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wen-kexing-apologist · 1 year

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Heart's Vocalization Thoughts and Feelings

Hello and welcome to another round of Moonlight Chicken Posts That Literally No One @respectthepetty Specifically Asked For:

Heart Edition Round ?? i've lost count.

Mx. RTP may have gotten me hooked on red/blue through clothing but my first and truest love will always be lighting so I need everyone, but especially Professional Life Ruin-er Formerly Known as "Petty" (you're my best friend now, sorry I don't make the rules), to understand that this specific lighting ruined my life. Like on a cellular level, my body is a wasteland, my mind will never recover. Stepping in from the outside world, from Heart's world, Heart's life, Heart's home in to the rich, red, warmth of Li Ming's world, Li Ming's home. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, if my memory serves me correctly we never see Heart in warm lighting until the end of Episode 4, and we definitely don't see Heart in red lighting until Episode 5. Up until this point when Li Ming and Heart are together, there is always blue lighting on them, and especially when they are in Heart's home there is always a blue wash on the whole scene. So finally, finally we get red lighting babyyyyyy, fuck yeah!

Ok, sorry, I'm normal again.

Initial thoughts going in to the actual scene are as follows: 1. Stripes, my beloved! 2. Heart is so head over heels for Li Ming it's ridiculous.

Anyway, I love the small little smile that Heart has on his face here when Li Ming is essentially giving him an 'I told you so' to Heart about asking his Mom. I know that Li Ming sees Heart earlier on in the episode, but he isn't present for the conversation between Li Ming and his mother so regardless of whether he knows that Li Ming talked to her, I don't think he knows the specifics. But he follows this comment up with "You're smart. You can persuade her." Obviously he knows that something happened because Heart's mother has never listened to her son before, why would she start now?

So! Much! Red! Lighting! They are in love your honor. I am so grateful for every moment we get to see of Li Ming and Heart alone together having fun. They may be on the edge of adulthood, but there is still so much repressed youth in them that has been dying to get out and can't because it's been contained by parental shame, by the need to work to survive, by the nature of generational gaps and unsuccessful attempts to protect your loved ones.

When Heart and Li Ming are by themselves (with the exception of the post confrontation mental breakdown session in Ep. 5) there is so much joy between them. And look at Li Ming, he is so proud of himself here, for successfully persuading Heart's mother to let Heart leave the house. They don't have to sneak out anymore, Heart's parents are finally starting to understand that they can't make their son problem go away if they just keep Heart cooped up.

Once again like father-figure uncle like nephew, Li Ming has found himself a love interest that is also obsessed with the family cat. Honestly, this cat is living the dream, all he has to do all day is be held for approximately 30 seconds and get fed a fuck ton of treats. So far this scene is just very cute, Heart taking in his surroundings, attaching himself immediately to the cat, absolutely bathed in red light. And there is something so simple I love about the set up this moment brings to the important turning point that immediately follows...

Heart's holding the cat with both his hands. He can't text or sign.

Side Note: I am curious if Thai sign language has finger spelling.

And here we go! Heart speaks, not just vocalizes, it's not an exclamation of surprise, it's not a shuddering breath, or a sob. It's not a squeak or random sound Heart makes because he can't hear how loud he is being. Up until this point, every time we have heard a sound from Heart it has been unintentional. This is the first time we hear Heart speak. And importantly, he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to say anything. There isn't anything urgent, nothing that would require a sound to get Li Ming's immediately attention. He doesn't need to say Jimbo's name, literally right before this he looked at Li Ming and pointed to the cat. He could have ended the acknowledgement there. But he doesn't. He speaks. And he absolutely does not look at Li Ming while he does it. He keeps his eyes trained firmly on the cat in front of him.

I stole this gif from @earthpirapat because I don't know how to make them, and because I need anyone who reads this to see Li Ming's reaction in this moment. He is also looking at Jimbo, because he, like the audience, believes that Heart is going to end his acknowledgement of the cat's name by pointing to the cat. Li Ming is content to watch his friend play with his cat, and that's all he is expecting. Until "yyim-" tickles his ear, and Li Ming's head snaps straight up to Heart's face. You can tell how surprised he is at the way he pulls his head back a bit more to really look at Heart. To make sure that what just happened is actually real when he says "bo".

And I think it's important to know that Heart does not really seem hesitant to speak. He just...does it. What he is hesitant to do is look at Li Ming. He waits a full two seconds after he's said "Jimbo" to look up from the cat he is holding in his arms.

But he has nothing to worry about because when his eyes go to Li Ming, what does he see?

A puppy dog of a man, radiating excitement. Li Ming is beaming. It's funny to me a little bit that the thought has never seemed to cross Li Ming's mind that Heart, who only went deaf three years ago, is actually able to speak. But nevertheless he is thrilled.

"You can speak?" he asks, and he's chuckling a little and pausing and you can see all the gears in his head turning as he signs because it's like his whole worldview just got rocked. And GOD I love this moment so much because from the second that Heart speaks Li Ming's eyes never leave Heart. Or if they do it is literally an unconscious thing that is happening when he's trying to remember his signs. Heart puts Jimbo down and Li Ming literally folds his body in half, to follow Heart's movement, bends over to tap him on the shoulder. "Hey, you can speak?" he says again.

"Yeah? Can you speak again? I want to hear." he asks, and he's baffled. He's losing his signs. Like he is signing successfully to Heart, sure, but it's taking him much longer to create his sentence than it normally does because he's still in such shock over what just happened. That Heart can speak, that he heard his voice. His brain cannot keep up with his emotions.

The face of a man verrryyyy skeptical that his voice would be that exciting for anyone to hear.

"I"

"Want"

"To Hear"

"Your Voice"

I have no thoughts. I have no notes for this. It is just an incredibly powerful moment to me in furthering Li Ming as a safe zone for Heart, as someone trusted and precious. Each sign is deliberate. This is a deliberate request. This isn't a question built on surprise, "wait wait do it again" this is specific. "I want to hear your voice"

Look how pleasantly surprised Heart is. Look how happy, how bewitched he is in this moment. A few weeks back, I wrote a post analyzing Heart's communication. At the time I wrote it, I was doing a lot of speculating about Heart and his ability to talk and what it meant for the character if he could versus if he couldn't. The tl;dr version was me essentially wondering how much agency Heart has over his own isolation. Is he capable of talking and chooses not to to test the people around him, maintaining control of his own isolation, with speaking as a lifeline, or because Thai is a tonal language did he lose the ability to speak because not being able to hear might impede his ability to make distinct tones. Either way he has the ability to talk, it's a matter of whether or not he could be understood if he did vocalize his words.

I got a pretty quick reply from @littlederxxnged with a link to this Tweet quoting P'Aof and Heart's voice:

And if this quote is real, if the reason Heart doesn't speak is because he lacks the confidence to, this makes the scene all the more important and all the more wonderful for me. Because it's showing us, the audience, that Li Ming makes Heart feel confident. Li Ming makes Heart brave.

And I love that I don't get a sense of fear from Heart in any of this. Surprise? Yes. Confusion? Yes. Skepticism? A bit. Hesitation? Absolutely. But it doesn't seem to come from a place of fear. Heart is not afraid of using his voice around Li Ming, and he is never afraid of what Li Ming's reaction will be. He certainly has no idea what Li Ming's reaction will be, but it shows how much trust these two have built in one another, that Heart feels safe enough with Li Ming to test his voice.

I don't know if Heart will speak again the show. I don't care if he does. Speaking is not his primary language anymore and he doesn't owe his voice to anyone. I just want to establish that before I say I find it so much more special that Heart says his own name, rather than Li Ming's here. Why? Because the way I interpret Heart's character at this point is a man who is far more certain about what he wants out of life, now that he is able to live his life again. We get to hear Heart's name, we get to hear Heart speak for himself.

Something really cute about this moment as well is Li Ming's reaction. "I heard you just say your name!" I love that he signs to Heart what he heard. I love it so much. We know that Heart is hesitant to speak, and it takes him a second to get the word out, and I'm sure he can feel the vibrations of his vocal chords when he says his name, but he can't hear it. Li Ming is SO obviously happy, so obviously thrilled.

But this is about Heart, Li Ming's feelings have nothing to do with it. Okay, Li Ming's feelings have everything to do with it for Heart. But Li Ming's initial, gut-reaction response to hearing Heart, hesitantly say his name, is to hype the ever-loving FUCK out of that boy.

"You're great! You're awesome! How can you speak? You're so great. I'm happy." and GOD Heart can't even hear him say it. Li Ming isn't signing here, I mean he is very obviously happy, and very obviously showering Heart in praise. But Heart cannot hear him. For most of the hug he can't even read Li Ming's lips. But the pride, the joy, the excitement is so palpable. He's jumping up and down, you don't really need to hear his words to feel how happy he is about what just happened.

He pulls back "How could you do it? I'm happy. Can you see? I'm so happy," He is talking so fast. He is talking so so fast. He cannot contain himself. But he has integrated himself so much into Heart's life, that despite the fact that he is fully forgetting to sign here, he is touching Heart, he is jumping up and. down with Heart, he is showing Heart how much being trusted with his voice means to him.

Sweet baby angel, you are talking so fast. He sees a bunch of words coming out of your mouth but does not hear what you are saying. And he looks confused because he definitely did not anticipate this strong of a positive reaction to just saying his name. Especially when you consider he isn't confident in his voice. He looks confused because he almost certainly did not anticipate this outcome.

(Ignore the subtitles on that second picture, focus on Heart's smile)

Does Heart owe us his voice? No. Did we ever need to know if he could speak? No. Does this moment hit particular hard after the confrontation scene last episode concerning the use of the term "mute" in reference to Heart. Absolutely. We saw how much it hurt Heart to learn his mother refers to him as mute.

We know Heart has to beg Li Ming to even tell him what she said, Heart can see how much Li Ming hesitated to deliver that blow. He saw how strongly Li Ming was standing against his parents, he's a smart kid. He might not be able to follow the full conversation cause it's happening quickly, and they are shouting which fucks with lip shape to read lips, and Li Ming and his mother are both facing away from him. But he knows his mother said something bad, he knows Li Ming defended him.

It is so so so so so SO important to me that Heart decides to speak in this moment. That he uses his voice casually, to say a cat's name, in private, with just the two of them.

Heart's voice is not a commodity, it's not a novelty. It's a gift. And Li Ming treats it as such. Heart is being vulnerable with Li Ming. Heart hasn't spoken to anyone in three years, and when he does speak in front of Li Ming for the first time Li Ming literally cannot contain his joy. I love how many times the camera cuts to Heart's face in this, to show us to tell us that Heart loves this. That he is surprised by it, but that he is more than happy to speak again, that he is smiling the whole time because he knows how important it is to Li Ming. Because it's important to him too.

If you finished this whole post, congratulations you have won an invisible medal.

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italianpersonwithashippersheart · 1 month

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DFF - Character Reveals and Why Some Work and Some Don't

I have been thinking about Phee and Tan and why the Tan reveal was so amazing while the Phee character reveal post episode 9 destroyed the character for a big chunk of the audience.

It all started with a post from @mikuni14 here is the link with a couple of additions and back and forths, from me, op and @leconcombrerit and the comments in the notes by @kerrikins which I just say today and accidently helped me figure out why I don't like post episode 9 Phee.

Set Up to The Reveal

I think most of us can agree that Tan and Phee have been suspicious since episode 1. The key to the later reveals was for Phee to appear the one in charage as highlighten in this excellent post episode 9 post from @lurkingshan

So for 8 weeks of real world time, everyone who watched live spend that time with this image of Phee: A loyal, smart, leader oriented teen that made a mistake in anger and betrayal and is now trying to make up for it. Someone who is charge and on top of this revenge plan. Someone who is willing to get their hands dirty.

While Tan came across as someone who wants answears, who likes to get high with these people but is only for real close to Phee, and fades into the background unleass you are specifically analyzing his character.

Speaking from me only, even while I was obsessing over Mio's microexpression I was skeptical over the Tan is the brother reveal, I was coinvinced that I wasn't going to suspend my disbelief over Mio's age and that it didn't make any sense because Phee looked to be so much more in charge.

Writers don't know what the audience is going to like about the character before the reveal happens. And with every character you ran the risk of that reveal destroying the audience's attachment by changing the wrong things.

The Reveals in Ep 9

While DFF had other reveals, specifically with Phee, all those revealed only served to strengthen the audience initial perception of Phee.

Then came episode 9. And while the Tan is New reveal blew everyone including me out of the water over how good it was, seriously Mio was amazing in this role and the writing for him was insanly good, Phee's episode 9 reveals didn't work as much.

Why?

It's simple because Tan was very much non entity pre-reveal. If you weren't obssessing over everything like myself you barely payed attention to him.

There was no character for the reveal to assinate, Tan never came across as someone who was especially close to any of the others except for Phee, at the most he Fluke and Top were his weed buddies and that is the extent of the friendships you saw between Tan and the group.

The reveal strengthents the character, they make it better, they make you go back and appriciate everything you didn't notice. All the little moments of barely concealed disdain.

While with Phee it's the opposite. Phee was a strong character already, and everything that we saw seem to reinforced that.

But episode 9 changed that. Episode 9 destroyed all of it, and while it worked fine at the time, the cracks started to appear as soon as episode 10 rolled around.

Because everything we learn from episode 9 destroyes everything we know about Phee as a character.

Loyal = He flipped on the boys as soon as they were nice to him and Tan [Read: OUR FRIENDS NEED HELP - I haven't forgotten, OUR FRIENDS I wanted to kill him]. Falls in love with Jin in three scenes (and yeah I know that it might have been weeks of real world time, BUT FOR US it was 3 scenes, in 3 scenes he was over Non and totally lovey dovey with Jin.), Enables New's revenge and pretends to be on his side still all the while not doing anything to help or not even wanting to do anything that doesn't help his guilt anymore.

Smart = Are we really supposed to believe that Phee had no idea that New had the intention of seeing the boys die? Am I really supposed to believe that the son of a cop, saw New totally loose everything, ask to die, profess revenge [the flashback scene I'll Make Them Pay in episode 12] and then heard "This won't killed them" in that tone and not made 2 + 2??? Are we for real right now??????

Leader Oriented = Not in charge of their mission, taking New's lead

Teen who made a mistake and said something in anger = This one is still valid, but it lessened by knowing he never actually confronted that what happened to Non was predatory and a little more complicated then actual cheating. Or the fact that he dismissed Non's call or explanations. The fact that he seemingly gets over Non and totally falls for Jin within a week of meeting him fits with stupid teen boy, but really doesn't help.

In charged and on top of this revenge plan = Again, not in charge of the plan seemingly just going along for the ride.

Someone who is willing to get their hands dirty = He has ethics about muder completely OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE!! It is valid to not want to kill people but I'm sorry where the fuck were this boy ethics before? An incompelte lists of things Phee did that he was somehow totally fine with despite his so called "ethics":

Sleeps with Jin under false pretenses

Lied to his father and implicated himself in a crime just to help Non.

Ok with drugging people with a dangerous experimental drugs that causes fear and paranoia after New's reassurance that it tots won't kill them trust me bro.

Sleeping with Jin while he was definately 100% under the influence of New's drugs (the fail blow job in episode one) [We know they were still influenced because if the hand groping Tee was an hallucination then all the characters were still drugged]

Enabled New's revenge quest for three years whithout ever trying to get New to go back to his family (we didn't see it or have it mention so it didn't happen within the text)

Totally ok with sending Top with New post Uncle Dang getting his head chopped off while under the impression that New is responsible for said head chopping

Under the impression that New caused Por getting impaled but still not saying anything (we know that he could have said something because that is what he does later)

Learns that Jin filmed Non and posted the video and reacts with: So we were both hurting him and is fine with it in 5 minutes.

Apparently never fucking interrogated or contronted what happened to Non with Keng, never calls it grooming or abuse. Never recognizes that there were deeper motivations. In three years he manged to do 0 internal searching on it. Despite the fact that Por (who is a dick and the same age as the other boys and Phee) managed to come that conclusion right away.

There's probably more. His ethics come out of nowhere and feel like he is betraying New and being a dysloyal dick, because this character doesn't and has never come across as someone who gives a shit about ethics.

Like ok none of those things are muder fair enough, but a story needs to set up a character internal conflict over murder on a revenge quest a little better then a simple "This won't kill them right?"

Phee post episode 9 character falls apart because it is simply not the same character we thought we were getting for the previous 8 episodes. If you are not a PheeJin shipper there is not much post episode 9 to like about Phee. In the most charitable of read he comes across as bellyflopping follower who couldn't make a decision about what he wanted for 3 years.

I think somewhere along the lines something from the original idea got lost in the writing. To the writers who know this character inside and out and created him, Phee probably comes across as someone who struggled for years and was very conflicted and tourtured, unfortunatly the structure the chose for the plot doesn't have much time to show that to us.

Character reveals should always feel like they make sense, you should be able to go back and fit what you previously knew about the character with the new reveal. The reveal should feel like something that re-orients the puzzle, or helps you to put something in a different prospective. Not something that totally breaks everything that came before.

Reveals that are meant to make you feel like everything you knew about that character was a lie are much trickier to writer and balance, and crucially YOU MUST TREAT THEM LIKE THEY DO.

I never got the sense that the show wanted me to see Phee's betrayal and flipping on New as a bad thing, as something that goes against what the audience believed the character to be.

It just comes across that he is going from sympathic villain to tourtured anti-hero. At least that is what it feels like the writer wanted to show with that. Not that I see Tan or Post episode 9 Phee as sympathic villains. It feels like the writers saw them like that.

#txt #dead friend forever #dff meta #possibly my last dff meta

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inkstainedhandswithrings · 18 days

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TBB S3 Ep 12 Thoughts!!

Gotta remember to look up what the title means

But starting off with rainy Tantiss and dark music

Setting the tone and I’m here for it!!

Ah yes

There he is

hemcock

I guess this joke is getting old but at this point I refuse to spell his name correctly

Yanno bitch really showed up with an undercut and an eyebrow slit right from the get go, like some well payed criminal

I never noticed that tbh

Ey yo Tech don’t shove your sister like that

The eye contact between omega and Emerie right of the bat got me like 👀

Girls are cooking

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re save.”

Right.

Damn occupied pabu hurts my heart

But hey batcher and hunter are okay

Crosshairs hand tremor acting up in a stressful convo with his bros

🥺🥺🥺🥺

my heart

Crosshair having potential info on Tantiss and not sharing it is… complicated. On the one hand he had the option to save his brothers and actively chose not to. On the other hand it is very clear that Crosshair suffers from PTSD as a result of the trauma he sustained there. Trauma is rarely something that allows you to act based on logic or even your own morals. It puts you in survival mode, not because you’re not strong enough to withstand it, but because it’s necessary. That’s why it’s called survival mode. Very likely every instinct within him told him not to return there and that can be hard to overcome. But he’s willing to take that step for Omega. Severe and unyielding, indeed.

Also, Omega not having that issue, not being scared to return to Tantiss isn’t a show of her strength or Crosshair’s weakness. They had different experiences and have different brains, therefore they process and deal differently. Crosshair is not the weaker link because he was unable to muster up the courage to return before now. He’s simply in a different place than she is.

PHEE AND AZI!!!

“Tech told me all about your sparkeling personality.”

PARDONNE MOI???

I BEG YOUR BIGGEST PARDON

JUST TECH???

NOT “YOUR BROTHERS TOLD ME ALL ABOUT…”???

NO JUST TECH HUH??

SPENT SOME ALONE TIME WITH HIM DID YA PHEE???

Also Phee and Cross bickering hihihehe

They have good sibling energy already (sister in law vibes huh)

Why did Hunter sound like Rex during the briefing?

Like he just put his “man in charge” hat on for the first time

Phee just straight up turning the ship off to get in undetected is such a Tech thing tbh

Obsessed

Gotta watch that again

Beautiful

Oh wait fuck RAMPART is WORKING THERE???

Serves him right

I love seeing this trio work together tbh

Hunter, Cross and Wrecker bring such a different vibe without Echo, Tech and/or Omega there and idk why or how to describe it but I am here for it

“Anything?”

“Yup.” *clocks him* “Clear.”

Baby <3

“You remembered. How touching.”

Queen💅😪✨

“Are you here to kill me?”

“Tempting. But, no.”

FUCK ME.

KING SHIT 👑

Rampart is still a whore then, huh?

“Oh, please. You’re not going to kill me.”

“Not yet.”

GO OFF

“We’re in this together.”

Yo buddy saying shit like that seems like a nice way to loose some teeth

“This is your new home.”

The fact that they left us on THAT line

Fr most of my thoughts on this are Crosshair brain rot and if I wasn’t so busy today you’d get to read it. (No u probably PROBABLY won’t get it another time bc I am adhd and I either forget or don’t have the motivation later so… lots of good thoughts get lost in the void unfortunately)

#cross is really making a run for the pedestal I put rex on huh #still low-key disappointed that he and echo weren’t there today but seeing as this is headed to an attack on Tantiss I can’t imagine we’re #far from that happening #star wars #the bad batch #tbb #tbb hunter #tbb wrecker #tbb crosshair #tbb omega #tbb echo #captain rex #tbb spoilers #tbb s3 #tbb s3 spoilers #star wars the bad batch

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dangermousie · 10 months

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Farscape rewatch 2x04: Crackers Don’t Matter

One of my favorite eps and the most quoted one in the Mousie household.

You know what I am struck by, this time? How crazily Farscape works. I am faced with the next to last scenes of this ep: John with green face-make-up, shiny cover, attacking a bug-looking alien with a sword as it gibbers, screaming 'humans are superior' and marvelling at the fact that somehow, it all works. How crazy is it? It works, works brilliantly. Farscape took some odd risks, some strange choices, but IMO, they almost always worked out.

And the way the humor (and this episode is bona fide hilarious) can coexist with cruelty and darkness because the ways the Moyans turn on each other is just vicious and what makes it horrible is that it’s their darkest ids, worst selves exposed - so it is them, even if the worst version of them.

And they have to live with it, with all the stuff they said and did, no easy solutions...

This is long and cap-heavy so behind read more...

I am also struck by how tight the writing is. It's obviously an organic show: it didn't have every plot detail worked out years in advance. But when things come up, they get so incorporated for later, they get brought up again, it all just fits. Just think of the little throw-away comment by Maldis in S1 that John lost his virginity to Karen Shaw, and how it comes to play in Kansas in S4. Why am I thinking of this for this ep? It's the fact that here is Harvey (his very first appearance), telling John that revenge is a dish best served cold, his whole attitude, his whole statement is so in line with the whole late S3 ep 'Revenging Angel' which echoes it so well. In RA Harvey fails to understand what makes John tick, what makes him stay alive: he is limited by his creator Scorpius. He fails to realize that what keeps John alive is hope and that for John, Aeryn is hope. (That is why chip!John in Scorpy's head in Incubator is so intractable, so final: he is post-loss-of-Aeryn, he really has nothing). What Scorpy fails in (and by extension Harvey) is to understand John on a very basic level: they don't really fit, like two odd pieces of a puzzle. Grayza of course makes the same mistake on Arnessk. It's going to sound corny, but Scorpy fails to understand goodness (not surprising considering his upbringing) while John has one-up on his opponent because he understands evil, because his face has been rubbed into it until it's raw.

I kept thinking, why is John the least affected by Traltixx in this ep? I am sure the eyesight has something to do with it (I love how Farscape turns on its head the old trope of humans being saviors because they are better. Crichton is 'better' because he is handicapped, because he doesn't see so well). But I think there are other issues here: for one thing, Crichton is a researcher, someone who must be analytical by nature. More importantly, he is attuned to oddness not just because of his post-Scorpy paranoia but because he is a stranger in a strange land, sensitized. And the thing is, just as with the chip later - knowing something is off is different from being able to put breaks on it. He periodically, alone among the rest of them, realizes something is wrong with his behavior but he is unable to truly stop it - the ugliness and the violence just come pouring out; the only concession to control is that he doesn’t kill anyone. The crew is horrifically ugly to each other in this one, but the ep is also mind-blowingly hilarious. Not like Out of their Minds, which is just plain funny. This one is funny with a hell of a sting. Some pretty bad things are said. I am struck not even as much by the Aeryn-John showdown (they know each other the best, so they really know where to hurt. Though I am still wondering how you can be both frigid and a skank :)) but I think it's because Aeryn and John cause each other such universes of pain, exactly when they are not trying to, but only trying to protect themselves or even do what is best for the other, that this is small fry. What is a little exchange of gunfire and a hit at Aeryn's being a traitor or John not measuring up to his father in comparison with Die Me Dichotomy or the coin toss or so much of late S3 or S4? Still, ouch ouch ouch.

What I am really struck by are other interactions: D'Argo with Rygel, flopping the little guy around like...well, a puppet, force-feeding him crackers. It's ugly. We haven't seen D'Argo attack a helpless being since DNA Mad Scientist, and we've forgotten, and it hurts. Though it does show a difference: here it's Traltixx doing an equivalent of drugging him. The inner savage is much further from the surface. The crew from early S1 would have succumbed to Traltixx in ten minutes flat.

And keeping with the fact that actions always have consequences, there is no magic forgiveness at the end (though also like Farscape, there is hope of one later.)

And Crichton with Chiana. It's an unnerving scene, horrible to watch, precisely because normally John is so protective of her, because for Chiana, John is in many ways her safe harbor, her surrogate big brother, someone who she would always feel safe in the area of sex with (i.e. he won't, with her). But he turns that protection on its head, something ugly (though luckily, a bunch of the horrible stuff comes from Harvey, not John, so she doesn't hear it).

Yikes.

Pretty telling tho that even messed with by Traltixx, any sexual threat is not from John but is suggestion of the chip, which is doing whatever to get Crichton to kill his shipmates so he’d be easier to capture. John himself is horrifyingly cruel but does not see Chiana this way at all.

The idea he ends up liking is tying her up next to the rest of them so he could try to talk without everyone shooting each other, not anything else and thank GOD.

This is such a reversal of his attitude in Taking the Stone so I think it's interesting that the attitudes in here and TtS are juxtaposed (in TtS Crichton is losing it a bit, slowly, but it makes him more protective, not less. That is the natural 'insane' Crichton, not the one where someone took over and brought out the darkest id; when he is himself, however utterly mad and irrational, he is never wantonly cruel to his loved ones.) And then of course, later, when he is back to sanity and tries to apologize, she blows it off, acts impressed. Chiana is queen of repression in some ways, however open she is in others.

You know, there is another reason why Crichton was the one to pull it together. (And no, I am not just referring to stubborness). He already has that edge of insanity to him and it's growing slowly larger. So has he figured out how to cope under weirdness while maintaining some control? He's had to persevere through some horrid stuff and had his head messed up with, so he can temporarily put aside distractions. But the thing is - this is only the start of Scorpius messing with his head. He can fight it on the margins for now (Harvey the Chip clearly wants him to kill everyone so he can be captured easier) but he can fight it even under the stress but we all know how it ends...

Oh yes!

He tries to tell Aeryn about seeing Scorpius but she’s also affected by the light and pays no attention and even John himself assumes it was some of the stuff Traltixx did (and I believe when they first had Scorpy show it was supposed to be a one off, not a chip) and oh boy, the misery that is going to eventually follow.

(the little correction she makes, heeeee...)

Oh boy, and eventually he will make you do that and this will be one of the worst moments of your life.

The thing is - having your mind hijacked is horrible but long before that happens to any significant degree, the layers of horror of it all are there because it’s not just John thinking he’s losing his mind and having his mind sorted through and controlled; it’s the fact that he now lives with the constant presence of his chief torturer in his head - it’s a somewhat literal metaphor for aftereffects of torture yes but also there is the sheer body horror of it which is incredible.

Yikes...

Side note - the ugliness with John and D’Argo bothers me least because they are evenly matched but also it’s pure physical violence, no emotional cruelty involved.

Also, cool bit of foreshadowing, Chiana aligning with D'Argo here but also, the way Aeryn and John still want to jump each other in this little scene tho they were shooting at each other and have not too much rationality. Heh.

God, those two must have some truly spectacular sex once they finally get to it.

Oh, and the sheer unhinged anything goes vibe of this is so perfect. I don’t know how they manage.

And of course Zhaan just spending the whole episode orgasming and show making no bones about it - I love how just genuinely out there the show was.

Just wild...

Crichton barreling through insanity to save the day but everyone emerging a little or a lot worse for wear is a lot of the modus operandi of this show and this episode really distills it down so concisely in the most gloriously insane way.

#farscape

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effieandtim · 5 months

Note

the goddamn. parallel of lucy’s story of meeting the ‘travel companions’ (title drop !!! in the writing sense it is meant to signal to an audience that this is a very pivotal conversation. and boy did it deliver.) and seeing their hands brush and then jerk away VS the final scene in ep5 where hawk tries to hold tim’s hand after witnessing him have a seizure and finally realising tim is dying — and tim jerks his hand away so weakly. (thats lucy’s story !!!!!) and there is the look in hawk’s eyes. but nothing in skippy’s. and having that cut between the ‘i have to go. i have to get over you’. and skippy says this with so much love and longing, with so much in his eyes that he cries. yet it almost felt more emotionally resonant to hawk in the hospital ward. this episode was incredible.

the episode really was incredible. i totally get what you’re saying about the parallels - like when lucy said ‘travelling companions’ i went OHHHH bc yes i agree that’s a nod to essentially what the show is about

bruh that last scene broke me. the contrast was SO GOOD and i can spend a whole day talking about it

i need to rewatch the ep bc i havent yet but like honestly tim looked so… hurt and drained at the end in the 80s, and yes there was no emotion in his eyes😭

he is just so fucking tired of it all, of opening his heart once more to hawk and see him break it again and that reflex of not letting hawk touch him… like my god😭

and yess I actually read ron’s recent interview where he talks about that bit here

anyway yess like we finally see tim taking some control over his life even though it was hawks decision that served as a catalyst and also the fact that he has been disillusioned of every notion he came to washington with in his head, like he has seen the real world and the cruelty of it kinda culminates in this ep for him which makes him unsure of everything

but that moment at the end was so painful bc you could see this wasn’t something either of them wanted at all, but there was no other way. what i am interested to know is why tim sorta goes back to hawk in the 60s if he was so determined in that last scene like what the hell happened 😭

#anons #fellow travelers #ft spoilers #jonathan bailey #tim laughlin #hawkins fuller

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system-of-a-feather · 3 months

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Relating to this post and this post, but I feel there is this stigma around "being triggeered" an acting in a way that is charged by the fact you are "triggered" as though it undermines your actions, invalidates your actions, or makes you wrong because its some "mental health symptom"

But being triggered literally has no weight to it and while it provides context, does not inherently make anything right or wrong, good or bad, valid or not.

In fact, I would even make the claim that being triggered really isn't inherently even a negative thing to be in all situations. Often times? Yes. Sometimes though? Its adaptive, appropriate, and useful to handle situations.

The difference? Control, awareness, and moderation - as well as just generally how deeply triggered you are. (cause if you are having full on flashbacks and full dissociative freeze, theres little 'control' you can put to that level of triggered; for the point of this post, I am talking about emotionally triggered / passively triggered)

There is nothing inherently wrong with operating in / from a mindset informed and charged by past experiences. Can it be excessive? Yes. Can it cloud judgement? Yes. Can it get out of hand and become self destructive / harmful and add more stress and harm to oneself if left to fester? Yes. Are any of those inherently going to happen if you indulge and allow those feelings to have space to air and inform your decisions? Absolutely not.

Cause here's the thing - especially with DID - being triggered can take up a fucking huge part of your life if you have C-PTSD or a CDD - thats just the facts of the life. If you have DID, you might have parts and fragments that in the very essence of them, are going to be triggered cause theyre trauma holders, EPs, fragments, and what not. Some of them literally don't exist outside of the constant internal existence of what they've been through. If you are going to wait until you are "not triggered" to live your life, you are never going to get anywhere. If you treat being triggered as this moral failing or intellectual failing, you are going to deeply struggle to build a loving relationship with the hurt you've been through.

The ways you act when you are triggered had / have a purpose. Even if the behavior is 99.9% of the time maladaptive and unhealthy, at least ONCE in your life it was adaptive and served to tell and communicate something stupid fucking important - otherwise it would not be there.

The challenge is figuring out what that stupid fucking important thing is beyond the stress that those 99.9% maladaptive behaviors and mindsets while triggered are, but every part and every trauma response is there to tell you something you need to know.

If you are able to be okay with being triggered, know where it comes from, know what its trying to tell you, know where it intends to go and what it will want to do, and you are able to walk away from it when you realize it is no longer serving you, being "triggered" can be an aid in your recovery and life in the occasional moments when that percentage of "adaptive behavior" presents itself.

XIV 1.0 was a pure solid EP who literally only experienced sadistic high from causing problems and screwing over established structures and would ACTIVELY look for things to be annoyed at / mad about and people making silly exploitable mistakes so that he could make them regret it and so he could get a high of some ambiguous concept of "dominating" and thus crushing people. It stems from the fact that in our household it was eat or be eaten and the most aggressive manipulative and intimidating person controlled the house, including safety, security, food, and if our dad was going to rage and hurt people. Having that insane high and joy from sadistically dominating people the second they make a single exploitable mistake is something that SEVERELY saved our ass growing up when we were a preteen left to figure out how to make sure our parents didn't get us killed.

Upon fusing with Rayku years ago I really realized as FUNNY and FUN as all that shit still registered to me, as much of an addictive high it gave me, the only place that shit was going to get me was an early grave and hurting everyone else in the system so I put a few years into learning to put that skill and joy on the shelf to use if it is ever needed again.

And every so often? Someone gets power hungry and abusive in a way that is fucked up and needs to be shaken, torn down, and have the small little mistakes exploited to punish shitty people behavior, and yeah, I'll be running off of a similar mindset to my trauma environment. Yeah I'll be having almost the same feelings and disproportionate focus and adrenaline. Yeah I'll essentially be having a passive emotional ""flashback"", but at any point, anyone in the system can say "hey XIV thats enough" and I literally can take a deep breath, sigh, and put it aside and go "yeah you're right"

I can choose to allow this to fester and direct my actions and I can choose to put it away as we see it necessary.

So yeah I am probably technically "triggered", but thats honestly by intention. Its helpful and adaptive. It lets me take down shit I find disgusting. I can put it away whenever I want to, I just simply choose to not, because in this moment, being triggered is far more helpful and adaptive to my current goals in life than being placated and peaceful. Plus, because we can turn it on and off as we need, everyone else can just exist as they do while I sit and indulge this when I feel the need to and trust that others will just tell me to cool it if I ever get too deep.

Cause honestly, its also this openness to indulge "being triggered" that is like... honestly the crux of being able to fuse and unfuse at relative will. It's how Chunn and I fuse and unfuse like every few weeks. We choose to indulge our exaggerated corners of the brain when we want to be seperate and shrug it off and let them meld when we want to be together.

#alter: xiv #fusion fuckery #wishiwashi #wishiwashi recovery #trauma talk #cptsd #ptsd #actuallydid #dissociative identity disorder #final fusion #functional multiplicity #syscussion #sysconversation #xiv rant

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apomaro-mellow · 8 months

Text

Ep 2

The Dinner Car

The next car they went into had elegant piano music playing. There was a suit standing at a restaurant podium. Just a suit, no person on the inside.

"Do you have a reservation?", the suit asked in a thick French accent.

"Uhh", Eddie looked to Steve, who looked to Lucas, who looked to Chadwick.

"My good man, I am afraid we do not have a reservation", the knight replied.

"Then we cannot allow you into this establishment."

Well they couldn't just go right back out the door. They had to find the other door and continue down the line of trains. They turned to look at each other, willing one another to come up with a plan. Steve was the one to step up to the podium.

"Look here. You obviously don't know who I am. My name is Steven Harrington. Yes, of the Indiana Harringtons, related to the Virginia Harringtons, and connected to the Kennedys by way of my Aunt Elaine. So if you don't let us in, I'll have no choice but to make a call and your job will be the least of your worries. You'll have a national incident on your hands."

While the suit had no body and thus no head or face, it was clear he was getting flustered as Steve went on. "M-my apologies Monsieur Harrington! We will have you and your guests seated right away! Rochelle! Menus! And Jon Pierre, get them some jackets! We have a dress code policy, you understand."

"I understand I just told you who I am and I still don't have a glass in my hand."

Jon Pierre, also a floating suit, provided them all with suit jackets that fit like gloves. Rochelle, a simple, black dress hovering over some heels, led them to a table. She also had a French accent.

"You will be dining with Monsieur Allard, only the best for a Harrington."

She set their menus down at a long table. At the head of it was a grand maroon suit with a top hat, accompanied by a billowing blue dress to one side and a less elaborate green suit on the other.

"Are you really related to the Kennedy's?", Lucas whispered from his spot next to Steve.

"Not even. But you gotta act like you know important people in places like this", Steve whispered back.

"What a pleasant surprise this evening brings", Allard said in a boisterous voice. "My friends, Madame Fantine and Monsieur Gaspard, it seems we have almost-royalty at our table."

Steve raised a glass in recognition. It almost sounded like a backhanded compliment but that was how these things went.

"Sitting down to dinner wasn't in any of your steps", Eddie said.

"Neither was walking a red carpet", Steve said. "Apparently sometimes we need to do things to find the door. Besides, when was the last time you ate?"

Eddie opened his mouth but his stomach answered for him with a low growl.

Fantine scoffed. "How uncouth."

"Well excuuuuse me for having bodily functions", Eddie rolled his eyes.

"Monsieurs we have but one rule here", Allard began, then said in unison with the other two. "Mind your manners."

Steve sat up straighter while Eddie slouched even more. Lucas was looking fearfully at all the utensils.

A soup was served and Eddie went out of his way to loudly slurp it every time Allard tried to speak. Steve kicked him under the table and gave him a look of reprimand.

"So Mr. Allard, what do you do for a living?", Eddie asked.

"I am an industrialist", Allard answered.

"Ahh, an industry man", Eddie said while Steve focused on cutting his food into acceptable bites. "So what's your stance on worker's rights?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Eddie", Steve hissed in warning.

"It's just that my uncle works in a factory and I know those folks put in long, hard hours and now that I'm face to face with one of the big bosses, I'm curious to know your thoughts." Eddie angled his body towards the man, letting his arm lean on the table.

"No elbows on the table!", Fantine scolded.

"What? Is the table your baby?"

"Where did you receive your education?", Gaspard asked.

"You can hardly call what I got an education", Eddie grinned.

"You know he's kind of right", Lucas agreed.

Eddie beamed. Lucas might've been on the path of a jock, but he'd always be one of his boys.

"I've been at that school for a year but it feels like the teachers have already counted me out."

"Well a professor of any caliber knows how to separate the directionless from the ambitious", Allard said.

"You hear that Lucas? We've got no direction", Eddie stuck a fork in one of his potatoes, the main course having just been served.

"If the shoe fits", Fantine huffed.

Eddie was waving his potato around as he spoke. "How can people stand to be around someone like you?"

This elicited gasps from the three of them and Steve covered his face.

"I think we've indulged you quite enough!", Allard shouted.

"Oh I'm just getting started!", Eddie shouted back, rising to his feet. He stepped onto the chair and then onto the table.

Fantine fainted and fell to the floor at the impropriety. Lucas was using the distraction to use whatever fork he wanted to eat.

"See I know I'll never be able to impress pompous bastards like you. So why even try? Why should I bend to your rules when the game is always stacked against people like me?"

"You are a child who has yet to learn his place", Allard growled. Slowly, he began to grow in size. "But pain is always the greatest teacher."

Eddie stood there frozen a moment as he was face with a giant. Steve pulled him off the table before Allard could swipe at him. They ducked under the table.

"Why do you always have to do that!?"

"Do what? Be myself?"

"Break the rules! Make people dislike you? Is it fun? Annoying people to the point where they don't wanna be around you anymore?"

The table lifted up and was thrown. Allard bent to reach for them again but they bolted in time. That was when Steve noticed something peculiar about his hat. He and Eddie ran to one of the circular tables in the restaurant, the white table cloth hiding them.

"Being my honest, annoying self is better than lying about who I am", Eddie argued in a soft voice.

"Having table manners isn't lying. It's...it's-"

"It's what, Steve?"

"It's how you survive these things!" Steve's palms had been up as he gestured, so Eddie was able to see the 161 go up to 174.

"Steve...your number."

Anymore conversation was cut off as Allard found their table and tossed that one too. "You both will learn to be functioning members of society!"

Eddie took Steve's hand and ran into the kitchen. Inside Chadwick was helping Lucas pack some food into a sack.

"Perfect timing", Lucas said. "Did you guys see what I saw on his hat?"

"Yeah", Steve nodded. "The door. It's on top of his top hat. But how do we get to it?"

"Sir Lucas has a splendid idea!", Chadwick exclaimed.

"Does it involve making an ass of myself?", Eddie asked, ripping the suit jacket off.

"Yeah", Lucas answered. "But you're used to that."

Allard was still stomping around the restaurant in a rage, somehow THAT wasn't considered rude, when Eddie burst forth from the kitchen.

"Hey ya ball of hot air? You wanna tell me which spoon I should use? Or how about women's liberation?"

Allard rounded on him and Eddie took him on a chase, distracting him while the others got ready.

"You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!", Eddie taunted.

He kept leading him around until he saw a thumbs up from Lucas, then began running in their direction. Steve, Chadwick, and Lucas had taken the long table cloth and tied to a couple of columns in the restaurant. Eddie looked back to make sure Allard was still coming after him.

He was reaching out but Eddie jumped over the trip wire and ran behind one of the pillars. Allard only saw red and so he promptly fell over with a loud crash. The door was right there, atop his hat. Steve opened it and rushed the others outside before going out and closing the door himself.

They were all panting as the desert outside rushed by them. When he caught his breath, Eddie grabbed Steve's hand.

"Why is it going up? How long has it been doing that?"

"Steve's number is going up?", Lucas looked for himself.

"It's nothing", Steve snatched his hand away.

"It's not nothing! It could be a clue!", Eddie threw his own hands up.

"It went up when you were acting in that car before, okay? And then just now, you saw. I don't get why and we don't know for sure if it's important. It could mean nothing."

"Everything means something", Chadwick pointed out.

"It went up when we were arguing", Eddie said. "What is it? Do you think I'm annoying? Uncouth? Rude?"

"No", Steve shook his head. "None of those things. I just-you just...You don't understand."

"Then explain to me, so I can", Eddie said, eyes sincere.

Steve looked into them, feeling just the smallest bit of weight lift off him. "That's how those people are. You have to play by their rules. If you don't, you get booted out, just like we almost did."

"You called it survival earlier. Is that what it's like being a Harrington? You have to survive dinners?"

"Not...not most of them. But especially during family gatherings. It's like walking a minefield. Honestly, I wish I could be more like you, Eddie. I wish I wasn't afraid to be me all the time."

"You were right about one thing though", Eddie said. "I act out and make people hate me. If I point it out then they can't find...they can't find what I actually hate about myself."

The numbers on both of their hands changed, going down this time. Lucas clapped his hands together.

"That's it! The numbers just went down when you two were being honest about yourselves!"

"Oh that can't be it Sinclair", Eddie groaned, hands going on his hips. "A mystical magical train is invested in our emotional growth?"

"I mean, think of other stories like this. Alice in Wonderland, she thinks she wants nonsense but when she gets it she wants order. Maybe our journey is like that, learning about ourselves."

"Counterpoint, this is all an elaborate simulation game and Steve and I just lost points for being gooey and not killing the boss."

"Only one way to find out what happens if we get to zero", Steve said, nodding towards the next car.

They all really hoped something good would happen when their numbers reached zero.

Steve's number: 159

Eddie's number: 257

Lucas' number: 33

Next Episode: The Caricature Car

Tag Team:

@affablevixen

#apo writes #stranger things #fanfiction #steddie

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luckydragon10 · 2 years

Text

KinnPorsche Ep11 Lines of Power

You know the drill by now: I'm here to talk about lines of power, staging, and framing in KinnPorsche.

D: I'm a day late. Apologies. My power went out yesterday... which, as @antique-forvalaka pointed out to me, is pretty funny. Totally different line of power.

This post focuses mostly on the first sequences with Vegas, Pete, and Khun Kan (or however we feel like spelling his name today). I won't be showing anything graphic, but there's some camera angle work that is SO interesting that I gotta dive into extra detail.

I have a few fluffier images later to lighten up the post, though, I promise. 😉

More LoP posts: [Trailer] ... [Ep07] [Ep08] [Ep09 Part 1] [Ep09 Part 2] [Ep10] [Ep12]

Pay close attention to the camera tilts (aka the Dutch angles) throughout this scene. I can't even cover everything because there are sooo many shots and angles, but I'll call out my favorite bits.

The two pics above establish the tilts. Vegas's angle tilts left, and Pete's angle tilts right. Their angles are leaning away from each other, like the opposing poles of magnets.

Be careful how you watch the scene... sea sickness may occur. There's lots of tilting back and forth, and when the cuts are fast, I feel like I'm on a boat that's rocking with the waves, very discomfiting.

Then we get a disruptor coming in. Hello, Khun Kan (Kun, Gun, whoever the hell you are).

This shot is so severely tilted, and Daddy Scarfs-a-lot has a biiiiiig thick line of power at his back with that unobstructed column in the foreground. He stepped in, took control of the room, and is like a crushing power looming above both Vegas and Pete.

What do we have here? Vegas is the focus in this shot, and his angle changed. THIS. THIS GOT ME.

Vegas has gone from the one abusing to the one being abused. He's taken on Pete's tilt, going to the right.

I see what you did there. I SEE IT. And I am so impressed by this choice. 🤌

Khun Namechanger takes a deep breath, cools his emotions, and returns to practical decision-making. He brings the scene into an upright position for the moment. The vertical column to the right helps steady the rocking boat that is this entire scene (though only briefly).

After Papa Goatee leaves, Vegas resumes his left-tilt angle.

FIRST SHOT: Oh hey, look, the column is tilting left, so that screws up the tilts from the establishing shots, doesn't it?

NOPE.

In the top pic here, Pete's head serves as the right tilt. If the camera were also tilted the way it usually is for him, his head would practically be horizontal, which wouldn't be any good. So Pete's right tilt still remains in effect, only with his head.

SECOND SHOT: There we go, back to normal with the pillar leaning right. Pete's head in both shots? Parallel. SO PARALLEL. Holy crap.

This is so good it blows my mind. 🤯

If anyone decides to break down every single angle from theses early VP scenes, link me, please? I'd love to see it.

Tableaus! Beautiful tableaus once again! (I explain what a tableau is back in Ep 5 LoP.) These really look like they could be sets on a live theatre stage.

Mostly I want to say how much I appreciate what they've done with P'Chan here.

This demonstrates a great way to accomplish a lot without any dialogue, using the staging to tell a story.

In the first shot, P'Chan is off to the side. He isn't really necessary to this conversation. Then for the Porsche scene, not only is his gun out, but he's looming like an avenging angle.

Peak comedy.

This is my freebie for this post. I haven't gotten a freebie for ages.

It's pretty. I like it. I could stare for hours.

Oh, and there's a damn reflection again. This show drives me mad.

Tankhun is so big here, and Porchay is so smol.

Tankhun's size is emphasized in multiple ways:

Tankhun can't even fit in the frame — the top of his head is getting cut off, emphasizing his stature.

Tankhun is in the foreground, whereas Chay is in the mid-ground.

Tankhun's fluffy jacket more than doubles his width.

These details all add up to make Chay look even more child-like than usual, out of proportion to Tankhun. His smolness is perfect for a scene where Tankhun basically adopts Chay as another little brother.

In this scene, Kim finally (at long last) makes a big breakthrough in his investigation.

Check out the background! It's an open doorway, a direction, a way forward, even if it isn't the direction he expected his sleuthing would go.

///

More LoP posts: [Trailer] ... [Ep07] [Ep08] [Ep09 Part 1] [Ep09 Part 2] [Ep10] [Ep12]

For more great meta from folks across the KP Tumblr fandom, please visit the Damn Good KinnPorsche Meta doc.

#kinnporsche #kinnporscheep11 #kinnporsche meta #cinematography breakdown #lines of power

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idk3453 · 2 years

Text

Mafia

Chapter 2: He’s the devil in disguise

For this chapter it’s gonna be in Elvis POV

The Image below is the suit and hairstyle Elvis Wore.

TW: Violence and mention of Murder. Strong Language.

Here is Chapter 2 of the series Mafia. Hope you guys enjoy!

Synopsis: Elvis Presley, notorious mafia leader of Memphis, Tennessee has the town on their feet. Fear, power, money and women surround him and his Memphis mafia. But what happens when one day you stumble into his world? And he makes you fall in love with him?

News reporter: John I’m here live at what appears to be a horrific crime scene. Behind me is an abandoned house, but inside is what’s nerve wrecking. Inside is the body of Mark Lane. Mark was known for having trouble with the law, but his fate was soon ended. I spoke with the Chief of Police here in Memphis, and it appears to be the works of Notorious Leader Elvis Presley….

“Hey guys, turn up the volume! I wanna hear what this reporter has to say” Billy says. The Memphis Mafia gathered around the sofa, and watched as the reporter talked about what was left of Mark.

“Serves him right, for fucking with me” Elvis said from behind.

“John, I am inside the abandoned home and as you can see the Memphis Mafia, is truly a force to be reckoned, more on this report to follow up” said the reporter.

“Fellas, imma just say this… Elvis held their attention. Nicely done on last night mission” clapping the mafia bellowed in cheers and congratulations. “Jesus, E you really did a number on Mark” said Jerry

His attention went to the television as they started to show images of Mark. You smirked as you remembered what you did.

“Elvis, man I-I-I-I swear I have the money” Mark begins to back away

I pinch my forehead with my left index finger and thumb finger. My right hand on my right hip, making sure it’s close to my gun.

“Mark, Mark, Mark when are you gonna learn, that this isn’t a negotiation. I told you to have the money by Friday”.

I looked at my watch, “and look what we have here… it’s Friday now!” Smiling at Mark.

I make my way towards him, Mark is backing away in fear, I crouch down.

“Now, Mark I’m gonna ask again do you have my money or not”

“Ptui” Mark had just spit on me. Still crouch down I wiped the spit with my left hand. Smirking I looked up at him with a sinister glare. “You shouldn’t have done that” I said as I connected my fist to his jaw. I got up, and told Joe, “try to pry whatever information he has”

“You got it EP” Joe stated

You turn around and begin to head to the door as you hear Marks screams from behind slowly becoming an echo. You open the door and remove your suit jacket. Leaving you with just a white button down shirt, the first few buttons left undone and the sleeves rolled up revealed some of the tattoos you had gotten over the years. You reached for your suit jacket again and look for the Diamond Tip Cigar you had for these types of occasions.

Lighting it up with a lighter, you inhale just enough of the cigar and exhaled the smoke.

As the smoke begins to engulf the air, you couldn’t help but wonder who that mystery woman from Club Handy was. Her beauty, her sensuality, the way she carried herself. The way you desire to be near her, grab her by the waist, and just kiss her. The way you desired her every being. You were determined to have her one way or the other. Smirking you inhale the remaining cigar, toss it to the side, and tell the boys, to head home.

Feeling accomplished for what you did, you look at the clock and it says it’s 6pm, you decide to get the boys ready for a night at Club Handy again. “This time it’s evening attire only fellas.” I wanna see your best looks tonight! We are celebrating! The Mafia nodded and Hollered “Will do boss” or “ Your the man EP.”

Heading upstairs, I make my way to the shower, the water pellets hit my skin effortlessly, as I'm washing my body, my mind begins to envision the woman. Feeing me everywhere. I groan, my dick beginning to pulsate with the idea of her on her knees. Hearing a knock from the bathroom door. I yell out saying “ Son of a bitch, WHOS KNOCKING?!”

“It’s me EP, Its Jerry” Jerry said.

Grabbing my towel, I wrap it around my waist and head towards the door, “What Jerry, WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU NEED TO DISRUPT ME FROM MY SHOWER SESSION!”

“It’s Anita, E, she won’t stop bitching about how you haven’t returned her calls, and how you pushed her away that night you sporadically left” said Jerry

“Anita?!” I said, “what the fuck could she want now, I swear all she does is bitch and complain”

“Tell her I’m too busy, make up an excuse Jer I don’t care.”

“Alright E, also that project you gave me?”

I turned my neck so fast, it almost gave me whip lash “What about the project, Jer?” “What did you find out for me?”

“looks like Parker is trying to become the number 1 mafia leader along with his has been of a gang.”

“Parker?!, hahaha don’t make me laugh Jer, listen let’s talking about Parker later tonight in our meeting. Right now we gotta get ready for our celebration!”

“Your right EP, let’s get ready” said Jerry

Closing the door to my room, I go to the closet and picked out a classic suit, black ensemble with a black bow tie, white button up. You strip yourself from the towel and started to dress yourself.

Slicking your hair back a bit leaving few front strands to frame my face, I couldn’t help but admire my reflection.

“Elvis, you’ve outdone yourself again”

. “Well, if it isn’t EP himself, how you been man?” BB King greets you and your mafia.

Chuckling I said “BB!, I’ve been good man, how you been?”

“Never better E, this place is packed!”

“I mean Club Handy is the spot to be BB”

After conversing with BB for a few minutes, I made my way to our designated booth, beginning the night by ordering our first round of drinks.

As I’m taking my 3rd whiskey drink, I see a figure in front of me. “What do you want Anita” you groan annoyingly.

You weren't in the mood to deal with Anita and her drama. All you wanted to do was have a nice evening with your boys, "And look for the woman" Your mind reminded you of her. Shaking your head you put that thought to the side, you have bigger issues to deal now. and that now happened to be Anita.

"I wanna know why you pushed me the other night! and why haven't you returned none of my calls! Is there another woman! I knew it! You are seeing someone else!" Anita cries

Rubbing your temples you look at Anita and tell her to shut up. "Anita theres a reason why I don't call you, Its because all you do is nag, and bitch, nag and bitch. Your a nagging ass wife!" you yelled. Anita being too stunned to speak decided to huff and leave.

"Finally, I thought she would never leave" you said taking a swig of your 3rd whiskey drink. You order your 4th round and over hear BB talking about some contest, something to do with singing. You couldn't care less, but decided to pay attention. You hear your boys laughing and making their pick of woman giggle, you couldn't help but think about the woman from last night again. What you would do just to see her again.

As the night rolls on your on your 5th glass and began to feel tipsy. Just as you were about to round up the Mafia and head back home to hold the meeting. BB announces one more contestant. You take the remaining liquid and swallow it whole, Making sure your glass hits hard on the table, you look up and couldn't believe it.

"ITS HER!"

Well guys that's Chapter 2! what do we think?

Again thank you to the besties! @natipooxx, @erutluve, @plasticfantasticl0ver !!

Cant wait for y all to see what Chapter 3 Is about ;)

#elvis fanfic #elvis x y/n #elvis x reader #elvis presley #mafia romance #elvis 2022 #anita wood #elvisaaronpresley

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telomeke · 1 year

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MY SCHOOL PRESIDENT – SOME (RANDOM) THOUGHTS

My School President has hit the one-third, four episode mark, and this light little rom-com has got me *thinking* (a bit like Bad Buddy did in its time).

It's not all fluffy clouds and rainbows this one; there's a keen intelligence percolating behind the scenes that knows just what it's doing (and every now and then it will drop in a little nugget of greater significance to offset all the romantic sweetness, to remind us of who's in control).

I'm hopeful for more as the rest of the story unfolds, but am also hoping that they keep the balance right, because this has been (above all, so far) an enjoyably light high school BL romance.

MSP winks at Bad Buddy quite a bit – its team of writers and directors is approximately the same, although Khun Noppharnach has taken a step back into the producer role to allow Au Kornprom Niyomsil to take up directing duties, and only two of BBS's writers are on MSP. But the signs are there it's taking up the mantle BBS so expertly wove and deployed.

But at this time my thoughts on MSP are still random and unfocused; I can't tell where it's taking us just yet. Nonetheless, I remember it took me until BBS Ep.5 and 6 to start focusing my thoughts, so I'm waiting things out before looking at MSP more closely.

In the meantime I can't resist jotting down some random unlinked observations though (more for my own future reference than anything else). Whether or not they'll come together as part of a bigger picture I don't know, but time will tell.

By switching up the POVs in consecutive episodes, they've wrung out the seme/uke trope (just as BBS did, but the MSP treatment is not as heavy-handed). At first it looked like the taller, serious Tinn was going to be an archetypal seme, but then they showed us he's really a lovesick dork whose schemes to get closer to Gun get thwarted by circumstances all the time (and that Tinn for whatever reason fails miserably to rise above). And Gun the shorter sunshine boy is anything but a delicate flower vase, more than just an object of affection. I think @absolutebl has already written about this here (and much more coherently too) so I'll leave it at that.

Win and Sound are going to end up together (this one's pretty obvious, I think). Their exchange in the music room (when Win says to Sound about the pieces of meat being grilled: "I'll get a new one for you. Here. Take this one") at Ep.4 [4/4] 11.14 (as well as Phat and Por's reactions) is MSP winking at the "food = love" trope, not just Sound's acceptance into the friendship group. But with the ditching of the seme/uke trope that Thai BL seems intent on pursuing, I think the two blustery personalities getting together is another wink in that direction, that they're moving away from stereotyped roles in Thai BL couples as well.

There are also two nods that MSP does to socio-political realities outside of itself, that directly or indirectly have an impact on the production of Thai entertainment.

The first is at Ep.1 [1I4] 11.04 when Gun turns up for the presidential debate like this:

This is actually a reference to the current governor of Bangkok Chadchart Sittipunt, who, while serving as a minister in 2013 was photographed in much the same (casual) outfit barefoot and bearing alms at a Buddhist temple, concretizing his down-to-earth and solidly dependable image among Thai people:

MSP's nod here is a witty flex, but I've not quite worked out yet what they're getting at, beyond that it's a cute, chuckleworthy moment.

The second socio-political nod they've done is at Ep.4 [3I4] 0.27, and it's particularly barbed:

This is a direct reference to government intervention in the creative process, that is being done with a view to increasing Thailand's visibility and clout in the global entertainment scene.

You can read more about it here:

It's clear that there is pressure being applied for productions to go in certain directions (possibly with the dangling of financial carrots, that the money guys at profit-driven studios may be insisting individual shows have to snag, thus entailing modifications to the plot or portrayals for compliance with funding guidelines – but really I'm just guessing here).

Any sort of outside influence will always be a dampener on the creative process and I'm sure this is what's being critiqued here.

I have my own ideas about which directions are being strongly pushed (to increase marketability) but will save the details of that for a different post – for now I will say that I think Thai creatives are being pressured to emphasize Thailand's cultural links and overlaps with East Asia (especially with an eye on the gigantic Chinese market).

So climbing back into MSP from outside the fourth wall (and keeping with the randomness of it all), @respectthepetty has pointed out that Tinn and Gun may be represented by the colors blue and red, in this write-up linked here.

I'm keeping an open mind about this, but if it is true – take a look again at this photo of Tinn and Gun on the stairs:

There are red and blue arrows on the steps, with the red pointing up and the blue pointing down. I know these are the school's directional arrows for the students to follow when using the staircase, but even though the arrows are worn (and thus may be pre-existing and not intentional on the part of the MSP production team), part of me can't help wondering if they may be signaling future developments for Tinn and Gun too. 🤔 Why keep the shot so wide, if not to keep these arrows in view?

All eyes on you, My School President! 😍

#my school president

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aylinaliens · 9 months

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🍄 [AUGUST] || CURRENTLY WATCHING

🏳️‍🌈🍿Low Frequency (4/8) IQIYI — completely in love with this silly little bl about a shameless ghost in a coma i’m not at all afraid that it’s going to break my heart like he’s coming to me the editing is wonky but it has a lot of heart

🏳️‍🌈🍿Hidden Agenda (4/10) YOUTUBE — very surprised i’m not super invested in this but i’m chalking it up to just not being in the mood for bl’s set in uni. i’m sure that as more eps air i’ll get more into it

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Laws of Attraction (3/8) IQIYI — recently picked this up so i’m still trying to catch up but sicjwjjdjdjd you know :)

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Wedding Plan (3/7) IQIYI — originally started this for the lita cameos but stayed for the silly characters & adorable lesbians

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Be Mine Superstar (5/12) VIKI — not sure how to feel about this if i’m being honest but i am enjoying it!

🏳️‍🌈🍿Jack O’Frost (3/6) VIKI — the angst and visuals has me 🤤

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Step by Step (3/12) VIKI — binging this super slowly for no other reason beside the fact that i have a short attention span. jengpat already has me by the throat

🏳️‍🌈🍿Jun & Jun (2/8) VIKI —for some reason this is giving our dating sims vibes (which is on my list for my top five BL of the year) so i love this already

🍄 REWATCHING

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Love in the Air (5/13) — first time i didn’t love this but the second time?? absolutely feral over phayurain & prapaisky

🏳️‍🌈🍿 The Untamed (32/50) — who needs therapy when wangxian exists cql brainrot is never going away just saying

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Not Me (10/14) — i need to see offgun on my screen every few months and seanwhite is just so angsty/sweet

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Kinnporsche (5/14) — i’ll be honest i’m mainly doing a kimchay cut during this rewatch because they make me !!!!!!!!

🏳️‍🌈🍿 2gether the Series (8/13) — i was feeling nostalgic so i decided to revisit my favorite boys

🏳️‍🌈🍿 The Shipper (8/12) was this drama a fever dream? yes. did i get queerbaited multiple times? yup!! do i understand the weird (pseudo) incest plot line between ohm & first’s character? no?? and yet here i am still vibing away knowing that i’ll regret rewatching this soon

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Heaven’s Official Blessing (6/13) hualian makes my brain go brrrrrrrrrrrr ❤️

🍄 STARTING SOON

🏳️‍🌈🍿 A Boss & a Babe (12 eps) — i’m finally going to sit down and binge because i need to understand the forcebook brainrot before only friends come out

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Vice Versa (12 eps) — i need someone to bully me into watching this. it has everything i love and yet i still haven’t gotten around to starting it

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Minato Shouji Coin Laundry (12 eps) — i am completely baited by all the lovely gifs for season 2 on my dash so i’m so excited to start this!!

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Mysterious Lotus Casebook (40 eps) — 👀 again i was gif baited into wanting to start this

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Sing My Crush (8 eps) — kbl are a hit and miss but this looks adorable!!

🏳️‍🌈🍿 Stay with Me (24 eps) — never watched addicted heroin or read the danmei this is based on but it looks like a hot mess and i, for one, occasionally love my bls with a heavy serving of disaster

#will be periodically updating this list as the month goes on #hopefully this will make me actually keep up w/ everything and not fall weeks behind again 😭#watchlist #bl watchlist #low frequency the series #hidden agenda the series #laws of attraction the series #wedding plan the series #be mine superstar #jack o’frost #step by step the series #jun & jun #pinned*

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forkaround · 2 years

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Indian BLs WIPs

So, months ago I joked around with the idea of writing Indian BLs and bestie, I don't think it's a joke anymore. I don't know how it happened but over the course of these few months I've plot bunnied my way into over 20 Indian BL ideas. Each unique in Indian entertainment as well as in any BL. Mind you I won't be revealing every one of those ideas here. I don't want to promise something I might not end up finishing for a couple years, if not longer.

This is a list of Indian BLs that I have fully outlined and an ready to start writing. I am currently doing preptober for Kimhan AU.

So let's start there,

Kimhan AU

Months ago when Kinnporsche started airing, I'd just got to my college dorms and I came up with a scene of a girl fighting minions and standing over them, shirt open, heaving and angry. Her 'bodyguards' come and she yells at them for being terrible at their jobs. I was looking for a place to put the scene among my other WIPs but it didn't make sense anywhere. It stayed on the backburner for months until - I was in the supermarket and I met some Gujarati people (Context: I am currently living in Germany for my Masters but I am from Gujarat). And we started talking. Afterwards I realized how I'd lied, not really a lie, but like changed in how I talked to people compared to how I did back in India. And as a certified overthinker I did what any overthinker would do - I overthunk. Which lead to this idea of a character who presents as sweet and innocent but really is very sharp. Around the same time I'd read a Kimchay meta about how Chay isn't as sweet as he seems and Kim isn't as un-affected as he seems and that played in my head and that was how this ended up being called Kimhan AU. This doesn't really have anything to do with kinnporsche, it's just tangentially inspired by it. (Kinnporsche was something, wasn't it? I have 7 works that are tangentially inspired by something that happened in Kinnporsche or a meta someone wrote)

Anyway, Meet the Characters -

Kim (F, 25) is the youngest of an Indian Mafia family. She has just arrived at her dorms with Big (I am still using temp names. I like names to come to me instead of going to them), her bodyguard and oldest friend. Her dad wants her to keep an eye on P (I dubbed her Princess coz she is the heir i.e. Princess of the rival mafia family). The families have hated each other since an event, years ago, that lead to the death of their first children. Kim doesn't know why she must endure this but after what she did a few weeks ago, she has no choice.

Type (F, 22/23)meets the most beautiful woman she has ever seen at the supermarket once and she can't stop talking about her, to the frustration of her new friends. When she sees her again at the college cafeteria she calls out "Didi". She is the awesomest person Type has ever met, beauty and brains. But then Type finds out she is gay. Type is a good Indian Girl. This gay bullshit is just bullshit. Aisa kuch nahi hota (something like this doesn't exist). And why would Kim need to like a woman when she is so beautiful she could get any man?

[A/N: Let's just say she is in for a surprise. So I had just watched Ep 1 of TharnType when I wrote her and you can clearly see the influence. Type is someone who constantly puts her foot in her mouth and I think that's awesome.]

Big's (27, M) family has served Kim's family for years but sometimes he feels like he could kill Kim any second, especially when she knows his weaknesses and tells the very persistent, very beautiful boy in his dorm how to seduce him. Big has never had any moral issues with doing bad things but a relationship with a 19 year old is where he draws the line. He remembers being 19, he remembers the arrogance and the stupidity and the regret.

K (19, M) was supposed to focus on getting his bachelors. Which was all fine and good and then the most handsome man walked into his dorm room and he wants him carnally. Problem is Big won't stay in the same room for more than a minute which meant Kim had told him. Now how was he supposed to seduce him? But with that Adonis body comes something strange. He's heard him talk about shipments and products and protections.

[A/N: KimType are the fun couple and BigK are the not-fun couple, if you didn't already get that. I was watching Minato Coin Laundry at the time. So...]

Kimhan AU is tagged with KimhanAU or just Kimhan if you want to know more.

Cult

Another tangentially inspired by Kinnporsche. This time it's Vegas Theerapanyakul. but a woman. No murder, just the general sense of 'What the fuck is wrong with them?'

Confession: Some parts of the narrative are real life experiences.

Hetakshi was bored. It had been 6 months of getting her Masters degree which she did well enough (not that her parents would agree unless it was 90% +), but there was nothing to do. The thought hit her so hard she was thrown back into the past - She was on the plane to Germany watching a movie when she thought - What if I start a cult? Wouldn't that be funny? So queue up your inspirational music this socially anxious introvert is going to start a cult. But how? She asked google. She learned, she practiced, she gaslight, gatekeeped and girlbossed. And then she met her -

Sachee didn't understand why she cared so damn much about this one person than she had anyone her whole life. Perhaps it was because she didn't understand her. Hetakshi was...complex. Confident and cocky and sad and soft and rude and shy with the brightest smile and the saddest eyes. It was as she(Hetakshi) slept on the floor of Sachee's dorm room did she(Sachee) realize her feelings might be more than friendship. So what is a Gen-Zer supposed to so when they don't understand something - Google Zinda bad (a hindi victory cheer)

[A/N: You kinda have to stay with this one till the end to truly understand everything. There is a lot of religious symbolism that I don't know how to get into a premise. It's parallels. It's Yin and Yang. It's a study of human nature, of love. A beauty and the beast narrative.]

It's tagged as Cult

CharuTirth

On to lighter topics. A Indian Food BL coz I saw Old Fashion Cupcake and I have no self control.

Youtube wasn't a thing he'd thought about, ever. Until the pandemic hit and he had all the time in the world to pass. Charu has just been qualified for shorts and he's trying to find a style. Tirth, his videographer, suggests a review of street food in Ahmedabad. They idea is good and they both like it but really it's just an excuse to spend more time together. Charu doesn't want to trouble anyone's life, he is happy just to watch and help even as he hates every second Tirth flirts with other people. Tirth's liked Charu since he's friend passed him the box of sweets he made. He knows what people think about him - about how he moves and how many people he sleeps with. He'd learned to lean into it. If they are gonna talk he better give them something to talk about. But with Charu, he's fine just spending time with him and being his friend.

What neither of them know is Tirth's cousin (Jiva) and Charu's best friend (Hemal) are horrible meddlers who love meddling. It starts with Jiva seeing the ThaiBL wallpaper on Hemal's phone. They agree Charu and Tirth would make an awesome BL couple and what are friends for if not to help?

[A/N: This is very tongue and cheek, fun, light-hearted, classic Uni-set Thai BL narrative but in India. No brains needed here. Okay, a few brain cells needed for the systemic colorism and homophobia but the story is very light on them. Supportive parents in this one. Coz I deserve it. This was the first bl BL I came up with. It's very different from my typical angst writing style. It's a rom-com hands down but I can't, coz I am me, not add some social commentary. Yay! (sarcastic and exhausted)]

Tag: CharuTirth or FoodBL

There are others but for now these are the three big ones. I'm going to be doing Kimhan for Nanowrimo. Hopefully I have some sort of a book by the end that I can send publishers. (If you know anyone, please help me) It would take me a year to fully finish all three, if I am consistent and diligent and don't fall into a spiral and if my immune system doesn't kill me first.

I am planning on writing in English and Hindi. Coz there are dialogues that you just can't do justice in English and there are other things that I only know how to do in English. Like my username says - I'll fuck around and find out.

Do you prefer the term Indian BL or Desi BL? Help me tag this.

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canmom · 1 year

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NieR Automata Anime ep 4-5

Continuing commentary from [part 1] and [part 2-3].

The NieR Automata anime continues to be... really good actually! A really good companion piece to the game, and even if you encountered it in isolation you’d probably get quite a bit out of it. I am increasingly relieved I didn’t judge it solely on the first episode.

As before the focus on this commentary will be looking at how they adapted the game, how it relates to the broader NieR context, references (e.g. books being read by the characters), and also the cool stuff the anime does to take advantage of the new medium.

Episode 4

Episode 4 covers the Amusement Park area and the machine lifeform Simone, aka ボーヴォワール (Beauvoir) in Japanese.

This episode was delayed, with the rushed production of the anime as a whole unable to cope with a COVID outbreak. Given that it’s kind of crazy what an impressive action sequence they deliver.

The episode opens with Machine Lifeforms watching a play. In the game, if you return to the Amusement Park some time after defeating Simone, you can watch a group of machine lifeforms perform a play called ‘Romeos and Juliets’ which has to be seen, seriously...

youtube

In the anime, we open with a less absolutely destructive play, although a machine lifeform still gets stabbed. We see a machine couple with painted-on eyelashes holding each other... and behind them we see a crucified android.

...followed by a rapid montage of her and other androids decaying.

The setup is pretty clear: this is a horror one!

At the Resistance Camp, 2B and 9S are receiving their orders from Lily and Jackass. This serves as exposition that normal androids only drink water...

...and YoRHa androids don’t. (Because their Black Boxes come from Machine Lifeforms, but we don’t know that yet!)

They do a great job of distinguishing the body language of Lily (cool, reserved) and Jackass (excitable, broad motions) which wasn’t really possible in the game. Poking and prodding 9S, wiggling like a worm...

The YoRHa recap the previous episode, and Jackass speculates that with the machine lifeforms evolving this way, peace might yet be possible. As we’ll see, 9S’s genocidal streak is really emphasised in the anime; here, he refuses to accept anything other than total annihilation of the machines and foreshadows his ‘I’m going to kill every last one of them’ break from route C...

The Japanese is actually quite plain: すべてを、破壊するまだです。It is perfectly valid to translate to “every last one of them” and it fits the dramatic finality of 9S’s line, but you could also just put “all of them”.

Next up we have a scene of the Commander in the bunker. This calls back to the YoRHa stage play, where the Commander pleads to send reinforcement to the YoRHa test squad, and is flatly denied.

Visually, the “Council of Humanity” is here represented by a moon with a segment taken out, resembling an eyeball. It’s a cool visual!

And in closeups, we see a circuit board pattern, which kind of foreshadows that the Council of Humanity is not human at all...

The Council declares that Adam, Eve and other unique machine lifeforms are all part of the plan, and to continue to use the Resistance as decoys.

YoRHa’s plan is completely nuts honestly. Not surprisingly since it was concocted by a traumatised android shortly before he blew up, but seriously. The primary aim of YoRHa is propaganda, to motivate the resistance to fight harder to overcome the machines on behalf of a phantom humanity - but they treat that same resistance as worthless and disposable constantly so who’s even supposed to spread the legend of YoRHa? They sacrifice endless units to goofy experiments to try to find the most efficient personality types, even though they’re planning to sacrifice the whole army in the end. They spend a huge amount of resources on attempting to squash security leaks among the androids, such as the Executioner type units, but their base security is completely useless against the machines.

But that’s the point, right? YoRHa is irrational bc the huge forces that we are caught up in are just as irrational. And thinking of this as a purely rational military operation, rather than something happening for religious reasons, is a mistake.

After this, we lead into the main plot of the episode, with 2B and 9S on their way to investigate the Amusement Park region. Before that, however, they see a supply launch to the moon; further foreshadowing.

Later, 9S will discover that the shipments to the moon contain only water, indicating that the moon is only populated by androids and there are no real humans. So the beginning of this episode has all been setup.

We get a message from from the crucified android. “Ah, what a beautiful stage...” - setup to the dichotomy of beauty and death that is going to be the theme explored in the rest of this episode.

Like in the game, the route to the Amusement Park from the City Ruins passes through a sewer. We get a brief montage of painted scenes from the game, including the rabbit boss...

...and the rollercoaster...

But we’re not going to dwell very long in the Amusement Park before going straight to the stage.

A Beautiful Song begins in a music box version, and we see the machine lifeforms from the play earlier professing love. Pod 153 explains the concept of the theatre to a dismissive 9S; then the players explode and Simone enters.

The outset of the fight is fairly close to the game, although there’s some small differences.

Like with the Engels fight, Simone is a 3D model, while 2B and 9S are 2D animated into a 3D scene with 2D effects animation. The CGI still doesn’t look great, but broadly it’s executed much better here. There’s some seriously impressive mobile camerawork.

In the game, you don’t get much of a sense of what Simone’s deal is in your first playthrough as 2B, but then as 9S you get visions of her motivation. She wants another machine, named after Jean-Paul Sartre and goes to increasing lengths to ‘become beautiful’ - returning to a constant refrain of ‘he won’t look my way’. (In real life, Sartre and de Beauvoir had a polyamorous relationship; Sartre was the one jealous. I gotta actually read de Beauvoir to get a better sense of what NieR is riffing on, if it is).

In the anime, the emphasis is less on Sartre, although we do see him...

The flayed, still-living androids on posts come in to open what will be a parade of ero-guro imagery...

Things really get going with dat psychosexual imagery, though, once 9S hacks into de Beauvoir. As we’ve seen, the anime presents hacking as a kind of full-immersion VR where 9S dives into the memories of the hacking target. Inside de Beauvoir, he first finds a huge space full of images of feminised machine lifeforms, the plates shattering as he walks past...

The hacking space is indicated by letterboxing a cinematic 2.39:1 aspect ratio.

He finds a mirror and then is confronted by an array of photos of the same machine in a red dress and various kinds of makeup. The floor transforms into a huge made up face.

9S shatters it with his sword. Outside the hacking dimension, 2B is holding him in a pietà pose. Simone explodes her dress and goes into bitey girldick mode.

Back in hacking space, 9S finds himself in a misty swamp containing a giant statue of an indifferent Sartre. With a Dutch angle to make it look extra big.

A representation of Simone with smudged makeup shows up in a wedding dress.

9S stabs her, she turns to sludge, arms drag him underwater, and he finds himself arm-bondaged to a wall in a bedroom full of discarded dummy/doll parts.

Simone, here a generic Small Stubby, discards parts until giving up in frustration, with scribbles all over her face, and comes to 9S where she starts trying to rip off his arm.

Abruptly she is pulled into a giant metal mouth. (Check out those bendy smears!) A match cut identifies this mouth with the big girldick dentata menacing 2B.

In the hacking world, a huge grinding wheel appears inside the mouth, reminiscent of Marx. Simone now stumbles blindly around the fight arena, bouncing off the walls. 2B orders Pod 042 to let her hack, despite the risk of a B unit attempting hacking.

Given how coldly she has treated (this incarnation of!) 9S until now, this might underline that there’s more going on with her feelings about him. If the first episode didn’t massively tip its hand there lol. Anyway, she arrives just in the nick of time to save 9S from getting ground up.

...kinda Utena-like framing there maybe?

This prompts Simone to charge atop the spinning wheel, giving 9S an opening to throw his sword into her face. The effect of this is to explode the metal covering.

The inner structure of her head suggests that 9S has actually smashed the teeth as well and gone straight into her throat with his sword. Hmm. HMMMMMMMMM. Yeah ok.

This gives 2B and 9S an opening to destroy Simone’s core with the pod laser. We get a final shot of her catching the attention of Sartre at last...

We see Simone’s core disintegrate - further setup for the eventual reveal that YoRHa Black Boxes are built from Machine Cores.

After the battle, the two machines from the opening come in to see the play and give flowers to Simone, one of them referring to her as ‘mum’! Suggesting that maybe Simone and Sartre went further in their relationship and adopted some Stubbies as kids in this version? 9S tramples the roses to mercilessly cut them down.

The puppet show this time is pretty brief and the ‘ending’ is basically that the commander pushes the bunker crew too hard.

So, to comment on this episode: in the game, the Simone fight is extremely cool - bringing to mind the Intoner fights in Drakengard 3, but considerably better executed! - but ultimately you just defeat Simone the same way you would defeat any normal enemy. If you hack her as 9S, I don’t believe you get any special hacking zones.

Here, they’re going all Silent Hill with the sexual imagery. I’m still not entirely sure what I make of the whole Simone episode of NieR Automata. There’s definitely something of the transfeminine monster angle in the whole ‘massive bitey schlong’ thing, the “Buffalo Bill” pursuit of feminine beauty by destroying someone else’s body (in this case, the androids that Simone uses as adornment). They’re mixing together a whole lot of images here: we already had the stage itself, gibbeted corpses, Wagnerian opera, the usual YoRHa doll imagery; now we can add the big juicy mouth stuff and a bit of bondage too. The Machine Lifeforms are generally trying to explore different ways of being human, and Simone represents insecure vanity leading to an obsession with aesthetics that can never really be satisfied. But there’s a reason ‘unrequited feelings’ is such an enduring subject for stories.

In the game, when you defeat Simone, there isn’t much of an immediate followup. The final scene with 9S killing the two childlike machines is a good one for setting up the later developments, and also for creating more of a contrast between the affects of the two MCs. 9S is interesting because he has much more access than nearly anyone to the inner lives of the machines, but also he is one of the most insistent that the machines don’t have real subjectivity, and they’re playing that up here in the anime.

Episode 5

Now we get Adam and Eve for real! In this episode we get a couple of their rooftop scenes from the game. The anime has more room for character animation, to express Eve’s fidgety boredom.

We see a lot of books in this episode. In the first scene, Adam is reading Being and Nothingness, by Sartre. Later, in Pascal’s village, we see his bookshelf contains Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and five volumes of Republic, presumably Plato’s.

In the final scene of Adam and Eve, Eve is grumbling about having to read a book titled Natural History, possibly the one by Pliny the Elder. Adam is reading a book titled Vice Amply Rewarded, which is the subtitle of the novel Juliette by the Marquis de Sade.

OK, the plot of the episode proper! This one’s kinda great! We finally get the introduction of Pascal and the pacifist village, but rather than simply reprise the game, we add some cool new elements...

We open with 2B and 9S making their way across the ravine to the department store.

They changed the geography a bit here. In the game, you meet the pacifist machines right after defeating Simone, and their area can be accessed by a series of bridges from the Amusement Park; later it connects to the City Ruins and the Forest zones. The department store is very small, and it’s a route to the forest zone, but it is notably where you first meet Emil, who bursts out of the inside of a Machine Lifeform’s head which really underlines the similarity. It’s also where Emil made his underground monument to Kainé, full of Lunar Tears, where 2B will eventually be buried. But the above ground part of it is pretty barebones, just a large room.

9S excitedly picks over toothbrushes, plates, pans and even a PS4 - the first platform that NieR Automata was released on.

He asks 2B to call him ‘Nines’, but she refuses. (She knows she’ll have to kill this 9S eventually, and she’s trying not to get attached.)

The department store is much larger in the anime...

9S explains how he wants to go shopping with 2B and buy her a T-shirt after the war. His body language is really cute. 2B shuts him down with the usual ‘emotions are prohibited’.

They meet the Machine Lifeform village, where they’re all waving white flags. The Machine Lifeforms in the village are a mix of 2D animation and cel-shaded CG, and the first half of the episode is 9S getting over his skepticism that there could be peaceful machine lifeforms disconnected from the network, and deciding to try to learn more about them.

One interesting difference from the game is that here, the Stubbies actually come in a variety of sizes...

...cementing the roleplaying of ‘parents’ and ‘children’ in the village. We see various machines in outfits either painted on or made out of scraps of cloth; there’s a couple of cameos of sidequest characters from the games, notably the pair of sisters with pink and blue bows:

Sadly the part of the dynamic where the Medium Stubby was the big sister and the Large Stubby was the younger sister seems to have been dropped.

After this montage, things diverge from the game in a really interesting way. 2B and 9S see a ravine by the edge of the village, and descend, where they find...

...a tree with an Emil in it! 9S determines he can hack this Emil because something something radio waves, and dives in to find memories of NieR Replicant while Emil (Sacrifice) plays:

The desert outside Facade.

The garden in the Shadowlord’s ‘castle’, the last thing the gang saw before Devola and Popola’s betrayal.

Devola and Popola’s library, with the roof broken open by the Shadowlord’s attack; a highly traumatic location for Emil since this is where he was forced to use his power to turn Kainé to stone to protect the village.

Kainé and Grimoire Weiss; likely the scene where Kainé was revived after the time skip. Kainé acknowledged Emil immediately despite his changed form.

Devola and Popola in the library, their faces obscured, representing their deceit. The one time Emil entered this office, they told him and Kainé to sleep outside the village.

Nier himself, taking care of Yonah. Not entirely clear when Emil would have seen this!

Emil forcibly discconects 9S, but 9S pulls up some data about him.

This is very different to what happens in the game, where 2B and 9S don’t have the first clue what Emil is and almost attack him on their first meeting! The pane on the left shows Emil’s mansion and the fountain which conceals the entrance to the hidden lab; the pane in the middle shows the multiple-Emil head form he adopts during the optional battle in the desert before changing to Halua chained up underground; the pane on the right shows Emil and Halua in their human forms before the evil child experiments. 9S refers to Emil as a weapon, an ‘it’.

At that point Pascal arrives and explains the pacifist village worship Emil(!) and that’s why Pascal stopped fighting. We get a flashback which uses a high contrast saturated colour scheme reminiscent of Takashi Koike, one of the coolest sequences in the whole anime.

Just like P-chan/Beepy did when rising from the mountain, Emil says one word: 生きて (live!) The magical force of this command causes Pascal to awaken. We get to see an older version of the Machine Lifeform army, where the fundamental modular unit is a Pascal-like chassis:

Pascal is given the ability to fear death. And he’s terrified by his indifference to the lives of his comrades. だから。。。

...he becomes a pacifist, and founds the village.

As Pascal is pulled back to the other machines, one of whom has found a music box (from an earlier sidequest at the resistance camp... I have so much useful knowledge in my brain lmao), 9S retreats to a nearby rooftop and derides them as selfish as it starts raining in a big old pathetic fallacy moment.

He says separating from the network and yet forming a village is a contradiction. 2B and pod 153 reply that it is impossible to live alone. 9S’s vision flickers with a glitch, showing the department store briefly...

He awkwardly tries to cover for it by making a kinda childishly flirty comment towards 2B - one that underlines the distance that still exists between them and 9S’s sense of loneliness. 2B gets it and instructs Pod 042 to mark the department store so that one day in the future, they really might go shopping there...

But we end the scene in an indirect mirror shot of 2B looking after him with a grim expression.

She knows that isn’t happening. (Don’t think too hard about the perspective of this shot lmao.)

As 2B and 9S return to the village, they see one of the machine children trying to keep the music box to itself...

Pascal is hopelessly ill-equipped to stop the conflict and the children fight; inevitably the music-box is broken.

The androids observe that, even in the pacifist village where there is no war against the androids, conflicts still break out just due to conflicting interests. 9S almost intervenes, but is interrupted by a message from Operator 21O.

Finally we have the last scene with Adam and Eve.

The post-credits puppet show omake scene depicts the effect of the self-destruct input, which causes 9S’s shorts and 2B’s skirt to get blown up ingame. This leads to sexy illustrations of both androids...

Unfortunately Emil gets the same idea.

We get ending Y from the game, where Emil kills everyone on Earth. I think this would be incomprehensible if you haven’t done Emil’s mission in the game.

All in all, a really cool episode. I loved the style of Pascal’s flashback and it’s cool to flesh out his character a bit more. Creating a connection between Emil and the pacifist machines is fascinating. The game definitely intimates towards a connection between Emil and the Machine Lifeforms from the moment Emil is introduced, and given that Emil was fighting the aliens, it seems very likely that they built the Machine Lifeforms in his image. But I don’t know of anywhere this is actually spelled out explicitly (and it’s kind of contradicted if the old model of Machine Lifeform looked like Pascal). Still, if that was true... in a sense you could even say the Machine Lifeforms give Emil - the last surviving human, permanently kept in this child state by his magical immortality - a way of growing up!

Also it’s nice to see anime Kainé lol.

I had a lot of doubts about this adaptation at first, and the conditions it’s being made in are pretty dire honestly, but despite all that, they are genuinely managing to add something that makes the adaptation a worthwhile addition. They’re being reasonably judicious with the action, which lets it be really flashy when they do show it; I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do with characters like Gruen and the Forest Kingdom later. Most importantly, they seem to be getting the tone right.

If we’re up to episode 5 and we’ve only just met Pascal, I can only assume they won’t cover the entire game in this one anime. I suspect they’ll probably just take it up to the end of Route A/B - at least, I hope they don’t try to cram the whole of Route C into a couple of episodes.

Anyway, really glad this is turning out to be good after all. I still need to write up NieR Automata on my NieR guide pages and I’ll definitely be including this anime when I do.

#nier automata #nier automata ver 1.1a #anime #nier #nier automata anime #nier automata spoilers #computer games

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invisiblegarters · 1 year

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Eternal Yesterday Ep 4 Thoughts

This drama, man. It somehow manages to get just a little better every single week - how does it do that? Japan is killing it at the end of the year again, only this time I have no confidence that my heart won’t wind up ripped right out of my chest at the end.

As with last week, I’m incapable of either objectivity or brevity. I blame these two:

This friend group is great. Even from episode one they seemed like a group who knew each other well and were comfortable with each other (and I was utterly tickled by the “this again *eyeroll*” reactions that Hashimoto and the Class Prez had to Koichi going on about Mitsuru’s cuteness in that ep. Said so much with so little). And I am glad that they explained the whole thing with Kagami, because now it is starting to make everyone’s acceptance of Koichi as the Living Dead Boy make a little more sense. They’re already used to weird and inexplicable. Also they make me laugh. From Hashimoto’s “Morning! Still dead, then?” to how excited Kagami was to see a demon in the flesh (so to speak).

Dying.

I think that she and Mitsuru are the only two following the conversation enough to understand that Koichi might be feeding off of Mitsuru. I could be wrong, but that is how I interpreted that little nod between them. But it’s probably only a matter of time before Koichi figures it out, and then I think we’ll see him start to pull away. As if he isn’t horrified enough by himself already.

Mitsuru’s house is so gorgeous and so sterile. It seems like the kind of place where you can’t actually live, because you might mess something up. But I don’t think Koichi notices:

I’d be kinda worried it was a zombie thing if there weren’t a dozen examples of Koichi looking at Mitsuru like that already. Best part? Now Mitsuru is looking back just as fondly.

I’m struck by how stark the difference is between the way he acted in the flashbacks vs. the way he is in pretty much this whole episode. And can I just say how much more attractive Mitsuru is when he’s making expressions? I’ve never liked him so much as I do this episode.

The mom stuff just breaks my heart. I don’t know why, but I’d assumed she was a loving mother (I had also assumed she was dead, fwiw). Poor Mitsuru, with a distant dad and a strict mom who never touched him. No wonder he didn’t recognize Koichi’s love for what it was, sheesh. And no wonder he’s embracing the whole “Living Dead Boyfriend” concept. Who wouldn’t, if it meant that they didn’t have to let go of the one person that they knew loved them? I’m not crying, you’re crying (no, it’s me. It’s going to be me a lot I think).

I am glad that we had some reaction from Koichi about being dead. He was so happy go lucky in episode two, not really seeming to care, and it threw me a bit. I am also completely fascinated with him finding himself disgusting and thinking that Mitsuru must too (I kind of love how it never occurs to him that Mitsuru feels absolutely the same as Koichi would if the situations were reversed). And Mitsuru is just lovely here with his reassurance.

And then this drama proceeds to destroy all my expectations by not only serving good kiss:

But also bringing the heat:

Koichi went full seme in a way I did not expect holy shit. Although that makes his reaction when Kagami asks if they did something special that night even more hilarious. Chill, thy name is not Koichi.

So I had to eat all my words about JBLs and dead fishies, not that I’m complaining. I’d already come around to the idea that the kiss in the previous episode fit where the characters were at the time, but this solidified it.

Okay WTF is up with the teachers? I’m officially curious. But also when I saw this:

I have to admit my first reaction was “we already have our zombie member, my dude.”

Next week: more cuddles! And I’m guessing the teachers find out about Koichi. I guess we are going to see what happens with his family, which I was wondering about and which I know will probably wind up breaking my heart, like so much of this drama is set to do. Bring it on, I guess. I mostly knew what I was signing up for.

#eien no kino #eternal yesterday

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blocksruinedme · 1 year

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SMALLETHO WEEK STATUS: PENULTIMATE REPORT

(please let this be penultimate report)

Okay I have 11 hours to get these out in saturday my time zone and i am going to do it, or i'll take my me off and throw me in the lake (it's right there down the street I'll do it.)

You'd think they'd be done by now. You'd think given how many days ago they were first "basically drafted" they'd be done right now. But noooo, some bitch (me) decided the fic "deserve more" and there are scenes "they really need" and like fine yes I still agree but why can't they just be done.

Red Life fic:

the first three sections are about incidents after turning red than made etho go "huh" about joel. they serve their purpose, but currently exist mostly in the form i scrawled down on the back of another fic in my car after the dentist. I could def describe things more, add a little more reflection about their place in the double life ecosystem as they start murdering and burning

gotta make good kiss at end, and the last bits of lead in, and the little bit after

the main issues here is that i gotta go rewatch DL ep 4 from multiple POVs. at minimum i need pearl's pov of dying, and maybe check for some other people's reactions to joel's shit that are not in smalletho vids but in universe they would have heard. (if only i could shove knowledge of every traffic episode fully into my head, sigh. so much content.

so that's not too bad!

fuck me there's 36 [] around words i don't like/phrases that need to be replaced/etc. fml fml fml

LARPer au morning after fic

apparently i'm adding all this backstory, which means i got to take it out o the author's notes, which i hope will make it more appealing. it's mostly about the party that this is morning after, but it's joel pov and *very* focused on getting laid, he's kinda aware that a lot of shit went down for pretty much everyone else

i want to add a very quick awkward bit with joel asking jimmy about the party the night before, currently he's totally succeeding at making joel (who is very distracted) think he's fine. and it's not gonna get explained in this story, but i'm not setting up a giant mystery, it's just more of "joel missed some shit last night". if that upsets people... i'm sorry! i'm actually very new t writing fic but it feels fine? it's a 5k story, alluding to the rest of the world seems fine

then it's just, fuck holding my breath... 40 sets of []. many many many of them, when i have people look at them, they say "that's fine", and it's just me at "will i have a time to struggle for a synonym/rephrasing

Dear everyone who compliments my writing skill (which i love, keep on doing it)

i hope you are not comparing yourself to me. here's some reasons why i probably have a leg (several legs?) up on you

i am very old and have been writing in one way or another possibly since before you could write.

I legit used to teach sat prep in writing, i have been trained in this and made money on it

if you live like i do, when you are my age you will also have a pretty big vocabulary

i usually edit a lot. I get beta, i throw problem sentences and such at friends, i've gotten proofreading from actual professionals. If i published most of my first drafts, well. I might not get as many "well written" compliments (though i think my plot and characterization would be similar levels of quality, my voices not so much - i have google docs for the way people talks and go through my dialogue looking for places to change things. it's actually great. i could share it?)

it's wild that what is my most popular fic by 3x is the one that went from thought of to posted in <12 hours and thus had only quick editing. so, it's not alway from editing

i just never want anyone who doesn't have those things to compare themself negatively to me, y'know? That said I'm a hypocrite, I compare myself negatively to professional writers in other fandoms. So, do as i say, etc

am i avoiding getting back to writing? yes

back to joel talking about asking scott to help him get tarted up

okay one last thing, me being pleased with my writing - i am jumping between my early 20s larper au and my late 20s/30s burning man au, and i think i am doing a good job at giving age appropriate characterizations to similar version of the same characters. my 21 year old Etho feels 21 to me and my early 30s Etho feels early 30s to me. These ensembles are very much based on my own experiences so I've got a lot to work with, 60 year olds would be harder :)

#me #my writing #larper au

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