#no clue if this is a literature or science since i know this shit from a tumblr post
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this is so incredibly funny. for the entirety of holidays i was pretty sure i have a shift today, obly to check it yesterday on my phone and a schedule i printed two weeks ago only to find out i have no shifts scheduled fot today. but also i got late once for my very first shift of march because my boss changed our work hours so i can not trust that. but also i'm working only 84 hours a month and the amounts on the schedule i printed matches. i do know however that our new temporary worker had changes. i also know that my boss and other coworker work today as scheduled and sure af i shouldn't be needed as the other temporary coworker should also be working then. what am i even doing. anyways if i want to go to job that i'm 99% i don't have today i should be leaving in 10 minutes.
#srry for the vent i had a fucking meltdown yesterday night i think that's my period knocking on the door#apparently migratory birds feel some sort of pain that appears before migrating and at some point they can not stop it so they have to go#and fly#no clue if this is a literature or science since i know this shit from a tumblr post#but maybe this and pms are correlated in some ways
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Mrs. Chickadee
(This was 100% inspired by Gilmore Girls. If you watched the show, you know exactly where this came from. Just wanted to make a short and cute Rayaari story! Also super sorry for the delay my tumblr shut me out and I could NOT remember my password so this app and I have beef. Modern au for this one!)
Raya may actually start crying right here, right now.
She checked the cage once, twice, three times, but there was nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a thing, if you will. Oh god, Raya’s hyperventilating.
Man, why did Sisu have to take the stupid animal science class and have to take care of a stupid little bird for the rest of the semester? Raya’s squinting her eyes and scanning the room to try and find the little ball of fluff to no avail.
Raya had no clue how she was supposed to find this avian escape artist if she can’t even see properly. She accidentally cracked the lenses of her glasses earlier this morning and dropped them off at Costco to get them fixed. Thank god for the many uses of Costco.
But since Raya doesn’t use contact lenses, she has an incredibly difficult time seeing anything over five feet away from her. That being said, since she is taller than five feet, looking down is an issue. Trying to find the chick would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Shit, Raya could probably be stepping on the bird right now and she wouldn’t know. After quickly checking her shoe to thankfully find no birds stuck on it, she decided to call reinforcements.
“Hey, Maari? You uh, doing anything important right about now?” Raya asked once her friend picked up.
“My literature class starts in like ten minutes, why?” Namaari answered.
Damn, Raya totally forgot that Namaari was a freak and decided to take a Friday class.
“Never mind, don’t worry about it. It’s not serious, really,” Raya hurriedly assured her. Now she had absolutely no clue what to do.
“No, please, tell me why you called,” Namaari insisted.
Ugh, she’s so annoying. Raya knows for a fact that she’s not going to budge until Raya tells her.
“There’s a chick lose in my apartment!”
“.........care to repeat that, dep la?”
“I don’t like the sass in your tone, Namaari!”
“Right, I’m too sassy. Apologies, Raya.”
“You should apologize, I’m freaking out man! I don’t know how to lure Mrs. Chickadee back into her cage!”
“Mrs. Chickadee?”
“THE NAME OF THE CHICK, WOMAN, KEEP UP!”
“Woah, woah, woah, there is no need for such a high volume.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry, this is very stressful. The reason why I called was because I was going to bully you into coming over but I don’t want you to miss your class so I’ll just hang up and figure something out,” Raya groaned. Right when she was about to hit the end call button, Namaari spoke up.
“Hold on, it’s fine Raya I’ll help you,” the other woman said.
“But you’ll miss your class,” Raya weakly argued.
“My professor posts everything online, I won’t have any trouble catching up. I will come over,” Namaari firmly told her.
“Hey Maari, are you a diamond? Because you dazzle me. You are one dazzling lady. Now get over here! Quickly!” Raya yelled.
“I’ll be there in ten,” Namaari confirmed. With that, the call ended and Raya could sigh in relief.
Namaari was probably one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. Whenever Raya needed anything, Namaari was ready to assist no matter the circumstances. Hell, it was Namaari who drove Raya to and from Costco when her glasses broke so that she wouldn’t have to take an Uber. And sure, Sisu is a great friend too and all, but it’s just different with Namaari in a way Raya can’t quite explain.
Raya then continued on for her search of the missing bird until she heard a knock at the door. She hurriedly walked to the door and opened it to reveal her good friend, Namaari Fang.
“Get in here, quickly! My god, you move like a drunk frat boy!” Raya hissed as she yanked Namaari into the apartment and quickly shut the door.
“I can’t believe I am missing out on my education to be insulted by you,” Namaari scoffed.
“Cry about it,” Raya huffed while tugging Namaari further into her humble abode.
“Oh my god, the hell happened here? This place looks like a pigsty,” the taller woman said.
“So the last birdie sighting was over there, behind the couch. Then she jumped off the side of the couch, so I’m pretty sure Mrs. Chickadee is suicidal, and then she scurried off in the direction of my bedroom and now I have no idea where she is!” Raya explained.
“Ah, yes of course. Suicidal bird in your room,” Namaari laughed with an odd tone of voice.
Then, miraculously, a tiny chirp resonated in the apartment. Yes! Mrs. Chickadee lives on!
“What on Earth was that?!” Namaari asked, sounding incredibly startled.
Raya shushed her and tried to beckon the bird to come out of hiding with no such luck.
“I’ll be damned, you really do have a chick in here,” Raya heard the other woman mumble.
“Of course I have a chick in here, I don’t lie about my chicks! Oh look, she’s making a break for it! Get her!” the long haired girl exclaimed.
The duo quickly followed after the bird only for Namaari’s foot to get dangerously close to the bright yellow ball of fuzz Raya can barely make out.
“Don’t squash her!” Raya yelled.
“She cut right in front of me!”
“Just be careful, she’s being graded! If Mrs. Chickadee chickadies, Sisu is going to chickakill me!”
“Well maybe you should tell Mrs. Chickadee to watch where she’s chickagoing!”
Unfortunately, in the chaos, they lost sight of the chick. So now Raya is taking an ice cream break as Namaari continues to hunt for the tiny bird. It’s probably for the best.
“I’m like, ninety percent sure she went by that chair,” Raya declared, using her spoon to point to the chair she spoke of.
“You’re blind, I don’t trust your judgement,” Namaari easily responded.
“First of all, don’t be a mean girl, I’ve had a long day. And second of all.....that’s fair,” the shorter woman sighed as she took another bite of ice cream.
“I am nothing if not fair,” Namaari agreed. “How exactly did this disaster occur?”
“Sisu’s got this animal science class and a big part of her grade is taking care of the little guy while tracking her progress. She went to her brother’s for the weekend because of a picnic thing they have once a month so she asked me to watch Mrs. Chickadee in her absence,” Raya explained.
“Apparently Sisu needed someone to watch both of you in her absence,” Namaari smirked.
Raya hates it when Namaari’s right.
She sighed and ate yet another spoonful of ice cream. Honestly, she should stop herself. She’s the high definition of a stress eater. At the rate she’s going, Raya will have to live in the gym to burn all these calories off.
Raya was going to try aiming the spoon in order to get ice cream on Namaari’s head to bug her, but she stopped when she remembered a certain part of their earlier conversation.
“Hey Maari, what did you mean earlier?” Raya asked without really thinking. She probably should have given her a little more elaboration.
“What are you talking about?” Namaari asked while moving a curtain to see if that was where the chick was hiding.
“Oh, you know, when you got here. You kinda sounded like you didn’t actually believe I had a chick in the house,” Raya clarified. All she got was a dismissive hum from the other girl. “I mean, if I didn’t have the obviously real chick, why did you think I was calling?”
“No no, I thought you were calling about the chick,” Namaari said in the most unconvincing tone of all time.
“Well I personally did not see it that way.”
“You can’t see shit without your glasses, your seeing is very off right now.”
“You are so rude for that.”
“You always think I’m rude- there she is!” Namaari exclaimed, finally finding the damned bird.
“Wait, seriously?” Raya asked hopefully.
Before she knew, it Namaari had lunged across the room to nab Mrs. Chickadee. Raya winced hearing Namaari’s body thud on the ground. That had to hurt.
The currently blind girl rushed over and picked up the little chick from Namaari’s hands. Faster than the devil himself, Raya put Mrs. Chickadee in her cage and locked it.
“I should put you in chains for what you’ve done tonight,” Raya huffed.
Now that the Mrs. Chickadee had been thrown into lockdown she rushed over to Namaari who was still laying on her stomach of the floor. Raya couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Namaari seemed to have decided there was no point in getting up after that incident.
“How you doin’ down there?” Raya asked while sitting by Namaari’s head.
“I’m not talking to you. You left me for the bird,” Namaari grumbled.
“But Maari, if I didn’t get the bird, your sacrifice would have been in vain! I could never do that to you!” Raya exclaimed while trying really hard not to laugh.
“I suppose. Pretty sure I cracked several ribs though,” Namaari sighed.
She then rolled over so that she was now laying on her back instead of her stomach that she so painfully landed on. Raya scooted over so that Namaari could rest her head on Raya’s lap. Raya yawned as she began idly playing with the other woman’s hair. Namaari mimicked Raya’s yawn and closed her eyes.
“What’s up Undercut?” Raya smiled.
“Just getting injured because of you. Really, it’s just another day in the life,” Namaari said, not bothering to open her eyes.
“Oh come on, aren’t I worth the trouble?” Raya giggled, playfully pinching Namaari’s nose.
“You are,” Namaari simply stated.
Raya blushed at the apparent honesty. Her heart embarrassingly fluttered when Namaari opened her eyes and made eye contact with her. Before Raya could do anything stupid, Namaari’s phone rang.
“Could you get that for me? I’m very comfortable here,” Namaari said while closing her eyes again.
Given the fact that Namaari’s phone is on the table right next to them, Raya easily reached it and handed it to the woman that seemed to be a little too comfortable. Huh, the caller was Atitaya. Wonder what that’s about?
“Hey, what’s up?” Namaari asked. Some muffled sounds on the other end of the line was followed by Namaari’s loud groaning. “Can it seriously not wait?”
More muffled voices indicated that whatever was going on seriously could not wait because Namaari slowly began sitting up, much to Raya’s dismay. She tried to hide her disappointment. She was also choosing to ignore the fact that she missed the other woman’s warmth. This is fine. Totally normal bestie feelings here.
“My awful cousin needs to be picked up from the airport because apparently Uber no longer exists. Or lyft. Or a taxi,” Namaari grumbled as she ended the call.
With a whole lot of complaint, Namaari finally stood up on her own two feet. Raya held out both hands to her friend, silently demanding for her friend to help her up.
“Are you being for real?” the now standing woman deadpanned.
Raya simply smiled and made no move to lower her arms. Namaari rolled her eyes but nonetheless grabbed Raya’s hands and hoisted her up.
“Geez, what would you do without me?” Namaari smirked.
“Probably whither away,” Raya answered honestly.
“Thought so.”
“There’s no need to be so smug, Namaari.”
“First I’m sassy, then I’m smug. Man, I never get to win with you.”
“No, no you don’t because I’m perfect.”
“Well even a smug and sassy girl like me could have told you that.”
“See, here you are back at it again with the sass. Do you ever learn?”
Namaari opened her mouth to respond but was cut off by a loud buzz from her phone. She frowned seeing the message that was left and shoved her phone back in her pocket.
“Alright, I actually have to go because now she’s yelling at me virtually,” Namaari told her.
Raya smiled and gave her a tight hug. Namaari’s arms wrapped around her to give her a small squeeze back.
“Thanks for being the best Namaari ever,” Raya smiled while letting go.
“It’s what I’m here for. I’ll see you later, yeah?” Namaari asked as she was walking out the door.
“Unfortunately for you, yeah,” Raya confirmed.
“Goodnight Raya,” Namaari laughed.
“Goodnight,” Raya said as she closed the door behind Namaari.
As Raya was walking back to her room, she passed by Mrs. Chickadee. She sighed and sat by the bird’s cage.
“So. You think I got a chance with her?” Raya asked.
Mrs. Chickadee chirped.
“Yeah, I hope so too.”
**********************************************
“Hey bestie! How was chick sitting?” Sisu asked way too early on a Sunday morning.
“So you’re gonna laugh when I tell you this,” Raya began.
“OH MY GOD YOU KILLED HER!” Sisu screamed.
She shoved past Raya and threw her bedroom door open which was where Mrs. Chickadee’s cage resides. And there the cute bird was, just chirping away.
“Oh thank god. Okay, what happened?” Sisu questioned as she flopped on her bed now that she’s much more relaxed.
Raya hopped on the bed with her and gave her friend the spark notes version of what went down a couple days ago. Thankfully, since nothing bad actually happened to the chick Sisu did laugh when she heard the whole story.
“I’m just glad she’s okay,” Sisu smiled.
“Yeah, she’s certainly doing better than Namaari’s ribs right now,” Raya snorted.
“Oh? And what was Namaari doing here?” Sisu asked.
Only now did Raya remember she didn’t actually mentioned Namaari guest starring in the story of the chick that almost escaped this apartment.
“So while assessing the situation in my typical cool calm and collected manner, I had a breakdown before calling Namaari asking for her help,” Raya told her.
“That’s a very Raya thing to do,” Sisu nodded.
Raya laughed before contemplating whether to mention that situation that bothered her the other night. Ultimately, she decided she may as well bring it up. Maybe she can get some perspective.
“Let me tell you Sisu, she said the weirdest thing that night too,” Raya told her.
“What, may I break my ribs on your floor?” Sisu snorted.
“Good guess, but no. When we got there and started our chick hunt she said something along the lines of oh wow you really do have a chick in here. Like I made it up.”
“I mean come on.”
“Come on what?”
“If you call someone and say help me look for my loose chick, its sorta kinda...,” Sisu said trailing off.
“Sorta kinda what?” Raya frowned.
“Sorta kinda sounding like code for I don’t have any underwear on.”
“Thats not the code for I don’t have any underwear on! Is there even a code for that?”
“If there is, it is definitely everything you said to her when you wanted her to come over. It’s not exactly uncommon to make up some bullshit excuse to see the person you got the hots for,” Sisu laughed.
“Oh my god, one of the first things I told her was that I saw the Mrs. Chickadee in my bedroom! Now she thinks I’m a whore!” Raya groaned while face planting in the pillows.
“No she doesn’t, because you actually ended up having a chick. She was only hoping you were a whore,” Sisu grinned.
“Your words do not provide me comfort,” Raya’s muffled voice told her.
“Okay, get your ass up,” Sisu said while yanking on Raya’s arm. “It’s obvious you have feelings for Namaari. So come on, be a big girl and tell her how you feel. Call her.”
“What no, I’m not-” Raya tried to say before her beloved friend decided to be a jackass and take her phone.
Before Raya could even think about fighting back, Sisu opened her phone and pressed the contact name of a certain someone. As the phone was ringing, Raya lunged at Sisu.
“You seem pretty cheerful for a dead girl walking, you evil miscreant!” Raya seethed.
Lucky for Sisu, the phone stopped ringing. Unlucky for Raya, it was because Namaari answered the call.
“Hello? Did you lose another avian again?” Namaari’s voice crackled over the phone.
“Nope, no wandering creatures tonight!” Raya laughed nervously. She vowed to kick Sisu’s ass for this.
“Good, I was seriously wondering if you can be alone without adult supervision,” Namaari laughed.
“You are so annoying,” Raya said with no bite in her tone.
“Since it’s not that, why did you call?” Namaari asked.
Shit, Raya had to come up with an excuse and fast.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Raya said.
You know, like a dumbass.
“Tell her the TV’s not working,” Sisu whispered in her ear.
“The TV’s not working! I try turning it on and all I see is weird static and stuff. Think you can help me out? Only if you’re not busy,” Raya spat out.
“Yeah, I have some time on my hands. I’ll be over in fifteen. Later,” Namaari told her.
“Thanks, you’re the best!” Raya told her before hanging up.
“Now all that’s left is for you to confess your undying feelings for her! I’ll make a beautiful bridesmaid at your guys’s wedding!” Sisu swooned.
“Great, no I actually did make up an excuse for to see her! Ugh, you are turning me into the whore Namaari was expecting!” Raya yelled while hitting Sisu in the face with a pillow.
“I’m doing you a favor, trust me. Now then, I’ll start packing now,” Sisu said.
With that, she hopped out of the bed and started to toss clothes into her backpack.
“I didn’t know your weekend was so jam packed. What have you got going on today, I don’t remember you telling me anything about it,” Raya frowned.
“Oh, there wasn’t a plan or anything, I just don’t want to be here when you guys go at it,” Sisu explained casually.
“I hate you so much,” Raya deadpanned.
“No you don’t!” Sisu cheerfully stated.
Damn, she got Raya there.
Not even five minutes later her friend was out the door. Within the following three minutes, Raya heard a knock. That meant Namaari has just arrived. God, Raya felt like she was gonna puke.
With embarrassingly shaky hands, she opened the door for her good friend. Her pal. Her compadre. Her buddy.
“Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Namaari,” Raya smiled, admittedly very awkwardly.
“You are so weird,” Namaari snorted as she entered the apartment.
When Raya could pretend her feelings didn’t exist, she had no problem with Namaari’s presence. Unfortunately, Sisu called her out. Raya is totally into Namaari.
So how the hell is she supposed to actually say it?
What’s to say Namaari even likes her back anyways? Raya isn’t one hundred percent sure what she’s supposed to be doing right now.
“Alright, let’s see what we’re working with here,” Namaari said.
Due to Raya’s pondering, she didn’t realize her friend had made her way to the television. When Namaari reached for the remote, Raya rushed over and swiped it before the taller woman could even touch it.
“Great, so you expect me to fix this TV with my mind?” Namaari frowned.
“No. That’s not it. I just, I gotta be honest with you here,” Raya sighed while fiddling with the remote.
“Of course. You can tell me anything,” Namaari said to her sincerely.
“Well, there’s sorta kinda nothing wrong with my TV. I lied. I’m a cheap liar. I lured you here under false pretenses,” Raya admitted.
To prove her point, Raya pointed the remote at the television and pressed the on button. As she just stated, the TV functioned normally. Sound on with very clear images. She then turned it off and tossed the remote on the couch.
“I see. Please, enlighten me. Why have you called upon me?” Namaari asked.
Namaari thankfully seemed more amused than anything. Raya’s pretty sure that’s a good sign.
“Okay. No prob. I just wanted to say that I.....,” Raya sighed and took a deep breath. “I like you. As in, more than a friend. And it’s totally okay if you don’t feel the same way! We can absolutely forget this ever happened and-”
Raya could physically feel the words tumble out of her mouth at a speed not even she can stop. Namaari did her a favor by simply putting her hand over Raya’s mouth.
“Okay, I seriously do not know how you’re so stressed about this confession thing. Was I not painfully obvious in the fact that I liked you too?” Namaari asked.
Raya’s entire being lit up at the news. Raya removed the hand that was covering her mouth and beamed.
“So You want to date me? As in, you really want to date me?”
“That’s correct. You’re a quick study, deo la.”
“Hmm. Well, I personally feel like you could have dropped a couple hints, but that’s just me. Now that that’s out of the way, I wanna know the real reason why you thought I didn’t have a chick in the house,” Raya demanded.
“Fine, I’ll give. You’re not the only cheap liar here. I had hoped that you were just making up an excuse to have me come over,” Namaari admitted.
Raya was very pleased to see the other woman’s cheeks develop a nice tint of red.
“I hope it makes you feel better that I literally just did that,” Raya smiled.
“Indeed it does,” Namaari confirmed.
“Now that we’re dating and all, I suppose this would be an appropriate time to kiss you?” Raya asked hopefully.
“You know, I think you’re onto something there,” Namaari agreed.
They stared at each other for a moment before colliding their bodies together. The kiss got intense at rather rapid pace and before Raya even knew it, they wounded up in her bedroom.
“I hope you realize that the last time I came over, I was hoping you’d want to do a lot more than just see me,” Namaari panted.
The taller woman paused, waiting for Raya’s response. She was giving her an out.
“Sisu’s not coming back until morning. We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for,” Raya whispered as she pulled Namaari into her bedroom.
All Raya was willing to say about that night was that it’s a good thing Sisu decided to leave.
#raya and the last dragon#ratld#rayaari#namaari#raya x namaari#namaari x raya#raya and namaari#ratld namaari#raya disney#ratld raya#rayamaari#raymaari#raya of heart#disney raya#raya namaari#namaari of fang#raya incorrect quotes#ratld incorrect quotes#disney ratld#modern au
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So I've been doing a lot of work on this future Evol Empire of mine and I wanted to do everything right including my mini blog! I wanted to introduce myself, explain my vision I guess, explain why I'm starting out with a mini blogs on Tumblr, and provide contact information BUT right now I'm pissed and since I'm pissed and it's Friday I am hereby declaring every Friday from now on to be: RAGEFUL FRIDAY (keep in mind that this name may change!) So every Friday from now on I'm going to post a rage about whatever... whoever is pissing me off! So keep your eyes open today I have at least 2 bastard ass platforms that have it coming today! Eventually my rages will be turned into a list for everyone to use as a resource, you know a rage list for places to stay away from and a respect list for places that are ok in my book, lol! (I'm not sure yet which day of the week is gonna turn into respect day where I do the same and post about places and people who deserve a shot out I figure I'll just wait for it to hit me like it did today!) As for the other stuff, I promise to work on getting it up but my living situation is very unstable at the moment it's kind of hard staying on top of things when I have no clue where I'm gonna sleep every nite! And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE that was not a call to action or a plot to get sympathy, it's an example of what this aspect of my Evol Empire is about, brutal truth, I'll share my completely fucked up life with you both past and present while you watch and participate in my beautiful redemption! I'll let you in on all my secrets; every time I fell and got back up, things I've done to survive or thrive it won't be long before you know it all! Part of the reason for it is selfish, I admit, opening up gives me a chance to let the bad shit out and keep it from festering, creating cancer, it allows me to vent! The other part, though, is the better part of me and it's something I sort of went to school for but also sort of not, something sort of close to a field I once worked in before I went out and got myself a nifty criminal record, oddly enough with all the higher education I've had (I'm a semester away from two different bachelor's degrees one in literature and one in behavioral science) it's something I learned about myself in rehab of all places! I learned that I was really really good at taking the worst parts of my past (and I'll get to that eventually but I've already admitted to being a homeless drug addicted felon who failed miserably at 2 possible civilian type futures I really don't wanna scare you away I mean this is my first real post and look at the shit that just fell out of my mouth!) So...Oh, yeah so I discovered I had a certain talent for taking my past, my shame, my own fall from grace and 1) unapologetically blurting that shit out cuz truthfully I just have no shame! And 2) telling the worst, darkest parts of my history in such a way that not only do I make it sound like a bunch of hilarious escapades bit by doing that I show others who have similar emotional scars but actually do carry shame and remorse, that there's nothing to be sorry for and that there is power in owning your history, EVERY SINGLE PART OF IT! So that's it, my first official post! I hope it was enjoyed, feel free to comment! Keep your eyes open for today's rage post and stay on your toes I'll be coming a lot more regularly now!
LOVE ALWAYS, EVOLNIKI
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20.) Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
oooooohhhhhh you’ve really done it now. I. Have. So much meta feelings. Omg. This is gonna be a long one. If u couldn’t tell i am a whole-ass meta HO and literally any of my work is going to have like. Layers and layers of meta work done in the background. I do a lot of classical literature work so I’m talking shit like writing the ending speech to a play based on The Tempest in the exact meter and rhyme scheme as the ending speech in that play.
Okay I’m going to do Swiftly Tilting meta bc that’s what most of you know, but if anyone would like to here about the Biggest Dramaturgical Undertaking of my Life, my Untimely Ripped senior thesis project, lemme know ;)
OKAY SO SOME META THINGS I PUT IN SWIFTLY TILTING
this one was mostly about the foreshadowing I think; there was soooo many steps and hints and stuff I was trying to throw in along the way, and a lot of people picked up on them, which was SO FUN. uhhhh. There are some things that turned into plot holes a little bit but there are a few bits that stayed pretty hidden! Like the fact that Jiang Zisuan was the full-blooded human that Wang Meng scented out in Chapter One, not Mao Xincheng. Um I loved putting in all of the species differences and tie-ins to canon, that was super fun. Oh! The journal that Sanshu found when researching Yincangui was Fo-ye’s! Zhang Rishan had put it on the ship and then lost it when he was trying to turn around and go back but was freaking out and all that stuff. Wu Xie isn’t actually a Shouling because he doesn’t own the ship, Sanshu does, but his crew call him that anyway because that’s what he is to them. Normally Kylin would have others of their species with them during regenerations to form those mental tethers, but since Zhang Rishan and Xiao-ge didn’t, Liu Sang was able to keep them psychically linked to avoid losing their memories. Since Liu Sang didn’t remember the execution frequency, he killed the metal porcupine monster on Lehan by literally just Screaming At It. After the gang leaves Yincangui it eventually just gets lost Permanently. Liu Sang never goes back. Huo Daofu insists that Zhang Rishan isn’t human at every single Nine Bloodlines meeting and everyone refuses to believe him and it drives him insane.
the other thing that I really enjoyed was the different POVs, especially the use of swear words in them??? Xiao Bai would swear, but only in dialogue. Kan Jian didn’t swear at all in his chapter, I don’t think. Pangzi used swear words like every other line (also was not as introspective as the other characters, which is why his chapter is one of my favorites? even though they’re grounded, it seems so active because Pangzi’s constantly in the action, he’s not ruminating on things like all of the others). Wang Meng only swore when Li Cu was in danger I’m pretty sure (also loved doing colors and sounds and smells and different senses with his POV). Xiao-ge swore when he though it was something Wu Xie would say (I also loved giving different emotional weight to his sentences and the ones in parentheses, as well as switching between Xiao-ge calling himself Xiao-ge or Zhang Qiling, depending on the level of danger they were in). Li Cu used Capital Letters to Emphasize Important Words A Lot (@jockvillagersonly pointed out that Li Cu’s chapter was literally just how I talk which I think is funny as shit) and swore a good amount bc he had picked it up from Wu Xie and Pangzi. Liu Sang didn’t swear because he was Literally A Baby (those chapters were also interesting because I had to keep him in the mindset of a child; there were so many ways things could have gone but he was a kid and he was panicking and he didn’t know how to handle a lot of things emotionally, so there’s a lot left out that an older narrator would have gotten). Wu Xie was sort of a combination of all of the pov voices we’ve had so far, which made sense because of how in-tune he was with the languages of his crew.
snake language for Li Cu! I used a lot of words like coiled and constricted and hissed and slithered and struck when describing his words and actions to really drive home his snake-like nature even before I revealed his species heritage.
I wrote all of the Fo-ye and Zhang Rishan backstory before I had seen much of Mystic Nine so I killed Ba-ye without knowing the Implications. I’m so sorry Ba-ye.
all of the acoustic stuff!!! the acoustic levitation and sound in space and sonic illusions were researched and like. hashed out before I wrote them! So theoretically they could all be real. I was like. deep in the science articles lmao.
ALSO!!! ON THAT NOTE (haha)!!! Liu Sang’s name in Yincanguian was an A-flat four. Su Baiyin’s was a G-major five, and if you plug all the frequencies listed in the journal into a frequency generator on the internet, you can hear what those words sound like in their language.
Liu Sang originally was going to be from a planet called Wangcen lmao. Also in the original outline they were going to completely destroy Yincangui and also pretty much all of Liu Sang’s backstory did not exist.
At the end of the fic, Sanshu is living with Chen Wen-Jin!
AH THERE WAS A LOT!!! Swiftly Tilting was literally so much fun to write, and so much fun to see what people caught, because everyone noticed different things!!! <3
Thank you so much for the ask, I live for this shit.
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Gav played: Figment
The game: Figment by Bedtime
Score: It's a game!, did not finish
Translation, it wasn't for you, right? Yup! This is a game for children, which is great! Children should have well-made games! Sometimes I enjoy media aimed at children or teens, but in this case I wasn't engaged enough to want to finish the game.
There are three main points that led to this. The first is that the gameplay involves a lot of backtracking. In particular, I got tired of discovering that a choice of branching paths wasn't really a sign that I could explore them in any order, but that I instead had to reverse a partially solved puzzle so I could return to the start point and go through the paths to work out the winning order. The second is that cutesy tips and "the villains attack with boogers and farts" humor grated on me. And the third is that this is a game set in the mind, and I know way too much about brains.
This last one isn't at all a fault of Bedtime's creative choices. I just found the references to structures and chemicals of the brain distractingly unaligned with my academic knowledge. I can easily see it delighting an elementary or middle school kid with an interest in science, just don't buy it for them assuming it's An Educational Game TM.
You play as Dusty, a courageous little guy who's retrieving memories and fighting foes such as Nightmares and Plague in the mind of someone recovering from a car crash.
{Dusty and his bird friend Piper stand on a sky-island with whimsical plants and musical horns sprouting from it. A small house sits on it, and a waterfall cascades over the side.}
It's a pretty simple mix of collecting useful items like "synapse" batteries and using them in the right places, and a little bit of fighting and puzzle-solving. I was genuinely sad when I grew frustrated with the backtracking I went over earlier, because it reminded me of a less puzzle-heavy Zoombinis, which I had loved as a kid.
You said it's for kids, do you think kids would actually like it?
Probably, but since I didn't finish it, I can't say how intense the themes of fear, trauma, aging, and injury become, nor how they are resolved. It could easily veer into the same territory "improving" literature does, being overly poignant in an effort to teach children about real life. I also noted a couple jokes that are definitely there for adults who might be playing along--a reference to HP Lovecraft's Cthulu and a hastily cut-off song lyric that was clearly about to say "shit." This sort of mixed-target writing is common in children's media, but I found these examples a bit clunky.
Hearing disorder corner: The subtitles for dialogue are solid without being special. There is at least one puzzle where you have to adjust the positions of three instruments until their sounds blend, and I found the visual clues insufficient. I got there in the end, but it was in the neighborhood of brute force.
Try it if you like: Ozzy and Drix, environments with I Spy-like use of everyday objects, children's games emphasizing both creative and logical thinking, puns.
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My first thoughts about Invader Zim (before I watched the show)
My overall prediction of the show’s theme was... a slight Powerpuff Girls vibe, but edgier. Lots of poison green and neon pink in the background colors. Probably an underground lab with white floor tiles as the main scene in most episodes. A really bad cartoon with crappy humor but interesting characters. Just very generic and cheesy in general, something you’d sit down your 6 year old child in front of when they’re being particularly bothersome so that they don’t annoy you further.
I had no ideas about the plot. I knew it would be episodical without much of a storyline, but something more like Gravity Falls, where there are small clues and references throughout the series to former events. Still really storyline-less, to be available for being stretched to season after season until you can’t even count them and the quality’s getting shittier with each one.
I thought Zim would be that typical bad guy. Just a little shit to the core. Always trying to cause inconcenience to everyone, calling them names, not caring about emotions. Someone you’d kill on the spot if you saw in real life. A bratty asshole. With a ridiculously high-pitched voice and laugh that tears your eardrums to shreds. Also really fucking feral and unhinged, probably going around on all fours and biting people for fun. Like if you piss him off particularly badly he’ll straight up attack you and claw and your face and try to chew off your arm. Incredibly cat-like, too. Most likely a coward.
Dib should have been a Dipper-knockoff. Quite literally. I thought he would be an exact bootleg of the Dipdops. Perhaps an inventor kid, building machines for his battles against Zim, a science kid. Super smart, straight-up genius, very devoted to serving humanity and saving people from Zim’s vile schemes. He doesn’t want the fame or to capture the alien, he just wants him to get tf outta here and stop pestering the human race. (At one point I thought HE was called Gir. I felt so stupid later for doing so.) Also, GIR would’ve been his sidekick, not the brightest brain there was but an absolute sweetheart going around and being sweet and brightening everyone’s day. A wholesome boy, never did anything wrong. Incapable of fighting, simply an assistant in the lab and Dib’s general company. 100% sees him to school and looks out for him during the day so he doesn’t get hurt. A fantastic friend.
I expected Gaz to be that typical teenage girl stereotype. She can’t stay alive for five seconds without her mobile phone, takes 54 selfies per hour, sreams when she’s frustrated, spends way too much time in the bathroom, hates nature, complains about every little inconvenience that happens to her endlessly. Not necessarily a popular girl but definitely a gossiper, pretty much hates everyone including her own family. A backstabbing whiny bitch. Can’t be trusted. Will not help you if you happen to be hanging off a cliff. Plays the innocent whenever it benefits her. She’s on the good guy team only for the fame and appreciation; as the savior of the world she’ll surely get praised by all of her peers. She still doesn’t help Dib though, just tags along and watches him work. She couldn’t even if she wanted, though, she’s an academical failure. She might be a tad bit into literature though.
I also didn’t think the Tallests would play such a big role. I mean, sure, they exist, but I believed Zim came to Earth on his own responsibility and will simply because he wanted to rule it, not to please anyone. Skool shenanigans? Human disguise? Lots of side characters of various species? Nah fam, none of that. Small cast, small problems, and nobody even knows about Zim’s existence since he hides in his base all the time.
And most importantly...
I hadn’t the slightest clue this godforsaken show would be so fucking dark.
ORGAN HARVEST?! DISSECTION?! TURNING PEOPLE INSIDE OUT?! ASYLIUMS?! MURDER?! FEELS?! DEPRESSION?! NEGLECTMENT?! SHITTY PARENTING?! GODDAMN BLOODY GIR?!
FUCKING NO.
#mhm. I think I'm done#textpost#invader zim#nice character analyzation of an AU that's actually based on my misconceptions#hope you like it though#it is sure amusing to see how stupidly naive I was
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Does Craig come off as a lazy genius to you? Also when has he shown to be methodical?
Hmm…not so sure if I’d say ‘lazy’…probably more like ‘unmotivated’. Craig’s the kid who does fine in school, because most of it comes easy to him. He probably has the biggest problems in literature classes, since most of that is interpretation and symbolism and other things that are more or less pure bullshit and conjecture, which doesn’t exactly mesh with with how his mind works.
Craig probably has a good head for facts, dates, and numbers. He likely has a good memory, especially if he has a strong interest in something. I can see Craig knowing everything about the Apollo missions but having no clue whatsoever as to what themes are at play in Romeo & Juliet. He can probably do advanced (at least for his age) equations in his head but if you asked him to explain the meaning behind Van Gogh’s Starry Night, the best he could come up with would be: “He painted a night sky. That’s all there is to it. He saw it, he painted it, can we move on?”
His methodical tendencies are a little harder to track, simply because he doesn’t have a whole lot of screen time to analyze. But you can really get a sense of it from how he talks. Consider his little intro in Pandemic 1 & 2: it’s very curt, very to-the-point, and follows a very methodical method of storytelling. “This happened, then this happened, then this happened, and that is why this is now happening.” Not much in the way of linguistic frills, incredibly linear, and even his pronunciation is deliberate and methodical. There’s also his interest in science to consider; I know we all like the “BLOW SHIT UP WITH SCIENCE” version, but most of science is methodical and deliberate. You design tests to investigate hypotheses developed from observations, and then you record the results. It’s the same basic process done over and over and over again. He’s also invested in routine: “nice and boring” is how he likes things. He likes things to be predictable. Routine. Methodical. When his routine is interrupted, when the methodology changes, he’s often left floundering.
Craig is ruled by logic. If things aren’t adding up, he literally cannot rest until he can either correct the deficiency or find an explanation that reconciles with his logic. (See: Craig’s reaction to Mephesto’s work in The Fractured But Whole.) He’s fine with madness, but there needs to be a method to it.
#nina answers asks#anon#sp craig#craig tucker#a lot of this is mostly just me really scrutinizing the details
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Li plz tell me you're not into the TD crap? Those idiots think everything Easter egg wise is about Beth and it's so obnoxious and I know you're not that obnoxious and just like why are you doing this and please come back to sanity before those morons make you stupid...
First off, I do not approve of the name calling. No matter if it’s something as childish as “butthead” or “idiot” or something along that line… That’s not cool. It’s degrading to insult people and call them names like that. Not okay.
Second, I’m not part of TD or Team Acceptance. I’m Team Fence. That means I’m in the middle. And what does that mean? It means that while I am able to accept that Beth Greene is gone, I also know that The Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic horror fiction tv show. Keyword? Fiction. Meaning something that is often “literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people.” AKA “If you got the imagination for it and can base it off of something real, you can do anything with it if you can prove what you’re saying/writing/filming has a believable explanation.” So, as long as whatever I’m watching or writing can prove what they’re going for and prove it in a way that makes bloody sense, then I can accept it. I may not like it, but I can accept that.
TWD is a show about the fall of civilization and the rising of the dead due to some kind of airborne infection that has affected all humans and now they all must struggle to survive the crumbling of morality and civilization while fighting the dead and the living that are just as dangerous. That’s it. That’s the basic explanation. Human vs Nature and Morality vs Survival. Humans fighting against the living dead and the decaying environment. And the morality of humanity vs what would you do to make sure you and your loved ones survive. That’s what TWD is about. Maintaining their humanity or becoming the walking dead themselves.
With that in mind, I can accept that something like TWD could pull off some incredibly creative things. Surviving a cranial gunshot wound or any kind of brain piercing/damage is possible and has happened in this decade and even in past decades (Check out Phineas Gage or Top 10 Amazing People Who Survived The Impossible for examples) in the real world. It can be incorporated on television and in fact, is a popular trope to have people “seemingly die” but then “return from the grave”. Hell, go read any Marvel franchise for christ sakes or watch Days of Our Lives. They’ve been doing it for years. I’m okay with it in the show so long as they give me a damn good explanation to go with it THAT FITS WITH THE SHOW (none of this “it was all magic” shit for this show. Fantasy show, yes. Zombie show, no, give me some science bullshit okay!)
I do agree with you that it is frustrating that there are people in the TD group that take every single little thing and connect it to Beth. Not everything on the show is centered around Beth. In fact, many of those “easter eggs” and “odd clues” and “little prop choices” could actually be meant to nudge at a whole other character than Beth. So yes, I agree that it’s annoying to see Beth be used as the center of everything. The show does not revolve around Beth Greene. Never did and never will. I completely agree with that… But I get why people do it. Some of the metas they make are pretty damn creative you gotta admit.
As for why? Well, taking into all the theories and all the clues and strangeness, there are a few that I myself can get behind:
1.] Beth’s death and the lack of any mention or interviews or closure on her death are - to me - pretty damn shady of the show. For every character, we’ve seen a form of send off for their death. From Jacqui to Andrea to Shane to Sophia to Merle and Sasha and Abraham and Glenn. We get some kind of send-off or main proof that their character is dead or they get a burial of some kind. That’s what the show has done since season one. Beth Greene got shot through the head, they had her body, and then they didn’t. And she has been mentioned only about once or twice since then and we never got told “when we buried beth” or something along that line… It’s downright crazy to me and doesn’t sit right for the pattern of the show… It ain’t right!
2.] Emily Kinney not talking about her death is also a red flag. Michael Rooker, Jon Bernthal, Laurie Holden, Sonequa Martin-Green, Scott Wilson, Steven Yeun, Michael Cudlitz, and Chad Coleman are just a few of the names of actors that have talked about their characters and their deaths and the leading up to it and the goodbye and all that stuff has been aired out… Emily has not given a straight answer and has played doe-eyed dumb about Beth’s death since it happened. That’s very weird. Even if she had a bad ending with AMC or something, it still doesn’t make sense.
3.] The Social Media attention from the main AMC accounts towards Emily Kinney and Beth. Especially the recent case of skybound thewalkingdead Instagram account and their decision to showcase Emily Kinney among the CURRENTLY LIVING cast members at the 100th Episode premiere…. Khary Payton, Andrew Lincoln, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chandler Riggs, Ross Marquand, Steven Ogg, Norman Reedus, Austin Amelio, Melissa McBride, and Josh McDermitt are all still active and alive characters on this show. Iron-E Singleton was there and helping to host it. Scott Wilson was there. Sonequa Martin was there. Hell Michael Rooker - Who is HUGE right now for his Marvel work playing Yondu - was there… They weren’t being posted on the Skybounds Instagram for the cast that was at The 100th Episode premiere…. It just makes no sense to showcase Emily and not the others or even give a screenshot nod to them being on the stage… From a marketing and promotional standpoint, it makes sense to showcase the living cast… So WHY Emily? Some people say it was just for her Mermaid Song release but even if so, they wouldn’t need to promote her among the cast. They could’ve just posted a picture of EK and gave information about her upcoming song and music video. Instead, they post her with everyone and do so BY PLACING HER IN THE CENTER OF EVERYONE while wearing a BRIGHT MAGENTA AND BLUE OUTFIT against everyone’s dulled and neutral colors of blacks, golds, white, and dark or dulled blues. I mean Hell maybe EK didn’t get the memo for “wear these colors”, but even so she’s the only one in that bright of colors and the one who sticks out in the group shots… It’s weird and raises the brow!
4.] As someone who graduated with a degree in theatre and cinema and who has a concentration in scriptwriting and acting and has studied the ins and outs of how business works and how to promote and what’s considered loose end writing… I spy with my eye too many loose ends on this show around this damn character and that just leaves an instinct feeling that, even if she may not be alive, we are NOT done with Beth yet
I am still Team On The Fence. But I still feel there’s ample opportunity for anything to happen with The Walking Dead and its characters. I believe I’m still perfectly sane… Well, as sane as ever lol.
#the walking dead#anon#twd#team acceptance#team on the fence#team whatever happens will happen#team delusional#team defiance#team I don't care I'm having fun
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BTS - Love Yourself | THEORY
Disclaimer: This will be a long ass post.
Krümmel: BUCKLE UP FUCKERS, HERE WE GO
Moon: Oh god...
So, as you might know, we have written some comeback theories in the past, mainly about HYYH pt.2 and the Peter Pan theory.
But most importantly, we wrote something called the Timeline Theory/ Multiple Universes Theory. (Some of the points we made in that post are still valid, so check it out!)
In these theories we talked about how the MVs can’t exist in the same universe and how ‘Run’ especially doesn’t really fit anywhere.
You could see this as the start of our theory. But after that we stopped talking about it much and even though we theorized about ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’, we didn’t bother writing anything down.
But then BigHit dropped the MV for the Japanese version of ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’ and I, for my part, got sucked in again.
Back then I formulated a theory and talked to Moon about it, but sadly we never wrote it down. We only talked about it via voice mail (which I am currently trying to find, unfortunately we text quite a lot.).
My theory was that Jin is traveling through time and different dimensions, trying to avoid a mistake he made. But because he keeps switching dimensions, reality starts to crumble. And it seems like that got confirmed in the last highlight reel.
(I am aware that others have already made the connection, and I’m not trying to sell this as my idea, but rather show evidence that further supports this theory)
So, first to the visual clues in the MV of the japanese version of ‘B,S&T’:
The MV is full of elements suggesting multiple dimensions and time travel.
We have members meeting with different versions of themselves
(Good that Yoongi covered his eyes, because as we know, you simply cannot meet yourself when you time travel)
Jimin getting sucked into the void
You can see Jin walking backwards from a crumbling ground and in the last second before the screen changes to Namjoon and his bruised hands, you can see two other Jins. (This is actually the scene that gave me the idea for the theory in the first place)
You can also see Jin in front of something that looks like some kind of wormhole (when I Iooked up the relevance of wormholes in science fiction I came across Donnie Darko and I think the two have a lot in common)
You also have a lot of instances of reality crumbling
The last one being the most important one. Jin is helplessly watching as reality shatters.
So in conclusion, this is the theory I formulated from this:
Jin is trying to save the boys by going through time and changing what he did, but can’t quite find the one mistake that set the events in motion. And rather than helping, he is unable to change the future in a way that everyone gets a happy ending. Furthermore, his interference with time and space leads to the multiple universes crumbling.
And one last thing I noticed in B,S & T:
The usual pairs throughout HYYH and following are Jimin and JHope, Namjoon and V, Jungkook and Suga, and Jin is alone,
but in B,S&T it’s Yoongi and Jimin, Namjoon and Kookie and less noticeably but still there, Hobi and V (and Jin is alone again of course)
But what’s interesting about that is that each member has his own circle, representing their struggles in the wings shorts, and two always come together to make the four circles on the cover. The circles that come together are Jimin’s and Yoongi’s, Namjoon’s and Jungkook’s and Hobi’s and Tae’s.
Jin’s symbol is a net interestingly enough (or crocodile leather, who knows). But in the logo his circle is empty.
A possible conclusion could be that ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears is a parallel dimension where some things about the boys are altered (aka the pairs they appear in), but other things stay the same (for example their struggles, Hobi and his mother, V feeling isolated, etc.).
Now onto why we feel this theory is supported/confirmed by the new Love Yourself Highlight Reel.
In the second reel we can see Jin getting ready for his date. He looks at the fallen flowers, decides to put on a suit and starts driving.
Then of course his date gets run over by a car and we get this really interesting shot of Jin’s face, that looks like he’s about to wake up from a dream.
Then he goes on to talk about how he wonders if you could be happy if you could turn back time and correct that one mistake and we get a montage of scenes from BS&T, HYYH, the Butterfly prologue, etc. all playing backwards.
And here’s where it gets interesting - we are in the same scene as before, before Jin goes on his date that would ultimately result in the girl getting killed.
But instead of letting the flowers fall he catches them.
Look how defeated Jin looks. Like he failed again (there are actually a lot of instances of Jin looking defeated at the camera/us throughout the MVs. More to that later.)
He puts on his cap that says “different but same”. Which he would be if he travelled back in time. And instead of going on his date, we can assume that he goes back to the sea.
We can also conclude from this, that his change of clothes represents him swapping timelines, “putting on” another Jin and trying to erase his mistake again.
And talking about the sea and this very iconic look, where have we seen that again?...Hmmmmm (I am aware that this shot looks more like the ones in the Butterfly Prologue/HYYH, but you know. Just an idea)
And maybe this is all coincidence but.... really now?
They even chose this as “Jin’s look”. But who knows.
The important thing is that it seems like Jin actually has the power to travel through time and it seems like he is trying to find that one mistake he made that caused everything to go to shit.
What we noticed in the other MVs that supports this theory further:
There is a huge play with perception and time in both HYYH and Wings era.
With time, there’s of course the disconnection of the order of the MVs and the story line.
The order they got released in was I NEED U, Butterfly Prologue, Run, The Wings Shortfilms and the Love Yourself Highlight Reels. But from what we can conclude from the note, the order should be Run, Butterfly, I NEED U/ Wings Shortfilms, and then the Love Yourself Highlight Reels.
(Although there are several scenes in the MVs that don’t fit with that timeline)
We know that they were really good friends (Run) and then went on that trip together (Butterfly). After the trip they didn’t have any contact and Kookie’s accident happened (I NEED U/Wings) and then they are trying to solve their problems on their own (Love Yourself).
Then we also have the graffiti in the background of one MV that says “The Butterfly is the Key” which would fit in nicely with the whole butterfly effect/ time travel theory. (I saw the picture back then and on some posts on tumblr, but I really can’t find it anymore. We will add it later if we can find it. I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the Japanese version of the Run MV)
Then there’s this weird disconnection between scenes (especially in Butterfly), where the MV starts with Tae washing away the blood of his father and calling Namjoon (which must have happened after the trip according to the note) and then the MV goes straight into the trip, which doesn’t make sense, since the trip is supposed to have happened before that.
And of course, there’s the weird coincidence that you can hear someone (Jimin?) ���say help us, help’ when you play ‘Love is not over’ backwards. (Which we linked to time travel in our previous theory)
Now, for their play with reality.
There are many instances where the MVs play with our perception of things and reality.
We already talked about the Japanese version of BS&T and how we can see reality shatter a lot but there is more throughout the MVs.
There are actually a lot of scenes where we can see Jin looking really defeated into the distance/camera.
The ‘Run’ MV especially stood out for me in that regard. There are a lot of jumpy and weird transitions in scenes that left us questioning the connection between the scenes. For example in this scene, where Jin looks at Kookie, we see Kookie looking back and then we are suddenly in the tunnel.
Another example would be Jin’s pictures, where people suddenly vanish, like in Butterfly.
Another big motive is water. We can see a lot of scenes where the boys are submerged in water and are looking directly at us, there’s the scene of V jumping into the water and Jin is also often depicted being close to water (for example Wings).
Water is one of the most common motives in literature and it usually stands for purity, the passage of time, reflection or clarity/reality.
And mirrors
And the last thing we noticed is the house of cards Jin builds in ‘Run’ which I got reminded of when I listened to Jin’s narration in Love Yourself (where he talked about his glittering world collapsing, revealing his deception. His deception being that he can’t save everyone).
So, summarizing all that, all the MV’s show a certain degree of chaos/ dysphoria, supporting our theory that the dimensions are reacting negatively to Jin jumping in time.
And now something we haven’t talked about yet.
We have talked about how Jin has an omnipresent role in the storyline of the MVs and that explains why he is often isolated from the boys, be it in pictures or in the MVs.
But there are also a lot of instances of the other boys becoming aware of what is happening around them and reacting out of character.
There’s the scene in Butterfly where Namjoon writes in the mirror that they all need to survive.
Or there are a lot of scenes where the boys make eye contact with us, the viewers.
Other weird behaviors include Tae destroying Jin’s house of cards, Suga covering Jimin’s eyes so he can’t look at himself, like he knows what’s going on, and others. We won’t elaborate more on this, because this post is already long as fuck, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
EDIT - this is an addition to the theory. Someone asked us about the girls in the highlight reels, so here is what Krümmel thinks:
I have seen a lot of theories, for example that the girls represent the other half of the pairs (so Kookie’s girl represents Yoongi and vice versa), or that they represent parts of themselves.
I personally think the latter one is the most plausible. I think that the girls represent the boys’ wishes, needs and also fears. Mainly their wish for companionship and their fear of being alone with their problems. And that they have to let them go to learn how to love themselves.
Tae’s girl represents his wish of being rescued and having someone by his side who takes care of him and who can see through his tough facade, since he saved the girl from possibly being caught by the shop owner, even though she looked like she didn’t want to be saved. He’s afraid of confronting his past and only starts to heal when he leaves the girl and faces the police on his own.
Joon’s girl would symbolize his need of looking over others and his wish to forget what he did to Tae. I think he feels like he failed Tae and is now trying to redeem himself by looking over the girl. He’s afraid of facing the damage he’s done, but he can only help Tae once he faced his guilt on his own, that’s why he didn’t pursue the girl anymore and left without talking to her.
Kookie’s girl represents his want for someone to stay by his side and help him forget about the trauma of the accident and his past, since Yoongi shut him out and the others weren’t there when he was in the hospital. There are theories that he lost his memories of the boys and I think that’s quite plausible. Maybe he wants to start a new life with the girl to avoid having to remember his past. But he can’t be happy without remembering, so he has to be alone first.
Yoongi’s girl represents his wish of someone sticking by his side, even though he tries to push them away. I think she also stands for his wish to be able to compose again. Yoongi has to overcome the feeling that he is the cause of his friend’s misery and allow himself to be with the people that mean a lot to him for him to be able to play the piano again.
Now, Jimin and Hobi are a little more difficult. Both of them are looking for someone to save them. Jimin thinks Hobi will save him and Hobi wishes for a motherly figure to rescue him. I think that’s the reason Jimin has no girl. Hobi is “his girl” and that’s also why he is envious of Hobi’s girl.
Hobi still wants to believe that his mother cared for him, even though she left him, but he has to let go of that to be able to heal. He has to face his trauma to realize that there are other people that really care for him.
With Jimin it’s similar. Even though we don’t actually know a whole lot about him. We know that he was in the same clinic as Hobi, so we can deduce that he is also mentally ill. But other than that, we only know that he is fixated on Hobi and that he is lying to himself about something.
My theory is that he cares a lot about Hobi and is envious/resentful of Hobi’s girl (which represents Hobi’s wish to be cared for) because Hobi doesn’t see how much Jimin cares for him already. There are also indicators that Jimin is in love with Hobi and lies about his feelings because of society and negative stigmas, but I’m not sure how much we can read into those signs.
But anyway, Jimin has to stop lying to himself before he can be with Hobi and the others.
And now onto Jin. I feel like Jin’s girl represents his wish for a peaceful and happy life. If our theory is correct and he has watched his friends suffer for a long time, this idea would become even more plausible. He thinks he can just become better and have a good life but he sees that that can’t just happen when the girl gets run over. His dream of just fixing everything by just becoming a better person, quite literally, gets run over.
He has to learn that he can’t change fate or people and that the best way to a happy ending is caring for his friends. And that he can’t blame himself for what happens to the boys.
So yeah, that’s what I think of the girls.
This got a lot longer than I thought it would, I hope you don’t mind that. Also, keep in mind that this theory also has weak spots. For example the scene where both Jimin and Hobi’s girl have an accident. That wouldn’t really make sense if the girls are just a representation of the boys’ feeling or wishes.
I’d like to hear what you guys think about all this, so feel free to message us!
Final Words
I hope you enjoyed our little theory! We might elaborate on some points in the future, but I hope this is enough for now. Like I said, feel free to ask us if you have any ideas!
-The Admins
#bts#bts comeback#bts theory#bts love yourself#bangtan#bts comeback theory#bts theories#rapmon#namjoon#suga#yoongi#jin#seokjin#jhope#hoseok#jimin#v#taehyung#jungkook#jeongguk
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Imposter Syndrome
“You should be an English teacher,” my dad used to tell me.
And I would respond with something along the lines of, “English teachers get paid shit.”
I sat in a blue, plastic chair in the front of my Calc AB classroom—one of the only air-conditioned classrooms in my budget-conscious Catholic high school—as my teacher projected a piece of paper onto the front wall. Written on the paper was a distribution of scores earned on the most recent test.
“One person did get a hundred,” my teacher said as he gave us a run-down of the score distribution. “This is the first time someone has ever gotten a hundred percent on this test.”
After he had finished discussing the scores, he began passing the graded tests back to the students. After anxiously awaiting the news of my score, he finally handed me my graded test. Bright red ink was scribbled on the top of the paper:
100
Math was my niche, my safe haven, where I always knew I would succeed. Where I never feared failure.
I’ve never been good at reading. It was always my lowest-scoring section on standardized tests. I read slowly, and sometimes I realize that I haven’t been paying attention for the last two pages. My eyes scan through the words, but they kind of just go in one eye and out the other. Not only did this make reading difficult for me, but the frustration it caused made reading utterly unenjoyable.
�� I come from a family of health-care providers. My father is a physician, my mother is a PA, my uncle and his wife are both physicians, my grandfather is a surgeon, and my older sister is in medical school. My dad could always tell me if I had strep or not. He once used his stethoscope on me at home because I thought I was dying[1]. On another occasion, I had the stomach flu, and he called in a prescription anti-nausea tablet for me—it was that easy. When I had cramps, my mom would tell me, “the prescription dose for ibuprofen is 800 milligrams, so you can take four.” I couldn’t go to the grocery store with my dad without running into four different people that he either worked with or treated. When I got the stomach flu again in college, by parents were able to tell me everything from the best position to lie in to the best over-the-counter medicine to buy.
There was never any explicit pressure for me to follow in my family’s footsteps, and I never felt any implicit pressure either; health care was just all I ever knew.
Before I was an English major, I had some pre(mis)conceptions of “The English Major”: obsessed with books, wears big hipster glasses, spends free time reading The Great Gatsby while drinking tea in locally-owned cafés. Has read the entire Harry Potter series three times. Mildly, endearingly socially awkward, but otherwise unremarkable. At one point, I thought people chose to major in English because they weren’t good at anything else. That’s why I was hesitant to become one myself. Why would I be an English major when I’m good at other things – “more useful” things, “more impressive” things? Why would I give people a reason to think I was unremarkable?
As I approached high school graduation, I never felt confident about what I wanted to do in college. I never felt like thinking about it. I told myself that I knew what I wanted to do just so I could stop worrying about it. I knew I was confident in math, and I was above average in science, so I decided on biomedical engineering—the same major my older sister had already been studying. It just made sense—I could use my talents in math and science, I could be involved in healthcare, and best of all, I could make good money. It made sense, didn’t it?
I vaguely remember one day in 3rd grade when my class was having silent reading time. My teacher—who I did not particularly like—came over to my desk and told me that I shouldn’t mouth the words while I’m reading. I didn’t understand why doing that was bad, and I still don’t really understand now. I’m not sure if it was solely for that reason or if other evidence was involved, but my teacher ended up making me do one-on-one reading practice with a volunteer parent. This is the earliest memory I have of feeling stupid.
I went into the semester optimistic—lots of people on my floor were in engineering, my older sister was a tutor in the College of Engineering, and I expected to enjoy all of my classes. But within two weeks, I decided I hated engineering and Engineering Problem Solving I[2]. “Everyone hates EPS 1,” they all said. “It doesn’t mean you hate engineering.” How exactly does one not hate engineering? was my only thought. I stuck with my engineering math class because it was basically just Calc II, and I wasn’t against advancing my math expertise.[3]
At this point, I was back at square one. So what the fuck do I do now? I decided to jump right on something else I had considered in the past: physical therapy. I had been interested in it since my senior year of high school[4], so the next semester, I began my work as a major in human physiology on a Pre-Physical Therapy track. It made sense, didn’t it?
You know those fat literature books you get in middle school? I always read the dumb little stories but hardly could remember what they were about. In high school, I Sparknotes’d my way through Huckleberry Finn and Of Mice and Men. I think I actually read about 50% of To Kill A Mockingbird. And I still got an A in American Lit, presumably because I’m good at bullshitting[5]. I got a 2190[6] on the SAT because, unlike the ACT, there is no reading portion.
One day — after a year in Human Physiology, a week of shadowing, and semesters full of bullshit classes — I had an epiphany: I fucking hate this. Maybe it was the professors; maybe it was the three-hour labs in windowless rooms; maybe it was the fact that every class made me cry on at least one occasion. But I knew that I hated it. And besides that, how does a painfully shy five-foot-tall girl work as a health care provider, anyway?
So for the next couple of weeks, I panicked and obsessed over what I was going to do. There I was, a second-semester sophomore, looking to completely start from scratch as I went into my junior year, and the self-reprimanding thoughts began. Can you pick something you actually enjoy for once? This is the rest of your life we’re talking about. Stop letting other people’s expectations make decisions for you and get your shit together.
But I’ve loved writing since I took my first creative writing class in high school. As soon as I was formally introduced to it, creative writing became my coping mechanism for any and all things. It was my way of sorting out the jumbled thoughts in my head into something I could translate into words. And my composition teacher was constantly astounded by my flawless grammar. So, despite my less-than-ideal track record in reading, I chose to be an English major. Am I actually, diagnosably insane? Probably. But more than a year later, do I regret it? Not even a little bit.
I need to make one thing clear for those who have the mindset I used to have: English is not easy, or useless, or unimpressive, or unremarkable. STEM students see English as a cop-out major, but ironically, those are precisely the students who are most likely to fail miserably in an English class. STEM is numerical, logical. English is subjective, creative, and abstract. Throw a stereotypical Engineering student into a Chaucer class or a creative writing class, and they are bound to have difficulties. But they don’t think so. They think it’s easy. I’d like to see a STEM major write a three-page paper on four lines of The Canterbury Tales. I’d like to see a STEM major read one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and even have a clue what it’s talking about. I’d like to see a STEM major write five pages on the symbolism of fire in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’d like to see a STEM major read five novels in four weeks. I’d like to see a STEM major take a class entitled “Chaucer” and even make it out alive.
I don’t read for fun, but maybe I would if I had the time. I don’t read or study in cafés because I can’t concentrate if I can discern nearby conversations. I wear glasses, but only because I need them to see, and contacts make my eyes itch. I’m socially awkward, but neither mildly nor endearingly. I’ve never read The Great Gatsby, or Gone with The Wind, or Great Expectations, or any books of the Harry Potter series[7]. I do drink tea, but only to calm my clinical anxiety.
I always thought I had to go into math and science because I was especially good at those subjects. To me, there was never even a question of what I enjoyed; what mattered was what I was good at. People always asked me, “Why do you want to be an engineer?” or, “Why do you want to be a physical therapist?” And my answer was always based on the fact that I excelled in math and science, not that I enjoyed those areas. It only dawned on me that I should enjoy my career when I was halfway through college and it all suddenly became real.
Why had I never considered a career in English, you ask? Because in 21st Century America, a successful career in English[8] is “unrealistic,” a “fantasy.” Doesn’t pay well[9]. Most people don’t even consider pursuing a career in English because it’s generally accepted that it’s not even a valid option, unless you want to be “stuck” teaching or working as a full-time barista, sharing a four-bedroom apartment for the rest of your life. And so what if someone does want that?
Sometimes I worry about how I’ll be able to teach English if I’m not particularly gifted in reading – literally half of the subject. But then I realize that that is exactly the reason I will succeed as an English teacher. Some teachers are so gifted in their field of study that they don’t know how to help people who don’t understand it immediately. When you’re naturally talented in an area, it’s hard to explain it to someone else. It’s when you actually have to work to learn the material that you understand how to teach it to someone else. The best teachers are the ones who understand how it feels to struggle and know how to help. I’m going to be that teacher for someone.
But yeah, I’ll probably get paid shit.
[1] I was not, in fact, dying.
[2] Engineering Problem Solving I, or EPS I, is a core introductory course for all engineering students.
[3] I ended up getting an A.
[4] Throughout high school, I had a chronic muscle knot near my right shoulder blade—a result of cheerleading, show choir, and bad posture. Eventually, it got so bad that I started going to physical therapy. In my efforts to relieve this massive knot, I became infatuated with muscles and how they functioned. And that’s how I got interested in the field of physical therapy.
[5] A lifetime of mandatory religion classes in a Catholic school system gets you good at that kind of thing.
[6] Out of 2400. This is approximately equivalent to scoring a 33 out of 36 on the ACT.
[7] I have seen all of the Harry Potter movies, though; I don’t live under a rock.
[8] Besides teaching.
[9] Includes teaching.
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“Oh, it’s just fantasy/sci fi” in writing.
Okay so. I decided I wanted to write - like seriously, I wanted to make the novels I grew up reading, and I set my mind to that when I was like, eight. Unlike a lot of other things I decided I wanted to do with myself when I was eight (”Herpetologist! Paleontologist! Fighter pilot!”), writing stuck.
I spend my childhood and teenage years collecting issues of Writer’s Digest and resources on how writing fiction worked, how to build stories. I ended up with a sort of head start on a lot of my English classes because while I wasn’t always coming at it from the same direction, I already knew what things like theme and tone meant.
And in college, I started taking writing classes.
I’ve gotten a ton of “Oh you can never make a living at that” re: writing fiction. I haven’t, yet, but I’ve also basically chickened out and had life stress and anxiety knock me out of seriously working on publication. Give me a year or two and I might be able to write something inspirational about that, right now it’s more “Okay seriously you can be realistic about the odds of making big money without treating it as a garbage job”.
And when I got to college, well.
See I don’t have a lot of interest in writing any “respectable literary genre”. I started out intent on writing fantasy and science fiction like what raised me, and damnitall, I’ve spent most of my life to some extent trying to do that, even when I didn’t necessarily manage to beat anxiety and self-consciousness to do anything anyone else could see. I also used to write horror occasionally, but I don’t think I could sustain it for too long right now.
And I have been through so many teachers determined to convince me it was a Tragedy that I was Wasting My Time And Talent on Trashy Genre Fiction when I could be teaching literary criticism or writing Real Literature.
(The “Wasting my obvious talent” is a little insulting now, because the teachers who did it always seemed to inevitably think my only source of instruction was them and other teachers, that any other ability I had came from some magical wellspring, and that I couldn’t possibly have been dedicating a shitload of time and effort to finding resources to teach myself. It’s like art in that respect, you get better if you practice, use references, and look up guidelines on technique, but don’t get too hung up on stylistic instruction beyond “what you like or don’t like”.)
One of the teachers never budged. He was a particularly egregious asshole about it, too, and would insist things like “Don’t use death in your writing, or even reference death. It’s overused and overdone and melodramatic.”
He also told me I should write more like Flannery O’Connor, which is where I looked between the short story of hers he’d assigned us where a wandering hitchhiker murders a family that tries to help them for no other reason than to make some kind of Statement about the Futility of Life, and him, and just stared for a good ten minutes.
He asked me to write something extra-credit “Like what I would normally write” instead of following his restrictive prompts. I wrote a short story about one version of a high-fantasy character of mine who’s been through about twenty different versions and incarnations; this one was the magically talented son of a military leader in a border keep, caught facing a war against a magically-focused enemy. The keep itself was a castle I’d walked through the ruins of in Germany. I’d researched the appropriate battle tactics and equipment. The mageling and his peers were twelve and thirteen, going through training to fight for the keep and weapons training, because I’d researched the equivalent time periods in Europe and it was setting-appropriate. A lot of his interactions with his peers were based on my own experience as an army brat and how the rank of parents and inclinations of kids compared to their parents impact bullying and social stratification.
I got back five pages of him being utterly horrified that I had written about CHILDREN with access to weapons. Horrified that some of the stuff the bullies had done would be potentially life-threatening kinds of hazing/harassment, like that doesn’t happen in schools. He ranted about how the entire setting was foreign and unrealistic, and that I should “Write what I knew”.
I had rants to my roommate for two hours about how I had damn well written what I knew, I HAD WALKED THE WALLS OF THAT CASTLE DAMNIT, the world might have been fantasy but that hill and keep exist in Germany.
So for my final project, I got vindictive and decided to write something fueled by pure spite to see if he’d notice. It was a relatively short “magical realism” slanted urban fantasy set on the college campus we were on. The main character was not even subtly based on myself - a college student with a brass-shod staff to deal with the Fairbanks ice and a black lambskin trenchcoat bought with a summer job paycheck. The protagonist could also see and talk to spirits and beings most of the others on campus couldn’t; I put a dragon in the story-world version of UAF, ravens that weren’t really ravens, and a handful of other things. The whole story was basically a very sad meditation on how depressing it was that most people had so little imagination that they would reject, mock, and drive out anyone aware of “the REAL world around them”, so intent on being sure the world only existed as a tiny little puddle that even if they did see for a few minutes they would reject it.
Yeah. It was pretty ham-handed of a call out. If I ever find it again I’m not sure I could bring myself to publish it because I don’t even like writing like that. But it was me trying to mimick the writing styles of some of the “Great Literary Authors” he focused on, keeping the fantasy elements where someone REALLY stubborn could call them “ambiguous and maybe not actually real”, and centering everything on a theme and on a location that he knew.
He loved it. Said I should write more things like that and less of the “Silly genre fiction that wasn’t real literature”, and “stick with what I knew like this” - ergo, modern, nothing too unusual, familiar locations by his standards.
Let me tell you, with one exception that’s going to its own post in a minute since this is pretty long, if my anxiety was more self-conscious about teachers not liking Non-Literary-Genre Fiction, if I hadn’t grown up on science fiction and fantasy, if I didn’t manage to be blisteringly angry enough to bull through the anxiety and self-consciousness out of sheer spite, I might have given up on it just for the amount of sheer “It’s not real, respectable writing, it’s just vapid escapist consumer pandering” I got in college. I also mostly gave up on writing classes after his and stuck with grammar, communication, rhetoric, and finding subjects I thought I could use.
(I am self conscious about it, but it’s more “will the actual intended audiences want this and like this?” and “As I start sending things to publishers do I have a chance of getting published?” That last one is a killer and has gone full executive dysfunction a few times on just finishing pieces; that’s the real dragon I’m throttling down into its hole.)
Holy shit, kids, fanfiction writers, people who want to word gud and tell stories, do not let the collegiate academics and people who call genre fiction “silly and pointless” or “childish” grind you down. They’re going to tell you that it’s “commercial pandering” and “vapid escapism”, but you can pretty much look around you to see how much impact that “vapid escapism” has. Even people who have never seen the movies have a clue what “May the Force be with you” means.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t believe that writing about aliens and castles isn’t “writing what you know”, because if that’s what you’re interested in, that’s what you research and surround yourself with, you damn well do know it. If you’re writing people like ones you know in your Impossible Worlds and writing about events that happen in the real world like wars and conflicts and trust and friendship and romances and fear and abuses, you are writing Things You Know, you are writing REALITY, and it is valuable, not fake or empty or “meaningless and with no bearing on Truth”.
(And don’t think fanfiction is worthless either; fanfiction is a wonderful thing for writing just for the joy of it, for getting to stretch and practice and see what you can do as a writer. Also, it’s honestly in some ways more of a challenge; if you’re writing your own characters and worlds, you’re the final arbiter of how it works and what’s in character for them. Writing someone else’s? You’re playing a game of seeing how well you can figure it out and portray it recognizably to other fans who are probably pretty detail obsessed themselves, and that’s a challenge in and of itself. You may not earn a living off it, but it’s perfectly good work.)
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Okay…SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I read the book and I watched the movie a long time ago. This blog has been a long time coming and taking me forever! I will be truthful and say that it has been a LONG time since I finished a book. For shame on me too because I love to read. This was the book that I finally finished but it was also the one that I was stuck on. It was not taking me so long to finish it because it wasn’t good. I actually loved it. It took me so long because of well…life and also I originally didn’t want to start it. It was a book that my husband wanted me to read and I hate it when I am told what to read.
However, this was really special to him. My hubby does not delve into fiction often (him being more of the comic nerd) and he really wanted to share the book that got him reading a science fiction NOVEL. Seeing that this was adorable I finally caved and started reading the book. I was pleasantly surprised that as a fellow female nerd, I really enjoyed it. However, life caught up with us and I accidentally stopped reading halfway in the book. So when I was ready to pick it up again I kinda had to start over. This idea ultimately frustrated my bibliophile heart but I really wanted to complete this book. 1. Because it is actually really good. 2. It was something that my hubby and I could share and 3. I had to get over this stupid “not reading lately” curse I had. I made it official in my head that I was going to end it with the book that started it.
So..Ready Player One…the book that got a lot of love at first and then a hell of a lot of crap. Ernest Cline’s science fiction debut novel of 2011 was critically acclaimed receiving the Alex Award and Prometheus Award. Set in a very believable dystopian 2044 future, Wade Watts is the main character that belongs to the young crowd of Gunters. Like most everyone in this dystopian world, Wade is in love with the virtual reality world The Oasis. Literally everything is done in the Oasis contributing to the steady economic decline of the real world. In 2044, the world is hammered by energy crisis from the decreased amount of fossil fuels and the rise in global warming problems. The overpopulation in the world causes social unrest and stagnation in the economy. It is no wonder people decide to fall into the Oasis to escape the reality of this declining real world.
The virtual world is powered by visors and haptic technology with things like gloves, suits and chairs! Literally everything we can ever imagine what virtual reality would be like in the future. The Oasis is like one ginormous MMORPG but the currency is actually more stable than in the real world. (This is a freaky thought…am I right???)
James Halliday is the creator of the Oasis and everyone looses their collective minds when after he dies he announces in a public video he made before death that he hid an Easter Egg in his own game, The Oasis. He says the first person to find this said Easter Egg will inherit his entire fortune and his corporation. I think in this type of future I can see why people lost their minds. Especially the younger generations like Wade’s. They wanted something to strive for. Something to keep their hope alive.
The best thing that I feel like I can do from this point is to say what I liked about the book and if it played out the way I wanted in the movie or differently and if I like it. This is essentially a book and movie review in one.
AGAIN SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CHARACTERS:
Wade/Parzival: Living in the stacks of the dying metropolitan future Oklahoma City, Wade remains the protagionist in the book and the movie. His name Parzival for his avatar is based after the Arthurian Knight involved in the quest for the holy grail. He dedicates his life in finding the Halliday egg and ultimately is the winner of the whole shebang. I loved that the hero was not perfect–he finds the Cooper Key first but ultimately needs help finding the Jade key. At first I was really irritated that he was not the one to find the second key/gate, but I realized I like it when my heroes have flaws and they are not perfect and Wade is definitely not perfect. I loved how his avatar looked in the movie. It had the perfect anime feel with a knight sword on it. Honestly, it could have had a little more armor some where on it to made it a little more like what I imagined in the book, but I was really pleased with it. Also bravo Tye Sheridan for a job well done!
James Halliday/Anorak: Halliday was exactly what I imagined in the book in the movie. Mark Rylance did an amazing job in his portrayal, but then again I am completely biased because I saw the character in the books exactly like how it was portrayed in the movies. He was described to be a little quirky and maybe a little bit on the spectrum in the books and that is how it was done in the movies. I thought it was done superbly.
Aech: Aech I thought was going to be a really tough character for the movies to portray, but honestly I was so pleased with Lena Waithe’s portrayal that I could not imagine this character as anyone else. To be quiet honest Steven Spielberg casted someone better than my own imagination could do and that is saying something because my imagination is awesome. Lena was perfect for the role of Aech. The character is very complicated in the fact that she is in real life a African American lesbian but in virtual reality she plays as a white male because she grew up with a mother telling her that the Oasis is great for reasons like pretending to be someone you are not to avoid prejudice and sexism. I was disappointed that we lost some of Aech’s backstory and explanation to Wade on her story in the movie. It was much more emotional and explanatory in the book and they could have put more effort in the movie to keep that, but instead all they did was have a brief exchange in an alley letting Wade know who Aech was based off of a saying they say in a movie. It was not as climatic to me.
Ogden “Og” Morrow: Simon Pegg is always good in his roles, but I pictured my Og a little bit differently. Not to say that he didn’t do a good job in the role and I was not pleased with what they did. They did have to change things in the movie to the extent to where it was not exactly the same as the book. Since I could not have the whole part where the main characters meet at Og’s estate for the final battle in the Oasis, it was nice to have this movie Og still provide a major role in the film. Book Og was always watching the main characters and rooting for them even though he could not really assist them he still was having a watchful eye on them. He provided them a sanctuary at his estate when they were getting attacked non-stop by Sorrento. This was a really great point in the book for me, but seeing that there was still some of that magic in the movie by making his Oasis avatar the Halliday Library Robot Butler in disguise was pretty nice since he followed their journey looking for Halliday clues. Incidentally, they had him be the one to give Wade the EXTRA LIFE artifact coin instead of him playing a game of PAC-MAN (like in the book). In my opinion it was not as awesomely received like in the book since it was just a bet won with the disguised Morrow in the movie, but it was kind of sentimental having Morrow be a part of it.
Daito: Daito…dear dear Daito. Again if you have not read my many spoiler warnings please make way of this one if you are not wanting any spoilers for the book or movie. One major change I noticed that differed between film and book was that of Daito. Daito, even though he was not a huge character in the book (or movie really) was a favorite. I am an Otaku after all so Daito and Shoto were beloved by me being from Japan and I wished that I could be in the Oasis and befriend them myself since they were badass Samurai! I mean Samurai! Shoto in the movie had a ninja feel to him which is just as awesome! Anyway, Daito was not supposed to live. He was brutally killed in the book. Although, I am happy to see that character not parted from the others especially not his precious adopted little brother Shoto, I feel like this was a mistake. The murder of Daito was a critical part of the book for me. I physically cried. It is not abnormal for my to cry with books and things, but I will legit say that Daito’s death was one of the top five things that made me physically ill with tears in literature. It was a moment where Wade knew he needed to get his shit together and make a plan. So he did. It helped Wade rally everyone together to go against Sorrento and IOI. It also gave video of the horrible deed when Wade investigated which ultimately caused more of Sorrento’s downfall. Most of all, this horrible deed really shows how sick, twisted and evil Sorrento in the books are. I feel like he was not that bad in the movie. Daito was a huge plot device…which I hate calling him that but has a fellow writer I know what Cline was using him as. He needed a main character to die. Daito was a tragic figure all around. I loved him all the same.
Shoto: Shoto was a character that I adored in the books and movies. His sorrow in the book was truly felt when Daito died. I think that some of the closeness that the two had was lost a bit in the movie because Shoto did not get to explain that they were not real brothers since the scene where Wade talks to him about the truth behind their relationship was never told since Daito never died. I supposed it is happier that he gets to keep his adopted Oasis brother and the young 11 year old does not need to experience a tragedy, but their relationship lacked closeness
Nolan Sorrento: Okay, this is going to sound incredibly awful but I imagined Sorrento in real life and in his avatar form to be like an Italian mob boss like guy. Is it because of the last name, probably, but I am not entirely sure you can blame me for that. I am a writer myself and I am a firm believer in picking names for your characters that truly matter. Like secret meanings and things. Maybe not so secret meanings too, like I really adored the meaning behind why Wade Watts was named that. That was not Wade’s parents or even Wade speaking through the narrative, but Cline specifically telling us that he wanted us to relate Wade to a superhero. Maybe I am going overboard…? I don’t think so though, because Wade is very much a superhero if you look at how he progresses in the novel and Sorrento is very much a classic villain similar to that of Lex Luthor. Smart, devious, ruthless, cruel, and just the right amount of evil to really piss you off. Mob boss right? Or at least superhero villain! The avatar in the movie was fantastic, but I didn’t completely by the portrayal Ben Mendelsohn put on screen. I do not think that is his fault. For two reasons actually. 1. I had this silly image in my head of what I wanted for Sorrento that was more like Godfather and I should have known better (lol) and 2. In the movie they down played Sorrento’s pure evil. He came off more desperate and pathetic to me honestly and that was portrayed nicely by Mendelsohn, but it was not supposed to be Sorrento.
Samantha/Art3mis: I loved this character in the book. She was spunky, she loved to write, sassy, rambled, filled with anxiety about herself, but also exuded beautiful confidence. She was also a writer which I also consider myself (obviously). Although, she hides behind some insecurities about the port wine birth mark she has on her face she has a radiance about her that most people can not ignore in the Oasis. She has a huge following on her Arty’s Missives blog and does not shy away from posting pictures of her avatar which Wade later finds out in the book is exactly like her real self minus the actual birth mark.
“She occasionally posted screenshots of her raven-haired avatar, and I sometimes (always) saved them to a folder on my hard drive. Her avatar had a pretty face, but it wasn’t unnaturally perfect…Big hazel eyes, rounded cheekbones, a pointy chin, and a perpetual smirk. I found her unbearably attractive…Art3mis’s frame was short and Rubeneseque. All curves.”
I love this description Wade (Cline) gives in the book. It paints a very vivid picture of who she is. I see a girl that is not afraid to be real in a world that pretends to be Elves and any other fantasy creature imaginable. I may go on a tirade her about Art3mis because there was a lot of controversy about her and Wade’s relationship (so more on that later) so bare with me. I thought that Art3mis was handled wonderfully in the books…it fell at little bit in the movie. My reasons? I am so glad you asked:
1. If you had an issue with how their relationship was in the books then you totally will in the movie. I will get more into this later, but to me the relationship was totally dumb in the movie and not real. I guess to save time they had to rush things, but honestly I just didn’t believe it. Art3mis would not be the love at first sight kind of girl…Wade would be that kind of guy. In the movie it seemed to go that route more than the books. Again I will explain more.
2. Maybe this didn’t bother other people has much as me, but what is one of the main things Wade describes about Art3mis?? Her frame is short and rubeneseque! She is all curves! She is like that in avatar form and in real life!! So why in good graces did they make her look like a weird TALL SKINNY pink bug thing in the movie?? I blame hollywood!! It is not fair! Being a woman that is short and curvey and always has been myself I find this quite offensive. I was really looking forward to who was going to play Art3mis and how they were going to do the avatar. I was thinking maybe some sort of representation would be nice for us curvy shorties. BUT NO!!! Now I am not bashing Olivia Cooke or anything but she is not exactly what I had in mind. To be fair she is not what was described either. Not in the least bit, so that is not my fault. She may be about 5 foot five inches so she is not super tall, but she is not really considered short either. Did you know that the average American woman over age 20 weighs 168.5 pounds and stands at just above 5 feet 3 inches (about 64 inches) tall? (https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/average-weight-for-women) Usually about 5 foot 4 inches to 5 inches. Just why would you pick some sort of weird pink bug girl over a curvy raven-haired sassy badass? I have seen fan art of what Art3mis could (SHOULD) have looked like. Missed opportunity to have some really awesome unknown radiate the screen with their brilliance. Honestly, Cooke’s portrayal wasn’t bad. She might have been a little too tall and definitely too skinny for what I imagined for the character, but the actress made sure she kept the spirit of Art3mis there. The script I am sure helped with that a bit with her acting. Just…couldn’t they have done something different than what they did with her avatar? The more I think about it the more I am annoyed with it! UGH!
FANART BY WILL MURAI --- hit it right on the mark friend!
FANART by Sunil Kainth---also fantastic
what we got instead....
whhhhyyyyyyy??????
Wade and Samantha’s Relationship
I like romance in my books. Even a little bit. I like romance in my anything cause I am a hopeless romantic. By all means it does not need to be the focus. To be honest I used to be a romance buff and all I would read would be romance novels and I would primarily watch rom/coms and dramas. BORING! Now I love watching, reading, playing, and writing just about anything. Do I prefer a hint of romance…yes…but it’s no longer necessary. Now that that is out of the way I will say that I did not feel like the relationship between these two was forced…in the books. Wade makes it quite clear that he has an uber crush on Art3mis. He says all the reasons why and it is in my opinion kind of nerdy and endearing, but I tend to like the nerdy underdog dorks.
When he meets Art3mis for the first time, he is actually really smooth and she is the rambler. I don’t see any remote sign of creep in the transaction like some of the critics say. He was actually more worried about getting out of there with the Copper key without her realizing he completed the challenge on his first try (the stinker). The whole time they talk, bond over similar interests, he lets her vent over her difficult time, and…they flirt with one another. To me it is charming. In the end they have a playful little rivalry when she finds out he lied and had the key on his first try. He gave her a helpful hint when he did not need to. Real smooth in my opinion and Samantha was totally digging him. There is and was chemistry.
Now, I will say that in the movie the interaction between them was not as charming. At least I did not feel like it was. The book gets a lot of crap for their relationship because they say Wade is stalker-ish, but Samantha gave her contact information to him. It is the same as a guy giving a girl a phone call to start a friendship. In this virtual reality world he emails her and I am certain that if she REALLY and TRULY meant she did not want to talk to another gunter or get distracted she would have blocked him and just not talked to him. I mean she was bad ass Samantha/Art3mis, she would not have done anything she did not want to. Case in point, when she felt like she couldn’t handle things she did stop talking to him after their argument at the dance in the books. Wade becomes very distraught and depressed, but who wouldn’t? Imagine meeting a slight, okay huge, online celebrity crush that you might have and then talking to them through email only for weeks. These emails start getting super deep too. You really get to know each other and then you start meeting for real. The chemistry is super strong. Then he/she takes you out on this great date and kisses you! WOW! HEAVEN right? I thought so…
Art3mis says that she led him on when she really didn’t want a relationship in the books. She brought him on dates (remember Rocky Horror Picture Show date where she kissed him) basically showing that she was just as much into their little fling as he was. Art3mis is tragic in the fact that she gets scared and anxious because of her real life appearance and things get too REAL for her in the virtual world. I honestly feel like that was the true issue there and the fact that they kind of forgot about the contest was merely second to both of them. The thing is their relationship spanned like months to a year in the book. They talked through email for like weeks before ever meeting up again. To say that there was hints of stalking or that this was not real is totally not accurate. I would like to bring up online dating, which is really big in our society now-a-days. Don’t roll your eyes if you are. I met my husband on some silly Facebook Speed Date App Game thingy and 10 years later we are still together and got married 4 years ago. Honestly, meeting people in the virtual world and falling in love with them should not be a weird concept to us in the year 2018.
In the movies I was really disappointed that they cheapened the Samantha and Wade relationship. If people who read the books hate the relationship then they would definitely hate it in the movie. I didn’t really hate it, but I just didn’t believe in it. They skipped out on the talking for weeks over email and jumped right into this story arc that she is in some sort of resistance and she kind of sucks him into it. It made it the typical adventure movie where guy meets girl, has adventure with girl, and then they become romantically involved. Notice the way I say they BECOME romantically involved but do not say they are in love or anything. Well, because I did not believe in it here. Seriously, he barely knows her in the movie version, but has this quick adventure and they think they know love. No, the Samantha and Wade in the books spent weeks getting to know each other, even though Samantha says she blocked parts she did not want to be seen she was still real and who she was. The book shows a real relationship build, end sadly, and then show the readers a sweet reunion after Wade gets the egg.
Women and the World of Nerd Culture
More things that I have read about the book have been about women being merely a trophy character and having no stance in nerd culture community. I can see arguments made for this from the movie, but not the book. Obviously, if you all haven’t gathered I really loved the book, but I felt like the movie lacked a bit here and there. This would be one of the areas. The great thing about the book is I thought they made Samantha/Art3mis a really strong character. She is a strong person as a woman and within the nerd community that she chooses to belong to. No one forced her to pick these likes or dislikes and she made her own opinions on things. She was ingrained in the community as a blogger. It shows to me that she has her own hopes and dreams that she is a writer and goes to school for creative writing. Those that say that Samantha is a paperdoll merely for Wade to waive around clearly did not read what I read because she was filled with personality of her own. It was Art3mis that found and fought through to receive the Jade key and the Second Gate not Parzival. Proving that she has strength in her own skills as a gamer and as a nerd, but I feel like she does not let this define her since she clearly does not want to win for silly reasons. She wants to win to make the world a better place. That may seem like a cookie cutter answer to some but I thought her desires to win were profound and a bit more noble than what Wade originally wanted to win for. So to bring my thoughts on this to a more conclusive and easier way to understand what am I trying to say? Women should not shy away from this book and this is why:
1. Samantha/Art3mis is a unique and beautiful person inside and out. I felt Ernest Cline tried to express this in the narrative through Wade’s feelings for her and his narration. She is not a cookie cutter Hollywood model.
Kat Dennings would have been perfect! She is 5 foot 3 inches and curvey and has that look that reminded me of Art3mis. Alright...i will let this go now
In the movie I argue that this was not so much the case. They did not follow the proper feel of what Samantha really looked like nor did they really follow what she did with her Avatar, which was essentially herself minus her port wine birth mark.
2. Art3mis thinks for herself by: leaving Wade and her relationship in the dust when things got to real, goes after the Jade Key and Second Gate and ultimately finds them and becomes Number One for awhile, and shows interests that are “nerdy” within all things, but also has a desire to write so she goes to college.
There was no mention of any of Samantha’s background, probably because they were too busy with the whole Resistance Adventure thing to really dig into her character in the movie. This was a lost opportunity because in the book as Wade learned about her we did too and it was really kind of sweet. They did show that she figured out the Shinning Scene which relates to the book where she wins the second part of the challenge. Samantha is also the one that is in the camps that Wade infiltrates in the book which irritated me on many accounts. Wade’s plan to take down IOI was great stuff and to see it that drastically changed was a bit disappointing as a fan of the book. Plus it made her a damsel in distress where in the book Wade was a badass taking down IOI from the inside. Just more proof that Hollywood screen messed with the book too much.
I get that there are some of you out there saying “well Ernest Cline helped write the screen play so he approved of it.” Yes I know that and I want to say I did not hate the film. I liked it but not as much as the book. It was so different it might as well be like comparing apples and oranges and everyone has their preference there. I prefer oranges so since I like the book better I am just going to say that the book was the orange for me. HAHA
Lastly, I want to shout out to all my lady nerds out there. I know we have it rough in a culture that is generally dominated by men. Or at least society thinks so. I used to get irritated when a new game would come out only to find out that there was no way to play it as a female character or the main character is yet again a man. Yes it is annoying and honestly I have seen franchises move away from that and start including women. Doesn’t always mean that the company is polite about it, I know, but I don’t think we should allow Gamergate to stop us from enjoying books, video games, shows, movies, etc just because of it being a male telling the story. If there is obvious signs of abuse towards women in the certain media then that media does not have the right to be considered by anyone regardless of it trying to go towards a nerdy community. Ready Player One was not abusive to women but merely a male author writing a story about a male nerd in the near future. I don’t think he meant to offend anyone or alienate anyone. He had a really awesome female main character named Helen who was a lesbian after all. There may have had some things about gender there, but Cline brought up a huge problem in society where a black woman did not feel safe in her own skin and played as a white male in the Oasis. In the movie, Aceh was kinda ambiguous with the race he might have been which was kind of disappointing because it needed a clear line to show more of Helen’s story, but we missed a lot of that. Anyway, ran off into a tangent again. What I am trying to say is, if as a female in the nerd community, you decide to only read, play, and watch things that are in the female point of view then you will loose out on so many good things. I would know because I used to be that stubborn with games. I would play only games that allowed me to be a female character, because that was what I figured was best. I was so wrong. It all started with Persona 4 Golden Edition. I love that game and I loved being my silent hero protagonist. If I stayed stuck in my ways I would never have branched out to playing action adventure games like Shadows of Mordor or RPG’s with a male lead like The Witcher. I have fun. If I didn’t branch out I would never have read Harry Potter because I was too busy reading romance novels because I wanted to connect with the heroine in the novel. This…this is not okay. I am glad I have grown out of this. As a nerd that loves all sorts of stories, I can appreciate all main characters male or female. Of course I love seeing a bad ass woman, because I want to see that reflected in me and I want it to be me. Who wouldn’t want to imagine themselves in the book or video game or on the screen? However, can’t we all just agree that a good story is just a good story? If you truly don’t like the same stories as me well then…maybe you just don’t like oranges. :)
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School. For over a decade I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should try to go back to school. When I was in high school going to college was my only way out of Arkansas. There was no other path, my parents did not accept the option of just not going to college and they also did not accept the possibility that I may fail. I was going to college, I was going to do well, I was going to finish. Period. They didn’t care what I studied, hence the art degree, all that mattered was that I went and came out at the end with a degree of some sort. I’m good at school. I think it has to do with my steely determination and a sort of crazy level of grit that must be genetic, having been passed down from a culture that has been mocked, destroyed, and marginalized through history (Romani/Polish on my fathers side.) Anyhow, I kind of breezed through college, I remember my counselor telling me I was graduating and that I needed to sign a form and I was like, “wait, what? It’s so soon.” I was the only person I knew who was actually graduating in four years, all my friends weren’t done yet. Then picking up my robes and the lady looking at the list and being like, “well honey, you need to go get your honors cords from that lady over there,” and again I was like “what do you mean? Honors? Magna what?I’m just trying to get by here” I like, didn’t want to wear them, I was so embarrassed, I had no idea I’d done anything to deserve fancy robes and a special place in the lineup of graduates. I just wanted to be done. I felt like a fraud surrounded by all the actual smart people who had really worked hard. In retrospect, I had worked hard too, often throughout my college years some spending 15-18 hours on campus at a time, working part time crap jobs, somehow still participating in student shows. I did all my work at the computer lab, as I never had a computer of my own. While I studied art and dance, it wasn’t a conservatory, I still had to take college level math classes, sociology, astronomy, geology, English literature, history of the antiquities, all that shit, I did all of this, and it never really phased me, I just did what I had to and I had to finish.
I use my degree all the time, I’m one of the few people I know that has. What I’ve never done despite my academic success and despite my work ethic is get paid enough to live. If my husband died and I was on my own I would be so screwed, so insanely far up shit creek with no paddle you’d never hear from me again. I’d be in Shitsville, last stop before Destruction Island. And here’s the thing, some women dream of being stay at home moms, I can see the allure, and I’m happy to spend my time focused on my babies for a few years, but at some point I’d like to contribute to getting my family ahead. So I keep thinking I should go back to school. Then, I’m like, but what the fuck for? Dance is out. My professional accomplishments are just not substantial enough to get me into the kind of program that I’d like to get into, or get the kind of scholarship I need, and even if they were, then what the hell would I do for work? Sometimes I think that I could retake some undergraduate level courses and then get a degree in science, but ultimately I just have no clue what I could study, that I’m well suited for, that would result in a decent job that wouldn’t make me miserable. Some people who are in my situation pray for a sign, or for the universe to give them a clue, but since I don’t do those things, that’s out. Ultimately there is no one else making this decision. It’s just me.
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