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dekusleftsock · 3 months

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HMMNGGGSHSHHSHD IM SO LATE TO THIS BUT THERES SO MANY THINGS IVE WANTED TO SAY FOR SO LONG AND IVE JUST BEEN TOO DEPRESSED OR BUSY TO DO IT

I did just re-read the chapter, hazbin/helluva hyperfixation is gone y’all I’m back and ready for more.

Okay so, a couple of things I noticed. Let’s start there.

Throughout this chapter, it really is heartbreaking to see how Izuku regards one for all as Allmight’s power, and therefore a disrespect to him to give that away. Which is quite frankly insane given the nature of what the power is, but regardless it still shows me just how deeply he still cares for and admires allmight.

It also makes the transfer Izuku makes to Katsuki in the heroes rising movie all the more intimate; izuku wouldn’t just give the power to anyone, if not for himself (which is also clearly due to that fact since he still sees ofa as the thing that makes him a hero, not his characteristics), then simply out of respect for allmight and his legacy.

It’s just the anger you can see, feel in those words as he demands to know why. I’ve personally been in the boat of “Izuku dislikes Kudou immensely bc he hasn’t proven to be heroic and amazing like Katsuki has, and also he insults him a lot why would he like him”, since Izuku does genuinely have self respect (a common mischaracterization imo), he’s just also more forgiving and faithful to those he admires or loves (or both).

SPEAKING OF SELF RESPECT AND MISCHARACTERIZATION!

I want to highlight the words “But even so, this boy refuses to throw in the towel”, bc it’s such an important part of Izuku and his character.

He isn’t overly self sacrificial, he isn’t a masochist, he isn’t even a martyr—especially not a martyr.

Izuku is stubborn. That is not the same thing as wanting to constantly die for others; izuku is like Katsuki, he wants to fight for others. Giving up just simply isn’t in his morality.

And if “giving up” also includes letting someone die or failing to save someone out of his own negligence, that’s not because he wants to die.

I can’t explain how much the interpretation that Izuku wanting to die, even for others, is so fucking out of character. Izuku is stubborn, he’s stubborn in the way that he won’t just fall over and let the ground take him. Given the circumstances, Izuku would fight for his life just as he would fight for another.

THIS HAS BEEN THE CASE SINCE, I DONT KNOW, CHAPTER FUCKING ONE?

“Idiot! If I’d really jumped, you’d be charged with bullying me into suicide!! Think before you speak!!”

“Idiot…”

Like he’s so unaffected by the awful comment outside of being angry at the DISRESPECT of said comment. This is why all those damn suicidal Izuku fics have always felt so ooc. Izuku isnt a moody, brooding ball of depression, he’s a stubborn, courageous, and angry ball of depression. There is a difference.

Even before this, he literally attempts to say something or fight back to Katsuki, honestly it looks like he’s about to punch him here.

The only reason he DOESNT is bc HE DOESNT WANT TO GET HIS ASS BEAT

Btw for anyone who has or ever will be in Izuku’s position, punch him. I love Katsuki But hit him in the fucking gut. If you get your ass beat at least you can say you can took it like a champ.

Speaking from someone who regrets not punching three girls who were trying to gang up on me in middle school🫶🫶🫶

Anyway, I’d argue that Izuku not taking Katsuki in a fight was made out of self preservation, something he very much has.

And last but not least, we get to this lovely fucking page.

First of all…

Hm, ain’t that strange?

I’m not saying it’s fully a parallel, I’m just saying it’s something to consider.

Especially with the context that I don’t think Izuku feels shameful here.

He’s been a hero who didn’t look like one once before, I’m sure a snide comment through Shigaraki is nothing in comparison to the literal hundreds of civilians afraid of him.

Or, even more interestingly, what if he’s shameful of it, and okay with that? Now THATS some control over your emotions. This is demonstrating the very thing Banjo told him in the first place; using his emotions to fuel him. Let himself live with them, breath with them. They exist, and they hurt, and that’s fucking okay.

But it begs the question…. Why bring attention to it?

Clearly horikoshi WANTS you to see that Izuku is the one who looks like the monster now. He even looks devil like, blackwhip coming out of his back the way it is just feels like wings.

But maybe… maybe this is how he stops sweeping problems under the rug. Maybe this is him, Izuku, at his most animalistic form. Him. At his core. This is the Izuku he doesn’t want people to know.

The faceless, long clawed, oozing black monster.

He’s a kid who can take a fucking beating. He’s not Deku the useless doll, nor is he Deku the hero. He’s simply Izuku.

And you know what’s even more likely?

The black pit of anger that Shigaraki has formed, fueling his uncontrolled emotions and anger and despair, with the light tear showing something underneath…

What if, this was Izuku’s black ball of anger and shame, except this one is escaping his body, pouring out and showing all of that for what it truly is. Pent up rage, uncontrolled emotion, anxiety and shame, all mixed into one hell hole of a person—but a ball that can be molded, controlled, torn apart from the inside out.

See, the same way Kudou tears at Shigaraki’s mental breaking to see what’s underneath, so have the ofa users for Izuku. Slowly, but surely, the people in Izuku’s life have, while created that ball in the first place, also worked to destroy it. The final piece of the puzzle is for Izuku to choose to let it happen, and he is.

Learning to sit in one’s fear, doubt, hatred, anger, sadness, grief, happiness—without that emotion having to be something, simply something that flows through you, that you can choose to act on or not; this is where Izuku’s arc is coming to its tipping point. We are nearing the climax, I can feel it.

#bkdk #midoriya izuku #mha deku #bkdk brainrot #bakudeku #bnha deku #bakugou katsuki #mha analysis #deku midoriya #IM FUCKING BAXK BITCHES #I’ve been trying to write this for. not joking. two weeks.#like I have three different versions of this meta that I scrapped completely #they all have their own cool ideas tho so maybe I’ll come back to those #have a good fucking night and happy Valentine’s Day!!!!!!!

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joachimnapoleon · 5 months

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My Napoleon Review

I really wanted to like this movie. When it was first announced, I was one of the people in our little community here with a hopefully-optimistic, wait-and-see approach. I wanted to love it the same way I loved Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven and other historical epics that, despite not being historically accurate, still managed to hook me with good storytelling, excellent casts, and memorable battle scenes and imagery. Ridley Scott's Napoleon has none of the above.

You know what I liked about it? The uniforms. The uniforms looked magnificent and were probably the most accurate aspect of the movie. Almost like Scott had help from historians, but that can't be the case, because Scott says he didn't actually need historians to make Napoleon.

What I was not expecting from this movie was to be bored. Yet that's what I was, for at least the first hour and a half. I'm honestly just perplexed by this even now. I don't know how it's actually possible to make the life of Napoleon Bonaparte so thoroughly uninspiring and dull, but Scott managed to pull it off.

To be fair, he was aided in this superhuman effort by Joaquin Phoenix. I never in my wildest dreams could've seen him doing such a poor job with his interpretation of Napoleon. But honestly, the fact that he's too old for the role actually ended up being the least of what I disliked about this performance, which was basically everything. The early reports coming out when the movie was still being produced about Phoenix putting a lot of effort into understanding Napoleon's psychology gave me what turned out to be a completely misguided hope. When you read descriptions of Napoleon from his contemporaries, you see an energetic, charismatic, vibrant being who exerted an almost inexplicable magnetism that drew people to him and inspired devotion and admiration, even among his critics. There is nothing even remotely inspiring, energetic, charismatic, or vibrant about Phoenix's grim, dour, monotoned Napoleon. He only ceases being grim and dour to become a clown, or to indicate to Josephine in some undignified manner that he is once again in need of sex (at one point he actually oinks repeatedly). In one scene he literally crawls under the dining room table towards her on all fours, while the embarrassed valets watch.

The relationship between Napoleon and Josephine is totally devoid of chemistry. Kirby's acting was fine, but she was given a trash script to work with. At one of their early meetings, Josephine flat-out spreads her legs in front of Napoleon, invites him to look down, and declares that once he sees what's down there, he'll never stop wanting it. It was the cringiest scene imaginable, and frankly an insult to the real Josephine's memory, as were the pathetic sex scenes. The scene of the official divorce is stripped of any dignity by Scott, who decided to have Josephine randomly chuckle at various points while reading her statement, and then made it even worse by having Napoleon actually slap her across the face.

Even the battle scenes were a joke for the most part, and that was the one area where I was certain this movie would shine. It's the usual fare of Side A charges across an open field at Side B, with no discernible tactics whatsoever. Napoleon yells "Send in the infantry!" Shortly after that, "Send in the cavalry!" Corps, regiments etc are just nonexistent; the armies are just big masses hurtling towards each other while the artillery blasts continuously. The Borodino battle scene lasts maybe two minutes and was just disappointing on every level, like damn near everything else in this movie.

Oh, remember that bit from one of the trailers of Napoleon charging headlong, saber drawn? That actually occurs during the Borodino scene. The battle during which real-life Napoleon was uncharacteristically lethargic (and possibly ill) and barely left his tent. And then to top it off, Scott also has Napoleon ride into the fray during the Waterloo scene, and start cutting English soldiers down with his saber like Mel Gibson's William Wallace in Braveheart. I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

The guy they cast to play Wellington appeared to be at least 60 years old. Christopher Plummer he was not. I'm actually planning to watch Waterloo sometime this weekend as a pallet-cleanser.

I imagine the eventual four hour director's cut Scott has spoken of will flesh the narrative out more, but I'm not even sure I'm interested in seeing it after this. I can only hope the rumored Spielberg HBO series on Napoleon will transpire and put in the effort that Scott was not willing to.

Well, the good news is that Rod Steiger is no longer my least favorite Napoleon.

#Napoleon #Napoleon Bonaparte #Ridley Scott #movies

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magicstormfrostfire · 5 months

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Something that confuses me a lot is some people's reactions/analysis to Sonic saving Shadow in the void in Sonic Prime.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE it, and its parallels to what happened in SA2. That is incredible. But what confuses me is that a lot of people assume that in this show, SA2 happened and Sonic is losing Shadow again.

But I don't think that's the case...? I know it was said that the show follows modern games/everything is canon, but I dont think that means what some people think it means. I've seen some people criticize this interpretation of Sonic BECAUSE they think all of the games happened in this universe.

What I understood is that this is simply using the current ongoing personalities/traits/styles of the modern Sonic characters in games, but this is NOT the same universe. Its a different one. The direction they are going with the characters in Sonic Prime is writing them closer to their mainline game counterparts, just in a different universal setting. The universe is just not as drastic of a difference as say, Movie!Sonic or Sonic Boom's universe. (Which i think is why they made a point to say its following mainline Sonic; because Boom is a universe with its own games, Sonic, and canon as well.)

This is also why I think so many people judge Sonic Prime on what Sonic should know, how he should act, and what he should have learned from. But this is a different universe Sonic! He's a lot more naive and learning to get around. Its why I interpeted that Sonic catching Shadow was not ptsd of losing him again, it was fear of losing him period. This is very likely this Sonic's first world-saving scenario; he's use to just stopping Eggman's latest 'Robot of the week'. He is out of his depth with the shatterverse situation.

Now, I think its totally fair if this kind of 'new & naive' direction with Sonic's character turns people off, or if they dislike/hate it. This is not me trying to pursuade people into liking it if they don't. This is not me saying 'hey if you dislike this, its prolly because you're interpreting it wrong and if you see it this way you will like it.' But I constantly see people criticize the show for not taking into account things that happened in games. Or in this case, praising it for taking account events in the games. Those things didnt happen here! This is a different Sonic!

Of course, I could absolutely be wrong, and if I am, that's fine. But honestly it feels like they're making a different Sonic altogether, and frankly it wouldnt make sense for this to be the exact same Sonic.

So I guess my overall point is that I kind of feel like Prime is being saddled with game expectations it literally cannot meet, via being a different universe. Like I said, hate it, love it, idc I'm not your mom. I just think that this needs to be said and added to the conversation.

('Everything is canon' means 'every interpretation is valid'. Sonic has different universes, so its a lot more validating to fans to say everything happened, instead of alienating entire swathes of fans who all experienced Sonic differently through different media, by saying their experience isn't 'real' or 'true' anymore. And I think the more people realize this, the less people will argue 'evidence XYZ in game and this comic and the Japanese version of this podcast, and this game dev, and this episode, and this writer contradict your theory of Sonic hugging people' you do not need canon as gospel to validate why you like or dislike a certain take.)

Sonic in general is so fun because of how freeform and multiverse and endless it is. We haven't had that in a long time. There are things I love and things I hate, but not because of how closely they follow mainline. Its because I just like or hate it. We should cultivate this new growth and diversity, not prune it to fit into one shape. 🌱

#sonadow #sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedeghog #sonic prime #sonic #sth #prime sonic #prime shadow #sonic analysis #shadonic #shasoni #I am begging people to use reading comprehension and do not bitch at me about things you THINK I said #I rarely put out my personal sonic thoughts for this very reason #but ive been sitting on this for a while and havent seen anyone address the whole #'Sonic has ptsd from what happened in SA2' narrative #and it had been bothering me for a while

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thefloatingstone · 4 months

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Not to be like "haha I'm better than you guys!!!" or elitist or anything because that very sincerely is NOT the point of this post.... but I never really understood people extremely love for Harry Potter.

I read them as they were coming out. Most of the time they came out soon enough that I was the same age as Harry. I liked them. They were cool. Goblet of Fire was my favourite and I was always happy to see what story the next book would bring but that's all it was. Interest to see the next story whenever it came out. Like a sitcom you enjoy but you didn't set your tv to record for you in case you missed it.

And then the word "Chosen one" was uttered and, just like that, I fucking lost all interest. Honestly there was "Chosen one" talk in the 4th book and already I was like

Honestly I think I liked Goblet of Fire the most because there was no friggen Quidditch. And there was less focus on the SCHOOL part of Harry Potter and more this weird Video game Quest setup which just appealed to me more.

In retrospect, I think that might be a big part of why I enjoyed it but never LOVED it like other people.

"Oh boy my absolute biggest most favourite fantasy! THE BRITISH EDUCATION SYSTEM!!!!"

The fact that the books take place in a school seemed like a default to me because, well, most teenage focused cartoons and shows I watched had the main characters at school. Because they're teenagers. But the school wasn't why I enjoyed the books. The school was just a location. No I didn't want to go to Hogwarts. No I didn't want to get attached to a specific school house (although I feel it worth mentioning that when I was 13 I did the online house quiz thing on the official site and it said I was Hufflepuff so make of that what you will).

I really disliked whatever the one was that came after Goblet of Fire. So much so that it completely killed any and all enjoyment I had in the series. Which, considering I was only mildly entertained by them wasn't a massive loss or anything.

I know I read whichever book it was where Dumbledore died but I very genuinely cannot remember one single thing that happens in that book whatsoever. I read half of the Deathly Hallows after coming back from College and gave up because I wasn't enjoying any of it and I never picked the book up again.

I saw the first movie in theaters when I was 13 and I did not like it. It was visually very very dark and gloomy and just... extremely uninteresting to me. Idk how to explain it. The first book just felt so much more vibrant than what I was watching on screen.

I know I saw the 2nd movie although I have no memory of where or why. And I... THINK I saw the third one??? I think??? I'm actually not sure. But that's about where I just stopped and completely lost interest.

Because it wasn't very good.

They just weren't very good books.

They weren't TERRIBLE or anything like that but they were just so.... blah. The earlier ones 13 year old me enjoyed the one time I read each of them but I don't think 13 year old me had the best taste considering I also disliked the Princess Bride at this age.

But I was reading other books because I was a kid with ADHD in high school who desperately needed something stimulating to stop myself from going insane. And frankly, there were just far better books out there. Books I actually re-read. Books I borrowed from friends which ere just... so much better and more interesting.

So I just don't understand this insane appeal so many people have for it, even if they have severed that connection due to Jowling Kowling Rowling's bufoonery and showing herself to be a withered old crone with a shrivled heart and mind every time she opens her mouth.

I grew up with these books the same way as a lot of people. I was the exact age to go through the series' highest popularity and I just did not click with them despite reading them.

So seeing so many people my age or a little younger try and do their best to re-analyse and de-tangle what the books actually are and that... maybe.... just maybe.... they might not have been very good?? Maybe?? is very weird to me because I'm just like.

"Yeah they're overrated as hell and not that interesting."

It's a very weird thing to live through because it's like looking into a bizarro version of the world you remember living through... but not like THAT. I remember the Pokemon craze and yes, it was like that. I remember when anime started to become big and yes, it was like that. I remember DBZ airing and yes, it was like that.

But this insanity around Harry Potter while it was releasing?

Yeah I don't remember it being like that at all.

They were just mediocre books I read because I needed something to occupy my attention and eventually they got worse and worse and I just stopped reading them. That's all.

#I'm watching a youtube essay on the weak writing in the HP books #and it's like looking into an insane alternate reality where people really were THIS obsessed with this franchise #It's a very uncomfortable feeling #Like your memories don't line up with everyone else's despite knowing you were there #text post #cw #Harry Potter #JK Rowling #rambling #For context I grew up reading Terry Pratchett #I read my first Pratchett book when I was 11 #14 year old me groaning at the concept of a chosen one probably says a lot about my media criticism even as a child

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dreadsuitsamus · 11 months

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Green With Envy | Renji Abarai x Reader |

author's note: more mechanic!au stuff! i love this au with renji sooooooo much. it's so damn fun

pairing: renji abarai x reader

warnings: au, jealousy, some background renji x rukia

The tick of the clock on the wall only serves to irritate you further, the tickle of what's soon going to turn into anger settling tightly at the back of your skull. Renji's late. It's a Monday morning at the shop and he's uncharacteristically not here. He's usually here before you or right on time with you, and while it's technically his shop, it's still rude to not even send you a courtesy text.

You can't help the bounce of your leg and tightness in your jaw. Rukia is in town, and surely it's because of her that he's not here. She already had the entire weekend with him, and God only knows what the hell they were up to. You didn't hear from your friend not once, and in fairness, you didn't reach out yourself. Working together for sometimes more than forty hours a week is already a lot of time together, not to mention Renji often treats you to dinner after work or you'll invite him over and have a drink together to de-stress from the day.

To put it simply, you monopolize quite a bit of his time, and as nothing more than a friend and coworker, you have no right to feel so strung out about him being with another woman.

Another woman he was certainly fucking the entire weekend.

The bell above the door dings and the way you cut your eyes at him must be pure evil, because Renji reels back as if struck. He's got a frappuccino in hand and his usual black coffee in the other— he certainly knows the best way to extend an olive branch to you. He takes his usual seat before your desk and holds your drink away from your reaching grabby hand.

"Before I give you this and you start tuning me out," He starts, and damn him for knowing you so well. "I just wanna say I'm sorry I'm late, and that I missed you over the weekend."

And ohhhh how your heart warms at his sincerely spoken words. Combined with his dumb-looking, apologetic face, you can't really stay mad at him. "You're forgiven. Did you have fun with Rukia?"

Renji sets your drink down and has a quick pull from his own. "Yeah, always. We went and watched the new Fast and the Furious movie."

You snort and take a sip of your vanilla bean frappe. "And was it as ridiculous as you hoped?"

"Dumbest one yet." He flashes you a bright, dumb grin and sets his cup down to pull a pen and piece of paper from your desk and begin writing out his day's plans. "How was your weekend though? Any hot dates?"

"No." You mutter bitterly. "Seems you're the only one that has any fun like that."

"I dunno why." Renji murmurs, his eyes flitting to you for a moment. "You're extremely hot. Men should be falling to their knees left and right for you."

"Now you're just kissing my ass."

"Who, me?" Renji's smile is blinding, and the telltale twinkle of playful mischief is in his eyes. "Only if you asked."

"Take me to dinner first."

"Busy tonight, but lunch is all yours, babe." Renji scribbles out a schedule for you to keep him on, like always, and grabs a set of keys for his first few jobs— they're theoretically just simple oil changes.

"When does Rukia return home?" You hum, and frankly you're not doing a good job of hiding just how badly you dislike her existence. She's never done anything to you personally, no.

You just want what she has with Renji and the jealousy burns you.

"Tomorrow morning. I shouldn't be late again though."

"I don't care if you're late. I just would appreciate a heads up."

"I care if I'm late. I could lose my job, y'know. My boss is a bit of a hard ass like that, even though I'm the best worker she's got." Renji winks at you and rushes into the shop before you can chide him any, and the sound of his cackling laugh echoing from the garage is enough to ease the tension in your body and let you have a laugh too.

"Idiot." You mutter fondly before answering the incoming phone call.

A few hours pass by before you see Renji again, and he hooks the keys back up to the key wall. "I am not doing even one more goddamn oil change today."

"Hit your head a few times?" You hum as you browse your computer for lunch ideas, and snort as you feel his eyes shooting daggers your way.

"I don't wanna talk about it." He snarks and goes to his small selection of nice shirts, picking up two for you to choose between. And he nods, expecting your choice of the teal Henley shirt and pulls it over his white tank top. "Lemme go wash up and we'll go get a bite."

"Yes sir."

Renji heads down the short hallway to the bathroom and you tidy up your desk as you wait, and your heart sinks as you see a very familiar pain in your ass walking up to the door. Plastering a small yet still fake smile on, you wave a hand to Rukia. "Hey, Rukia."

"Hello!" She's always been so damn kind to you, it's ridiculous for you to have so much disdain for her. "Where's Renji?"

"Restroom." You murmur, eyeing her carefully. She's wearing a cute little sundress, emphasis on little, and no wonder you didn't hear from Renji during their weekend. And thank the fucking lord they're just friends with benefits and that she lives so damn far away, because you're not sure you'd still be in this business with Renji if you had to see Rukia more often.

It's petty, but your heart doesn't like to share, one-sided or otherwise.

Thankfully Renji's out of the bathroom before the awkward silence can linger, and he greets Rukia with a hug. "Hey, you! What're you doing here?"

"Wanted to get some lunch with you." She smiles brightly and good lord she's a teeny thing compared to him.

"Oh!" Renji rubs the back of his head. "Not that I don't want to, but I already promised to take-"

Rukia pouts, and you sigh to yourself. "Just go, Ren."

Renji frowns. "No, I told you that I would treat you to lunch and I meant that."

"Just go. Make it up to me tomorrow." She'll be gone then, is unspoken, and you're sure hoping he's picked up what you've put down. Much as you dislike her for stupidly selfish reasons, being rude to Rukia isn't an option.

His brow furrows together as you set your purse back into its normal spot and you toss his car keys to him without so much as another glance his way, and he only barely catches them in the midst of his frustration. You're upset, that much is obvious, and he doesn't want to leave you behind like this. "I really don't feel right about this. Let's just all go out together, okay?"

"We shouldn't really leave the shop unattended." Your voice is damn near robotic, and the frustration in Renji's chest digs a little bit deeper. You won't even look at him. "Since Mondays are my busiest days. I'll be fine; I brought my lunch anyway."

And before Renji can argue further, a repeat customer steps through the door and they shake hands for a quick greeting before the man steps to your desk to schedule service. You smile at the customer, grateful he's earlier than he said he'd be— Rukia pulls Renji out of the building and they're off to their lunch, and you get an hour to yourself before your dear friend returns.

"He wants a state inspection, oil change, and he'd like you to do an alignment as well." You mutter when Renji steps back inside, setting the customer's keys at the edge of your desk for your mechanic to move the man's truck out back. Your packed lunch, a simple Caesar salad, sits in front of you almost completely untouched as your fingers tap against the keyboard for yet another email response.

"Alright." Renji eyes you carefully, tugging the keys into his palm and removing his Henley. He hardly ate a thing at lunch, much to Rukia's annoyance. But his happiness is very much dependent on your own, and knowing you're upset because of his inability to keep his word sends a feeling of pure sickness to his stomach. He let you down, despite his best efforts.

You pointedly avoid his gaze, and he sighs gently before he sulks out to get back to work. You end up tossing what's left of your salad, your tummy too full of feelings to want to eat. Renji stays in the shop for the rest of the day, not even emerging for a snack or a set of keys before lockup. The air around you is tense, and you curse yourself for being the very source of it.

But damn this jealousy will not let you go.

You're already shutting down your computer and organizing your desk for tomorrow when the door to the garage opens up, Renji's work boots scuffing against the floor as he comes back for the first time in several hours. He sets all the keys on the desk instead of the wall, indicating he's gotten all the work done.

"Nice job." You murmur, pulling them into one of your desk drawers. "I'll send the invoices tomorrow and depending on when they pay up, we can send out the rent—"

Your chair swivels around, causing your heart to skip a beat as you come face to face with your mechanic, his hands settled on either armrest with you subsequently caged into the chair by his body. When the hell did he even cross over to this side of the desk?? "Renji, what the hell—?"

"I can't stand you being mad at me." He admits honestly, and you can see just how pained he is with his gaze alone. "I'm sorry about lunch, okay? I really, really am."

"Renji." You sigh softly, and it takes everything in you to hold your hands back, keeping them in your lap and not cupping his face and kissing him like you so desperately crave. "It's not a big deal."

"You're mad at me and you're hungry. I got a double whammy on my hands." He moves just a tad closer to you as he shifts his weight, the scent of his savory, expensive cologne still there even after a day spent working hard. "And they're both my fault. You didn't eat your stupid little salad because what you wanted was a grilled cheese with all your little fixins from that place down the road, and also because you're upset and you don't eat when you're upset."

"How do you have me so figured out?" You ask softly, eyes so stuck on his handsome face. The shape of his nose, the way his lips curve, the sharpness of his eyes… The tiny little freckles you've never even noticed dusting over his cheekbones… Being in this close proximity only makes you realize and memorize the finer details of what you thought you already had discovered entirely. But it isn't often you're this close for this long, and hopefully he can't hear the way your heart beats in your throat.

"We have been together for almost six years now." He murmurs gently. "We know almost everything about each other at this point. You're my best friend and my business partner— I'd have to be the dumbest guy in town not to know you better than the back of my hand."

"Best friend?" You whisper in fear of your voice cracking if you talk any louder. Your chest is tight with want and the corners of your eyes begin prickling with tears; this is all too oddly intimate to take place at work, of all places, closed or not. Though it was this place that brought you together to begin with— "We have been together almost six years now." is how he phrased it, as if you were a couple.

"The very best." He whispers back. "Rukia is my childhood friend, but she doesn't know me better than you do. And I definitely don't know her half as well as I know you now. I could talk all day long about things she liked before she turned fifteen and moved away, but I don't even know what her favorite restaurant is now. That's the thing with time. It changes people, y'know? So if you don't keep up with them, you drift. Seeing her once or twice a year isn't enough to beat out my bond with you, no way in hell. I see you every day, all day, and I enjoy every second and always look forward to more time with you."

"You promise?" Your eyes are filled to the brim with tears now, and Renji smiles ever so gently as the pad of his thumb wipes away a renegade drop.

"I do." He presses his lips to your forehead in a sweet kiss, and your arms loop around his neck— and in turn you're pulled into a crushing hug and receive a longer kiss to your temple before his lips graze down your skin to speak softly into your ear. "Let's go get you that grilled cheese now, okay? My treat, and after that we'll go get some ice cream from that other place you like."

"What about Rukia? It's her last night in town, and you said you were busy tonight."

"She's probably packing anyway, and her flight is so early that she'll be in bed within a couple hours. It's fine. I meant it when I said I missed you, and I wanna take you to dinner. It'll be okay." His voice buzzes against your ear, and he gives you another squeeze when you relent and nod along to his idea.

Grinning widely, he lets go of you to pull on that same Henley from earlier. "C'mon, before you start acting hangry and yell at me."

"Hey! I do not yell at you!"

Renji snaps his fingers and points. "There it is, right there! Hangry!!"

You laugh and bat your purse at him, and he screeches playfully and runs out of the building. "You'll never take me alive!"

"Only because you left me to lock up!" You call back, laughing giddily as you ensure the building is secure and follow him to his car.

"Hey, you know the rules. Last one out is a rotten egg." Renji explains as he opens the passenger side door for you

You just laugh at him, chest warm and fuzzy at the day's turnaround. And the little green monster at the back of your brain, the toxic little thing, is sated as your mechanic slips into the car for an evening with you.

#renji abarai x reader #renji abarai x you #renji x reader #renji x you #renji abarai #renji bleach #renji abarai imagine #bleach imagine #fic #au

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maplewozapi · 8 months

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hey, it's me, the anon that left the ask about studying Native American history and cultural appropriation. Thanks for the book recommendations, I've added them all to my to-read list.

It's crazy how much people seem to dislike the topic of history I've chosen, but you genuinely helped so much. Definitely reassured me. I've also bought bury my heart at wounded knee which is a *bit* outdated but was the first book I bought on the topic so I always think of it fondly, and another called Blood and Land, and also one called a Century of Dishonour, which was written in the 1880s (very outdated in areas but also. definitely against the government policies). I'm also trying to expand my reading horizons from what happened in the 19th century USA.

(Btw, wasn't Killers of the Flower Moon turned into a film recently starring Leonardo di Caprio?? I wondered if you'd watched it. I would like to find some more modern films/tv shows with good indigenous rep - I watched Annie Get Your Gun a while back but frankly it was shit. I want to purge it from my mind).

I hope you have a lovely day, I just thought I'd say thanks for the recommendations and the reassurance </3

Yes I am very excited for the movie to come out, and there’s nothing wrong with outdated books besides biases told by the white people at the time, you gotta be picky and not take everything at face value. I read so many old books and university papers of recounts of native history and it’s kind of an art to describe them and the bs some of them say and the crab meat of truth you’re trying to find. Or like by proxy of growing up and hearing stories, and then using those accounts to figure out "oh that’s what they mean" or "Oh they mean this thing not that, they mixed it up." Cultural and language mistranslations are just so prevalent.

Then here’s some movie and video recommendations, I’ll just say with Wind River and Bury my heart again be kinda thoughtful about them. Bury my heart has like this Hollywood kinda atmosphere, more cinematic it’s a great movie but it’s also based on events and they kinda dramatized some. Gives me the same feeling of "woman who walks ahead." Still great movies and a great way to get a feel for thing that happened back then. I really love news of the world too especially what they show with the buffalo and little girl, but I really wish they hired a native actress, it’s true that adoption of any race of people happened a lot in tribes but the representation of native kids in Hollywood is nonexistent and I think these movies would be so much better portraying native head leads. With Wind River if Jeremy renner and Elizabeth Olsen where switched out with native leads the plot would be so much richer. Like a city native and Rez native story would be so good. Movies that greatly follow white leads or have white characters for the yt audience to attach to just limits the movie for me.

#native american #indigenous #native #First Nations #Watch Juanita it’s so good #I need more native slice of life movies #ngl the tipi scene was weird af tho #ask

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steveandbuckysdaughter · 4 months

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Hi, again. 👋

I found the post you were talking about. The stan's account was deactivated, but yeesh. 😬 Nice replies to them, btw.

The stan that bashed on me said I was being misogynistic, even though I'm a black woman who just wanted to see another black character get their chance to shine.

Hell, it's not just the shows and movies (I think this all started with Endgame). It's also the Steve Rogers musical too. I don't know if you know about it, but Disney made the musical real, and it really did Sam and Bucky dirty.

Sam isn't even in it. Maybe he was mentioned once, but the musical showed an image of Sam as Captain America. As for Bucky, his scene from CA:TFA, where he saved pre-serum Steve, was given to Peggy instead. Bucky was mentioned once, and the musical tried to justify Steve's ending from Endgame. All for this ship.

And, frankly, I don't hate Peggy, I'm just more annoyed that other characters get shoved aside as well as this great dynamic that Steve and Bucky had, while she and her ship with Steve has been getting propped up more and more. But, seeing some of your and the others' posts, I get why you guys don't like her.

Girl, don’t get me started on the abomination that was Rogers the musical. It could have been glorious, it had so much potential, but once again Bucky’s role in Steve’s story was given to Peggy, and Sam wasn’t even there!

I feel like Marvel feels the need to tone down Stucky or their friendship overall because it was just too powerful. We all remember the hashtag that begged Marvel to make Stucky Canon, #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend. They just couldn’t let it happen, not to a main and important character like Steve, god forbid. And so ever since civil war Stucky has always had little to no scenes together no matter how well established it was in previous projects. All their scenes and dynamic were given to Peggy, their friendship was toned down, Steve’s whole ending happened. It just feels like Stucky is so menacing to Marvel that the only way to stop us is by destroying Steve, Bucky and their relationship.

I mean, Steve is given no justice in his ending and in all the other projects he appeared in. Bucky went from a victim and prisoner of war to someone who must make amends for things that were beyond his control. And the depth of their friendship was toned down and reduced every time Peggy was involved. And then they wonder why many people in the fandom dislike Peggy or why the whole Rogers the musical initiative flopped the second it went beyond Hawkeye.

Like, even if you don’t ship Stucky you can tell that they care for each other, and you can tell there was a shift after people actually wanted Marvel to take action and do something about this dynamic. Steve can’t get even one episode as his own character because Peggy must be there. Bucky had more luck, but still… and let’s not even talk about Sam, his only appearance was as a zombie!

In another post of mine I ranted about how bothered I was that Peggy was inserted in the 1602 storyline, and i haven’t changed my mind. It would have been so nice to give Steve one episode about himself, about his dynamic with his best friend and about the relationship with himself and his fellow avengers. But no, Peggy must be there too, and for no good reason as well.

I feel like Marvel trying to erase pre-existing relationships to have Peggy shine only results in fans turning their back on Marvel and hiding in fanfiction or whatever piece of media that can actually bring justice to the characters. Once someone on Tumblr said “you gave us the characters, but once you mess them up they’re not yours anymore. You don’t understand and respect them, therefore you don’t deserve them.” and I couldn’t agree more, which is why I am currently reading and writing fanfiction rather than buying into everything marvel gives us.

Peggy was the love interest with more screen time even before what if and all that jazz, she had her own show! And I fear that the day Marvel will realize that pushing a reimagined Nazi turned Mary Sue into every single what if episode where she can fit instead of enhancing the characters that are actually relevant in-universe it will be too late.

Sorry about the rant, I get carried away when it’s about my boys lol

#Steve rogers #pro Steve rogers #anti endgame steve #bucky barnes #pro bucky barnes #stucky #pro stucky #steve x bucky #anti peggy carter #anti steggy #marvel critical #mcu critical #what if #sam wilson #pro Sam Wilson #sam wilson is Captain America

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 28 days

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tuesday again 4/2/2024

in which i try to clean two different boxes with varying success

new people: hello! the tuesdaypost is a weekly roundup of stuff i've been listening, reading, watching, playing, and making. it is NOT a recommendation series, although i sometimes dabble in critique. when im firing on all cylinders i ask "what is the core concept of this? does it succeed in what i think it's trying to do and what it says it's doing?is it well-made but i dislike it/beautiful but not for me? why? what parts Really Work?"

if you are into purity culture, yelling at other people about the problematic media they consume, or are under 18 i am going to have very little patience for you.

listening

now that i live in houston i am legally obliged to loop the new beyonce album 24/7. there is absolutely truly nobody fucking doing it like her. every song is a multimedia art piece. goddamn do i miss the album as a tool to convey a specific concept/listening order/flow. sometimes (chappell roan most recently comes to mind, although it does feel unfair to compare anyone to beyonce) every individual song is pretty good but the listening experience if you sit down and listen all the way through the album is unpleasant and choppy. not so here. NEVER here.

my favorite like Dance Number is YA YA (it samples nancy sinatra's boots! and the beach boys' good vibrations! wildly different tones despite coming out a year apart!)

youtube

the one that goes on four different character/tone playlists is BODYGUARD.

youtube

great early roundup of influences, samples, and collaborators. delighted to see five fingers for marseilles listed, a rocky but underrated south african neo-western free on tubi rn for americans

reading

also very texas-relevant with the recent pornhub lawsuits! pornhub and sex tech (among other things) have been samantha cole's beat for almost ten years. i trust her to report sensitively and not for like. shock clicks

this site has a free paywall (sign up with your email for a link to the full article) so bots have a harder time scraping articles: this is a journalist-founded site with only the four founders running it and writing articles. while annoying i do think this is a reasonable measure

The platform still has problems, but after years of critical reporting and a litany of legal and reputational consequences, Pornhub is now more heavily moderated than any other porn platform, and most major social media platforms, for that matter. A growing list of age verification laws has put Pornhub in a position where it is compelled to block access to its site in seven states and counting. In theory, these laws are designed to prevent children from being able to access pornography online. In reality, what is going to happen is that children are going to end up on pornographic sites that don’t care what the law says, and where some of the most harmful content that exists online is actively promoted to them.

she's also got a new limited series podcast with CBC about the rise and fall of pornhub, which was fascinating and kept me company during an extremely early morning drive

watching

i'm lukewarm about this one but i spend a lot of time getting there, much like this movie

ive been watching a lot of frankly dogshit thrillers, which has made me wonder: what's the deal with supervillans? where did they come from? and thence arrived at the prototypical film Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922, dir. Lang). the four and a half hour cut on Kanopy is two normal-length movies superglued together, which makes sense as a streaming product but it is sort of a terrifying runtime and took me three days to get through.

sometimes, as we know, i get a real bee in my bonnet about visiting the early versions of things. dr mabuse is the blueprint for every james bond and mission impossible villain, or really any shadowy supervillain with power over [INDUSTRY] or [THE MARKET]. it is a four and a half hour long cat and mouse game through lavish, eccentric sets between mabuse and prosecutor wenk. it has some trouble sustaining itself bc it is four and a half hours long but does deliver on the cat and mouse aspects. this letterboxed review has interesting things to say about the political climate of 1922 germany and how lang subverts the formula of the pulp serial.

really the film opens with mabuse yelling at his cocaine-addicted assistant, but the film properly gets going with mabuse's henchmen stealing a trade agreement (nothing really carbon dates a movie more than a missing trade agreement. vanishingly few post-early-30s movies have missing trade agreements as plot points) and then he crashes the stock market. for fun and profit.

however. i think every time you see an evil man who is a banker or stockbroker or generally uses money as power you have to interrogate whether it's antisemitic. the answer here is "maybe" but i'm not sure if intent matters when contemporary nazi critics were eager to hold mabuse up as "this is the typical jewish criminal". (sorry about the link directly to wikipedia, it's been touch finding online sources for this section). mabuse is not specifically jewish, but there are certainly elements of stereotype. i am still not good at being presented with "this movie has a shadowy behind the scenes figure manipulating the government and all the money ever" and going "hey wait a minute".

after that tremendous glaring caveat, for which i read more contemporary reviews and reviews in general than i ever read for movies in these posts, is it good? eh. a contemporary VARIETY review remarked (and i largely agree)

The direction of Fritz Lang has moments – but Lang somewhat negates his good technical effects by twenty forty-word captions of a ludicrous unconciseness.

the night scenes are particularly well done, and imo are better than many modern night scenes--other contemporary reviews remarked

In this film the techniques of the film camera (Carl Hoffmann’s brilliant photography) are brought to perfection. The problem of how to film lit-up streets at night has been solved for the first time. It is unbelievably impressive to see the glaring lights of speeding cars flash through the night or the rapid passing of an elevated train of the initially blurred, then gradually focussed glimpse through a pair of opera glasses on to the variety stage, the nuances of light and shade—these things alone prove the value of film documentary.

look at this shit! filmed from within the cars! in 1922!!!

youtube

this film asks you to believe hypnotism is real and really effective, so i don't think it's that big of a leap when it asks you to believe in ghosts. i don't understand that quibble from contemporary viewers. there are several on screen suicides with like. specific methods. which is not currently regarded as good filmmaking practice. im curious to know what contemporary audiences thought but couldn't immediately turn anything up, and wading through masters’ theses on cinematic suicide is a little beyond my current mental health.

if i were a more content-minded woman this would turn into a clickbait video essay about the antisemitic origins of every supervillan. however i am unqualified and untalented at video editing and i'm sure there are forty theses on this already. this movie is a hard sell to anyone jewish or employed. it is also a stunning example of cutting-edge film technology and part of the genesis of the modern supervillan. Fritz Lang films tend to fall in the category of “movies i am happy to see once and feel no need to revisit”.

playing

playing what is effectively the same game three times back to back (breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom, genshin impact) has sort of burned me out on open world games with a focus on battle skill progression and stumbling across little puzzles in the overworld. i have to get itch.io up and running on this pc and find the most linear jankiest possible one-sitting indie thing. or several of them. i might try the solo ttrpg Gentleman Bandit i seem to have acquired in one of the giant charity bundles

brief breath of the wild update bc i don't want to pull screenshots off my switch: i have gotten to the boss fight for the gerudo and goron regions, have not completed them bc my focus in this game is NOT hearts, and am in the middle of the zora temple. despite the quality of life improvements and new regions in totk i think i prefer botw: progression is a bit easier, there are fewer mmo-style hub quests and repeatable quests. things like the stable photos are cute but very repetitive, so are the sign bracing puzzles, and the sky crystal quests for sky shrines feel VERY samey. also dislike how the CLEAR OUT: [REGION] quests with the monster suppression squads reset at the blood moon.

anyway! to genshin! there was an exceptionally fun little event with a surprisingly involved management sim tacked onto the game??? you make and sell potions fulfilling different requirements, and can eventually stock travelling merchants all over the continent. the actual act of making the potions was this block-filling 1010! style thing (screenshot from polygon)

the new region, a port town and tea-growing area called Chenyu Vale, is maybe the prettiest one in the game so far? it's the one that feels the most picturesque and Designed, like this is one huge mansion garden studded with follies. they also added background chatter and noise in the cities and towns, which really startled me and makes them feels much more lived in! this is a fun trick to avoid putting in a thousand NPCs and making everyone's framerate crash. the less stuff in your game, the less shit can go wrong.

also pulled for and got chiyori, a geo-aligned seamstress (and sometime spy???) swordswoman who has what i can only call domme voice

making

ok now we'll talk about boxes. i was rearranging my kitchen, as unemployed women are known to do, and noticed this recipe box i picked up back in mass was disgusting. the finish is starting to fail but it was genuinely grody and last summer i packed my kitchen in a blind panic inside an hour and did not have time to address it. i have never seen a recipe box at an estate sale before or since and it made me desperately sad.

it was full of a lot of stuff.

i went at it with a somewhat inadvisable combination of things: wood soap didn't budge it, so i dampened a paper towel in vinegar and wiped it down in the vain hope it would do something. the thing that worked, and would be inadvisable for anything veneered or less densely textured, was baking soda paste and the scrubby side of a sponge. it still smells Very musty even after 48h of loose baking soda inside with several changes, but that might be partly the recipe cards' fault. i would like to refinish this at some point but i don't have polyurethane on hand and the fun little project budget is empty until further notice/i get a job.

the hinge did rust a bit despite my best efforts but that has since been lightly steel wooled and oiled. a well loved object! it's possible the lady who died just fucking sucked and that's why literally her entire estate including many other things families usually keep was on sale, but i would like to think perhaps she simply had no other family? a well loved/used object even if all the recipes are for semi-horrifying fifties new england recipes.

the other box, pre-acids but post-washing: this topp trading card box with seven episode one packets of cards was intact with the original seal. i have verified it was not worth much more than the $5 i paid for it with the trading card obsessed man in my best friend's husband's friendgroup. i bought this three months ago but the man was unavailable to open it until uhhh last week. some sort of liquid got inside it at some point and it was super corroded. i was going to store embroidery floss in here but even with all my powers (barkeepers friend. brasso.) i cannot completely remove the corrosion. it's not corroded Through but it looks bad and feels rough. so it goes. it'll probably hold the tiedown straps in my car bc that plastic bucket is rapidly failing

#aaaaaaand we're back baybee!!!#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #uncharacteristically nervous about this one since there are so many new people haha

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ataleofcrowns · 1 year

Note

i don't know if anyone has asked you this before but are there any story/book tropes that you dislike? :D (like; love triangle, "I'm not like other girls", etc.)

Not specific tropes, but actually... the way tropes are used by authors. This is gonna be a minor rant, fair warning lol.

The thing with tropes is that tropes themselves are not bad. They're staples of certain concepts that can be reinvented or utilized in unique and refreshing ways depending on how an author uses them, consciously or subconsciously, straightforwardly or by subverting them.

Hell, sometimes authors don't even realize they're using tropes, but reading their work you can pick out elements that would fit certain ones. I can tell you that when I started writing AToC, I did not think to myself, "Okay, now we need a Chosen One Trope and a Royal Bodyguard Trope, and a Slowburn Trope, and a Friends-To-Lovers trope".

I planned the world, the story, and the characters first, going off what appealed to me personally, without really thinking of tropes. Only later did I recognize the trope-like elements when readers started to point them out to me.

The problem with it is when an author becomes overly reliant on tropes to the point where they center their characters and plot around them. That's how you get artificial, shallow stories that are churned out without thought or passion, especially because it's so easy to market them that way to an audience.

An author who writes about a love triangle that arises from the wants, desires, motivations and/or flaws of their characters, can absolutely do it in a thoughtful, compelling way. The love triangle exists because the character caught in the middle has genuine reasons and feelings for being attracted to two people, and the love triangle in turn can affect the larger story because of that.

On the other hand, an author that writes a love triangle for the sake of having a love triangle? So they can point to their story and go, "hey everyone, my story has a love triangle, come read it"?

Yeah, I'm not touching that story. The whole trend of "read my novel, it has Mutual Pining with a dash of Slowburn Enemies-To-Lovers and Secret Bodyguard in a Coffeeshop AU with shades of [Insert Anime here] [Insert Sci-fi/Fantasy Property here]" frankly drives me up the wall.

What is your actual story about. What are you trying to say. I'm begging you just give me an actual summary of your story without referring to tropes or other media properties. If I wanted to read something like [movie] [anime] [video game], I would literally just go watch or play those things myself!!!

So, yeah, no real tropes that put me off. It's the way tropes can be misused by authors that repulses me from a book, usually.

#ask #anonymous #about the author

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ousama · 7 months

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ok im going to try and address the callout in the best way that i can now that im fully medicated and in the right mindspace. i will go over every part of it to be as concise as possible!

let me state right now this post is not to garner pity. i am not asking for apologies. i am not asking people to refollow me if they are uncomfortable. if i make you uncomfortable please put your mental health first for the both of us

ok lets start with this! over a year ago i sent people fake gore. this is fact. those people were pedophiles and fascists. you are allowed to have the opinion its wrong for me to send anyone gore but i want to make clear i only targeted genuinely dangerous individuals. i am a grown adult as well! that is true. but i do think there's quite a difference in the maturity of an unmedicated 20 year old who had been, if most of my long time followers recall, recovering from a literal cult. and a now 22 year old who is fully medicated and has a job. i have matured and changed i think

this was in regards to i believe that how intimidating am i ask meme? though i mentioned gore here i am noting again i had actually stopped sending gore by this point in my life. I do still send fascists their IP addresses to scare them into deleting. I understand i can block, report and warn others but quite frankly. Staff does not care about the fascist problem. blocking and reporting does not do shit on this website and i believe personally its best to take it into my own hands especially when, in my experience, i have a 90% success rate in getting them to deactivate via just mentioning the town they live in

im. not sure why this image is included quite frankly but ill try my best to address it. The person messaging has been harassing me for about a week including misgendering me and using ableist language against a developmentally delayed individual. This is the kill yourself website. I did not think replying with a blingee would be an issue. They mentioned gore only because my carrd says if you stealth follow and are a pedophile or other brand of freak ill send you gore . my carrd is not updated and that has been there for about two years. it is not accurate to what i do now.

this is me explaining that^ also included in the callout. don't know what to say here as im clearly acknowledging it.

same person harassing me doubling down on the fact my carrd outdatedly mentions gore. I answer honestly, because again id only ever used horror movie screenshots. To Fascists And Pedophiles.

im not elaborating this is my post. it explains itself but its added here as it was in the callout

now we get to malistaire. i will say right now. I have nothing against malistaire personally. i also cannot check their tumblr so will default to they them. if these are the wrong pronouns i apologize but i quite literally cannot confirm.

Malistaire does have a history with our group. we are a friend group called the overdosis group chat. other members may dislike malistaire. that is not my problem quite frankly. i do not hold any ill will or intentions toward them. as you can see in both screenshots. Neither Discord Message Is From Me. I have NO obligation to take responsibility for other people in a shared server especially when i am one of the least active members. I believe the first message was prompted by malistaires old blog having a post that implied our group might be stalking them. we were not. as far as i know they left the server due to personal drama with one member. the second dm is also not me. my name is not liv, you may notice. i am not responsible for this. adding it to a post about me is pointless at least and misinformation at most.

they go on to list other members. which is irrelevant to a post about me. but i find the comment about the groups name most interesting because

Malistaire Was An Original Member Of The Group. They Had Joined The Server Twice Actually.

they were aware of the suicide note (of a racist, mind you) and even joked about it in the server. They do not mention this at all on the callout.

they also partook in sending death threats. alongside us.

im out of image space i will continue this in a reblog. please do not reblog this post in its current state.

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lostcryptids · 2 months

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Some thoughts on Lisa Frankenstein - A total failure of a movie when it comes to being like "oh look our main character is a weird girl no one understands!" when it never actually presents her as that weird or disliked at school. she sits in a graveyard... ok? I really hated the line where she's like putting on music and is like oh it's music for people with feelings like us.. like girl shut up. The person who mistreats her the most is her stepmother, at home, not fellow students. - Lisa herself INSUFFERABLE character. So many of the things she does make no sense. It's a comedy so they try to play a lot of the absurdity off as an excuse for this, but she's suddenly ok with killing people and burying their bodies without even a freak out or change in her character. She's a dick to her stepsister when she's one of the most compassionate characters to her but the movie never actually seems like it thinks Lisa is in the wrong for anything? The movie really reminded me of Heathers if it wasn't actual smart with its commentary - Playing this movie as a Frankenstein movie is..seriously misleading? A guy getting zapped back to life yeah ok, but she doesn't BUILD him. They seem like they came up with the name of the movie first, then were like oh shit how are we gonna make this a plot point? And then they hardly did, because them killing people and cutting off singular body parts for most the movie is frankly a really boring plot. - The constant stream of songs being thrown into the movie made me feel like they were trying to make these songs tiktok trending. Like i could just FEEL that they were trying to manifest that. - More power to you if you found this movie romantic, but it's really not at all to me - People calling it a modern cult classic are totally wrong for many reasons, and this movie trying to come off as campy while just feeling like a manufactured big budget movie pretending to be a campy movie is embarrassing

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moonlitempty · 7 months

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The World’s End (2013), Dir. Edgar Wright, Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

One night. Six Friends. Twelve Pubs. Total Annihilation.

And with this beautiful entry we end the Cornetto Trilogy Journal Entries (C. T. J. E.’s for short), it’s been a truly beautiful ride! I hope my (frankly deficient and almost awful) little journal entries have provided at least a little bit of enjoyment or inspiration to all of you, my beautiful Peggsters <3

I had a lot of fun making them! And this served almost as an exercise or test in if I had any creativity left, I hadn’t done anything like this before so it was a nice little refreshment from my normal journaling routine.

(Pss, there is one for Spaced on the way, this is not the end!)

The World’s End proved to be the most exotic (for lack of a better word) movie out of its siblings, while I felt like Shaun and Hot Fuzz were grounded in reality enough that their events could realistically happen in our reality (well, perhaps excluding the zombies), I felt like The World’s End went all out with the mysticism, fantasy, extravagance, and exuberance.

Of course, this is to be expected, it IS a Sci-Fi movie after all! And I didn’t realise how much I needed a nice, time-to-fight-a-planetary-menace movie until I saw this beaut.

Which speaking of that, this movie is visually beautiful! All of Edgar’s Cornetto movies have this signature look I can’t quite put my finger on, but World’s End (I’ll call it that from now on for the sake of convenience) exudes a certain look and feel that I can’t quite describe, it’s sophisticated almost?

The editing in this film is the best in the entire trilogy, it’s got that signature snappy and dynamic style Edgar does so well, but this time it’s refined to the maximum level, with every scene change and transition leaving you in awe in a “THAT IS GENIUS!” sorta way.

Actually, I remember absolutely losing my shit at the intro ALONE, it was that much of a treat to the eyes.

The score was just PHENOMENAL as well! Normally I’m not one to pay much attention to a film’s score, they almost blend in and become complementary to the film in some cases, but this score drew me in almost immediately. It just started to become more and more impactful and present with each passing scene, I stopped taking the score for granted, and the whole film became a feast for the senses, the scene where Gary, Andy, Sam and Steven are driving away from Newton Haven was so powerful and imposing, I must get this score on some sort of physical format (don’t trust digital media to last forever! much less streaming!)

The plot was the thing I was most afraid of, I’m not known as a huge Sci-Fi guy, I find it quite boring and even uninteresting most of the time, so I was terrified of feeling disconnected from this film. The contrary ended up happening, I think this film may have put me onto the genre! That strange sort of cosmic horror and the implications of bigger and stronger societies outside of our own planetary grasp is very, very intoxicating.

GARY WAS PHENOMENAL.

The first time I watched the film I was honestly a little afraid that I’d dislike him, every little juvenile and childish joke or one liner he’d pull made me worried, specially since he was surrounded by a bunch of people that clearly knew he was not someone to trust. This all changed relatively quickly though, I learnt that Gary was just someone clinging to the past and the fun times he used to have with his mates, and honestly his struggles with addiction and feeling like you have nothing going for yourself hit particularly close to home for me. I ended up completely adoring Gary and I wish him the best, my sweet 40 year old baby boy.

The dynamic between Gary and Andy was perhaps the most interesting in the entire film, you could even argue it’s the central theme of the whole film, and seeing how it all slowly developed, unraveled, and blossomed, and Andy grew to care for Gary again was very, very sweet. The scene where they’re together at The World’s End was the most cathartic and powerful moment of the film. To err is human, truly.

I struggled to grow particularly attached to the rest of Gary’s and Andy’s friends, besides Steven and Sam, I didn’t care much for Oliver and Peter, admittedly, sorry!

This movie was surprisingly powerful, even now I find myself still thinking about it, specially the message of how making mistakes and being imperfect is part of the core nature of being human, to rob us of imperfection is to rob us of humanity, of warmth, of thought, of intention.

The World’s End. 10/10.

Until I (inevitably) rewatch you again, Cornetto Trilogy, which will probably be sooner than I expect it to be ❤️💙💚

#the cornetto trilogy #simon pegg #nick frost #edgar wright #the worlds end #gary king #andy knightley #this is a soliloquy at this point #movie #movie journal #journal #film #film journal #movie thoughts #absolutely stunning

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saltineofswing · 3 months

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Hello! I'm the person that made the rant post about my dislike on the lack of natural dichotomy of the Pyramids and Traveler since the introduction of the Veil that turned into a whole thing. You mentioned a lack of pulp in your reblog and it's stuck with me since then. I wasn't familiar with the term and did some research on it, but I still don't think I get what it is. I tried looking it up but a lot of articles and videos I could find explain the history of pulp and its influences in modern day sci-fi but not necessarily what it is, especially in a way that would give me context to better understand your reblog. If it's not too much trouble, can you explain a little more what the "pulp" is that destiny is lacking?

I’d be happy to try and give you a little more insight into what I feel are important tenets of pulp as a genre/concept! I decided this might be a good opportunity to talk a little about it generally because I am really feeling its absence generally in the past couple years, so I included some historical backing which you’re probably already familiar with – hope that’s OK.

I did a little digging personally, for some good places to familiarize oneself with the basics of pulp as a concept and/or genre. It was nice to re-affirm some info that I’ve felt secure in holding as true without a ton of evidentiary support, and I also learned some cool new stuff as well! I think a good place to start would be to link to the TV Tropes page about pulp magazines, which does a pretty good job of explaining the origins and foundational aspects of the concept in a way that is easy to digest. It also has a lot of examples available to peruse. I also found this cool article on the golden age of pulps, which is an interesting read.

This got long, so below the cut!

To reiterate, the original ‘pulp’ terminology and vibe comes from early/mid-20th century magazines, which were cheap and easy ways to access genre fiction and action/adventure stories before comics, paperback novels, and TV/movies were really on the scene. Pulp magazines spanned a very wide array of genres, but because of a lack of appreciation for the medium, a majority of pulp magazines and aspects of what I would consider to be pulp as a genre have been allowed to fall into obscurity. There are places where I feel it is particularly obvious, especially the superhero genre (don’t get me started we’ll be here all week) but also in fantasy and science fiction – a term which was, in fact, coined by Hugo Gernsback, an editor for pulp magazine Amazing Stories.

They were cheap to make, cheap to buy, and easy to serialize; they could be really schlocky, crass, and unpolished. They could also be fucking incredible! The Shadow is a good example of an early pulp property with screaming highs and frankly peat-bog lows. Lovecraft published a lot of what is considered to be his ‘best work’ in Weird Tales! Conan the Barbarian, too! They kind of came out of the gate with a somewhat negative connotation associated with ‘low-brow’ forms of literature like dime novels, but where other magazines of the time tended to incorporate non-fiction articles and photography, pulp mags tended to be fiction stories only – short stories, or longer stories split into serialized chapters. Early on, not many of them had art, though with the advent of comic books that changed (you could argue that books like Creepy and Eerie are direct offspring of early pulp mags). Similar to what Weekly Shonen Jump does with manga.

If you think of a genre as a toolbox, pulp is a box full of tools that function fine alone, but excel at assisting the function of other toolboxes. I would almost liken ‘pulp’ to the concept of ‘camp’, which are also two concepts that can and do overlap with a high degree of synergy. Pulp has its own foundational attributes that are distinct from camp – for example, camp is gay relies a lot more on its self-awareness, at being able to wink at the viewer or participant, and telling you ‘yeah, we know it, but isn’t it fun?’ Pulp, on the other hand, is the (no pun intended) straight man counterpart to this aesthetic sensibility; pulp is at its best when it is being completely earnest. The quippy lines and dramatic proclamations are meant to be taken on their face. Nowadays it’s the kind of stuff that memes are made of – ‘That Wizard Came From The Moon’, ‘I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain’, ‘Whether we wanted it or not, we’ve stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars’. Saying shit that has no explanation with your whole chest. Trying to be cool on purpose, the ultimate cringe move.

Nowadays I think that this kind of thing has mostly died out of modern media, but the counter-motion is still prevalent in mainstream superhero movies. A good example is the ‘Would you have preferred ~YeLlOw SpAnDeX~’ line from the OG X-Men movie. Hey dickhead! The yellow spandex is cool if you, the guy making the movie, believes its cool! Crucially, while a lot of modern superhero stuff is quippy and irreverent, it often uses these tropes in a self-aware or cynical manner – afraid of being earnest, committing the aforementioned cardinal sin of trying to look cool on purpose.

(God damn it, I’m talking about superheroes again. Sorry. Before I get back on task this is why I loved the recent Moon Knight run so much; Jed MacKay is NOT afraid to have the characters say some absolutely batshit thing but it comes off as so, so cool. And yes, a little cheesy.)

And then, where modern sci-fi typically has an ultra-detailed explanation on-hand, I think a lot of early pulp stuff just… didn’t. Ask a sci-fi property for an explanation on, oh I don’t know, ‘where did these super-humanoid sapient machine warriors come from’ and it will likely have a molecule-deep explanation of how those unnamed machine people were created. Ask a fantasy property for an explanation on the same and it might say, ‘no’. It’s not that a pulp-leaning property won’t give you the answer to that question… it just might not have it. The ‘why is it/how is it’ is not as important as the ‘what is it’ and ‘how is it relevant’; a writer had a limited amount of page real estate, as multiple features were typically crammed into a single magazine. Even if a feature was serialized, much like television episodes (before the binge trend), one had to keep information digestible, and not too reliant on a prior or later edition that a reader might never see.

Explanations tended to be in service of an emotional beat, or to a theme, versus as a grounding agent to immerse a reader in the world. For the record I don’t necessarily think of either method as being better or worse, and heavy worldbuilding can still utilize pulp as a veneer or filter to engage audience expectations in different ways. Pulp stuff relies a lot on suspension of disbelief without utilizing a rigid lore-based framework to – though, you know, your story/setting still has to have its own internal logical consistency.

(I feel that it is important to note, as a partial consequence of the time period in which these magazines were being made, and when pulp fiction was most heavily consumed, xenophobia and racism are also heavily present in pulp works. I think everybody knows at this point about how much Lovecraft sucked but it’s a valuable example of how a lot of ‘fear of the unknown’ in that time was transliterated into ‘fear of the different’, in general but especially relating to genre fiction. If you decide to explore material in this genre, in this time period, be forewarned! Some of it was pretty glaring!)

So, let me tie some of this stuff to my previous statements about Destiny. I think that Destiny is an excellent example of how pulp tropes, aesthetic, and genre conventions can be used to enhance and streamline a setting… and how stripping too much pulp away can have a detrimental impact on the depth of a narrative.

The original narrative and worldbuilding of Destiny drew very heavily on pulp aesthetics to create a foundation, both in its appearance and its lore. The ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction’ was a period of time in the mid-20th century that sort of transitioned sci-fi out of pulp magazines and into its own thing, but the foundational structure of science fiction at this time was still heavily pulp-influenced. I think this is very well-represented by the portrayal of Venus as a ‘garden’ (jungle) world, very lush and with sulfurous and sometimes acidic rains. Before advancements in astronomical technology went and fucked everything up for us writers, Venus’s opaque cloud-covered atmosphere was impenetrable enough that there could be anything under there – and a popular portrayal of Venus was a muggy, humid, rain-heavy world that sometimes also included lush jungles. In Bradbury’s short story The Long Rain (WHICH ran in Planet Stories, a pulp mag, by the way!) this portrayal is a central obstacle to the narrative; it’s also used in Heinlein’s novel Space Cadet.

The color scheme that Destiny uses for Venus also matches a common color scheme for Venus in this era – see this cover for Fantastic Adventures. Visually, I think that this comparison between the postcard that went out with the D1 limited/collector’s edition and this Planet Stories cover for The Golden Amazons of Venus demonstrates the influence, at least regarding terrain and biome.

In fact, I think that you can see from this Eververse postcard – which could have been peeled off of any era-appropriate paperback novel – that the influence goes bone-deep. Destiny even refers to humanity’s halcyon age as ‘The Golden Age’.

(Below: Is this image from Destiny dev, or a science fiction paperback from the 60s? Who knows! I know. It’s Destiny.)

In the modern era of Destiny storytelling, though the visual elements of the universe remain largely rigid relative to this early framework, the pulp underpinning of the narrative has been largely left behind. The original game’s story, and the stories of subsequent DLCs, felt very pulp-inspired – this ranged from ‘sort of effective’, like in House of Wolves, to ‘game-savingly effective’, like in The Taken King. Pulp lends itself to straightforward conceptual executions, and brisk narratives, because of its roots as short-form literature. The narrative of D1 was simple and to the point; Light good, Dark bad, humanity is in the shit, think you can kill a god? The surrounding world scaffold was rich but not deep. As I like to say, sometimes a river can be wide but shallow. This is not a commentary on its quality – something can be good but not complex, and IMO, sophistication is not necessarily synonymous with complexity. Destiny managed to pull off a trick that many high-quality pulp stories employ: it made the river look deeper than it was. This is the whole reason that Lovecraft’s oeuvre has the staying power it has: other writers got to play in the space because it felt very deep, even though the stories themselves were fairly straightforward.

I also don’t mean to say or accidentally imply that ‘morally grey storytelling cannot exist within pulp stories’, because that would probably get me torn apart; that’s just not the kind of straightforward foundation that the original Destiny was built on. ‘It is what you see, but what you see could be anything’, you know? The problem that began to muddy the waters in the Destiny narrative is that they started to say, ‘You know, actually, it ISN’T what you see’.

Tentpole narrative additions to the Destiny 2 game employ varying levels of pulp. As I said in the other post, the Hive have a potent pulp influence built into their foundational coding, and so subsequent portrayals of the Hive as a main antagonist have higher degrees of pulp genre naturally present in the narrative – it’s hard to separate the two of them. Shadowkeep and The Dark Below draw strongly on the ‘sword and sorcery’ convention, a subgenre of fantasy that is a heavy (perhaps 1:1) blend of fantasy and pulp; think Conan, or Elric of Melniboné (who, hey! Showed up in a novella feature, in an issue of Science Fantasy magazine, named… THE DREAMING CITY). The Witch Queen leaned away from pure sword and sorcery and more towards noir/detective pulp – though, I think, TWQ is a good example of the pulp slippage in its narrative, resulting in some more bland moments and things that feel ham-fisted in a bad way. Part of it, I think, is the need to make these expansions ‘long’ and complicated without making the player feel like they’re slogging; in a more pulp-forward TWQ narrative, the reveal that Savathûn is actually NOT evil-aligned and is a potential ally would come much earlier in the story, and the central mystery would be MORE about ‘what the fuck is she trying to do/prevent’, leading to the Witness reveal as the centerpiece of the finale and the ‘solution’ to the central mystery.

The decision to start retroactively appending more complex connections between disparate pieces of content naturally leads to a reduction of pulp prominence, in my opinion. If you imagine Destiny as a vessel that is mainly full of three component liquids – Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Pulp – you can say that adding more of one genre pushes out another to make room. You can always pour more of one genre in to re-balance, but in response to increasing levels of sci-fi the narrative seems reticent to reintroduce pulp back into the mix, instead favoring fantasy. But another problem is that once you take it out, Pulp is really hard to put back; once you solidify and unionize world-lore, every subsequent retcon risks diluting and destabilizing that world-lore until a) nobody cares about it anymore and b) it stops being mutable at all, and becomes sludge.

The lore behind the existence of the Exo was originally very pulp, with no real explanations given for exactly what they were and where they came from, and how they attained sapience. Early hints that Cayde and a few other Exo having once been human didn’t preclude other Exo from having other origins – for example, implications that Exo war-frames eventually achieved sapience as a result of the ‘Deep Stone Crypt’, and that they were originally simple AI-equipped warriors designed and overseen by Rasputin to minimize human casualties. This early mystique around the origins of the Exo is classically pulp: we don’t need to know how the hyper-advanced robots were made, we just need to know what they are, why they are relevant to the story. It allows You, The Player, to engage with it at whatever level you want. In a game where You, The Player, are also being asked to step into the role of You, The Protagonist, this is beneficial to engagement for people (like me!) who like to think too much about the backstory of the your-name-here protagonist on-screen. It is also beneficial to not distracting the player with conflicting information, or accidentally contradicting previously-established lore.

Enter Big-Head Bray. The Beyond Light-era explanation of why Exo were created and how they were made is a retroactive nuclear strike on the Exo lore; it strips away a lot of flexibility and thematic richness from the concept of the Exo, shoehorns them into a single narrow use case, and directly conflicts with early-game Exo lore implying their connections to Rasputin (which they then had to go back and hastily shoehorn back in later) or existence as war machines for the Collapse. If D1 lore is wide but shallow, the D2 lore is narrow but deep. Just because something has a lot of ‘depth’, I.E. many layers to traverse before you reach foundational bedrock, it doesn’t make it good.

Same thing with the Fallen. Season of Plunder felt to me like an attempt to reintroduce pulp genre back into the setting, but it fell flat because of two reasons: it didn’t really want to be pulp, and it was more concerned with its tethers to the science-fantasy exterior world than it was with creating its own cohesive narrative. Why was Mithrax doing evil pirate shit when he was young? Because he comes from a race of fucking evil space pirates! It Does Not Need To Be More Complex Than That! But the exculpation of pulp from the D2 narrative means that if Mithrax doesn’t have a good enough reason, WRT the larger narrative, it would be a glaringly obvious plot hole. By Plunder, Destiny had already undertaken the task of filling out the Eliksni lore with sympathetic science-fantasy excuses for why they were trying to exterminate humankind – the more earnest, pulp-forward explanation would just be that desperate, hurt, suffering people will do desperate things, hurt people, and may perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

Oy. There’s a lot you COULD get into. How the Destiny macro-narrative seems to be decaying the rigidity of good and evil in its original lore vs. how the micro-narrative is obsessed with trying to recapture that good/evil dichotomy in order to give players a reason to like the main characters. How the determination to connect and explain everything has resulted in a general flattening of the background lore, and the subsequent trivialization of many things the game included in earlier iterations of the narrative/lore. How the narrative has basically nothing to do with the Vex because they wrote themselves into a corner by trying to explain them too much while simultaneously not altering the foundational lore of the race, meaning there were too many things they can no longer do without retconning again.

Overall, I guess I will just end by saying that many of the things that Destiny is CURRENTLY doing, feels like the game is straining to rip the part of it out which proudly asks its audience not to think too hard about sweeping, dramatic statements that built a lot of the things people love about the game’s setting and narrative… and in doing so, is just ripping itself to pieces.

#More lore! MORE LORE!#dinklebot sitcom #northbot sitcom #destiny 2 #Pulp genre #Genre discussion #Sorry this got so long! I’m not used to writing this kind of big essay #it may not be super coherent but whaddya gonna do

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