You know something that bothers me in Time Travel Aus and some fics Obikin centered? Obi-Wan's reactions. Like I only really ship Obikin via their dynamic in Rots and CW while fully acknowledging the etnics involved considering everything Anakin did when going Vader (or falling into it), and yet... The fact that people make Obi-Wan have certain attractions to him while he was underage unsettles me. Because when I saw Aotc, Obi-Wan seemed to view him mostly in the lenses of a exasperated father (or coworker), with some moments of reassurance and fondness. Only when he stops being his padawan does that shift to be more equals (dunno how that was portrayed in the OWK show, haven't seen it).

And while I'm aware that wasn't the intention, whenever I see Obi-Wan time travelling to when Anakin was a kid or teen, it feels weirdly similar to grooming, where Anakin simply shifts his obsession with Padmé to Obi. Dunno if it's just a peev of mine, but wanted your opinion.

I must admit I am eyeing this ask a little warily, all things considered. But! assuming this is in good faith…

You may have noticed that when I go on my periodic obikin spirals I tend more to vaderwan; it's the version I was drawn to first and still find most compelling for me. So I'm not the best person to ask for a breakdown of the dynamics you mentioned, but I'm not without insights I guess.

I would say that Obi Wan being attracted to teenage padawan Anakin-or more importantly acting on it- is a darker take on his character… this is an angle someone might find it interesting to mess around with. (and sometimes being unsettled can be the point)

For example Obi Wan -> padakin may be appealing for Obi Wan's character by making him less than respectable, with desires and passions that he has very carefully squirreled away, but that Anakin pushes against and through the boundaries of..

Or your scenario with the time travel- I think I have read something along those lines, but it was fairly self-aware about it. This would be post- rots for Obi Wan, so the stakes are different. And you could play with him getting manipulative.

It sounds like it's not for you though!

Vaderwan is also dark, but in a different way. The OWK show doesn't exactly bring sex into it, it just depicts them as completely undone by each other, their souls consumed by each other, eaten away with grief and guilt and rage for ten entire years……………………………………………………………………

*shrug* This is playing with dolls to me. I have a mental closet with dozens of little Obi Wans and Anakins and Padmes and Ahsokas and Codys in various outfits (the outfits mostly being different takes on them etc). I'll toy with just about any ship involving my blorbos, but I'm not going to necessarily be drawn to every permutation either.

idk idk.

do you have any more stuff on dirks kf thread? i love that idea

referencing some of the stuff in this post, specifically dirk's.... art. how it's mainly shock value content...highly graphic, self-hating, misanthropic, nihilistic, 90s and early 2000s edgy humor art taken a disconcerting turn for the sexual. and, okay. this content would not be enough to warrant a kf thread on its own. what's been established is that his physical assault of hollywood director dave strider is what put him on the map and by extension in the crosshairs of the types of people who...use kf. people would start digging into his internet history, tracing his digital footprint, you know. his deadjournal, the boorus he uses, they'd identity an art style and essentially go to town tracking down everything he's ever made and posted, even if it was posted anonymously (4chan).

and, like. the things he draws... I don't know how to describe this but to him this isn't really vent art, and he's not, like, a shadman. (most of*) what he draws isn't drawn with the intent of it being hot, or appealing. it's... again, shock value. I think he thinks you'd have to be really stupid to think anything he draws is funny (the actual joke he's making is that he's stupid enough to waste his own time and energy doing all this shit, and the ACTUAL joke beyond that is that he knows it's stupid and is doing it as a joke and is so elevated beyond both criticism of the work itself and of the creation of the work on a sincere AND ironic level. you cant touch him because engaging seriously at all with anything he makes makes you a dribbling drooling IDIOT), but I dont think he cares about people getting off to his weird shock value porn.... though at some point he would have? earlier in life. like i do think he would've had a kind of puritanical phase where he realizes how wrong the way he was raised was, but I also feel like he quashed this relatively quickly on realizing that it just made his everyday life that much more humiliating. his creation of shock value porn SPECIFICALLY the porn part. is not to get off to it or to be sexy or to help anyone else get off. it is all part of the joke. if you get off on it you're stupid and missing the point but no more so than if you are out here laughing at his non-jokes. I don't think he'd LET himself be sex repulsed, basically. he'd feel that way for a little while but he is so surrounded by it that letting himself be disgusted by it feels weak. he isn't a kid he's not some girl or whatever. it's sex it's no big deal to him because why would it be. no seriously like tell me why why would he even be thinking twice about something like this. elaborate on it.

Like. I just really lean into the idea of him delibrately quashing a natural aversion to sex that comes from a history of being violently assaulted...to me that ties into him fueling his own internalized bizarreness refusing to get help or admit weakness etc. it's similar to the involuntary agere** and the bedwetting; if he could only look his own humanity and weakness in the face and come to terms with it he could heal but he will NOT let himself do this, no self-reflection no criticism just straight ahead into oblivion forever it does NOT get any better than this it isn't even that bad now it was never that bad then and you're projecting OBVIOUS STYLE if you think he's ever even struggled with jackshit.

but anyway.

the people hobbling together everything he's ever made, into one big thread... with the masses completely misinterpreting his intentions, the message, the motivation he had behind these pieces... he would be so mad. like he's not even mad about the insults, he does not give a shit about that, it's how little people are understanding that is what's truly offensive to him. like none of you get it you're all just laughing at the barest most obvious layer of absurdity out there. you're not even thinking not even for a second you're all so stupid compared to me and you'll live and die and you'll never fucking know it I'm going to blow my brains out on camera in front of you I'm going to kill you you are so fucking stupid how do you even justify your own existence etc etc etc.

*I can see him being, like, a legit puppet fetish artist. like these pieces are about the same quality of any of his other works but there's a much more sincere quality to them than any of his other art that depicts more grotesque topics. if people genuinely made fun of this stuff I think it's one of the things that would genuinely make him grind his teeth into dust. they don't fucking GET IT.

I'm envisioning the prominent features of this thread consist of, like, compiled scs of his deadjournal account...which if you don't know is like livejournal but they do not filter anything you write or anything like that. it’s got a smaller audience, no one reports you and no one monitors it. so i imagine he uses this as an outlet for utter bullshit fabrications of his life, like blatantly untrue ironic traumaventing with some stake in his emotional state at the time (e.g., extremely exaggerated stories of him being kidnapped and trafficked and tortured and shit, really long ramblings/lies that are adjacent to how he goes down stupid one-sided conversational rabbitholes) mixed in with EXTREMELY occasional genuine breakdown vents. kf members would tear all of them apart, but especially the latter kind once they figure out what they're looking for. like every once in a while someone does manage to hit a legitimate pressure point I think, like some weird analogy he makes a couple times. someone makes a random guess and happens to describe something that like actually happened to him and hes like stunned for a second over it.

in general i feel like this would just be so monumentally terrible to him. like hes aware of the extent to which people do not "get" him but. his little brain would boil at this he'd be so mad i think he would break things in his home. need to draw him sitting at his desk about to physically explode.

**I forgot to post meta about this in response to an ask I got. we've talked about it for cumulative hours and written fic of it and it is like. the cause of timeline branchiations. I cannot get into it now. it will be so long.

Having asked your thoughts on designing Frankenstein's daemon, might I now ask your thoughts on bringing Count Dracula from the written word into illustration? (I'm definitely in favour of the 'Hairy Old Mountain Man of Horror pretending he's people' look from the original novel; one of the small tests too many Draculas fail to pass is an absolutely tragic lack of the Evil Beard and/or Wicked Moustache explicitly described by Mr Stoker).

Unlike with Frankenstein, where I think the design needs to be painstakingly thought out in order to achieve the best balance of the creature's traits for horror and tragedy alike, I think with Dracula you can actually just take an approach of "whatever works". Because as I mentioned before, I think much of the appeal and longevity of Dracula is how the character's both a layered villain as well as a shapeshifting narrative force that can be tailored to whatever you want to do with. Granted, there are bad or dissappointing Dracula designs, of course there are, but in regards to the leeway you get for reinterpretation, you get a lot more of it with Dracula than with other literary icons.

Like with Frankenstein, I'm gonna bring up how I'd tackle a less grim, more comedy-centric Dracula first, one that's less a force of horror and more of a charismatic villain, and I think to that end I definitely agree that people are sleeping a lot on the hairy old man barely-passing-off-as-humanoid of the original story. Despite very much loving these performers, I'm actually not a fan of takes that mold Dracula too closely to people who've portrayed him, like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, partially because I think it's a waste of an opportunity to create your own Dracula design. Since I can't draw (yet), I'll do what I usually do and make a board of images to try and convey some of my thoughts on one way I'd design Dracula.

(Pictured: Kiwi's design for Dracula, Hotel Transylvania concept art, Nandor, Castlevania Dracula, Charles Dance in Dracula Untold, Vladislav, a Transylvanian rug)

I used the images in my other Dracula post and I’ll post it here again because I absolutely adore @kiwibyrd's designs for Dracula and it's main heroes, in particular I love the way it strikes a good balance at making sure Dracula looks distinctly separate from the humans, but not too much that he couldn't conceivably operate in society as just a harmless old man. I also adore the mustache and bushy eyebrows and pointy ears and I think these three are wonderful features to keep on any Dracula design. I'm also very partial to the Hotel Transylvania concept art, even if it makes me incredibly depressed to look at all the great designs they had for Dracula that they threw in the trash because they somehow decided making him look like Adam Sandler was the idea to go with.

I deeply adore What We Do In The Shadows, both the movie and the show, and Jemaine Clement's Vladislav is one of my favorite (maybe even my actual favorite) on-screen Draculas. But I also enjoy Nandor just as much, and I think it's really great that as a character he's completely different from Vlad while also being ostensibly a take on Dracula, and in particular I bring up his Jersey look because "Dracula in common clothing" is a criminally underrated concept for a joke.

As a character, I'm very partial to comedy takes on Dracula that play him up as a decadent aristocratic supervillain, the kind that can get away with talking in third person. I also have this idea for a version of Dracula who dresses ostentatiously in finely-broidered Romanian or Transylvanian patterns, maybe even wearing a rug as a cape, claiming that he's carrying the legacy of his people on his back. And of course he's lying, he's not Vlad Tepes and he's not even Romanian, he is just a parasite pretending to have a history to be proud of, but good luck getting him to admit that. And finally, I'd like this version to be played by Charles Dance, and I consider it a tremendous crime against humanity that he has yet to play Dracula proper even despite being in a film with the character's name on the title.

So that's kinda how I would design a take on Dracula for something more comedic or more based around him as this guest character and personality on-set. Now, if we're talking a more serious version, I think the possibilities increase, and I won't be getting into all of them because I may prefer to keep them to myself, but I'll elaborate a few ideas.

For example, the edition of Dracula I personally own comes with these really scratchy, really creepy B&W illustrations related to the story, that I can't find scanned online so I'm uploading them here so you can look at. They don't necessarily depict the scenes but rather some of the story's moments, like Van Helsing staking Lucy, Renfield in a straightjacket, Dracula as a coachman, and they are more focused on conveying the horror of the concepts at play.

Dracula never looks the same way in any of the illustrations, in fact you kinda have to piece him out of them by trying to find teeth or capes or eyes or bat-features to see where he's hiding this time. In the first, it's the half-man half-bat, in the 2nd, he's the shrieking bat silhouette next to Renfield, and in the latter, he's the gaping jaws and eerily humanoid eyes in the wolf. The effect to me almost feels like if you were to look at a bunch of tv static and then see a humanoid shape form for a split second before everything went back to normal, something like you'd get from Slender Man or other modern creepypastas, and I’ve argued before that Dracula’s form of horror is a very modern one. 

In terms of illustrations of Dracula that keep up the original traits while still pulling off horror, I definitely have to hand it to the one at the left of the image above, drawn by regourso on Deviantart (account deleted at present). Going back to Castlevania’s many takes on Dracula, two in particular that stick out to me would be Castlevania: Judgment’s armored dress Dracula, who’s got this great twisted heart/rose motif going on in his outfit, and Dracula’s final form in SOTN where he just sits in his throne and his cape twists into all these monsters, particularly how it’s depicted by witnesstheabsurd’s depiction. 

I’m not particularly a fan of how Dracula’s “final form” in these games is usually just some big demon, and part of what I like about his final form in SOTN instead is that, while it’s not a particularly challenging final boss, I do find it interesting the idea of us never actually getting to see what Dracula’s true final form looks like, only an ever-shifting pitch-black torrent of teeth and claws and bloody veins pouring out because that’s ultimately what Dracula is and brings to the world.

On the flip-side of the rotten old monster, we have the charming seductor Dracula, and while I’m really not a fan of how various adaptations have convinced people that “the point” of Dracula is that he’s a seductive force and an allegory for Victorian xenophobia and I’m reeeally even less of a fan of adaptations that make Dracula some misunderstood tragic hero (and I think I’ve made rather violently clear my feelings on interpretations that play up a romance between him and Mina), that the seductive force part exists is impossible to deny, so conversely, while on one hand we can have Dracula as the gargantuan whirlwind of predatory violence, we can also go for Dracula as the tantalizing lover.

I’ve seen a lot of opinions proclaiming Frank Langella as the best Dracula because he was the best at actually being seductive while still playing Dracula, although I haven’t yet seen his performances. If I had to point at one picture I look at and do buy for a second the idea of Dracula as a romantic character, it would be that particular still of Raul Julia in the left of the above image. And it’s strange for me to think of Raul Julia as attractive because I mainly associate him with his brilliant comedy performance of M.Bison (I know it’s far from the highlight of his career but, look, I grew up with Street Fighter, I can’t help it) but those eyes are definitely looking pretty convincing to me, if nothing else. 

And I’ve included this still of Sebastian Stan in the right because, during a conversation between me, @krinsbez and @jcogginsa about who could be a good fit for Dracula, jcog suggested Sebastian Stan, partially because he’s Romanian, and I’ve learned recently that Stan was actually interested in playing the character in Blumhouse’s upcoming remake. And you’d think I’d hate this idea  considering how much I don’t care for tragic anti-hero Draculas, but who says that’s what he’d have to play? 

Do you have any idea how much actors, who are traditionally known for heroic or supporting roles, usually LOVE it when you give them a chance to cut loose as the main villain?

I’d want Sebastian Stan to put all of his charm, all of his talent, all of his good looks and etc, into playing the absolute most vicious, bloodthirsty and irredeemable Dracula put on screen. Someone who is exceedingly, eerily good at being a lovable protagonist, who’s all smiles and charming eyes and politeness mannerisms and maybe even a funny accent, and then it isn't as funny when he's flying through your window intent on kidnapping babies to feed to his brides, except he may take a moment or two to do so because he's feeling pretty hungry himself right now.

Now, admittedly this is kind of a lot to juggle in regards to a single character, which is why my answer for questions like these inevitably has to be “depends on what I’m going for”. That being said, if I was going to try and cast someone who I think could both look the part of Dracula, as well as respectively, play “cartoon aristocrat” Dracula, “mercurial embodiment of evil” Dracula, as well as realistically be an attractive, even seductive performer who can charm viewers even as the character descends into horrible villainy, and juggle these performances even?

I think I’d have to go with Mads Mikkelsen. Not specifically because of Hannibal (I actually haven’t watched it yet), although it’s definitely a factor, the thing that actually made me pick him specifically is, other than his looks, his voice, his reputation for playing sinister characters, the fact that he loves the role and wants to play it, or how many people are deeply in love with this man, or that people already joke that he looks like a vampire, was watching him in Another Round, and specifically that glorious final scene where he’s just dancing to his heart’s content and just, moving with such spring in his step and such joyful vitality even though he’s past his mid-fifties, and that was the moment where, in regards to how much you all love this man, I went

And now I am going to add “casting Mads Mikkelsen as a dancing Dracula” to The List of Reasons Why I Became a Filmmaker.

For one: whenever the concept of the Nohrians meeting the young trio comes up, my first thoughts are 1) Inigo being cripplingly shy and terrified of Xander 2) Severa being Extremely Unreasonable and Aggressive especially toward Camilla and 3) Owain gravitating toward Elise because she's reminiscent of his mother, because he's a mama's boy who probably lost his mom very recently and that's pretty fucked up!!

That being said, I'm screaming at the idea of Owain gravitating toward Elise because mother, Xander because cool sword, and Camilla because cool armor, and Not Trusting Leo because he's a Dark Mage and Dark Mage Means Plegia Means Grima Means Evil (almost always) and Leo being so upset about it. It turns the tables entirely, where Odin was originally the one who thought both Leo and Niles were so cool and they thought he was a weirdo idiot until he proved himself, now he thinks they're creepy and Evil and have to work for his trust. And I will always love the Nohrians realizing the trio were Fucked Up Kids and the idea of them watching the three of them take down a faceless with Brutal efficiency because of how much more dangerous Risen were...I'm so into this. AND!! The trio fucking hating each other!! They're so used to them being Best Friends and Inseparable and understanding each other on a whole different wavelength. And now? Sev and Inigo aren't very kind toward Owain's dramatics, Sev and Owain are Bothered by Inigo's flirtations, and Severa is just so harsh with both of them (and most people). Of all the people they could be stuck with, they would Not choose each other. I'm rambling but I'm so into it I'm so so into it. One of the previous asks you linked spoke a lot about Inigo, but if you could talk a bit more about Severa and Owain? Especially if their adult selves were involved with their lieges and partner retainers and how different the dynamic is now and the way they each react when realizing the trio went through something so clearly screwed up and beyond even what they've seen

(prev ask) Ayyy, glad you got a kick out of all of that, lol. And yes!! Leo Trio origins reversed!! With Niles and Leo being the ones who have to prove themselves to Owain instead of the other way around. And the Trio not getting along!! They're 100% there to save each other when they think they're in mortal danger, but as soon as they realize they're not in Plegia? Don't touch me, don't breath on me, don't look in my direction, any of you. Owain & Inigo can't be alone in a room together or else they'll scuffle, Severa stomps away whenever Inigo tries to compliment her, nobody wants to talk to Owain, etc.

Also sure! I spoke a lot about Inigo in that last ask because I wanted to be clear about what I meant with the shyness thing, but for Severa & Owain...

I don't know if they would have been in romance with their lieges before this! I obviously ship the royals & their retainers, but I don't ever see the appeal of that dynamic in deaging fics? I get the idea of like "oh, this is a new side of my partner I've never seen before," but the deaging part is such a huge part of the plot that I don't really see the benefit to that dynamic in these types of fics.

But just in general! The friendship/platonic shift!

I mentioned before about Camilla trying to dote on little Severa but struggling because Severa rejects her So Hard, lol. In general she'd want to dote on Severa because of her personality and how Severa is a tiny version of her beloved retainer, but the more it becomes clear that Severa has issues (especially re: family, which is a major reason Camilla feels the need to dote on Corrin), the more she wants to spend time with her and make some happy memories with her. Which makes Severa's rejection of this attention even stronger bc who the hell are you to presume you know her? And also you're not her big sister/mom/whoever.

Eventually, I almost feel like Camilla would?? I don't want to say "give up," but eventually you're going to get more flies with honey than vinegar. By which I mean the less Camilla tries to push the relationship, the more open Severa might be to spending time with her. But I'm not sure Camilla would get to this point within the timeframe of the Trio being deaged! I think this would take many days or perhaps even weeks to figure out. If the Trio return to normal before this, I think Camilla might feel different (Hard to say how... maybe guilty??) about the way her Selena dotes on her and wants her attention all the time vs little Severa rejecting her. But!! If the Trio stay deaged for a while and Camilla learns to stop pushing the relationship, Severa may slowly grow to approach Camilla on her own and may then be open to being doted upon once they understand each other more (bc she canonically wants all the foods and fun stuff Camilla is offering; she just wants it from someone she trusts. And primarily from her parents ((see: awakening supports w/ parents)), but they're not here).

tl;dr Camilla would have to go against her doting instincts if she wanted Severa to get comfortable with her. Otherwise Severa would avoid her/take advantage of the things Camilla is offering while not wanting to be near her very much.

Re: Beruka!

Unlike Camilla, who has a lot of sad and sympathetic feelings for Severa, Beruka really leaves feelings out of it. Which is probably to her benefit in this scenario, as she's approaching Severa's trauma's from a logical (perhaps even detachedly relatable) standpoint rather than sympathetic. She's more direct than Camilla, so Severa might be a little more comfortable with her, just because she knows what to expect.

Severa, for her part, may even seek Beruka out once she knows they're partners because (1) she wants to know what sort of person her future partner is and (2) she wants to prove that she's the better retainer than Beruka. Which of course she can't do because (a) Beruka would never compare them like that, nor Camilla and (b) Severa is younger, more hotheaded, and less skilled than her older self, so anything she tries to prove now, she'll probably fail at and will blame on her older self having more experience. This competetive spirit may start as an inferiority complex thing, but with Beruka never really fanning the flames, Severa may eventually calm down about it and just feel more driven to get better on her own/respect Beruka as her partner (sort of like her Cynthia Supports in Awakening, though a little different).

Leo & Owain, I already talked about. Owain will immediately take note of the fact that Leo & Niles are his future lord & partner, which he is very curious about, but once Xander, Camilla, & the other very cool people with melee weapons come into the picture, he's very drawn to them, which makes Leo jealous, lol. Leo dedicates himself to "solving" the deaging issue, using this as an excuse so he doesn't have to spend time around Owain and get compared to his "cooler" siblings. HOWEVER, joke's on him bc the fact he's avoiding Owain means Owain doesn't get the chance to quiz him even more and tell him about how cool Brynhilder is. When this finally happens, Leo feels incredibly foolish for trying to show off for Owain & avoid him in turns. Owain, meanwhile, may or may not have ever picked upon on the fact Leo was feeling weird about him at all (although he will admit he felt nervous around Leo at first bc Pelgian Mage Memories and had to take time to get over that).

Niles is a little hard to consider because I actually think?? He'd be good with young/immature folk when he's genuinely trying to be? (See: Niles's interactions with Elise & Nina). However, he can also be quite cruel to people who don't really deserve it (See: Mozu C & B supports) despite having a motto of only insulting "people who deserve it," (Peri Support). So!! I think Niles's interactions with Owain ultimately come down to how well he respects Odin/how good their relationship was. If they were besties when Odin gets deaged, then I don't think Niles will purposely try to make Owain feel bad, though a lot of what he says with metaphors & double meanings will probably go over Owain's head anyway. I also don't know if he'd purposely go digging for information or not?? Depending on how much he feels asking would be a betrayal to Odin's trust vs his own curiosity and all the hints Owain doesn't realize not to drop?? I think Owain would really determine what Niles does or doesn't learn about him. They have the potential to have a really good talk where Owain talks about his parents' deaths and the struggles he & the kids are going through and Niels talking about his own life on the streets. (BTW, despite Owain literally going through a war & both parent death, I think he might think Niles has the worse situation bc he's never known parental love at all, which baffles Niles).

Similar to Leo, I think Owain would be really cautious around Niles at first, both because he's an intimidating sort and because he takes cues from how everyone acts around Niles too. But!! Also just like Leo, if his future self trusted them, obviously that means something, right? So he'd approach Niles a bit more after a few days of settling in.

Niles & Owain's interactions are really hard to imagine because they depend on so many factors that I haven't decided upon! But hopefully the other ones make sense, lol

Thanks for asking!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Mockingjays and Roses

*Warning: Full Spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes*

Symbols are an important part of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Symbols are used to mark the identities of different characters, define relationships, and provide thematic links to the original trilogy. The symbols work to create a tension in the story, a question of whether they complement or contrast. Symbolism is used to explore two of the most influential people in Snow’s life: Lucy Gray and Katniss. 

The various symbols associated with Lucy Gray are color, music, and birds. Each of these things plays a special role in the story and serves to distinguish her from Coriolanus. In a typical setting, love interests with different symbols could be understood to show how they complement each other-- opposites attract, two halves of a whole, etc. This novel lets the reader play with that interpretation for a large portion of the book; the story questions the relationship between them, wondering repeatedly how strong, or even how genuine, their love is. Ultimately, however, the contrasting associations sets them up for their final conflict and foreshadows the eventual destruction of both of them. 

At the first sight of Lucy Gray, she is in a “dress made of a rainbow of ruffles” (24). In her first interview she says “the Covey love color” (53). The Covey are all named with colors. Lucy Gray wears bright colors at all times. The snakes which end up being drawn to Lucy Gray in the arena are bright neon colors. The colors represent her exuberance, her love of beauty, her eccentricity, her freedom to stand apart. But Coriolanus is white. The absence of color, the opposite of all that Lucy Gray loves and represents. However, this symbol for Coriolanus is not prominent in this book. In fact it only really exists in this book in the form of his last name-- Snow. Even that is not the name he goes by. But it is the name that forms his connection with the Capitol and all that it represents: Dr. Gaul calls him by his last name; the Capitol media makes frequent plays on his name; he is associated with the legacy of his family name; in the peacekeepers he is officially addressed as “Private Snow”. It’s also used as the voice of his ambition in the phrase that he and Tigris use, “Snow lands on top” (9). Eventually, when his character arc is complete and he has embraced evil, he switches to going by his last name, as the Epilogue exclusively refers to him as “Snow”. However, to fully grasp that a part of the symbolism of his name relates to the color white requires knowledge of the Hunger Games trilogy. There Snow is represented by his white roses. The roses are present in this book, but they are colored roses. Therefore, Coriolanus being symbolized by white is not a constant in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it’s a progression. It is Coriolanus turning against what drew him to Lucy Gray. While the progression is ongoing, the decisive moment comes when Lucy Gray uses the bright orange scarf he gave her to set a trap for him (or at least so he assumes) (581). The shift is there as he is “betrayed” by Lucy Gray’s colors, and the fulfillment is present in the person of President Snow in The Hunger Games.  By knowing the trilogy, the reader knows Coriolanus’s future and can see that he eventually eschews color, choosing the stark white which here sets him apart from Lucy Gray, but will also inevitably mark the violent contrast between him and the Girl on Fire. 

The second hallmark of Lucy Gray is her love of music. Her singing is her survival. It’s how she earns her living in District 12. It’s what unites her with her family. It’s how she expresses her emotions. It’s how she attracts attention at the Reaping and how she gains enough favor to win the Games. Coriolanus does not start out opposed to music. In fact, it initially attracts him to Lucy Gray, especially since one of her songs she sings in the Capitol awakens memories of his mother and a song she sang to him that “mentioned loving him” (78). Music is associated with his mother on several occasions, and his mother is the figure who most represents love and goodness for Coriolanus. When asked how he is like his mother he replies that they “shared a fondness for music” but also internally admits to himself that “she liked music, and he didn’t hate it, he guessed” (290). Despite his positive associations with music and his connection with people who love music (his mother, Lucy Gray, and also Pluribus), Coriolanus himself does particularly like music and doesn’t really understand it. He notes that he “can’t really sing” and when he sings the anthem “his singing was more like sustained talking” (127, 129). Beyond lacking talent, it seems that music and poetry are something that he cannot grasp; all the Capitol’s songs “sounded the same to him”, and Livia Cardew mocked him for “his inability to decipher the deeper meaning of a poem” (185). This extends later into the novel when he specifically fails to grasp the meaning of Lucy Gray’s song, which he describes as “nonsense words” and “ridiculous” because he “couldn’t make sense of it” (425, 427). Coriolanus has an inability to understand something that is an essential part of Lucy Gray which represents a failure to connect to her on a deeper level. It also distances him from those characters who demonstrate positive moral character: Lucy Gray, his mother, the generous Pluribus, and Sejanus (who Coriolanus notes had “always been good at rhetoric” (427)). Livia Cardew attributes this to Coriolanus being “self-absorbed” (185). The presentation of this trait within the book represents his moral failings and his rejection of the Romanticism which defines the Covey and the philosophical rhetoric of the Rebels and Sejanus. This puts him at odds with all that the novel holds up as praiseworthy. His attitude toward music only worsens as the book progresses and he finds that he is “weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word” (445). He feels the way it pushes him away from others and threatens his position. But the significance of the music does not stop with the concept in general. 

The novel features the lyrics of multiple songs. Lucy Gray’s ballad is notable for the way it describes her mystery, how it shows Coriolanus’s failure to truly understand or appreciate her, and how it foreshadows his hand in her destruction. However, as he brings about her destruction, she has a hand in his eventual destruction. Lucy Gray is revealed to be the writer of the two songs from the Hunger Games trilogy-- “Deep in the Meadow” (“Rue’s Song”) and “The Hanging Tree”. “Deep in the Meadow” has less prominence in this book. The context is essentially the same-- Lucy Gray sings it as a lullaby to Maude Ivory in the same way that Katniss sings it to Prim and Rue-- so it carries the same weight initially. It is a symbol of peace and comfort and love. These are things which are mostly denied to Coriolanus and things which he rejects by the end of The Ballad, and actively seeks to destroy in The Hunger Games. However, it is eventually used against him, as Katniss’s use of the song-- her gesture of love for Rue-- is what causes the first sparks of rebellion to rise up in District 11. “The Hanging Tree” plays this role to an even greater extent. Lucy Gray writes the song about a moment that Coriolanus is present for and deeply disturbed by (350-351). The song is, on one level, about doomed lovers. Within the song you have Arlo and Lil-- two Rebels whose fate is mourned and romanticized, and whose doom Coriolanus has a hand in, already casting him in the role of antagonist. However, there’s also the speaker in the song. At one point in the narrative, the speaker is Billy Taupe calling to Lucy Gray. With him in the role of speaker the love story of the song is poisonous-- when they can’t be free together, Billy Taupe wants her to die rather than be free without him (487). After his death, the song transfers to be a call from Lucy Gray to Coriolanus. However, his character is entirely antithetical to the song. He rejects the dark romanticism that makes star-crossed lovers appealing, and rather than being willing to “wear a necklace of rope side by side with” Lucy Gray, he tries to kill her, betraying her and everything she and the song stand for. The song could also be applied to another pair of star-crossed lovers-- Katniss and Peeta. In their Games, Peeta tried to save her life-- “called out for his love to flee”-- then they try to survive together-- “I told you to run, so we’d both be free”-- and when that hope is lost they are prepared to die together-- “wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me”-- in order to deny the Capitol its victory and its ownership over them. Despite being the only couple without a literal connection to the Hanging Tree (and being a fake couple at the time of their actions) Katniss and Peeta most truly embody the spirit of the song, which Lucy Gray calls “too rebellious” (491). The song is meaningful on a broader level because it subverts the symbol of the Hanging Tree, which is meant to be an instrument for the Capitol’s control, and turns into a symbol of love and hope for freedom and resistance that would rather die than submit to the Capitol. Katniss later takes this song and transforms it into an anthem for the rebellion. In fact, it’s compared by Lucy Gray and Coriolanus to the Capitol’s anthem, saying it “has authority” like “when [Coriolanus] sang the anthem in the Capitol” (491). Katniss gives it the platform to be the rival anthem that it was destined to be, and she uses it to attack Snow. Lucy Gray haunts Coriolanus through the Hunger Games trilogy through her songs. These songs which are all that remains of the girl he betrayed and destroyed, come back as weapons against him, brandished as symbols of all that he and his tyranny stand against. 

Beyond her general association with music, Lucy Gray is associated with birds. Her musical nature makes her a songbird like that of the title and her family is deemed “the Covey”-- covey is a word which means “a small party or flock of birds”. The way she is continually conscious of her appearance early in her time in the Capitol evokes a bird preening, as the ruffles of her brightly colored dress evoke feathers. Coriolanus ends up dealing with birds through his work as a peacekeeper, rounding up jabberjays and mockingjays. While his team member shows an affinity for birds, Coriolanus does not. He specifically notes that while some people “just understand birds” he is certain “that he would never be one of those people” (413). In an immediate sense, this once again signals a distance between him and Lucy Gray. She is a bird that he can never understand. In contrast, Lucy Gray has an affinity for snakes. The clearest counterpart for snakes is Coriolanus himself. His use of poison in this book and the Hunger Games trilogy creates the suggestion that he is venomous (especially when the evidence of his poisoning is found in the sores in his mouth). Dr. Gaul also breeds deadly snakes in the same way that she grooms Coriolanus into the man he becomes. Her snakes ignore him as if he is one of them. And Lucy Gray “always knows where [snakes] will be” (433). She uses her understanding of snakes to her advantage, dropping one down Mayfair’s dress, leaving one as a trap for Coriolanus, and poisoning Treech with one. The snakes in the Games end up drawn to her and soothed by her singing. Coriolanus is drawn to her and her singing in the same way, and likewise is used by her to win the Games. Lucy Gray seems to understand Coriolanus in a way that he can never understand her. However, she may have confused him for one of the non-venomous snakes from District 12, rather than a snake specifically bred to kill by Dr. Gaul. Or perhaps she subconsciously knows the truth about him since she states, “I love all kinds of things I don’t trust… snakes. Sometimes I think I love them because I can’t trust them” (441). Regardless of how his role of a snake attracts Lucy Gray, her role as a bird creates tension with Coriolanus. The wildness of the birds unsettles him. He expresses the belief that they’d be happier in a cage, but both Bug and Lucy Gray believe the birds should be free (418, 421). It reflects Coriolanus’s relationship with nature in general. It cannot be controlled and so he dislikes it. When he first sees the woods he is afraid of them; “the disorder alone felt disturbing” (348). This is a stark contrast to both Lucy Gray, who frequents the woods with the Covey, and Katniss who thrives in the woods. In similar fashion, the plant that Katniss is named for, and which aids in Lucy Gray’s survival (435, 497) grows wild, while Coriolanus’s signature flower, his roses, are domesticated and highly cultivated. Coriolanus likes only what he can control. It’s when he realizes that he cannot control Lucy Gray that he turns on her. This distinction takes on further relevance in his specific response to the jabberjays and the mockingjays

Coriolanus appreciates the jabberjays because they can be controlled easily with a simple remote control. Mockingjays, however, represent the uncontrollable. His reaction to them is immediate: “he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight” (352). Later he advocates killing all the mockingjays because “they’re unnatural” and “he distrusted their spontaneous creation. Nature running amok” (417). Lucy Gray on the other hand loves the mockingjays. When the mockingjays take up her song “the Covey were all smiles” and Tam Amber asserts “like sandstones to diamonds, that’s what we are to them” (439). Here Coriolanus expresses that what he fears most is that the mockingjays have removed “the Capitol birds from the equation” (439). He deeply believes in the need for the Capitol to maintain control, so something that openly flouts the need for the Capitol’s influence is both frightening and a threat to the beliefs that define him. Coriolanus eventually uses the jabberjays (a symbol of Capitol control) to betray Sejanus. In return, Lucy Gray uses the mockingjays to protect herself from Coriolanus as he hunts her (504). If she survived the encounter, it is because of the mockingjays. With his transformation into Snow complete, he is able to return to the Capitol. When he looks back on his time in District 12, he views Lucy Gray not as a lost love but as a conquered threat. Because Lucy Gray was someone he could not control he repaints her in his memory as someone who manipulated him and made him feel jealous and weak (516). But with his new power Snow is assured that “she and her mockingjays could never harm him again” (516). The memories have been twisted to associate Lucy Gray with mockingjays and in turn with harm done to him, though neither has ever actually harmed him. However, knowledge of the Hunger Games trilogy reveals the clear irony of his statement. Katniss uses the mockingjays to help her in the Games and makes them a tool for herself. They then become a symbol of the rebellion for the very reason that he initially hated them. Katniss comes to embody the things that mockingjay symbolizes and she and that symbol are the rallying point for the rebellion. Because of the Mockingjay that he can never predict, understand or control, everything Snow is and has built is destroyed. 

Lucy Gray is a vibrant character that tempts Coriolanus toward a better life and a better way of being. Everything about her symbolizes a potential for good within him in his early years. However, he fully and irrevocably rejects that good. In doing so he commits his first great sin and destroys Lucy Gray. But he is unable to entirely destroy her. In fact, he’s never even sure if he killed her. Instead, she stays on as a ghost girl, her influence haunting District 12. From her influence rises Katniss, the Girl on Fire, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the songbird Snow killed. Katniss is symbolically linked to Lucy Gray, but at the same time wholly distinct. Through her, Lucy Gray haunts Snow as punishment for his crimes. This link between the Songbird and the Mockingjay represents the way that Snow’s evil paved the way for his own destruction, but more importantly it shows that the things which he rejects and opposes and tries to kill cannot be destroyed. The spark of hope cannot be put out, beauty will not be tamed, and rebellion cannot stay dead in the face of tyranny. Those things were always destined to destroy him. Though The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may end with “Snow lands on top,” Lucy Gray is the persistent reminder that “The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings.” 

Choosing a rune set: A beginner's guide

by Michelle Gruben

Thinking about taking up the runes? Mastery of the runes can take many years, but it is not difficult for a beginner to learn the basics. (Much as young children can quickly learn their ABCs.) The first learning tool you’ll need is a rune set of your own, to begin familiarizing yourself with this ancient system of knowledge.

First, some background: Runes are archaic European letters used in magick and divination. The best-known runic alphabet is the Elder Futhark, which contains 24 symbols.There are other rune systems, such as the Younger Futhark, Northumbrian runes, and Witches' runes. But most of the time, when people talk about reading runes, they are referring to the Elder Futhark, which fell out of use as an alphabet around the 8th century AD.

Each rune has a threefold meaning: A phonetic sound (as a letter of the alphabet), a mundane object or action that it stands for, and a mystical or abstract significance. Rune-casting—or reading the runes—is a way to activate intuition and gather information about the past, present and future. Runic symbols have powerfully condensed meaning. Sometimes, a single letter says something that paragraphs cannot.

Make or buy?

Making your own set of rune stones or tiles is an excellent way to begin to learn the runic symbols. Painting or carving the runes can be a kind of meditation, and help to infuse your new rune set with your energy. Depending on your level of craftiness and the tools/materials available to you, making your first rune set can be a great option that lets you express your creativity.

On the other hand, there are many beautiful rune sets for sale—many made with materials and techniques that would not be practical to replicate at home. Investing in a pre-made rune set that calls to you can be an equally good beginning to your runic studies.

Usually, rune sets for sale at metaphysical stores include the 24 Elder Futhark runes. Most also have one blank (or “wyrd”) rune that acts as a wild card. A drawstring bag or box and a set of basic instructions may also come with your runes. However, don’t feel that you have to use any of these items just because they were sold as a set. Rune-reading practices vary greatly, and eventually you will settle on a method that works for you.

Making your own runes

If you go the route of making your own Elder Futhark runes, you will need 24 roughly equal-sized objects that will become your rune tiles. (25 if you wish to include a blank rune.) Your backyard or local craft store probably has something that can be made into runes. (Be sure to practice good magickal etiquette if you take something from nature.) Wooden nickels, tree branch slices, earthen clay, and even glass aquarium gems all make serviceable homemade runes.

Obviously, some materials are more durable than others. I made my first set of runes with flat rocks gathered from a streambed. I didn’t realize that they were made out of fragile sedimentary rock. They flaked and crumbled to pieces after several weeks of being dry. Uncured wood will split, and painted symbols will chip off when the runes tumble together in a bag. It may take some trial and error to make a rune set that can endure being carried around and used in readings. Wood-burning, clear-coating, kiln-firing and engraving are all crafting techniques that will help your handmade runes stand up to wear and tear.

Materials

Rune sets can be made from a staggering variety of materials: Glass, bone, antler, wood, gemstone, ceramic, metals, and common stones. What you choose mainly depends on your preferences and budget. What feels most magickal to you?

Bone runes are made from cleaned animal bones, which are then painted or engraved with the runic symbols. (I’ll admit that bone items personally skeeve me out, but many Witches who work closely with the animal kingdom love them.)  If you collect bones, or know someone who does, you can create your own set from the bones of a special animal. Commercial bone runes are usually made from water buffalo bone—a byproduct of meat and dairy farming in Asia.

Antler runes are made from cross-sections of deer antlers. Antlers are fast-growing bones, and their magickal properties are similar to bone. Antler runes would be a marvelous choice for a rune-reader who connects with Stag energy. (Both bone and antler runes look like puppy treats to dogs—so keep your prized rune set away from Fido.)

Wood runes can be made from nearly any type of wood. You may wish to choose one of the folkloric magickal woods for your rune set (Oak, Ash, Elder), or some other wood with a personal significance. Wood runes may be painted, engraved, woodburned—or a combination of these methods. A sealant or varnish gives the wood a lovely sheen and helps protect the symbols, but many rune-readers prefer to keep it all natural with a light coating of oil or beeswax.

Stone runes are made with precious gems, semi-precious stones, or even ordinary pebbles. Some Norse Pagans I know insist that wood and bone are the only proper materials for rune tiles. Rune stones, they say, are a modern, New Age invention.

Even so, gemstone rune sets—which combine the metaphysical lore of crystals with the runic alphabet—are probably the most popular type of rune set among Wiccans and Pagans. Gemstone runes are pleasingly heavy when cast, and undeniably beautiful to work with. You can choose your gemstone rune set based on the magickal properties of the stone—Amethyst for intuition, Jasper for courage, Hematite for protection, etc.

Ceramic runes include rune tiles made from air-dried, oven-baked, or kiln-fired clay. (The latter is the most durable.) They are popular with DIY-ers, and those who connect especially with the element of Earth. One of my favorite artisans makes rune sets from fragments of pottery that have washed ashore in her coastal town—they are unique and colorful runes of Earth and sea!

Glass runes and pewter runes are specialty items that are hard to find. Though these materials are made by humans, they are perfectly appropriate for magickal work if they appeal to you.

Are there any materials that should not be made into runes? I’m a magickal pragmatist. I’m into what works, and I don’t have much regard for sacred cows. But. As a magickal pragmatist, it’s perfectly fair to point out that the runes work best when treated with the utmost respect and dignity. Odin, it is told, hung on the World Tree for nine days and nine nights in order to receive the secret of the runes. It just seems wrong to look up the symbols on Pinterest and start carving them onto Styrofoam.

You can argue, I suppose, that since the runes are a sacred alphabet, they sanctify everything they touch. And yet, I have an instinctive revulsion toward runes made from paper, wood composites, and plastics (polymer clay included).

The runic symbols are worthy of great reverence—but there are no absolutes when it comes to selecting rune tiles. I recently broke my own rules and added a set of inexpensive resin runes to my store. I wouldn’t want a lack of money to prevent anyone from studying the runes. Even a basic set of runes can become a powerful tool in the hands of a serious seeker.

Size and Shape

All settled about the material? It’s time to spare a bit of thought on the size of your runes. Runes, especially gemstone runes, may be as small as a half-inch—too small to be practical for most readers. Basically, you want the rune set to be easy to read, and to feel comfortable in your hands. If you’re going to be reading for others, or in low light, go a bit larger. Even big runes are really travel-sized!

Rune tiles vary in size and shape, even within the same set. If you use the “blind draw” method of rune-reading (putting your hand in the bag and feeling around), it becomes more important for the runes to be a fairly uniform size.

One final consideration is the shape of the runes: Flat, round, symmetrical? Round-ish runes are fine for drawing from the bag. But if you want to lay your runes out in lines or grids, tile-shaped is the way to go.

Some rune readers—but not all—read “reversed” runes. Reversals give a different meaning when a rune lands face-down, or upside-down. If your rune tiles are very round and/or symmetrical, it will be more difficult to tell when a rune comes up reversed. Some runes (like Isa and Gebo) look the same whether they're upright or inverted. If getting the reversed meaning is important to you, get an asymmetrical set and memorize the orientation.

Choosing your first rune set can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. Pick a set you're drawn to, learn the symbols, and begin using the power of the runes to transform your life and magick!

https://www.groveandgrotto.com/blogs/articles/choosing-a-rune-set

not the same anon, I just have feelings about this. I hope it's okay to send in a message: i don't love zuko. like, he's a good character, with amazing arc, but the fandom just woobifies him so much. I've seen very few people actually talk about his mistakes and how they impacted the gaang and I realize that they've forgiven him! but it's still iffy. instead, a lot of people will take the good qualities of aang and sokka and just sic them onto zuko bc, what, he's cute? also the way he treated azula in the comics (I relate very strongly to azula so I'm probably biased) just doesn't sit right with me.

the best part about zuko is that he learnt from his mistakes. he was fed fire nation propaganda throughout his life and was forced to unlearn it DUE TO POSITIVE INFLUENCES AND HIS EXPERIENCES IN THE COLONISED VILLAGES. it's super annoying to see people just gloss over these things.

Agwhskks yeah I agree that fandom tends to glorify Zuko too much (hence @thinkingisadangerouspastime and I like to keep him humble. But rest assured we love him 🤣). Even before fandom, Zuko wasn't the character that appealed to me the most (and unpopular opinion but when I was younger I was more drawn to Aang being charming and adorkable than to Zuko's angst and awkwardness. But then again, I also never had that childhood crush on Zuko cuz I only liked his Book 3 hair and I was much older when I got to watch Book 3. I'll admit tho I did find him attractive for a while when I saw Book 3 but that was short-lived.)

Yeah tho I feel lotsa people tend to zero in on Zuko over the other characters for whatever reason. Yeah, he's attractive by usual standards, but I'm sure there are people who also admire his arc (which is amazing, as you said!) And I agree, that's the entire point—his arc is so good because we see him start out as a hot-headed, violent, bitter, and selfish guy and we see him grow from that. Or grow back into who he really is before Ozai's abuse—a sensitive, awkward, kind, and sweet boy who likes turtleducks. To ignore the first part is to undermine the arc. It's sad to see this complexity overwritten for the—as I've heard it called—"soft boy uwu" characterization.

And to add on to what you said about positive influences, I think it's very ironic how these positive influences are then ignored or hated (*cough* Aang *cough*).

As for Azula ... is this about how he demonizes her and has her put in a strait jacket? I have personally never been that invested in Azula so didn't really think about this much. Idk if therapy, meds, etc. was a thing already in the ATLAverse, but iirc, psych has had ... uncomfortable methods of dealing with patients in the past (like electric chairs) because mental health was less understood + Azula is def a danger (a canonical history of murder and attempted murder) so idk if this was the best they could think of at the time. Not saying it was right or is a good message to put out, but idk how advanced psychiatry was in the ATLAverse?

This is a quick read I brought up on Google btw about straitjackets. Not a psych at all nor am I an authority on history/mental health tho lol so I would love to hear other input!

𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 - nomad steve rogers x sw! reader

steve rogers is not usually the guy to seek out a stranger for relief, but after going into hiding post-avengers-breakup in amsterdam, the sultry red glow emitting from the neon signs in the red light’s district seem more and more tempting each passing night.

( warnings: nsfw, rough, sex work, descriptive smut, slight dom x sub undertones, dark! nomad steve, angsty, oral sex (male recieving), etc. )

Word Count: approx. 4.9k

this is my first one shot, my apologies for making it so long! i got a little carried away. tbh i’m thinking about turning it into a series if people like it enough, i think theres room to explore things here but for now just enjoy! i’d love some feedback if you have any! happy reading!

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

To say that Steve Rogers was exhausted would be an understatement. After the fight that broke out in Germany, where friends became enemies and enemies became friends, the blonde super soldier had lost track of time. Although the memories seared through his mind like a surgeons cautery pen as if they were yesterday, the image of Tony in a rage and taking hit after hit, Bucky going under cryo in Wakanda, it had been almost a year. It was hard to believe it; the burner phone weighed heavily in his pocket with no calls or text from his former friend and wealthy fellow avenger. But, in the time he had been on the run, Amsterdam had been the most recent place to call a temporary home. He had stayed in places not so pleasant, like the little motels all across Russia as he backpacked further west into Europe, never really staying in any place for long. He was overly cautious; the man had lost faith in most forms of authority, which rang with such a strong sense of irony considering he was at one point the epitome of a law abiding citizen. Poor pre-serum Steve wouldn't know what to think of the man he had become; bitter, closed off, easily agitated, irritable, and even a bit cruel. He hated the world that had suddenly hated him, the world he found himself wishing he had never woken up into. Steve had become so unbearable that he and sam had split ways for a while, promising to reconvene in London should it be necessary. But now, Steve was on his own, staring out the window of his hotel room that had the perfect view of the canals that swirled like ink, and the bridge that lead right into the ever so alluring Red Light District.

During the day, the Red Light District was rather inconspicuous, perhaps slightly less attractive than the rest of the city, if anything at all. The bricks aligned in a herringbone pattern practically guided you past window after window of beautiful women, quite literally anyone you imagined. The closer you get to the area, the louder the buzzing of neon gets. The bars are usually pretty empty during the day, a few stray women, presumably escorts, looking to pick up an alcoholic or two having a drink at noon. Steve often found himself in these bars, but only during the day to find a place away from the tourist infested hotel and his sad, tiny hotel room. He never got anything to drink besides water, since alcohol metabolized far too quickly in his body to have any affect on him anyways. It was times like these that he missed Thor’s Asgardian brews, the only alcohol he had ever tried that made him feel something, any kind of buzz. But alas, he stuck to water in the dimly lit, smokey bars with sunlight seeping in through the above-ground windows.

The women of the Red Light District never tempted him, at least during the day. Steve had never found the appeal in casual sex. Yes, he was a man with desires and wants and needs, but part of him was too unbothered to try anything. He had Sharon, at one point in time, early on in his fugitive life, but they had since parted ways for the same reason he and Sam parted ways. The man was far too distant to really feel anything, but there was something about this place at night that drew him in more than he wanted to admit. Was it the otherworldly red glow that caught his eye? Or rather the shadows of women dancing in the windows, that same sensual red caressing their skin, barely dressed and jewels adorning their skin and necklaces resting against collarbones and heels far too tall for day to day wear? Perhaps it was the EDM that pounded from the many clubs, or maybe there was something else he couldn’t explain, a primal nature in him that drove him to near madness when he lay in bed trying to sleep, the soft red glow haunting him through the thin curtains covering the sliding door to a balcony. Sometimes, Steve would sit out there, watching the wonderland from afar, scratching his beard as he contemplated venturing into the maw of the beast. He never gave in, knowing the risk of being caught was serving time for treason at best.

But this particular night, Steve was insatiable. His own hands couldn’t possibly satisfy the craving that couldn’t be satisfied, the itch that just couldn’t be scratched. He was usually relatively satisfied after a few minutes, his hand wrapped around the thick veiny shaft of his cock and leaning against the headboard of his bed as he swiftly sent himself over the edge. But tonight was something else entirely. He had gone at it three or four times, his bare and sculpted chest glistening with sweat and his lower half slick with his cum. It didn’t help that his neighbor in the suite next door must have brought home a girl, because between the pounding of the headboard against the wall and the fake moans the poor girl had to emit was obnoxious, Steve couldn’t possibly take it anymore. He put on a few layers, as it was starting to get a little chilly in the city, as well as a hat to hide his face behind, and ventured out into the belly of the beast. He wandered for a while, keeping his head low for a while, until he realized how the red lights drowned out most features. his hat cast a deep shadow over his face, his hands shoved in his pockets as he finally lift his head to look up at the scantily clad women in the windows, waving at passerby after passerby. A few spotted him and fear coursed through his veins, but they didn’t recognize him, only thought he was handsome enough to warrant their attention. but he wasn’t drawn to any of them, not like he was drawn to you.

You were something else entirely. Although you were tucked away towards the end of the rows of windows, your presence was enthralling. He moved closer to the window as if you were a siren and he was lured to you by your song. You hadn’t spotted him yet, dressed in what was more of a burlesque showgirl kind of costume, almost pinup style. The crystals upon your leather bra reflected the haunting neon lights into fragments of color, bouncing around and catching the eye, although your perky breasts were just another set of eye catchers. Steve felt his cock twitch beneath the denim of his jeans, cursing his quick recovery speed considering he had left his hotel almost immediately after his fourth orgasm of the night. The super soldier took off his hat and ran his hands through his long hair to disturb it, never once taking his eyes off of you. you had finally spotted him at this point, noticing the handsome figure now smirking at you as you made eye contact. His stunning blues still managed to shine underneath the red light and something about that carnal look behind them made you forget any other potential customer besides him. you moved coyly, turning around to play shy and peeking over your shoulder, but turning around exposed your plump bum and swaying your hips only accentuated such a feature. You checked again to see if he was still watching, which he was, though a smirk was ever so present beneath his thick beard. Your mouth began to water at the imaginary feeling of his beard between your legs, the coarse hair tickling your inner thighs. This is what sent you over the edge, lifting your hand and summoning him with a single finger, your long nails accentuating the movement. Steve hesitated for a moment, looking over both shoulders, before moving towards the door. 

Steve had never solicited anyone before. He had never really had one night stands, let alone payed anyone for sex. He was that kind of guy who wanted chemistry and a relationship between him and his partner, as cheesy as that sounded. He may still be adjusting to the modern world but it didn’t matter when he woke up from being under ice, he would have always felt that way. But he sure as hell felt chemistry between you and him. He entered the room just as you were closing the curtains, standing in the doorway as he took in the layout of the very small room. Where you stood was the giant window that you lured customers through, the lights that once shone through the window were now blocked by thick curtains and that very same red light that haunted his every filthy thought flooded the room. It was tiny, a small bed a little larger than a twin was pressed against the wall, with a sink directly across. It was clean, plainly decorated, but clean. He assumed that every room looked like this. Steve finally got a closer look at you as you stood there staring at him, your painted lips curved into a teasing smile. He noticed that bit of mischief was prevalent in you; he could see it in your eyes, your expressive brows, your hands that wandered your own body to tease him, and god, was it working.

"You're new here." you said, moving in to place your hand's on his broad shoulders beneath his heavy canvas coat, letting them slide down to his chest and slowly unzip. Normally, you'd ask for your payment ahead of time, but this man seemed like he was going to be payment enough. "I've never seen you around, neither have the other girls. Otherwise there would have been plenty of talk. It's not often we get handsome strangers like you in all to ourselves."

Steve was mildly surprised to hear english, tensing up as he felt you unzip his coat, but he couldn't help but let you. Your accent didn't sound like the natives of Amsterdam, making him more and more curious about you. Every new thing he learned about you made him crave you even more, and though he was holding back, he wasn't sure he wanted to anymore.

"Your accent. It isn't Dutch." he was curt, his words getting to the point and it only made you wonder if he would be this harsh and unrefined with your body, something you had been craving from a beautiful man like him.

"It isn't." You pushed his coat off his shoulders to reveal a white t shirt that looked a few sizes too small considering his bulging muscles. The sleeves look like they'd burst any moment. "Would you like it to be?" You purred, arms wrapping around his neck and playing with his long hair, hair that hadn't seen a barber in far too long. "I can be a sweet little girl from London, or perhaps a feisty American woman, or a seductive French Woman fresh from Paris," You mimicked every accent with uncanny precision, leaving the blonde man unsettled and impressed. There was more to you than meets the eye, apparently. Steve was tense as he felt you get even closer, the heat from your bare body enough to make him feel that desire come back full force, blood rushing to his lower abdomen and feeling himself get warm as his large hands finally found their place at your waist, that mischievous smirk growing upon your red lips. "I can be anyone you want me to be." you tugged at his hair playfully.

"To be frank, I don't care. Just be you." he pulled you in roughly, body to body, face only inches from each other. A silent agreement was made between the two of you; this was really going to happen. Your lips collided into a heated kiss. Steve had never felt so sexually attracted to someone in his life without really knowing them. Perhaps that was the appeal, the idea that he had no idea who you were, only that you were willing to do almost anything and be anyone he asked for some euros. He pulled away from the kiss, the two of you now panting as you tugged at the hem of his shirt and helped him lift it up over his head, revealing one hell of a body. What was a man like him doing in Amsterdam alone? Was he single or was he filling the void of a lacking lover with prostitutes in the window brothels? You did not have time to dwell upon those thoughts any longer as his lips found your neck, his arms wrapped around you from behind as you let out little mewls of pleasure. His scratchy beard sent shivers down your spine, lips leaving little red splotches that would surely darken over time. His grip was strong, commanding, a little harsh, but you liked that.

"What can I call you?" you purred, pushing your hips back into his and finding that he had a large bulge that was only getting bigger by the moment. "How does that feel, Sir?" you tested, your hand reaching behind to touch his face while the other rest on top of one of his hands and guided it to your breast. "Do you like it, Master?" Still not a satisfactory reaction from the man you wished to seduce, although he continued to work at your neck and let out a soft groan as his large hand cupped at your breast still covered by the costume you wore. "If you want it, come and get it, Daddy." This was the name, you decided, noticing him freeze at the name before his grip got rougher and he was a little more reckless with you. Steve caught that mischievous look in your eyes again in the mirror and finally the man let go of all his inhibitions. He spun you around to face him before he kissed you again, sloppily and full of need as if you were his life force. His hands wandered your back, pulling you towards him and pressing your body against his chiseled one. the kiss was suffocating in the best way possible, one of his hands sliding up to your face, leaving a trail of goosebumps upon your skin. It settled at your neck, momentarily wrapping around it as if he threatened to tighten his grip, before pressing at the back of your neck to deepen the kiss. He grabbed fistfuls of your freshly done curls that reminded him of the show girls he toured with back in the forties. Everything about you screamed home to him, despite you being completely unaware of what home even was to him, despite him not even having a home anymore. You pulled away only to look him in those beautiful light eyes, the two of you basking in the deep red light that perfectly reflected the heavy heat of the room. Your hands swiftly moved to undo his belt and slide down his jeans that pooled down at his knees, leaving him in his briefs. The imprint of his bulge clearly showed how he yearned for you, his shaft wanting nothing more to escape its confine. you guided him to the little bed and had him lean against it while you wedged yourself between his legs. The way you looked up at him had him going wild, innocent eyes looking up at him through thick lashes as you palmed his cock through the thin fabric. You loved the way he looked down at you, the way his knuckles had turned white from gripping the edge of the bed too rough. He looked down at you with an intensity you rarely saw in a man as you hooked your thumbs into the elastic waistband and tugged down, his member springing out and standing at attention as his boxers joined his other clothing on the floor. Steve watched in awe as you left open mouth kisses on the veiny shaft, groaning upon the feeling of your soft lips where he craved you the most. You were shocked at how large he was, although you shouldn’t have been just by looking at him. You lifted the mattress to grab a condom wrapper, tearing it open and rolling it over his hard member. You, like all the other sex workers in the Red Light District, refused to not use a condom. It was common knowledge and Steve silently agreed to it. He didn't want to make you uncomfortable. His hands found their place in your hair again as your tongue dragged from the base to tip, flicking over the slit that leaked clear precum into the latex. Steve’s body reacted more than he would have liked, involuntarily tensing. A low growl rumbled in his chest as you finally began to take him into your mouth, little by little as your hands with manicured nails wrapped around the shaft. He watched you as you began to bob your head, groans of pleasure escaping him. You looked so beautiful to him, unearthly and sinful with drool dribbling down your chin and watery eyes from taking his thick length into your mouth and hitting the back of your throat. He hadn’t felt the touch of a woman in too long, unaware of how much he had been craving physical intimacy. Watching you move was enough to make him explode right then and there, but he held it back, the coil in his lower abdomen tightening up as he threatened to orgasm.

"Yeah, that's right, doll, take it." he moaned, really getting into things now. You looked up to see his eyes shut and head tossed back. His neck was tense and jaw clenched. He was already close to an orgasm, which was unsurprising to a woman in your field, however you didn't want the fun to end so soon. Your hands moved away from his cock and you braced yourself on either of his thighs as you began to deepthroat him, taking all seven inches down. Suppressing your gag reflex was easy enough, although your jaw ached from his girth. He let out a guttural moan, one he couldn't hold back like the others as your lips closed around him and bottomed out down your throat. He pulled on your hair, the pleasure too overwhelming, but you refused to let him give in. You pulled away with a gasp, strings of saliva connected from his cock to your lips as you breathed heavily and your hands moved at the pace your head had bobbed.

"Does Daddy like it? Does it make him wanna bust? Come on, Daddy-" Steve had enough of the taunting. He lift your chin up so he could look at you, a proper mess with smeared lip stick and drool, wiping it away with his thumb.

"You drive me insane." was all he said before he scooped you up and placed you on the bed. He kicked off his clothes that pooled around his ankles and swiftly undid your own bra, your nipples hardening to the cool air as Steve hovered over you. Once again, his lips found their place at your neck, admiring his marks that had now deepened and went over them again, but unsuspecting you had been so consumed with the feeling of his lips on your neck and trailing down that you hadn't noticed his hand slip away from your waist and slipped beneath the fabric of your lacy promiscuous bottoms. Your eyes, which had previously been shut as you enjoyed his lips on your neck, flew open as you gasped, back arching up towards his hovering body upon feeling his fingers slide between your slick folds. Steve wanted nothing more than to slide into you right then and there upon hearing that beautiful sigh escape you. His cock twitched in need as his lips trailed further down, nibbling on your collarbones and leaving breathy, open mouth kisses until taking the delicate rosebud of your nipple into his mouth and sucking gently while a finger skillfully slid inside you. Your moans were symphonic, like beautiful song, although he knew they weren't faked like the neighbor's girl, her sing-songy moans that annoyed him to no end. He was genuinely pleasing her, and he loved it. You grew wetter by the second, the feeling of his finger, and then fingers inside of you, his lips leaving marks all over your breasts, you weren't sure how much longer you could last. And there was another moment of silent communication, as Steve pulled away, sliding his middle and ring finger out of her and placing them to her lips. "Be a good girl and clean them up." he demanded, groaning as you parted your lips and sucked his fingers clean, tongue swirling around them sensually. His cock twitched at the feeling before pouncing, pinning you down and kissing you feverishly and you reciprocating once more. His hands slid down your body to remove what little clothing was still on you, leaving the two of you bare. Your taste on your tongue was intoxicating, and if he had more time and more patience he would have savored it and perhaps gone down on you, but he was impatient and needed you. Steve's eyes met yours as he lined himself up with you and slid in, the two of you erupting into moans neither of you could hold back. It had been almost a year since the last time Steve had had sex, but you didn't have that excuse. Your moans shocked you. Steve shocked you. You had sex all into the night, every single night, several men leaving this very room and yet none of them felt the way Steve did inside of you. You were unsure of whether or not it was because of how attracted to each other you both were or if he was simply that large (or perhaps it was both), but as he bottomed out inside of you, your nails dug into his broad shoulders and he buried his face into the crook of your neck. You shut your eyes tight, seeing stars from the sheer pleasure of it all, but slowly it began to fade, to which Steve took as a sign to begin to move. He pinned your arms over your head as he pulled almost all the way out, smirking as he slammed back into you. It felt intense as he reached spots few other men had over reached, proving himself superior with every roll of his hips. Steve found satisfaction in the way your face morphed, eyes squeezing shut and nose scrunching before lips parted and formed a perfect "o" shape, letting out another moan that was like music to his ears. It spurred him on, encouraging him to keep going. "You like that, baby?" he asked, although you were so consumed by the pleasure that only incoherent mumbles could escape your lips. Steve wasn't satisfied by this. "Use your words, dollface or else Daddy won't let you cum. Tell me how much you love how I fuck you." He demanded, really getting into it as he picked up the pace, grunting softly as your tight walls gripped him like no other. You were a desperate mess at this point, eyes wild and filled with arousal and fear as the sounds of sex filled the air, skin to skin contact and the faint thumping of EDM from a nearby club. The unmistakable smell of it consumed your mind, unable to form a single proper thought and fully enveloped in this electrifying sense of primal desire. Your body felt hot, a thin sheen of sweat glistening upon your skin like diamonds, your baby hair starting to stick to your forehead from the pleasure of it all. You could feel yourself reaching your climax but you knew he'd deny you of that thing you chased if you didn't talk, if you didn't beg for it. "God, I love how you fuck me, Daddy. You're so big inside of me, you fill me up so good-" You were interrupted by a moan that escaped you involuntarily as he purposely rolled his hips deep into you. You were dangerously close and Steve could feel it too, the way you clenched around him, the way your body rolled like the tides beneath him. He needed to orgasm, but he refused until he heard you beg. "Beg for me, baby girl." He demanded, now thrusting at an ungodly speed. You weren't sure how any human could move like this, but you had no idea who he was, really. You had no idea that he wasn't some average human, you could only assume he was just some guy with extraordinary skills. Steve let go of your hands to get better leverage over you, and your hands flew to his back. "Please Daddy, let me cum," you begged, nails digging into his skin and leaving claw marks upon his flesh to serve as a reminder later when he showered that this was not a dream. "I love how good you fuck me, no other man can possibly compare to you. I love your big cock inside of me, it makes me feel so good. Please daddy, I'm begging you, let your baby girl cum-" You were interrupted by his hand reaching down to find your clit and begin circling it with his fingers, nearly sending you over the edge. But it wasn't his skillful fingers or his thrusting that got you to your peak, but his words, his command that brought you to your orgasm. "Cum for me, doll." Four simple words made you cum, an explosive orgasm that reminded you of the birth of a star. Pleasure ripped through you like white hot lightning and rippled out to your fingers and toes and left you feeling like you were made of stardust and nothing more. You hadn't even realized how loud you were moaning because you were so consumed with the immense pleasure he brought you. Your toes curled and eyes shut tight, head tossed back, shaking violently as your legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him in and deeper inside of you. Steve was close, himself, but you pulling him in deeper and deeper with your strong legs around his waist sent him over the edge. He wanted to admire the beauty that was you as you orgasmed, but he could hardly focused as you had tightened around him and an orgasm was imminent. He thrust into you once, twice, and three more times before he came as well, spilling into the condom wrapped around his shaft. He let out a guttural moan in your ear, his own eyes shut tight. The two of you slowly fell from your highs together, panting heavily. Steve's warm breath tickled your neck as he peppered kisses upon your skin again, softening inside of you. It took a moment for you to recover, as it did for Steve, but he seemed eager to leave. You were a bit disappointed as he got up so soon and threw away the used condom, sighing as he was finally satisfied. for now. "How much do I owe you?" he asked as he started to get dressed again, the jingling of his belt filling the heavy silence in the room. You looked at him, languidly propped up on the bed, staring at him like he was a god. "Nothing." you said after a moment of silence. he paused and looked at you, pushing back his long hair and suppressing a smile. "I've never had sex like that before, you must've been angry for a very long time." You teased, grabbing your robe and wrapping yourself up. You grabbed your cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke out between your smudged lips. He scoffed and shook his head, putting his t shirt back on. "Yeah. I guess you could say that." His voice was low, gravelly and quiet, as if that were a loaded statement. If only he could tell you of his troubles, the tales of glory and triumphs...and losses. He had walked in with slumped shoulders and his guard up, but now you noticed his posture had straightened and he seemed a little lighter on his feet. That alone was enough payment. It amused you. You stared at the wallpaper for a moment as he slipped on his hat and began to push the door open. "Can I be expecting you again?" you asked, trying not to let the hopefulness seep into your words. He looked down at his shoes before looking up at you, your curls all distressed, smeared lipstick, blowing smoke out into the air as you leaned against the bed they had fucked on only moments ago. You were otherworldly, and though sometimes it was hard for you to see yourself as even human, he thought the world of you. Brave enough to let strange men fuck you, enter the most vulnerable state a human can be. He admired that about you. "I don't know," was all he could say. You looked at him and nodded, taking a drag from your cigarette and sighing, smoke exiting your body through your nose. Looking down at your bare feet, you pursed your lips. "Well, you know where to find me." You told him. He took one last look at you before he nodded respectfully, leaving without another word. And with that, he disappeared like a ghost.

Avoiding scams in witchcraft

Not sure if someone has made a post like this or not, but I am seeing more and more obvious scams on my dash daily. As an experienced witch, let me tell you, I've come across my fair share of scams.

Here's how you can identify them:

"I have SECRETS that NO ONE ELSE has!! Also, NO ONE ELSE will teach you these secrets because they are MEAN and SECRETIVE. BUT I'M NOT. I will teach you. For a small fee for the 'risk'." You do not have to pay someone for "secrets" of any nature. Especially not as a beginner or even intermediate witch - you have so much information freely available to you. The most you might pay is the price of a book.

"I'm a psychic and I'm coming out of left field to tell you that you've been cursed, but no worries, I can lift it for you!! For a fee. :)" You would think this is obvious but verify, verify, verify. Also as a rule don't trust the spells of someone you don't know unless you know someone they've helped.

Be CAREFUL about magical services in general. People won't tell you this cause they want to make money, but SO MUCH is easy to fake. Jewelry with a companion in it? Bought that bulk for $1 a pop and scribbled in a .50 journal about it, sell for $35. No magic performed. Copy-pasted tarot, rune, and psychic readings. Sure, I cast that spell, send me $50. The thing is, unless you're talented enough to cast it yourself in the first place, you won't know when someone's conning you.

"This is DEFINITELY allnaturalorganicsupersafe scrub/balm/soap/lotion to apply to your *insert sensitive area* and yes it IS worth $85 I went to the rainforest myself to collect the ingredients." Just use some quick googling and your common sense, here. Certain herbs and essential oils are not meant for certain things. Just because they sell this stuff, doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.

Another good rule - if you're working with a vendor and they make an appeal to your guilt, your grief, your loneliness, etc.? Really good chance they're pressing that button to get you to spend. Some examples: "I see you are lonely let me cast a love spell $5 off for this thing you weren't going to get in the first place." "I can channel the spirit of your dead grandma via ouija. *disappears for three days* I was SHOOK her presence was SO powerful she said she loves you and she's happy, no I didn't ask her any identifying questions... $40 please."

"Ready to ADVANCE your CAREER as a WITCH??? WELL COME ON DOWN to LADY OF THE SILVER CHALICE DRAWN DOWN MOON DRAGON, ESQ.'s temple where I will PERSONALLY sign a $2 certificate saying you're a 3rd degree Ancient Knowing One after 3 sessions of 90 minutes of me ranting about how aliens built Egypt." Do some traditions observe degree systems? Yes. Make sure you're dealing with a reputable source before you fork over $300.

Cults. There are many good posts and online resources about this, but most cults are made to serve the creator in two ways: 1) Power/control. 2) Money. For me, it's not so easy to notice the power and control issues due to past trauma, but money? I sure as hell notice that. If they are pressuring you to make more, spend more, contribute more, and you can barely pay your bills? Get the fuck out of there.

If someone is giving you a service and they're asking for ANY method of payment that is not trackable, be wary. Now, it might be an old family friend and you hand cash over yourself, which is safer. But someone online asking to be paid through giftcards, or someone asking you to mail cash? Oof. Bad energy.

People can not so much "con" you but cost you extra money by playing the middle man for certain transactions. Sometimes it's worth it to have the middle-man; that can mean higher quality products and reliable delivery. But you could save yourself money if you know the item you're buying and go directly to the supplier. Often middle-men jack prices up considerably, sometimes more than they're worth, or even trade in worse quality products than they advertise. Consider your finances, look at who you're buying from, and look at the price tag.

Yes, it sucks to say, but some psychics really ARE just good cold readers (i.e., people who can read things off you with good questions and observing body language). Some may not even know it themselves. Any form of divination may suffer from this. Again, stick with those you trust, or at least consider that when you put down that money, it's a gamble.

"I can definitely make ALL your problems go away!!! except *insert small technicality I know won't make you say no*, with just 8 easy payments of $29.99!!" Big grandiose promises that ALMOST sound too good to be true are easier to let slide because they admitted there's a problem! They must be telling the truth! No, hon. They know exactly what they're doing. They're making big promises to get big money, and when you complain, they point to their terms of service and say "This was entertainment only." That exists there for a REASON, yes, and it does serve to protect legitamite practioners when, say, a tarot reading is slightly off because those readings are meant to guess at the future and that future can be changed. Some vendors abuse the hell out of it, though.

There ARE legitamite vendors and good reasons to spend cash in the community if you want to. But be careful out there.

Modern Role Playing Games For People That Want To Get Into RPG‘s

You may have heard of a little game that’s come out recently called Final Fantasy VII Remake. There has been a lot of talk about this game having inspired a lot of people to play a game that they skipped back in the day or inspired them to pick up another RPG because they were so engaged in it. Final Fantasy VII Remake isn’t going to make it into this article because I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. But if you’ve always been curious about the RPG genre or maybe you have just finished Final Fantasy VII Remake and are hungry for more, I have a pretty good selection of RPG’s that could offer you the chance to get into a genre of games that maybe you hadn’t considered before. The games on the list are primarily “modern” and what I mean by that is the games will not be SNES era games but rather games that are probably more accessible and easier on the eyes. The games are (as always) limited to what I have had the chance to play. And the games that have been selected were chosen based on the following criteria: low complexity of combat, world building, leveling curve (lack of grinding), and visual appeal. Some of you may want to dive straight into the deep end and download some anime RPG on Steam or find a copy of Chrono Trigger or some certain PS1/NES era RPG and if you can do that then you are an absolute trooper but this post will focus on newer titles rather than the classics. Also if you want me to spotlight a game that you want to recommend put it in the notes because I love getting suggested games! And if you have any questions my messages are always open and I have all the free time to answer them. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way here are games that I recommend as good starting places if you want to get into RPG’s.

Kingdom Hearts

(PS2/PS3/PS4/XBOne)

Kingdom Hearts is a cross over series that blended the worlds of Final Fantasy with Disney. What makes this game attractive to new players is the Disney half and what hooks them in is the Final Fantasy half. The game is easy to pick up and keeps you consistently engaged in enough story and new locations to keep you wanting more after the credits role. The combat is easy, only requiring a few buttons and allows the player to advance effortlessly without having to worry about their gear or level. The platforming sections help form a cohesive world that is small enough to allow its player to mentally map the whole game easily. The game still tosses around complex themes and sullen moments so it is still very viable to play for adults even though it may take you a good while to start seeing the fruits of that. This is an easy pickup for anyone that is thinking that just maybe they want to try a role playing game that tells a large story in a manageable amount of time that doesn’t require a huge amount of your brain power to get through.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

(PC/PS4/PS3/XB360/XBOne/Switch/PSVR)

Skyrim is an open ended role playing game where you create a character and exist in a fantasy world full of dragons and wizards. It’s exactly what most people associate with when they think about fantasy and most of the time it is where people go when they want that sort of experience. If you are trying to play an RPG that tells bite sized stories but includes enough world building to have you reading Skyrim history books until 4 in the morning then perhaps Skyrim is a good game to try. The controls are similar to any other first person game so if you are not familiar with that then there is a learning curve attached to it, other than that there is a wide range of difficulties that allow just about anyone to be able to play through the game. The snowy vistas make this game a beautiful option and the way that the scope of the world reaches miles in front of you gives a really liberating sense of freedom. Skyrim has the potential to become a hardcore obsession but also allows a lighter and more casual experience for people who just want to see main stories.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

(PS4/PC)

Ni No Kuni II is a fun game that applies big ideas into digestible pieces. The combat is very simple to learn and fun to exploit. The game adds a strategy mode where you command troops that isn’t awesome but also introduces a town building mechanic that is easy to understand and gives you a visual sense of progression. The story is awesome and keeps the world of Ni No Kuni grounded into its fantastical fantasy setting that borrows a lot from everyday life. The game borrows from the art of Studio Ghibli and is heavily inspired by movies like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. If any of that sounds like it is interesting to you then this is easily a fun opportunity to bring a unique RPG into your gaming library.

Pokemon Sword and Shield

(Switch)

I’m willing to admit two things. The first being that I truly believe that Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum were the best Pokemon games and that normally I would recommend that someone just play that game instead. However, the second is that Pokemon Sword and Shield are the definitive versions of Pokemon that rid the game of the dated mechanics of previous titles. Pokemon is the monster taming game, the game is a celebration of being able to constantly change who you are playing as and it feels endlessly personal. Pokemon is a great intro to turn based combat that does a great job teaching things like elemental weaknesses and speed stats. This is definitely the easiest, most customizable, and cute, way to enter the RPG genre.

Persona 5 Royal

(PS4)

Persona 5 Royal is the definitive version of Persona 5 which is the latest installment in the Shin Megami Tensei spinoff series called Persona. The game is about balancing daily high school life with traveling into another dimension to fight shadows. The game has a lot of things in it, a day to day manager, a dating sim, turn based RPG, fishing, darts, batting cage, etc. Persona 5 also drips with style, from the amazing art to the fantastic soundtrack. The combat takes some learning but if you set the difficulty all the way down it becomes an accessible experience at no cost to the gripping story. You are guaranteed to fall in love with this game if you end up playing it and it’s bound to create an obsession that has you playing Persona 4 as well as Persona 3. This is an intimidating game to start but with the difficulty set low you really can’t mess up the other portions of the game so there is always a good way to make sure you can experience one of the best games on the PS4.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age

(Switch/PS4/3DS/PC)

Dragon Quest XI is the funniest game on this list. The writing also ironically follows plot lines from other media like Marvel Cinematic Universe or Dragon Ball. You’ll also notice that the game looks a lot like Dragon Ball so if you ever wanted a Dragon Ball fantasy RPG then you might be in luck. The story is driven home by its amazing cast and continues to supply the player with things to do way after the credits have rolled. The turn based combat is very traditional so maybe try this game if you don’t mind learning an older style of game play presented in a fun and easy to understand setting. Dragon Quest XI is guaranteed to hook you in with its likeable characters and grand story telling, if you are at all attracted by the promises of dumb humor, excellent writing, and incomparable character development you should plan on purchasing this game.

Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn

(PS4/PC)

An MMO is an RPG too. And as I’m writing this the current best place to live a virtual life is in Final Fantasy XIV. As someone who has tried almost every free to play MMO on the market I can say with absolute certainty that you get what you pay for and the subscription to FFXIV is worth every cent if you want to get into an MMO. The game is large and intimidating and complex, however, the game is also home to one of the friendliest communities I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with and they make the game as special as it is. This is why people that don’t even like video games are drawn to FFXIV because it is an amazing social experience that also happens to be an amazing MMO experience. The story is the best in terms of MMO story lines and the combat is vast boasting 18 completely unique combat classes. I can’t recommend this game enough and if you have ever considered an MMO then I can guarantee you that this is the one that you want to be playing.

Fantasy Life

(3DS)

Fantasy Life is a game about grinding professions. It looks like Animal Crossing and kind of plays like Animal Crossing would if you could also slay beasts and smith armor in that game. If you are familiar with Life Sim games then this is just the fantasy RPG version of that. The game gives you a job and makes it insanely fun to do that job with fun mini games and a rewarding economy system. This is the “relaxing” game on the list so if you like games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon and you may want to try more combat heavy games then this is a great Segway into that genre of game.

Diablo III

(PC/Mac/PS3/PS4/XB360/XBOne/Switch)

Diablo III is probably the most famous ARPG which just means that you are looking down from an isometric point of view and are typically facing hordes of monsters to achieve hordes of loot. I would say that Path of Exile might be catching up fast to Diablo but if you want to ease into an ARPG then Diablo III is much more forgiving. The game is instantly rewarding and gives you a lot of customization with your skills and appearance. This game tells an epic story but has too much game in between story beats to make it worth playing for. Although I would recommend this game to a new player that only wants to play an RPG for its gear management and game play versatility without having to sit through endless cut scenes.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

(Switch)

In Fire Emblem: Three Houses you play as the combat teacher of one of three groups of kids. You decide what they learn and how well they get at it. The game is a strategy RPG so you are using your brain a bit more to assess situations than the other games on this list. However, Fire Emblem streamlines the system into something easy to understand that is accessible to most new players. While I don’t recommend this game to every new RPG player I’d say that if you really want a game that makes you think rather than hit buttons randomly than you might enjoy the deeper engagement that this game offers. Note that the Fire Emblem series is known for using a very evil emotional weapon called “party member perma-death” which you can absolutely turn off if you would like a less stressful experience. Or live for the thrill, I won’t tell you what to do.

Final Fantasy XV

(PS4/XBOne/PC)

Final Fantasy XV isn’t a normal Final Fantasy game. It is a road trip that you can’t truly appreciate unless you get distracted. Over the years RPG’s have been known for putting a large amount of side activities in their games, Final Fantasy XV takes its story and encases it in casual game play that involves long drive and lots of fishing and camping. This game is not for everyone but its more casual approach will appeal to a newer audience than a hardened veteran of the Final Fantasy series. People looking for their first RPG won’t be totally swayed by the story here but they will have seen that the journey can be fun if you let it.

So You Wanna Start An RPG

Take it from someone who has played the opening hours of a lot of games and then quit that sometimes you just can’t get yourself to like a game. You owe it to yourself to find in entertainment something that you like. I consider myself more of a casual RPG player, I’ve never beaten any of the classics and I can hardly finish a lot of the RPG’s that I own now. But I think that fickleness makes me a good source to recommend a good RPG for people that may not have the patience to play through a Final Fantasy IV or a Golden Sun. Also remember not to rule out experiences just because people say that they are “bad” because opinions are subjective to you personally. RPG’s have the power to tell moving and important stories, and as a player of them I hope I’ve given anyone reading this some incentive to experience a larger than life story.

Hi! What are your thoughts about OUAT.

That’s a complex, layered answer because my feelings for OUaT are very complex. The short of it is that, obsession and love level wise, this was my Shadowhunters before Shadowhunters existed as a show. I completely loved and adored this show, I watched every episode as soon as it came out, with a single-minded focus (as in: normally, when watching TV, I use the show as a background noise to my writing. There is only a select handful of TV shows that ever managed to get my full, undivided attention of me turning all else off to only focus on the show).

I love OUaT to bits and pieces. However, much like Shadowhunters, it was far from a flawless show. Very, very, very far. Seriously, it’s an absolute mess in many aspects but damn do I love it.

It appeals to many of the things I love. For one, classic Disney movies. For another, fairy tales - but the very specific niche genre of fairy tale crossovers, which is just... my biggest weakness, possibly. Thirdly, characters you can get invested in and love to bits and pieces.And fourth, shipping.

This is one of the incredibly small, tiny pool of shows where I absolutely adore the canon ships, not just in a “daw it’s cute enough” way that makes me accept that it is The Canon Ship That’s Happening, but in a way that has me actively invested in and rooting for those absolute dumbasses. And. Not just one ship, usually it’s like “huh I am surprisingly invested in this one ship”, but - Rumpel/Belle, Hook/Emma, David/Snow?? Yes, please, inject it into my veins.

Though also just as attached to my non-canon ships - REGINA/EMMA FOR LIFE, Ruby/Snow, Hook/David. And that duality of being really invested in the non-canon ships but still absolutely loving the canon ships? That is... completely and entirely unique to OUaT for me. Never happened outside this show.

I adore that this show did one of the things that I complained Descendants didn’t - it respects Snow White, the very first Disney princess, and puts her front and center. Never-ever made sense to me that Descendants just went “uuuh we at random picked Belle to rule all the kingdoms because I dunno the head writer loves Beauty and the Beast the most”... Snow White was Disney’s very first and I do think she deserves more respect.

The things they did with her! They made her an actual active heroine. Not a little girl hiding out in the woods. They explored possibilities and turned her into a total badass, who never lost the main qualities of Disney’s Snow White though. Her nurturing, loving, gentle soul. That is what I adore about her, because very often when trying to portray strong female characters, media removes their softness, makes them hardened to make them a badass.

Regina and Emma have such a brilliant canon dynamic - even beyond the fanon ship. The way they mended and grew together and became friends. The growth, the softness, the shared custody. I love them.

And with both Regina and Rumpel, I love the day they gradually progressed from “main antagonist from season 1″ to “part of the family”. This show is a found family feast.

It wasn’t flawless. It had some pacing issues, in my opinion. Like the Peter Pan arc was too long. They went hiking for like 12 episodes. That one still sticks with me as having bored me. And I also do think it was a huge mistake to make Peter Pan, one of Disney’s heroes a villain. He was a great villain and his actor absolutely killed it, don’t get me wrong, but in the context of Disney canon, it was a bit jarring.

The same is to be said about Arthur. Don’t take King Arthur, of all people, and turn him into a jackass. That didn’t sit right with me and I think that could, and should, have been handled differently.

As a huge fan of Wizard of Oz canon, I have mixed feelings about Zelina. She was kind of a joke most of the time, her raping Robin was not good at all (beeecause that’s what it is when you shapeshift into the person the other one loves and then have sex with them under pretense to get yourself pregnant), but in the end it - and her - fit relatively well into all of this.

Was completely wasted for the entire Frozen arc, but even I, someone who loathes that movie with a burning passion, genuinely enjoyed the way the show was trying to fix it? Answer all the unanswered question the movie left and actually tie it into the Snow Queen fairy tale? Like, that was a feast and I love that they did that. Also Ingrid was hot and checked all my boxes so there’s that.

In the same way, I adore what they did with Ursula. That they took the scraped canon of Ursula being Triton’s sister and worked with that and that they in the end decided to redeem her too - though I am still very disappointed that we never got to see Ursula actually interact with Ariel at all. That’d have been so interesting. (Also, I admit, they went really overkill with having three Ursulas. Regina pretending to be Ursula, Ursula the ancient golden statue goddess and the actual Ursula, daughter of Poseidon).

I love Hades. I love Greg Germann’s take on Hades. He absolutely killed it. The whole underworld story was incredibly awesome to me personally - though I know others didn’t like that half-season as much. But I really dug that.

I think that it started to fizz out after that though and that after the underworld storyline, they probably should have drawn it to a close, because... after everything, after five whole seasons of watching redemption and working hard to make up for the things you did in the past, they really just decided “and now Regina is gonna physically split off her Evil Queen”... and made that Evil Queen the villain. That felt insanely repetitive of season 1 and like a set-back for Regina.

(The second half of that season didn’t go better because honestly that whole nonsense with “not only is Rumpel the son of Peter Pan, nope, now we bring in his mom the Evil Fairy”, featuring the very overused trope of “baby is magically aged up to be a character who can contribute to the plot”... Not the best.)

Also I refuse to acknowledge the existence of that reboot season. It’s bullshit is what it is. The show had the perfect ending. And then they immediately slapped a reboot onto it... why? If they had taken their time, wait ten years until nostalgia for the show kicks in and the actors all need work again, and do a proper “now Henry goes through shit”, that’d have actually been interesting, but... the moment I saw “so... we keep half the main cast, break up some OTPs, don’t age the adults up but age Henry up and also there is now a second Cinderella”, I knew that’s not gonna be good.

Seriously, the second Cinderella is what really fucked it over for me. What I loved about OUaT was that it gave very specific rules to its universe.

The Author documents the tales. The Author gives them their spin. But they are still the same tale. Be that the Brothers Grimm, who documented Cinderella, or then Walt Disney, it was still Cinderella, from the Enchanted Forest. Their stories were simply written down.

That they then, in the reboot season, went “well, actually There Are Many Cinderellas!!” completely contradicts the previously established rules of this world? Because yes, the concept very similar to Cinderella actually exists in many cultures - and that was the cool thing of OUaT’s take, because pressumably that is because the Author was in said culture at said time and documented the tale, as is the Author’s job.

Especially since it was so... unnecessary? I mean, they gave Rapunzel one half-assed episode in the past, they never tackled Gold Mary, they could have shown what became of Hänsel and Gretel now also grown up, etc. There were other unused characters that could have been brought in instead of throwing the rules out of the window.

But moving on from that; I love that they didn’t limit themselves to Disney movies - that they did prominently put Red Riding Hood (my favorite fairy tale character) in there, that they worked with mythology as well as books.

One thing they absolutely fucked up was their spin-off though. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. They made that. They decided that, out of everything touched upon in the series, Alice’s tale should get a spin-off... and then they didn’t use any of the actual characters?

Alice herself never got an appearance in OUaT, not prior or after the spin-off (only very much later in the reboot season, with a different Alice)

They had the Queen of Hearts on OUaT, but they didn’t use her as the main antagonist, or at least a huge deal, on Wonderland

They had the freaking Mad Hatter on OUaT, but he doesn’t even have a single cameo on Wonderland

And don’t give me “Seb Stan was too busy!”, because... even then, they could have recast. The Mad Hatter is kind of a big part of Alice in Wonderland, but... they ignored the majority of what is important in AiW in general, so there is that

They named the Red Queen Anastasia and very heavily implied that yes, the Anastasia who was the stepsister of Cinderella - but when OUaT’s original Cinderella got her stepsisters introduced, they suddenly had entirely different names than the Disney stepsisters and of course it wasn’t the same actress either

They introduced Jafar (for some reason) in Wonderland. And then recast him when Aladdin was tackled on OUaT and never addressed any of the things that happened on Wonderland, especially not how Jafar was the son of the sultan which would technically make him Jasmine’s brother

It was nearly dumb to move Will Scarlet to OUaT after the spin-off was axed, because at that point they legit just ignored Wonderland as a whole so this acknowledgment felt very off. But then it’s Michael Socha and I love him so I ain’t gonna complain about that.

So yes, I have mild issues with how they made a spin-off that had basically no inpact on the show, despite many elements that should have crossed over and carried significance in both shows.

Lastly, because we’re on the topic of spin-offs, I still would absolutely kill for a spin-off about Mulan, Merida and Ruby. Those three, exploring the Enchanting Forest together, training together, being gay together, it was the best thing. Which does force me to mention the gay. Because... Mulan was canonically in love with Aurora and when they set her up to find Ruby and journey with her, it came really off as them trying to make Mulan/Ruby happen. Then they introduce Merida, a very famously single princess, and you start to wonder. But in the end, it’s Ruby who ends up with Dorothy, aka two characters not associated with Disney. And it makes you wonder. (It doesn’t. We all know Disney is hugely homophobic. We all know OUaT most likely had some Disney executive yelling at them for even implying one of their characters may be gay. So they backtracked to give the wlw storyline to two characters that weren’t Disney property.)

Ah, I don’t like ending things on a negative note so one last positive - as weirdly as the Dark Swan arc was handled at parts, I absolutely love that Emma’s name being Swan really did pay off in making her the Swan Princess in the end and giving a nudge to Swan Lake with the Dark Swan. That was such a cool pay-off of something as small as a last name.

So, to sum it up, there’s some flaws in the writing, some things I wish would have been explored more, but overall good gods do I love and adore this TV show.

Survey #253

hope everyone is staying safe through this quarantine. wash your hands.

Which band do you have more music of than anyone else on your computer? Ozzy. Who’s your favorite philosopher? *shrugs* I don't know any's ideals well. How old were you when you learned how to read? I'm not sure, but I know I was exceptionally young. What’s the coolest Halloween costume you’ve ever worn? I don't think I've ever worn something rather cool. Who’s your favorite painter/artist? If we're talking about well-known, "popular" artists, I'm not sure. Maybe DaVinci. What’s your favorite song lyric- ever? ARE YOU??????????? FOR REAL?????????? Holy FUCK I get goosebumps from lyrics SO easily, this is like impossible. Probably an Otep lyric, though. I really don't like her personally, but goddamn can she write. What’s your dream tattoo if you don’t have it already? I've linked it before, so I'll just remind it's "Denialism" by deviantART's NukeRooster on my entire, upper left arm. I've already gotten her permission (I don't like just... stealing artwork to put on my body), now just comes the day I can pay for it by a top-tier pro. What’s the coolest screen name you’ve ever had? I don't think any have been necessarily "cool." Who do you think was the most badass serial killer? (Real life.) I'm not well-versed in serial killers honestly, but I can say Charles Manson was a C A S E. I think we can all admit he was... interesting. Just the epitome of weird. Most badass fictional serial killer? ig Jason; again, I don't know a lot off the top of my head, but I like him. How many bank accounts do you have? I don't have one. Have you ever been falsely accused of starting drama? Yep. Have you ever found a song that describes your whole life? Parts of it, sure. What kind of car do you drive? I don't drive a car, but Mom's is a... Honda? Kia? Idk. I'm bad with car brands. What kind of car would you like to have? Average size, pretty simple. Burnt orange or red. I know I want one of those screens you look into to see what's behind you when backing up. Have you ever been to Dairy Queen? If so, what’s your favorite thing to eat from there? mmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. So unhealthy, but I will destroy and Oreo Cupfection. Try. That. Stuff. Their milkshakes are also great. Which website do you email from? Outlook. Do you enjoy receiving souvenirs? Sure, it's nice. Have you ever had the flu? No. What about strep throat? Maybe once? Do you normally have a lot of homework, if you’re still in school? Kinda, yeah. Did you ever enjoy gym class? Fuck no. Even when I was healthy. What is your biggest insecurity? My body. Have you ever painted a room alone? No. How many huge secrets do you have? Huge? Uhhh, none, I think. Have you ever painted something and been impressed by it? Yes. Would you rather go out to eat or stay in? I prefer eating out because yummy food, but considering I'm working on losing weight, I avoid it. Do you have any younger siblings? One. Have you ever considered bleaching your hair? To the point of being snow white. Considering my hair is super healthy and bleaching so heavily would destroy it, I'll be avoiding that. I DO want to bleach my hair to do other colors, though. Brown hair sucks. Do you drink vitamin water? No. Are there any old movies you absolutely love? Oh sure, a good handful. The Outsiders probably tops it. Have you ever had a Big Mac before? No, doesn't appeal to me. I don't like veggies on my burgers... despite eating veggie burgers when I was vegetarian lmao. Do you think you attract the opposite sex at a reasonable rate? I doubt that. Have you ever filed a lawsuit on someone? No. Do you enjoy reading often? I'm finally back into it!! Lately all I've been wanting to do is READ READ READ. Have you ever had a deadly illness? Well, I consider depression (among other mental illnesses) to be very deadly, but on a literal level, no. I mean I have dormant MRSA, which can kill if active, but it never has been. Most people carry that dormantly anyway, if I remember correctly. Ever had food-poisoning before? No, thankfully. Where did you last eat dinner at? Mom bought Nicole and me Sonic. Have you ever had someone pick you up off the ground & carried you? When I fainted, yes. Are you a flirty person? Not really. A name you hate with a passion? Edward, to name one. Erwin. A lot of old names. What is your favorite type of water (ex. arrowhead)? Essentia mmmmmmmmmmmmm,, Have you ever been to Warped Tour? I WISH. :( Do you know anyone who wears fur? I fucking hope not, because I wouldn't associate with them anymore. When was the last time you were on myspace.com? Damn yo, millennia ago. How often do you cuss? Too much. I mean, I don't even believe "profanity" is a thing by our definition of "that word is magically bad," but still, it's like when people say "like" too much. Have you ever cussed out a teacher? No. What did you think of the movie Juno? I never watched it. How often do you eat meat? Sigh, more than I wish. What grade did you meet your best friend in? We didn't meet in school. Last time you cleaned your room? Couple days back. I'm honestly bad at dusting regularly in here, but that's gotta change with Mom having chemo now. Her immune system will be compromised so this house needs to be as pristine as it can. When you were little, would you have rather watched Cartoon Network or Disney Channel? Disney Channel. We weren't really Cartoon Network kids, actually. It was Disney or Nickelodeon. Do you shave your arms? No. Are you a big fan of the Harry Potter series? Never read a book, never watched any movies; the first one was playing in my presence once, but I paid no attention. How often would say you pulled all-nighters, if you ever do? Shit man, never, nowadays. I don't think I've had one for two years now. My youth is escaping. Has a friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend ever had a problem with you for any reason? I don't think so. How many times a day do you find yourself cracking your joints, if at all? Maybe not even once a day. Only my big toes and upper back can pop. Is there a particular sport you follow on a regular basis? No. Are you 100% over the last person you kissed? No. Do you put ketchup on top of your french fries or on the side? On the side. Who was the last person you talked to in person? Mom. Do you have a dog? Not anymore, thank fuck. Do you like orange juice? Yes. Are you one of those people who obsesses over Hollister? I never liked it. They're not inclusive at all towards fucking NORMAL bodies, nevermind plus size. Apparently even their rules on looks for workers are absolutely horrible. Ashley liked them though, so sometimes I just had to go in with her. If money was no object, would you change your wardrobe? My goth could finally  E S C A P E. How do you/did you get to school? My mom drives me. Have you ever had to have a pet put down? Four times that I remember off the top of my head. What candy cane flavor is your favorite? MMMMMMMMMM get the pink Starburst kind. Do you get angry when fast food restaurants mess up your order? It's annoying, yes. Angering when you've already driven away, especially when you really wanted something. What was your favorite elective class in high school? Art. Did you ever wish you could be homeschooled? Yes. I was homebound for a little while. Have you ever had a dream so realistic you could’ve sworn it happened? Yes. Do you have any mental disorders? I'm a walking mental disorder, lmao. Y'all know the biggies, and now ADD and especially DPD (dependent personality disorder) are being considered. Do you feel comfortable talking about these disorders, if you have them? Yeah, I really don't care. Where did you go on your last field trip? I want to say to a band competition in high school. Are you able to agree to disagree? Or do you have to have the last word? Yeah, pretty easily. Is there a cover song you like better than the original version? A whole lot, actually. Do you have a hard time talking about sex with the opposite gender? I have a hard time with anyone. Have you ever had major surgery? Major, no. Is there any food you don’t like that a lot of others do? Here in the South, everyone is most surprised when they hear I hate fried chicken. What was the last thing you bragged about? Hm. I'm not sure, actually. I don't make a habit out of doing that. Can you do a backflip? Hell no. Are you listening to anything right now? I have a video up of relaxing tracks from Silent Hill 2 + 3. Great shit. Has anyone ever tried to tell you you were adopted? No. How many doors are in the room you’re in? Two, but one's just the closet door. Have you ever been engaged and broke it off? No. Has anyone ever drawn a picture of you? Yes. Do any of your friends have children? Yep. Is there anything you’re craving right now? Not really. Who got married at the last wedding you attended? A family friend. It was the second wedding I shot. Is happiness something to be achieved and sought after or is it something to be retained and held onto always, no matter what happens? The former. You can't just stay happy when, like, your grandma dies. What gives you a peaceful feeling? Nature. Hearing water and birdsong, specifically. Are you a Toys-R-Us kid? Hell yeah I was. My sisters and I would go crazy if we had the chance to go there. We were SOOOO upset when it closed down. If you believe in Heaven, are there separate heavens for different animals (kittie heaven. dog heaven, bird heaven, etc)? I don't know if I believe in a "heaven," but some sort of peace after death, yes. I believe it's one, unified "heaven." When you sleep next to someone do they fall asleep first usually or do you? They always do considering it takes me ten years to fall asleep. If they do, do you watch them sleep? I have. Not in a creepy way, but rather a "wow I love this person" sorta way. What is your usual breakfast? Usually apple and cinnamon oatmeal What do your salt and pepper shakers look like? They're nothing special. The salt is a blue ceramic, and the pepper one is just what you get from the store. Have you ever had your car towed? I've never had my own car. What band or singer do you believe started rock and roll? I'm pretty sure Elvis is given that credit. Whose voice irritates you like fingernails on a blackboard? The female singer of Mother Mother's voice. Mom and I can't stand her singing. All I songs we enjoy feature almost solely the main singer. I can *tolerate* it in some songs, but. What do you contribute to society? Ha. Do you take naps? Almost daily. Do you have any cavities? Not to my knowledge. Do you believe that there has been a man on the moon? Yes, though I do believe the "first" landing was faked in competition with Russia. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm so serious, look into the theory - there's incredible evidence. Would you ever go into a sex shop? I'd be too self-conscious to. I'd just order online. Let’s just say your school team is on a winning streak. One of the cheerleaders cheers both for your team and the other team during games. Does it make you angry? I don't care enough about sports to even consider how I'd feel. Do you prefer carnivals, festivals, circuses, parades or faires? To be real, I only know the difference between parades and circuses. What even distinguishes the other three from each other. Do you believe in psychic ability or is it a sham? I lean towards no. What is your favorite classic rock song? You CANNOT ask me this question. Classic rock is some of the best music there is.

The Audience of My Channel

Okay, holy hell....

I wrote a freggin’ long history and now that I’m lookin’ through it... it’s a mess.

I’m going to TL;DR this who want the point but if you’re seriously concerned about this and want to understand the history then I recommend reading but understand this post is a mess of explanation but it’s worth the read IMO if you are interested in this history of my MC content and who it’s intended for.

TL;DR: My heavy story content isn’t aimed at kids/younger audience, if that was not evident from S4 alone then there is plenty of evidence from BEFORE and during Diaries days to support this. The heavy MCD implications also show I’m writing for that older audience who grew up with me. I’ve retained a lot of my audience from those days and know that young adults watch my stuff (hence a small reason for my lack of growth due to not conforming to kids content, you’ll see other MC YTers who convert to Roblox taking off in comparison) Some of my content can be found on the YT kids app and if you are a parent/guardian concerned about the heavy material I recommend using the YT kids app as it censors those seasons/episodes. It’s not 100% perfect but the kids who do watch me only know me for the content listed on the YT kids app. Most parents who let their kids have free roam of base YT are already aware of the lack of censorship from all sorts of YTers and have expressed they are aware of the material in my content and allow their kids to watch under their supervision and guidance. Who/What people watch on YT is up to them to decide. I rate my vids in the self rate system to be aimed at the demographic I’m writing for. 

OKAY THAT’S NOT TL;DR, BUT CLOSE ENOUGH. The rest goes into detail and is what I originally wrote if you want to understand my prospective. AGAIN IT’S EVERYWHERE.

Alright so I’m in the addressing mood, but let’s start this train with one thing at a time. Today I want to clear up a misconception that a lot of people tend to have about my channel. 

“Aphmau has a kid audience.”

To some extent, this IS true.  These days people naturally associate “Minecraft” with kid friendly content. Especially with YouTubes crack down on what is advertised to kids via search. (Which as a parent: thank you YouTube.)

To another extent, this IS false.

In the early pioneer days of MC a whole ton of adults were playing the game which promoted the popularity of it. These were also the days YouTube didn’t have heavy censorship so everything was free game. There were adults cursing and talking about sex during gameplay, having tiddies in the thumbnail, to adults playing MC drunk. Again totally the early days of both YT and MC. 

During this time a lot of the MC audience was mixed, both young and older. (I was in the older crowd; was watching Shadow of Israphel by the Yogscast at the time before my channel started) Eventually time passed and it was obvious that the game by itself appealed more to the younger demographic and it kept that audience. [I’ll get back to this point later].

Around the time I entered the MC scene it was the untamed wild west. Hell, I remember doing a Cops and Robbers video with Adam about being high the whole time. Around that time I was writing Diaries which had a lot of adult themes, war, topics, violence, death, [babe house, tho that’s not bad], sexual implications, blood, etc. etc. I also had side series going on that were more light hearted [Pixelmon, Mod Mod World, etc.] I also played games such as Saints Row, Hunie Pop, Dead Space, etc.

Again all this was in the untamed wild west of the internet. 

Fast forward to today, all of those youngins who consumed that content have now grown up. They are either finishing up High School or already in College or they have always been adults and are just older (and by that I mean they’re even more cooler now) Surprisingly a LOT of them have been with me from that long ago... and holy crap you guys... thank you for being with me for that long <3

Fast forward to today again, you’ll see MC and YT have been censored heavily.

If you want to be a successful MC YouTuber these days - You gotta make content aimed at kids to get on that YT kids app - and just let me say there’s nothing wrong with that at all! I’m all for peeps makin’ their content the way they want to for the audience they want to consume it. (always disliked when creators would belittle others for the kind of content they make)

Let me say this: Diaries and MyStreet [plus a few other series] have always had heavy adult themes in them. I have been watching my audience grow from the start and know who I am writing for since a lot of peeps who are watching the more intense series have aged with me. 

“But you have kids who consume your content!”

Yes, there are children who consume my content because it is on the Minecraft platform. You will also notice the most vocal peeps in the YT comment section/twitter/insta/etc. tend to be youngin’s who will shame you for liking a certain ship, hate you for your opinions, etc. [they are NOT ALL like that] Understand that these peeps (while I love and appreciate their support, wish they read my PSA’s and were a bit more understanding sometimes) are often in the minority of those who consume the more intense storylines/game play. Of course there are exceptions. Creators after YEARS of experience, data, and analytics will know who watches what content based on statistics and feedback. Some of our decisions are based on the analytics we receive and what people show they want in content by watching it.

Now, where are these “children who are watching my content” consuming it from? The YouTube Kids App. (GOD THIS ISN’T A PLUG BUT IT’S GONNA SOUND LIKE ONE BECAUSE I GET INTO PARENT THINGS, ALSO THIS IS RELEVANT TO WHO CONSUMES MY CONTENT SO IF YOU CARE ABOUT THIS TOPIC PLEASE BEAR WITH ME) 

As a parent, I use the YouTube kids app. The YouTube kids app has a LOT of options to make sure kids under the age of 13 are consuming the content their parents want them to watch. (But the age you can set goes all the way to like 20+ for some reason) There are two options: 

1.) [Younger] More restricted, meant for preschool kids and elementary school kids.

2.) [Older] For parents who think their kids are old enough to be less restricted and it even warns parents that there may be suggestive content, violence, etc. In this option.

There are a lot of kids consuming the more tamed versions of my content which they know me for. There are some children I meet at fan meets that don’t even know that certain episodes of Diaries or MS Season 4, 5, or 6 exist or that I even do RP’s. (They seem to like my content for Snipper Clips, Love Balls, MyCraft, etc.) I’m perfectly fine with the app gating off my mature content, rightfully so since it’s not meant for that demographic. With a lot of that being said I cannot control what is and is not seen on that app, but know that a lot of my mature content is off of it.

That being said, my writing is aimed at teens, young adults, and adults. 

The problem is people see MC as being “ONLY FOR KIDS! THIS IS A KIDS SHOW IF IT’S IN MINECRAFT!” which to me... as someone who has been using the platform since the Wild West days... to pretty much tell similar and just as harsh stories since then... is pretty much the equivalent of saying: “IF IT’S A DRAWN LIKE A CARTOON IT MUST BE FOR KIDS!” Or “VIDEO GAMES ARE MEANT FOR KIDS” (which are very ignorant statements because cartoons and games can be for adults)

Again the problem lies in the fact that I’m still using MC as a platform to tell stories. And really, that’s not a problem since I know where my content is being consumed, I know who consumes it, and I know who I am writing for. 

The kids app exists for parents who are active in their child’s lives and make sure my content is what their kids want to consume and I use that as a barrier to entry for younger kids who don’t get the themes in my mature content. 

The people who have grown up with me and know the adult themes in my story often times don’t want to admit to their friends that they watch Minecraft because of the stigma that comes with that statement and often times won’t participate in the community. Btw, side note: For those that are vocal I sincerely appreciate you who have been around forever and help grow the community.

[ADDITIONAL UNIMPORTANT NOTE: We actually did a test run to see if our audience was younger than we thought. I tried doing a ROBLOX RP to see if maybe our demographic was there instead of MC. (...Also I wanted to make something for our kids to watch.) It turned out the feedback from the audience was so overwhelmingly negative on it because peeps didn’t want to see the channel turn into a “kids channel” with kid directed content]

But again... the problem is the stigma that comes with using MC as a storytelling device. A lot of YTers bowed out of MC because they felt they no longer had the creative freedom they once had before censorship happened. Which if I had been completely kid friendly from the beginning I could see where the problem is, however this is not the case and adult themes (be they subtle or not) have always been there.

My content is for those who want to consume it on the main YT site/app. Anyone under the age of 13 SHOULD be using the YT kids app, but that is in their parents hands to decide what is appropriate for their kids. I advise fellow parents when they ask me in person to make sure my content is for their kid(s) and to have open discussions about the topics at hand if they decide to allow their kids to consume my content. I understand parents cannot be there 24/7 but they should not entrust media to be the core source of conversation for a mind that’s still growing and needs a parent/guardians guidance.

I will continue to use MC as a platform and the YT self rating system to make sure my content gets pushed to the right outlets, I cannot monitor who sees my content. Eventually I’d like to move to another story telling platform OR modify MC so it doesn’t look like MC anymore but rather something that looks similar to the unity engine. (We tried this with Ultra Nova but didn’t have people who cared about the project enough to help with it. Jason ended up doing the modeling and it didn’t come out like we had hoped) Jason and I would love to get into animation (2D/3D), but that is not possible at the moment, however we are working on that and maybe later FAR down the line you’ll see that! (you can see with S6 we’re getting a feel for it! Animation ain’t just there for show it’s for prepping for the future)

I will do my best to open up more about my creative choices. 

I understand some peeps are upset about the Ein/Aphmau thing and I plan on addressing that (maybe in another blog post later this week but it might just say what I’m about to say). Peeps tend to get riled up as soon as something negative happens and are on “attack mode” which leads to provocation and just a whole mess of emotions coming from both sides. But since I’m trying to be more open right now I’ll give it my best shot to address it later. For now to give a brief summary: not all stories/characters are 100% planned. My writing for stories years ago was not written knowing exactly where the characters would be year(s) later. Again a topic to get into depth for another time. I know there are peeps out there who won’t listen and will probably see everything I say as an excuse. But hey, I’m gonna open up and if they want to believe me or not is up to them. I understand why they’re upset and I value and respect their opinions, but implying someone’s absolute moral beliefs on a taboo subject through a fictional story is just odd. I think my girl Michaela best sums that up in this post. 

My responsibility as a creator is to create. I do take responsibility in who sees my content through the systems that are set in place for that. But there is also a responsibility in the viewer to know the type of content they’re consuming. In the future maybe I’ll add in self ratings since that isn’t completely and transparently done through YT. 

Whew, I hope that sums things up or at least gives an answer to a few things.

Sorry for being all over the place with that post, let me know if you want me to convey anything in better detail for this topic. I’ll address other topics mentioned in here when I have a moment, thanks again for your time! <3 (appreciate if you took the time to make it this far!)

So I sent this ask already through mobile, but in case it didn't go through I figured I'd try again through desktop! For the ABC headcanons thing, could you do C, D, F, I, J, K, L, M, O, P, T, U, V, W, and X for Jager and/or Bandit please?

I received your first ask, in fact it was in line to be anwered. Although I see you added an additional letter this time, so I’ll answer here 😄

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

Bandit loves cumming over his partner, not so much the other way around. He has no problem swallowing tho.

Jäger doesn’t have a strong opinion about it, besides not wanting it on his face or near his eyes. Aside from that, he’ll roll with whatever his partner prefers.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Bandit had his nipples pierced at some point during his undercover stint, and his partner playing with them can get him hard as a rock in a matter of seconds.

Jäger would love to crossdress, mainly for the lingerie and heels. However, he hasn’t had the guts to tell any of his partners yet, so he doesn’t know if they would encourage him or laugh at him as he fears.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Something that lets Bandit control the movement, either with the partner face down on the bed, or with their ankles up on his shoulders. If he is the bottom, he preferes to ride his partner.

Jäger enjoys the most any positions where he’s at the mercy of his partner, letting them control the pace of their fucking even if he’s topping, yes

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Bandit is possessive, will tell his partner that they’re his and ecourage them to say it back. If they say it, he’ll reward them with scorching kisses and more dirty talk whispered on their ear.

Jäger will forever adore any show of affection his partner provides, and will try to reciprocate as best as he can, even if he’s rather awkward at being romantic.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Bandit masturbates quite often, always in the sanctuary of his room and watching porn. He may or may not imagine himself and his partner in the position of the porn stars of the video.

Oh boy, Jäger masturbates so often its a miracle nobody has caught him mid-act yet: during his morning shower, after training, while taking a break from tinkering in the workshop, at night before falling asleep. His libido is uncommonly high, more so for his age.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Bandit is a bit of a thrill seeker, and he’d love to try public sex more often, if he can convince his partner, of course. He also would love to get his partner all tied up and with a spreader bar keeping them in the perfect position for plundering them.

Har pulling, Jäger loves getting his hair pulled. 

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

As far as Bandit is concerned, as long as there is a surface he and his partner can use for their activities, it’s all fine. Sometimes that surface can be a fucking wall or a bench, yes.

For Jäger, somewhere private if possible. Or at least somewhere with the illusion of privacy, as long as there’s nobody actively watching them, he’s fine with it.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

It doesn’t take much to get Bandit going, tbh. However, the idea of getting his partner to lose control has always interested him, it feeds his ego. 

Let’s face it, Jäger is always horny (as I stated somewhere above), he’s probably ready to jump into bed as soon as his partner so much as hints at it.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

Bandit loves receiving, but also prides himself on giving good -if a bit sloppy- oral. Sixty-nine seems like the perfect solution.

Jäger prefers to give, loves seeing how his partner comes undone thanks to the work of his mouth and fingers.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.) 

Bandit will pick a faster or slower pace depending on his partner’s cues while in the moment. Will boast that he likes it rough, but he’s more considerate than he advertises. If he’s the bottom, he actually likes it slow.

Jäger usually favours a fast pace, but he has to admit slow and sensual makes for an amazing build up. He tends to be slower if he’s topping, hurting his partner, even if by accident, is not an idea that appeals to him at all.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

Bandit owns a wide array of toys, and would be the type to give pointers to his friends about it, no shame at all. He’s all for using toys as a means to get his partner ready, or for finishing them if it’s necessary.

Not only does Jäger own several toys, they’re all of the vibrating and/or rotating kind, and he always enhances their settings if he can.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Bandit doesn’t mind playing dirty, or talking dirty in this case. He will absolutely tease his partner both physically and verbally until they’re a desperate mess aching for more him.

Jäger is not the teasing kind, he’ll enjoy foreplay, but prolonging it too much is not one of his goals. He’d rather go several rounds through the day than have one very drawn out session.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Bandit’s not very loud, if he’s moaning that means his partner is doing something extremely right. He will mostly leave out harsh breaths and a little panting when he’s getting close.

Jäger knows how to keep quiet, but when he’s with his partner he will be louder, making little moans to show them how much he’s enjoying it.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

After sex, Bandit likes to have a smoke while still in bed, maybe engage in a bit of pillow talk. He’s not big on cuddling, but he likes having his partner next to him and might press some kisses to their face if he’s feeling in the mood.

Despite his awkward personality, Jäger is surprisingly good at comforting people, and is an excellent big spoon when cuddling.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

Bandit: average length but meaty and veiny.

Jäger: slightly avobe average lenght, but thinner.

2020 T.V Show Tracker

T.V. Shows

The Witcher 

Started 2019 finished 2020. Click here for my thoughts.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Completed - I really enjoyed the episode with Pimento, that episode was just hilarious. I think that was one of my favourite episodes this season.

Self Made

It was very a enjoyable mini-series. Sarah's story is so fascinating and inspirational precisely because of how many hardships she had to deal with throughout her life. I enjoyed the show and learning more about Madam CJ Walker.

Interior Design Masters

This was a really fun show. I didn’t agree with everything that the judges said, but I definitely had fun watching the contestants renovate commercial and residential places. My favourite episode was when they worked on the stores (not restaurants). I really loved those transformations.

The Big Flower Fight

It was such a fun show! I really enjoyed watching how the contestants used plants to create beautiful and interesting topiaries/sculptures. I loved most of the contestants and was always looking forward to their take on each challenge!

Space Force

It was a fun show! Enjoyed watching it with my sister.  :)

Hannibal

Re-visiting this show from the one or two episodes I watched back when I was in grade 12 and one of my teachers was promoting this show because her friend was an extra in it. But, I really am intrigued by the concept, the way the show is filmed is just so gorgeous for such a gory show and the plot is very fascinating. Anytime Hannibal feeds anyone I get a bit antsy. But Will Graham is just such an interesting character. I have high expectations of the show!

Update: Finished s1 and LOVED it! As I was binging s2 I started to get nightmares and also the plot started to move forward at a snail’s pace (imo) so I will put this show on hold for now.

The Umbrella Academy s2

So I really enjoyed this season of Umbrella Academy because I got to see more of Five kicking ass as a teenager, the character growth of BOTH Diego and Luther, seeing the entire family getting closer to Vanya and the general action sequences of the show. I enjoyed the new characters as well - Lila and The Swedes. I admit my memory of season 1 of this show is somewhat vague, but I found that the ending of the season (its climax to be precise in episode 10) to be somewhat lackluster considering the build-up. 

I really enjoyed was seeing Klaus, Allison and Vanya deal with their respective subplots and that scene in the barbershop with the three of them bonding really was a highlight of the season. Also when (spoiler alert) Ben finally ‘died’ and went to the afterlife that scene was so well executed and emotional and has got to be one of my favorite moments of the season. It was nice to see him helping Vanya out.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

I loved this show! I grew to love these characters so much! I loved Hannah and Owen’s relationship so much.

The Haunting of Hill House

So, I read the book first and wanted to see what the hype was all about. I really enjoyed the little easter eggs to the book in the show, and that ONE SCENE with the ‘Bent-Neck lady’ gave me a nightmare... It was good, definitely an interesting take on the story.

Anime

The Disastrous Life of Saiki: Reawakened

I love how the show constantly shows us that Saiki will tolerate anyone for the sweet sweet coffee jelly. I need more of this show!! Please give me more episodes @Netflix.

Haikyuu!

I love it. I understand the hype now. I really enjoy how they show the lives of all the people in the show, the ‘extras’ on the team, the opponents and give us a glimpse into their lives and their stories. I finished season two and am looking forward to more! It’s honestly so hard to be rooting for just one person in this show and I love that.  Finished 2 seasons so far. Will get back into it eventually. I’m honestly jealous that I can’t play volleyball rn.

Mob Psycho 100

This will probably take me a while to finish as I am planning to read it before watching it. It’s so so lovable. I love Mob and I would do anything to protect him. Also I really like Regen’s protectiveness and genuineness towards Shigeo. It’s just a great manga/anime. Finished season one. It is so addicting! I love Mob and Reigen so much! <3

Update: finished season two. Man watching this show makes my heart grow 5 x as big every time I watch it! It’s just so endearing, fun, comedic. I love how season two really just show’s Shigeo’s growth throughout the season. His speech to Shirazawa at the last episode and how it came full circle - loved it! I also was surprised by the red headed son (Ryu?) in the best way. I hope we see more of him in the next season. Can’t wait for more!

Fruits Basket season 2

Can’t wait for more crying. 🙃 I am really looking forward to seeing Yuki’s character development and his relationship with Machi and Kakeru developing. Also looking forward to seeing Momiji growing and more moments between Kyo and Tohru.

Update: Love seeing Yuki’s arc in the anime format. Seeing him reach out to his brother, Hatsuharu and the student council peeps and grow is so rewarding to watch. Looking forward to more and more Kyorhu. One wish is that, I wish with this season we could see Momiiji change physically a bit more but I’m holding onto hope for that near the end of the season. 

March Comes in like a Lion/ 3-gatsu no Lion

It’s not my usual type of anime to watch as it is so slice-of-life, but in a weird way it really reminds me of My Roommate is a Cat except after I watch it I want to play chess or learn shogi. Of course, Rei has depression and a lot of issues he needs to work with, but the sisters are just so sweet and the moments that they show up to take care of him are so heartwarming. I love his self-proclaimed ‘best’ friend and rival - Nikaidou. I just really love how he’s drawn, his personality and when he shows up in the show it definitely perks me up. I really enjoy seeing him develop as a character and as a person. I am somewhat sympathetic to the plight of his foster sister but where I am in the show (finished s1) I absolutely loathe her. I really like seeing  how many people are around Rei and watching him tackle life and grow. Looking forward to watching s2!

The animation is very interesting. One thing that I am not sure if it is deliberate or not is how the characters’ facial expressions (mostly the way the mouth is in close-ups) are drawn to me seems very ambiguous to me - I can’t quite understand what emotion is being conveyed.

Update: Started s2 and man the bullying storyline with Hina is so sad.

Teasing Master Takagi-san

DNF. Just started it randomly. It’s very cute.

The Great Pretender

I started it cuz it was short and seemed like fun. It has darker undertones than I expected going into it. On the Singapore storyline.

Wotaku

This was very short and binge-able. I liked it, it’s fun for what it is.

Dramas

Never Twice

So idk if I’ll actually keep up with this as it is a guilty pleasure atm. I just started it because I liked some of the tropes that the show had (found family, sweet male lead, baby being doted on etc.). I am enjoying the gifs of the show. The plot is very... boring and I do recognize that for the most part the female characters don’t have much intrinsic motivation or identity outside male characters... 

05.2020 Update: DNF. 

Crash Landing on You

I am really enjoying it so far. I really like that both the female leads are just very powerful and interesting on their own. Really like how the found family trope is being used. The romance is cute (a bit much at times imo). I still can’t get over how Captain Ri heard her suicide tape and just went ‘oh we are fated to be together’. That was... an interesting interpretation of the tape...

Also the whole thing with her being in N. Korea is hilarious and really the drama asks the viewer to really suspend disbelief to enjoy the show but  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Update: Completed. Enjoyed it overall. Wasn’t the best drama I’ve ever seen but REALLY loved the female leads in the show. Seo Dan and her family are just SO adorable. Can’t believe Gu Suengjoon was killed just as his relationship with Dan became so cute. One qualm is that this show does the whole near death thing WAY too many times with the main couple for my taste. 

365: Repeat the Year

Interesting premise and it has Nam Jihyun who I love. Looking forward to more and hoping it will keep my attention. I can’t believe that by episode 10 that the serial killer was revealed. I mean, I’m still invested in the show but that definitely caught me off-guard.

Finished it! I am really glad that they reduced the total amount of episodes because I felt that the ending was well done - not too rushed, not too out there (for the show). It was a very good ending for the show! I recommend it to anyone interested in a sci-fi/thriller. Overall, it was a fun time! Very engaging and would appeal to anyone interested in thrillers. I do have ONE gripe about the show which is a spoiler but it did not prevent me from enjoying the show. 

Love with Flaws/ People with Flaws

Finished! I started it cuz of a random compilation I saw on Youtube with the show and the gifs of it here and there and it’s decent overall. I would say that out of the many kdramas I’ve seen in this genre, it does stand slightly apart from the rest because of how each character is portrayed. I feel like there were no overt archetypes for the characters and I especially liked how they portrayed characters relationships. I liked how the siblings’ relationships were portrayed, and I really ended up loving the female lead’s eldest brother. He’s just so sweet and kind and I love how he does his best to take care of their entire family. It was definitely sad to see at points knowing that Cha In Ha committed suicide, but his character in the show was just so well done and important! Also his boyfriend is literally so pure I love him. As usual Seulgi just makes me go  😍😍.   

Nobody Knows 2020

It’s really good - very dark and bizarre. The shady foundation’s motivations are a mystery to me, but that hotel owner is a very interesting character. I will get back to it when I can handle more pain.

Update few months later: The twists and the turns though. Wow. I love all the children and how (so far) they are all portrayed as victims of circumstance. They are so sweet and I appreciate how Eun Ho, Dong Ryong and Min Sung’s relationships progress throughout the show. I’m also enjoying the character development of Sun Woo (the teacher/heir to the foundation). It’s also nice to see Cha Young-Jin begin to slowly open up. I’m enjoying the show a lot so far and am very intrigued by Baek Sang Ho’s group.

Final update: FINISHED it! Really loved this drama a lot. I love how all the characters are written so lovingly with so much depth to them. I liked the way the plot unraveled, I liked how all the relationships developed in the story, I loved the way forgiveness and morality were discussed. It was a really good drama and I am missing it already!

Chicago Typewriter

A re-watch. Man I love this drama. The three leads and their relationship is just adorable. 

I hope that in Shin Yul’s world/afterlife or whatever they can be happy together. <3 

Oh My Baby

I started this out because I was extremely bored and saw a few gifs of the show. It seems promising. Don’t have super high expectations of the show tbh. I do like the main couple though! They are adorable, nervously awaiting how it will conclude.

Update: Skipped a couple of episodes (4?) and went to the end. It ended up alright, very open ending and somewhat realistic. I’m glad the main characters were able to put their relationship above their disappointment in being infertile.

Strangers from Hell/ Hell is Other People

I really enjoyed it!! - If I were to recommend it to anyone I would recommend they go into it as blind as possible to enjoy it to the fullest.

So... I had no clue that this show was ONLY 10 episodes long, so imagine my surprise as the events that have been put to play begin to climax, I checked and was surprised that it wasn’t a 16 episode drama. Anyways, this drama had superb writing, directing, acting and fight scene choreography. Everything came together to really make this show have such a dark, creepy atmosphere that intensified as the episodes went on. I loved how the show portrayed how Yoon Joon Yoo/O’s mentality was tested to the breaking point. Tbh I thought he was slow in the beginning of the show (episode 1-2), but turned out that he did far better than his counterparts. I think that one thing that was a shame was they didn’t really show the strength of his relationship w his girlfriend too much before, and had they had more screen time as a couple I would have been even more invested in the story. 

Mystic Pop-up Bar

Loved it! This was a really enjoyable show. The pacing was good, the story was interesting and I liked watching the characters relationships develop. It was heartwarming and a fun watch! I enjoyed the focus on various people’s stories showcasing all sorts of relationships. 

It’s Okay Not to be Okay/ Psycho But It’s Okay

Put it on hold for now - watched up until episode 10-12ish.

Flower of Evil

The best kdrama of 2020 so far? Possibly.  Love how it mixes being a thriller with the marital relationship aspect. One potential con is that it seems that the mystery aspect of the show for now seems fairly obvious but how the situations will be handled keeps me on the edge of my seat!! Also I totally did not expect such a strong marriage to be shown in a thriller drama! Also the way that Cha Ji Won is written is just chef’s kiss. I love how complex she is, how intelligent, kind, caring and so so good at putting things together. I love Hyun So’s family and I hope it ends with them staying together.

Update: Finished it! Not sure how I feel about the very last episode... but I can say I’m glad that Do Hae Su got some crumbs in terms of character development by the end. So glad she didn’t end up with Moo Jin and started a new life abroad. The amnesia plot was unnecessary imo, I would have rather seen more cute scenes of them together than angst in the last episode. But, it was interesting to see how the trial was revealed, and the Baek’s got way better than they deserved which is unfortunately realistic.

Lie after Lie

Plot sounded way more interesting in the synopsis vs the execution. Mediocre plot which I thought was easy to see through.

Eighteen Again

sort of dnf? I made it to epi 14 or so and just finished it in my head and through gifs. It had so much potential which I think it squandered... but there were some genuinely heart warming scenes from the show which I really enjoyed. (Siwoo and his dad bonding, all the scenes showing the mc as the nicest dude).

I don’t want to be friends with you

I really enjoyed the show. I liked how it portrayed the mother-daughter relationship, the differences in how they were raised and how Li Jing Bu was able to get the love she so craved through her dream?/journey. I liked how the romance was handled, how she gained such meaningful relationships during the show and how important it was to her that her mom was happy.

The Good Detective (2020)

I really enjoyed this show! It was really cool to see a show that critiques the corrupt systems they have in place and the unexpected consequences that it can have on people. I liked how it touched on themes of guilt, remorse, forgiveness and resilience. Also, it was interesting to see a guy who has all the money in the world choose to be a workaholic detective.

Part 2

Judy Garland: Reflections on an Icon, Gay or Otherwise

Today, June 22, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the day we lost one of the world’s greatest entertainers, Judy Garland. In just a few days time we will observe an even more momentous 50th anniversary, that of the Stonewall Uprising which birthed the modern LGBTQ equality movement. If you’re familiar with your queer folk history, you’ll know there are those who claim this close timing is not a coincidence. But we’ll get to that later.

I first encountered Garland the way most people do--my parents showed me The Wizard of Oz when I was little. I don’t remember much of the experience aside from wanting to be a flying monkey for Halloween, and that “Over the Rainbow” made me cry, which was the first time any piece of media had made such an impact on me. It never really occurred to me that the woman who sang that song could have had a career beyond Oz until 12 years ago when I was just finishing Middle School and becoming interested in the Old Hollywood era. She was the first star I formed an emotional connection to, and as I happily made my way through her filmography and read up on her life I first encountered the phrase “gay icon.”

I knew what gay meant, obviously. I was vaguely aware of the LGBTQ and marriage equality movements, but at the time I mostly knew “gay” as the insult hurled at me seemingly everyday of Middle School for a series of things I never gave a second thought to but were apparently tell-tale signs that I was that way, and thus a figure deserving of torment--how I carried my books, how I sat, how I looked. My basic opinion of being gay at that point was that it’s fine for other people, but dear god don’t let this be my future!

So, when I realized that the star I was idolizing was famous for being idolized by gay men, I did what I’d become very adept at doing, I ignored the implications. Denial allowed me to spend high school working my way through her films, youtube videos, documentaries, and a biography without really examining why this woman resonated so much with me. So now, as we approached these two anniversaries, it seemed like a good time to finally try to sort through what she meant to me. What I ended up with instead is an essay that’s part personal reflection and part mediation on the meaning of the term “Gay Icon” in the era of Marriage Equality and Corporate-Sponsored Pride.

The term “Gay Icon” has been used to mean several similar, but different types of people. To clarify, when I talk about Gay Icons in this post, I’m talking specifically about a subset of gay icons related to the so-called “Diva Worship” culture among gay men. Nobody really seems to know why exactly gay men are so drawn to larger-than-life women, I’ve heard too many reasons to go into them all now, but even if not all of us go for the cliches (Cher, Gaga, etc.) pretty much every gay man has a female figure--real or fictional--they connect with in a way their straight male peers don’t.

Looking back, it’s obvious why Garland resonated with me. She was chronically insecure, especially about her looks--as was I. She spent her life wanting desperately to for someone to love her unconditionally and to be able to love them back, only to be denied this simple happiness time after time--well, of course that would resonate with a gay audience, especially in her lifetime. And she was a survivor, repeatedly cast aside by the press and the industry as washed up, she continually had the last laugh. She had a strength to her that I wanted. It was a different kind of strength than the physical/masculine kind offered by the pro-athletes and superheroes my male peers emulated, but which I found unrelatable and unappealing. Hers was a strength that came dressed in sequins and high heels, and I just thought it was fabulous.

Garland though, is more than just a gay icon, in a lot of ways she seems to be the gay icon. The popular code phrase “friend of Dorothy” is generally assumed to be a reference to her character in Oz. She maintained close friendships with gay men throughout her life, with whom she would frequent illegal gay bars on both coasts. Her father was a closeted homosexual, and biographers have speculated this is why so many of the men she was attracted to, both as friends and romantically, turned out to be gay or bi. She was one of the first celebrities to have their gay following acknowledged in the mainstream press. There’s even footage on youtube of her being asked directly about why she attracts so many “homosexuals,” and she is visibly thrown by it.

To understand why Garland would be so flustered over that question, it’s important to understand how being popular with the gay community was perceived in her lifetime. William Goldman’s The Season, his influential book about the 1967–68 season on and off Broadway, includes an account from an unnamed screenwriter friend describing a mid-1960s cocktail party that offers a fascinating glimpse at just that:

I can’t explain her appeal, but I saw it work once in this crazy way. I was at a party in Malibu... There were a lot of actors there, the word on them was that they were queer, but this was a boy-girl party, everyone was paired off, and these beautiful men and gorgeous broads were talking together and drinking together. Anyway, everything’s going along and it’s sunny, I’m getting a little buzzed... when I realized, Garland was in the room.

The guy she’s with, her husband, supports her as she plops down in this chaise, and says what she wants to drink and he goes off to get it. And she’s sitting all alone and for a minute there was nothing, and then this crazy thing started to happen. Every homosexual in the place, every guy you’d heard whispered about, they left the girls they were with and started to mass move towards Garland. She didn’t ask for it, she was just sitting there, while all these beautiful men circled her. They crowded around her and pretty soon she’s disappeared behind this expansive male fence. It may not sound like all that much, but I’m telling you, she magnetized them. 

I’ll never forget all those famous secret guys moving across this gorgeous patio without a sound, and her just sitting there, blinking. And then they were on her, and she was gone. (x)

Another passage describing one of her concerts in 1967, from Goldman himself, is even more blunt:

Another flutter of fags, half a dozen this time, and watching it all from a corner--two heterosexual married couples. “These fags” the first man says, “it’s like Auschwitz, some of them died along the way but a lot of them got here anyhow!” He turns to the other husband and shrugs, “Tonight, no one goes to the bathroom.” (x)

Both passages, laced with condescension, homophobia, and misogyny, are nevertheless useful windows into a pre-Stonewall way of looking at how far gay culture has come. Today Lady Gaga can sing “Don’t be a drag just be a queen” on a lead single and still reign as a queen of pop music, back then any association with homosexuality was enough to taint you. Garland’s popularity with gay men opens her up to condescending mockery, while gay men’s mere existence at a public event is enough to terrify the heterosexual attendees.

Still, the most revealing part of that last passage might not be the homophobia, but the opening reference to “another flutter of fags, half a dozen.” The fact that a decent amount of gay men evidently felt comfortable enough to express themselves at least somewhat openly at a mainstream public event is notable. In this pre-Stonewall era such openness was generally reserved for bars and other covert safe spaces.

Which brings us back to the first paragraph. If you know any queer folk history, then you’ve probably heard this one--Judy Garland’s funeral sparked the Stonewall Uprising. That fateful night in June the Stonewall Inn was packed with gay men still emotionally raw from losing their idol, so much so that when the police raided the joint they channeled that anger and loss, and fought back, and the modern LGBTQ movement was born! It’s a story that would solidify Garland’s status as the definitive gay icon, a martyr for the cause, (move over Harvey Milk!) Except, it’s not true. It’s been debunked multiple times. Most recently in this video from the NY Times.

I bring it up though, because even if she wasn’t the cause, she was still connected to that historic night, if only indirectly. Even as the NY Times video debunks the myth of her funeral causing it, two of the uprising’s participants interviewed do admit to being at Garland’s funeral, which really was held just hours before the violence started. Other accounts from people who patronized Stonewall have said that “Judy Garland” was a popular fake name to use on a sign-in book at the entrance. In other words, even if she didn’t cause them, she was still an important figure for some of the people who went on to build the modern equality movement.

As a final thought to wrap this all up, I’ve been thinking about Garland and her status as a gay icon. It’s no secret that as the years have passed by she’s been somewhat supplemented by younger icons for younger generations. There’s been some question over whether Garland even has a place in a gay culture that now has people like Lady Gaga and “Born This Way,” openly acknowledging their gay fans in ways Garland never could. 

At the same time, I can’t help but feel the recent debate over Taylor Swift’s gay-themed music video demonstrates why Garland still deserves her Gay Icon status, even if most younger queer people today don’t have the same connection to her that older generations did. Swift’s video, chocked full of every out celebrity who would return her calls and saturated in a rainbow-hue, has faced criticism for being “performative activism.” That after being fairly silent on the issue for so long she’s now trying to cash-in on the movement by branding her single a new gay anthem for Pride Month. The fact that with one exception, which misuses the word “shade,” the lyrics to the song sound more like they’re referring to Swift’s online haters rather than anti-LGBTQ bigots, certainly helps the critics’ case. As does the fact that Swift never seemed to have much interest in building a large gay following before this.

Yet there’s also a sense that this was inevitable. Corporations already roll out rainbow colored logos for Pride, in retrospect it seems obvious that celebrities, and their PR firms, would start deliberately trying to market themselves as a gay icon without first taking the time to build a large following in the LGBTQ community. (Gaga’s established gay fanbase undoubtedly blunted similar criticisms of “Born This Way,” for example.) Garland in this case then serves as a symbol of a time when the Gay Icon title wasn’t anointed by marketing campaigns, but emerged organically from a genuine affection for an individual held by a large number of queer people. A reminder of how important that affection was to members of our community, (and still is to many of us) even if it could only go one-way. And perhaps even a warning, of what we might lose if we let this important part of gay subculture be transformed into just another marketing gimmick.

But I’ll leave all that for another time. For now, I’ll just say, thank you Judy Garland. Thank you for all the joy and comfort you’ve given to generations of gay men. And thank you especially for the companionship you gave me while I was still figuring some things out.