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fictionadventurer · 3 years

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Thoughts on Edwardian literature (as opposed to Victorian)?

To keep things as simple as possible, I’m defining Edwardian fiction as anything published between 1900 and 1914, no matter which country it was published in.

The Edwardian fiction I’ve read seems to be a lot lighter than the Victorian fiction. Maybe it’s easier for the lighter works to stick around since not as much time has passed? Or maybe it’s just that the age of pay-by-the-word epics had passed? (Is this the point where cheap paperbacks started to be a thing? That could account for the rise in short, fluffy literature, unless my just-making-this-up-off-the-top-of-my-head method of historical inquiry turns out to (somehow) be faulty).

First association with this era’s always Chesterton. My love of him is no secret, and a lot of my favorites of his works come from this pre-war era.

Graybeards at Play was his first published book of poetry--conveniently, for the purposes of this post, in 1900. According to Ward, even Chesterton hated it. (He always considered The White Knight his first published book). I don’t think it’s deserving of hatred. It’s like, four or five poems. They’re light and forgettable (I couldn’t have told you a thing about any of them an hour after I read them), but there’s nothing all that terrible about them.

I don’t talk enough about my love for The Napoleon of Notting Hill. It’s such a fun story, and a lot of the ideas of it form important parts of my mental landscape. I think of it every time I see a Renaissance Fair, and any time there’s a Cheat-the-Prophet style prediction about the future. So much of it is so very silly, but it’s built on such an interesting tension between people who care too much and people who don’t care enough. Adam Wayne and Auberon Quin are such good characters. The ending section always kind of creeps me out--of all things, it made me think of Elmo Saves Christmas, because both stories left me with an extremely unsettled feeling when the silly story turns into an unexpectedly dark alternate reality--but the ending reconciliation between Quin and Wayne is excellent.

Manalive is delight in novel form. It was the first book I ever read by Chesterton and it changed my life. At first, I was just blown away by the love of life shown in the pages, but I thought it a better essay than a story. Later rereads have made me appreciate the excellent character work and the turns of the plot.

The Ball and the Cross was an excellent book, but very weird. A lot of the issues are still relatable, but I don’t understand the weird mystical happenings of the later part of the book.

I think Chesterton’s essays are my favorites of the things he’s written. “On Running After One’s Hat” is a particular favorite. As is the one about drawing with chalk on brown paper.

Lepanto is one of my favorite poems of all time. Ballad of the White Horse gets a bit long and repetitive, but it’s a stirring epic.

I have an entire section of Father Brown reread posts that go into my love of the stories. Those rereads gave me a greater appreciation of the stories as stories, rather than Chesterton essays. I low-key regret that I was never able to finish my post for the last story in Innocence. The reread posts were a big undertaking, but I would have liked to have had posts for at least the first volume of stories. (But there was something about that last story that just halted all attempts to say anything about it.)

Oh, how can I forget about Orthodoxy? Absolute cornerstone of my mental landscape. But Chesterton has already taken up far too much space here.

I’ve also got two years’ worth of Psmith Pseptember posts talking about my love of Wodehouse’s work in this period. They may not be Wodehouse’s best work, but they might be my favorites. It kind of shocks me to remember that the Psmith author is the same guy who wrote the Jeeves and Wooster stories, because I’ve kind of split them up in my mind. So much similar between the series while feeling so different.

I always assumed The Phantom of the Opera was the quintessential Victorian Gothic novel, but I ran across a copy this week and was shocked to see that it was published in 1911. I like the book, especially the parts that didn’t make it into the musical. I love that the book casts Raoul as the hero of the piece and plays up the horror of the Phantom’s past, making him this exotic genius. (The scenes with the traps below the opera house? Shivers.)

I seem to have developed a deep fondness for A.A. Milne’s adult books. His sense of humor is so relatably daffy, and I can see why he hated only being known for the Pooh books. I have a copy of The Sunny Side that I read about half of, and I really need to go back and finish the rest of the stories sometime.

Peter Pan is...fine. I was glad I read it, but I can’t say it’s a favorite.

This period also gives us Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. The first book deserves its status as a classic. It was one of the first books I ever bought for myself at full price (I had won a bookstore gift certificate). I hadn’t even heard of it before, but I loved it. Then I tried to read the second book and got so bored that I never finished it, and I never read the rest of the series until I was an adult. I’ll always hold a grudge toward that second book for depriving me of years of Anne enjoyment.

A Little Princess was one of the only books I got as a gift as a kid (my parents are not bookish). My aunt gave it to me, with an inscription saying it was one of her favorite books. I read it lots, still have that copy, and was glad to see that it held up when I reread it last year.

Daddy-Long-Legs was a book I discovered thanks to tumblr recommendations, and I loved it. Such an engaging voice! (Though the twist does make the MMC a bit skeevy). The musical is rather good, too.

The Rosary by Florence Louisa Barclay was an impulse pick when I was looking for free Kindle books. (It has nothing to do with religion--The Rosary is the title of a song the character sings). It was apparently the bestselling novel of 1910, and I can kind of see why. The characters and humor are surprisingly sharp, and the romance is sweet, even though it devolves into improbable tropes. I’ve only read it once, but I have intensely fond memories of it, and it always makes me wonder what other Edwardian gems have been lost to obscurity.

Kilmeny of the Orchard has some beautiful descriptions and cute characters, which makes it a crying shame that the entire plot hinges upon complete medical codswallop.

There are a lot of books that I think of as Edwardian that turn out to have been published during WWI or the ‘20s. But that’s probably a good thing because this post is already far too long.

#thanks for the ask!#i hope you don't mind a list of rather vague thoughts #and as always i'm glad for any recs #books #answered asks #ask games #isfjmel-phleg

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imma-potatoo · 3 years

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I HAD TOO

I AM NOT SORRY AT ALL @superwholockandpfl

This is once again written for my friend k.c.cosplay on tiktok! Once again, amazing cosplays 💙💛💙💛💙💛💙

Same universe then this fic

*Logan is a dark side*

Ships: Loceit, parental logicality, parental anxceit

Warnings: none that I know of? Let me know if you want me to tag something

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Perseus and Andromeda

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Logan and Janus stood in front of the other four. Smiles completely coated their faces as they both held out their left hands. Janus holding Logan's bicep with his right hand.

Rings. On both of them.

"You- you got married?" Patton's voice was timid. He didn't expect this day to come. But he currently wanted his father-son dance with Logan

Janus and Logan's faces quickly turned to shock. "What?! No! We're engaged! These are engagement rings daa-- Patton!" Logan blushed at the almost use of Pattons old title. Not that Logan didn't view Patton as a father figure -far from it, Janus and him were the youngest sides- but calling someone dad while you are practically the same age and completely imaginary is quite weird in his opinion but I mean-

"My love, your zoning out again."

Logan could hear the amusement in his fiance's voice. Squeezing Janus' hand slightly; Logan cleared his thoat, "What was that question again?"

Roman was slightly laughing before Remus elbowed him in the ribs, "OW REM-" "Roman sh! Do you have a date picked out yet?" Virgil had a hopeful shimmer in his eyes

Logan and Janus looked at eachother briefly, "Not really, to be honest" Janus laughed slightly. "He just asked me last night," a lose curl falling from behind the yellow sides ear. Logan quickly catching it to tuck it back to its rightful place

The sides migranted over to couch. They had a feeling that they'll be talking for a while.

"Any ideas on a theme yet?" Roman was bouncing enthusiastically, hands tight fisted on the couch. A huge ear to ear grin spread on his face

Logan hummed, thinking back to a precious conversation, "We're thinking victorian or dark academia. But we're open to any suggestions!" his hand was tracing circles over and over on Janus' back.

Roman jumped off the couch. Bouncing up and down over and over and over, "FEAR NOT MY BELOVED FRIENDS! I will help you plan it!"

Romans eyes sparkled rapidly. Grin glowing like wild, he paused for a second or two before gasping, "WE COULD HAVE IT IN A HUGE GOLDEN BALLROOM! With crystal plates! And a hundred foot tall cake! An-"

It was at that point where the blue and yellow sides completely zoned out to Romans tangent.

The newly engaged couple gave eachother a look. This look said a lot of things. But mainly 'are we seriously going to let a side who thinks throwing glitter at random objects equels fashion. Complete control of our wedding?' that look. Its a very very specific look. But its a very obvious look.

The red creativity seemed to notice the couples glazed over eyes and blank expression. So he quickly stopped his rant to add on a rather important detail, "I mean... If you guys want me to help. Its completely ok if you don't!! I mean, its ok, I just-"

"Roman for the love of all things holy. Please stop talking." Logan was rubbing his temple with his free hand, "We would love to have you help plan our wedding. But we don't need a ballroom, or crystal plates, or any fancy fairy tale type things." He squeezed Janus' hand with a bright grin, "We just need eachother."

Roman's dramatic pose and extreme tangent faltered. He paused. Seeming to process the information. Before a small grin took his face. "then thats what you two will have."

Janus moved his gaze from Roman to the green twin... Looking at the floor.... With a pout that could kill a god.... Looking very non-Remus esq.

"Remus, do you also want to help plan our wedding?"

In the span of a second, Remus' face bounced between 50 different emotions before settling on complete and utter happiness, "I THOUGHT YOU WOULD NEVER ASK MY AMAZING DOUBLE D-"

Patton slapped his hand over Remus' mouth, "lets not talk about my future son-in-law like that! eeewwwWWWWWW!!! ROMAN HE LICKED MY HAND!!" Patton snapped his hand away as soon as he put it on.

Laughter filled the rest of the night... And quite a bit of wine.

------2 mouths later-----

Logan grumbled as he threw another crumpled piece of paper against the desk. Elbows on the desk, hands pressing into his eyes.

His supposed vows were going amazingly. Completely. Totally. A hundred percent. Amazing....... Oh who was he kidding? His vows were going terribly.

Not from lack of love or anything absolutely ridiculous like that. He loved Janus more then the stars, moon and galaxies combined. He loved everything about Janus.

He loved Janus' snark. He loved the way his eyes glowed when they watched a movie. Or how Janus' voice drips like steeped honey and smoked chives. Or how his snake eye dilates when he's happy. Or when he gets excited and talks for hours and hours about a philosopher or a certain myth that sparked his interest or reminded him of their relationship-

Thats it.

The last myth that Janus was talking about was Perseus and Andromeda.

Andromeda was to be sacrificed to save her kingdom because her mother boasted about her beauty to the nererids. The nererids told their father, Poseidon, and as revenge; Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravenge the kingdom. Perseus, the hero who slayed Medusa, saw Andromeda chained to the stone and slayed the sea monster. After saving her, he took her hand in marriage.

It was far from their love story. Far far from their love story. But...

The way his eyes lit up.

Logan could get drunk on that look. He could live off that look alone for the rest of his life. Oh and that smile

Logan takes his head out of his hands. Mouth agape.

He had an idea

---------

Janus had been hitting his head against his desk for hours.

Janus could write millions of speeches, and could convince armys to do his bidding, and he could use empty words to get his desires.

But these damn vows.

Janus supposes that its because he isn't used to truth. But he wants too! But the truth seems to be avoiding him more then mouse with a cat.

Logan likes cats, he could never get one before because Patton's allergic. Should he even call Patton by his name? Wouldn't he call him dad now?

He allowed his mind to wonder for a short period of time. Elbows on the desk, hands pressing into his eyes.

This needs to be the truth and its not like he's low on love for Logan. Far far from it

They met when they were younger. Really really younger. He doesn't even remember it. But according to Virgil, Logan and him stared at eachother for five minutes before actually talking to eachother -more like babbling- after that they were practically inseparable. They did everything together apparently. Then they stayed friends for a long time. They barely even talked to eachother by the time that he introduced himself to Thomas. But...

But then Logan became a dark side. Logan started to unbutton the top of his polo. Logan stopped wearing the tie. Logan started to wear ice blue makeup. The Logan he knew as a child came back.

The Logan who loved science, bugs and books. Who loved ranting about old dead philosophers and Janus loved to listen. Logan loved old libraries and classical music. The Logan that used to watch Bill Nye as a child and knows the theme song by heart. The Logan that loved old myths and stories. The Logan who would go outside to the imagination and watch the stars and constellations for hours. His Logan

His favourite constellation was Perseus-

He has an idea.

----The Wedding Day----

Janus adjusted his suit for probably the millionth time. Running his fingers through his hair, attempting to make it lay properly. But only making the curls more wild.

Grumbling obscurities while trying to smooth down his damn hair, he heard low chuckles behind him.

"You know your only gonna make it worse, right Jan?" Virgil was leaning against the wall. His own hair absolutely perfect.

Janus sighed, "I know dad. But I just want my damn hair to lay properly for once! This is why I wear my damn hat-" the chuckles turned into full laughter.

"Logan will love you, no matter how your hair looks," Virgil stood up straight (HA) and walked over to Janus

He took a comb and started to go through his hair. Janus stopped growing by the time he was fifteen, so he was maybe at shoulder height with Virgil. "You need to stop worrying so much, and thats coming from me. Lo loves you more then the sun itself. Don't worry about something as silly as your hair."

Janus watched from the floor to ceiling mirror as Virgil expertly calmed down the mess of his hair.

Meanwhile.....

"Patton please stop crying. Your going to stain my suit-"

"BUT MY BABY'S GETTING MARRIED!!!" tears were still leaking down his face. He's been doing this since he came into the room -which was about twenty minutes ago-

Logan sighed, a smile apparent on his face as he patted his father figure on the back. "I know." he straightened his bowtie slightly in the mirror, "I just love him so much dad," Patton sat down in one of the dressing room chairs. A smile covering his entire face.

"Jan isn't really one to cry. But when I proposed to him? Tears just started leaking. I thought he was upset, so I went to comfort him," blush growing on his cheeks, "then he kissed me and looked me directly in the eyes and said yes." Logan felt a huge grin spreading on his cheeks against his will. He looked out of the mirror and back to his father. "He said yes."

Patton stood up from his seat and put his hands on Logan's shoulders, "and now its your wedding day. You two are going to get married and live out your lives being complete loveable nerds as you talk about philosophy and the stars and things I could never understand. You two are absolutely perfect for eachother and I can't wait to see where you two go next." while tears still shone in his eyes, the smile showed that they were of happiness.

They stared at eachother for a few minutes. Patton nitpicking small details to fix on Logan's suit.

"Janus the one walking down the isle right?"

Logan laughed softly, "yeah, he said it was a more dramatic entrance. Thats my future husband, right there"

Patton looked a little puzzled, "Can you even call him your future husband if the ceremony is starting in less then ten?"

"I mean, technically thats in the futur- wait. How much time was left?"

Patton blinked. Looking in the eyes of his son, "Ten minutes."

A look of panic shot through Logan. "We have to go!"

Logan grabbed Patton's hand. Pulling him out to the room. The celebration hall was stunning

It was outside, circle tables scattered around the clearing like the stars above scattered in the sky. A banquet table for the newly weds, their parents and their best men. The altar was covered in delicate fairy lights illuminating a soft glow. The shimmering stars above their heads shone brighter the usual. The constellations of Perseus and Andromeda were by far the brightest.

Logan stopped in his tirade to the altar. And simply looked at the brilliant view that the twins had put together for them.

For once in his life. Logan was speechless.

"They did a good job right?!?"

Logan was still looking around the meadow, amazed at every tiny detail. From the black dahilas that Remus insisted on including because of the famous unsolved murder, to the fairy lights climbing up the pillers that was no doubt Roman's doing.

"Its beautiful... How di-"

"The twins are a very creative bunch, kiddo!! We have five minutes until your wonderful groom comes out!" The other guests were starting to fill the room as Logan took his place at the altar. It was mostly figments that Thomas had made. Emile, Remy, The Critic, etc. They all took their seats and watched the meadow.

Logan walked over to his place next to the altar. Hands fidgety and resisting the urge to mess with the hair that he spent so long combing down. Roman stood at his side, while Remus waited at the other side of the altar for Janus. Before he knew it the music started to play, the quests rose from their seats, he felt his desire to stand straight. But none of those compared to when Janus walked into the room.

Janus walked in with Virgil latched on to his arm. A periwinkle blossem on the left of his chest. He still had his yellow gloves on -he really hated taking them off. Without the gloves, Janus couldn't lie- but he was without his hat. He was in a black tux with a yellow bowtie.

Logan couldn't think of anything else more beautiful. Logan couldn't think of anyone more beautiful then the side in front of him. Logan couldn't help the gigantic, ear to ear smile as Janus arrived at the altar and took his hands in his own.

The officiant -Who Roman just summoned from the imagination- cleared his voice and spoke to the whole room of people, "Friends and Family, we are gathered here today to connect two side's hearts and souls through this ceremony.

Logic Logan Sanders, Do you take this side to love and to hold, to protect and charish and to adore until the end of your lives?"

His smile growing wider, eyes sparkling with deep love and affection; Logan gazed into Janus' eyes, lightly squeezing his hands. "More then the sun and the stars."

The officiant smiled slightly before turning to Janus. "Deceit Janus Sanders, Do you take this side to love and hold, to protect and charish and to adore until the end of your lives?"

Tears shone throughout Janus' eyes. He removed his hands from Logans and for a second the blue side felt his heart drop, only for it to swell when he sees Janus remove his gloves and place his hands back in Logans. "More then every lie, secret and promise I have ever made."

The officiant turned back to Logan, "Please say your vows."

Logan felt his heart throb as he opened his mouth,

"Janus. In the very very long time that I have known you, I find myself falling more in love with you every day. I love how you laugh. I love how when you're tired you curl up to my side. I love how you stay by my side through it all. My translation from a light side to dark, my learning cerve to our new family, every dilemma from the others that we have to enviably fix.

Every night, every day, every hour, every minute, every second. You occupy my mind. And god Janus, I never want you to leave it.

I love you. I love you more then Perseus loved Andromeda." Logan's eyes were shining with unshed tears, he lightly squeezed Janus' hands. "I love you Janus and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."

The officiant nodded, then he turned to Janus. "Please speak your vows."

Janus drew a shaky breath before speaking.

"Logan, I honestly don't remember when we met. You were my only constant, the unchanging variable that I could always fall back on. You were always there for me and I want to always be there for you.

I love you more then anything Logan. The way you light up when a new documentary comes out, drives butterflies to my stomach. When you laugh, I get lightheaded. When you smile, I get bolts of electricity to my heart. When you take me to the imagination for a date among the stars, I get so love drunk that things get dizzy. When you took me to our favourite place and got on one knee, I cried tears of joy.

There is nothing that I don't love about you. I've always found honest words hard to process. But believe me when I say that I've said no lies to you. You are the one person I will never lie to. I love you more then Andromeda loved Perseus," Janus looked up at Logan. The height difference apparent, but he smiled like he never smiled before. "I love you Logan. And I cannot wait to call you my husband."

The two sides gave eachother looked at eachother with pure adoration and love.

"Please put these rings on eachother."

They could hear Patton's loud sobs in the background as they slipped on the rings.

The officiant smiled wide, "I now pronounce you, Husband and Husband! You may now kiss your groom!"

They flew together like magnets. Logan grabbed the side of Janus' face to pull him closer, the earthy smell of cloves and plums filling his senses. Janus held Logan's arms and pulled him towards him. The kiss was far from chaste, but they pulled apart not long after to be met with......

"NOW YOU GOTTA STRIP AND FU-- OW ROMAN!!"

"NOT AT THE WEDDING YOU BABOON!"

The twins were a very chaotic bunch...

The wedding continued perfectly as planned. Then it came to the father-son dances.

Virgil as Janus were doing well. Virgil was giving Janus his best wishes and telling him how proud he was if him.

Patton and Logan??

Patton always cries at wedding to say the least...

Then it was their turn to dance.

Logan took his husbands hand and led him to the dance floor. It was lit by only fairy lights and the extra bright stars. They twirled and spinned and danced like they was only the two there.

The two battled for the lead before Logan won. Hand now in the swell of Janus' back and leading him in a very elaborate ballroom dance. Janus' scales glowing a bright yellow. Even over the music you could hear their laughter.

Patton and Virgil stood on the sidelines. Watching as their children had their fun. Virgil hummed slightly, "you owe me twenty bucks Patt."

Patton was very confused, he hadn't made any new bets recently or borrowed any money. "Why is that kiddo?"

Virgil turned and looked at Patton, "Ten years ago, you bet me that Lo and Jan would never get married. You owe me a twenty."

Patton grumbled slightly as he pulled a bill from his jacket pocket and handed it over. "This is the best bet I've ever lost then."

Virgil laughed, purple beginning to dust under his eyes. "You got that right," He took two glasses of champagne from the waiters walking by, "To our beloved children?"

Patton took the glass and raised it with Virgil. "To our beloved children." they then took a long sip and continued to watch as the couple danced.

The stars shining above, the moon full. They loved eachother more then Perseus and Andromeda.

-------

I. REGRET. NOTHING!!!

I also have 0 self control soo

The charcters are very ooc... But I don't overly care.

💙💛💙💛💙💛💙💛

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peterstanslizzie · 4 years

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Reacting To: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Season 2 Episode 1)

Episode Title: Paw of the Jaguar

Spoiler Warning: Kindly proceed if you’ve already seen the episode or are able to tolerate spoilers.

1. Naturally, Season 2 picks up where things left off at the end of the first season; Kipo manages to avoid being captured by Scarlemagne by reining in (or still trying to) the Mega Flamingo that grabbed her. Wolf says that the flamingo is their best bet and so, she, Kipo, Dave, Benson and Mandu hop on it in the hopes of it leading them to Scarlemagne and Lio Oak, Kipo’s dad.

2. Back at Scarlemagne’s Court, we find the captured denizens/humans including Lio and Hoag, whom are all apparently separated from the kids of the burrow for some reason. Hoag is blaming Kipo for their kidnapping, which I have to be honest; He is right. She did unknowingly lead Scarlemagne to Site B. One of the mind-controlled mutes starts spraying the Puppet Pheromones on the humans, which includes Hoag. But Scarlemagne/Hugo doesn’t want Lio to get sprayed with the pheromones.

3. I have a prediction. I bet Lio and Scarlemagne used to be friends or co-workers and I’m pretty sure they had something to do with Kipo being part mute.

4. Before taking off, our heroes are spotted by Troy, Asher and Dahlia and they are wondering what’s up with Kipo’s arm to which she tells them she’s part mute. Troy wants to tag along to help out but Kipo says that it’s too dangerous and suggests that Wolf and Benson take them to the Timbercats while she and Dave go after Scarlemagne. Despite some push-back from Wolf, her plan is more or less agreed upon. I think not bringing Wolf along isn’t a very good idea since she’s the best fighter. Also, he has an entire army; What makes her think that only her and Dave could take them on?

5. As she makes her way over to Scarlemagne’s Court, she is making sure to leave some remnants of Dave’s exoskeleton to allow the others to know where they’re going. Suddenly, the mind-controlled Mega Monkey attacks them. Kipo tries to calm it down by singing the iconic song, ‘What We Have Is You’ again but it doesn’t seem to be working as well as before. Maybe she needs to play the guitar lol.

6. The Mega Monkey grabs Kipo and she tries singing to it one more time and thankfully, she manages to calm it down but for only a few seconds before the pheromone-infused collar it’s wearing starts to activate. Luckily, Kipo swiftly uses her huge cat arm to destroy it, freeing Mega Monkey from Scarlemagne’s control. Aww, I’m so glad because I can’t bear to see it being controlled any longer.

7. Kipo seems to understand what the Mega Monkey is saying because it tells her that it wants to come along with Kipo to stop Scarlemagne. Kipo does the right thing and convinces it to stay put because she doesn’t want it to get mind-controlled again. I agree with Dave; This moment was so cute and touching but I’m sure we will see Mega Monkey again. Plus, Kipo gave it her bracelet/wristband as a symbol of friendship. That’s so sweet.

8. Kipo tells Dave that the Mega Monkey is “special”. I’m now actually wondering if it’s somebody Kipo knows or has met before. Maybe it’s her mom, Song? But didn’t she die when Kipo was a baby or something? Hmm...

9. Meanwhile, I don’t really know what Wolf and Benson are trying to do with Troy, Asher and Dahlia. They want the three of them to learn how to wrangle Pierre in order to gain the respect of the Timbercats. They cover Asher and Dahlia’s faces with maple syrup to lure in Pierre, which catches its attention and it charges right at them. Troy tries to defend them but Benson pushes him out of the way and we get this moment:

10. STOP THE PRESS! Did y’all see this? They blushed! Not just one of them but both of them! OMG! This is lowkey confirmation that Troy is gay too. Well, we all suspected it but c’mon this blush pretty much confirms it. Plus, the little pessimist within me is fearful of one-sided crushes. But luckily, we didn’t get any of that; YASSS!

11. Anyways, back to the story hehe. Pierre starts licking Asher and Dahlia’s maple-syrup covered faces, which makes Benson and Wolf think that they’re doing a good job. Anyways, I love how Wolf doesn’t know how to fist-bump. I guess it’s because she was raised by wolves lol.

12. It’s already night time and Kipo and Dave have finally reached Scarlemagne’s Court but it’s strangely empty. We then quickly shift over to a shot of Scarlemagne and his army flying over (or is it to?) Ratland.

13. Oh, great. More lessons on how to impress the Timbercats in order to let Asher, Dahlia and Troy stay with them; Is this really necessary? Don’t they have better things to do during a time of crisis? This time, they want them to learn how to properly chop wood. They do a decent job with it but Dahlia (I think?) unexpectedly goes ham on the wood and according to Asher, it’s because it has been a long day for her.

14. Kipo eventually spots her dad inside a prison cell that is guarded by two of the primate mutes and she rushes in to attack. One of them sprays the pheromones on her but it doesn’t seem to do a thing. I wonder why? She then beats them and frees her dad.

15. More Troy and Benson moments! We basically see them talking some more and Benson comes up with an idea to have them give flapjacks to the Timbercats. He also says that he has the best recipe in the world to which Troy asks if it includes flour, milk and eggs and Benson replies yes. Don’t they know that those are the basics? LOL.

16. But please, go ahead and be your cute gay selves while you guys flirt and bond over flapjacks. And it’s pretty clear that Wolf, Asher and Dahlia can sense their chemistry.

17. We shift things over to Ratland and all of its patrons are freaking out whilst rushing to exit the theme park since Scarlemagne has arrived, without an entrance ticket for that matter. Scarlemagne reveals to Amy and Brad (two of Ratland’s personnel) that he plans to take over Las Vistas and rename it as Aurum. He envisions Aurum to be a city where mutes will reign supreme over humans. He then proceeds to order his army to dismantle Ratland, which upsets Amy and Brad. Aww, I feel so bad for them!

18. Benson, Wolf, Mandu as well as their new friends arrive at the Timbercats’ forest and they try to return Pierre back to Yumyan. Yumyan notices that Pierre is acting differently because he seems to be attached to Asher. Benson and Wolf try to convince Yumyan and the rest of the Timbercats to let them stay with them by telling them their story about losing their home and etc. And guess what? It’s working because Yumyan is in tears as he is overcome with emotion knowing how brave they’re being despite the hardships. Umm, okay??? And so, they manage to quickly win over all of them. Well, it’s mostly because they’re friends of Kipo but a win is still a win lol.

19. As Wolf and Benson are getting ready to go back to help out Kipo and Dave, Troy walks over to Benson to thank him. They then talk about what they plan to do once they hopefully reunite again; They’re basically setting up a date! And oh, before leaving, Troy gives him one of these:

20. Oh. My. God. A kiss, a gay kiss on the cheek! And it’s only the first episode? I’m screaming! I love these two; I ship these two! YASSS! I hope they meet up again soon because I need more Troyson moments. And Benson is obviously so happy about what just happened. Same here, Benson. Same here.

21. Now back to Kipo, Dave and Lio. Lio reveals to Kipo that he and Song had infused Kipo’s DNA with a mutagen in order for her to become a Mega Jaguar herself. And that is why Scarlemagne’s pheromones didn’t work on her because they only work on primates. What a revelation lol. I was kinda right; I knew that Lio had something to do with his daughter’s transformation. But why would he and Song want to experiment on their own daughter, even if it’s to save the world or whatever? That’s kind of....I don’t know, off?

22. Just as I was half-expecting for Kipo to get mad at her dad, she reacts in the complete opposite way and is excited about becoming a Mega Jaguar and wants it to happen now to get everyone to safety.

23. I have questions lol. If she becomes a Mega Jaguar, will it be permanent and she can she ever turn back to her normal human form? Or maybe switch between the two forms? Lio says that she needs to train with the Chevre Sisters (who we’ve never heard till now) in order to control her transformation or else she’ll never come back. What does that mean when he says “never come back”? Like is she supposed to learn how to switch between her human form and her Jaguar form?

24. They notice that the flamingo that flew them there is being taken away by the primate mutes and Kipo foolishly rushes to attack them to retrieve the Mega Flamingo. She is stopped by Lio but it’s too late because one of them manages to grab hold of Lio whilst trying to escape with the help of Dave who has now transformed into his flying hero mode. Kipo tries to fight back to rescue her father but there’s too many of them. Lio urges Dave to fly Kipo out to safety and the scene cuts off.

25. Back at Ratland, Amy and Brad are devastated at the destruction of Ratland by Scarlemagne and his army. He then grabs hold of two humans and sprays them with his pheromones. Here, we also find out more about Scarlemagne’s evil intentions, which is similar to how Planet of the Apes is and that is to overcome their oppression by humans for thousands of years and basically topple over them.

26. Please don’t kill the rats, please don’t. Scarlemagne wants to make an example out of Brad and Amy as he threatens to launch a bottle of explosive nectar at them. He advises them to run but unfortunately, the scene then cuts off. Oh how I hope they survived!

27. Back in the woods, Benson, Wolf and Mandu bump into Kipo and Dave. Kipo then tells them what happened and she totally regrets not thinking things through, which led to her unsuccessful rescue attempt of her dad. She feels like her instincts have betrayed her. Wolf and Benson try to console her by telling her all the good things she did in the past to which there’s a lot of them.

28. That immediately makes Kipo feel a lot better and we then get a nice group hug between all of them. But the love-fest ended quickly because they hear a loud rumbling in the background, which of course, as we know, it’s coming from Ratland. Again, I hope Amy and Brad are alright. Scarlemagne and his primate mute and human army are seeing flying away from the area, taking some of the wreckage from there.

29. We then see in the distance, a group of cloaked individuals looking at the result of the explosion. I wonder if they are mutes or humans? I can’t tell. One of them does appear to have a beak and two of them have really long ears. Although, their legs looks very human-like. Maybe they’re part-mutes like Kipo? But what we do know is that they’re against Scarlemagne, which is good news.

30. Thinking back, I suspect that they’re the Chevre Sisters, Lio was talking about to Kipo. And it would make perfect sense if they’re part-mutes too because they’re supposedly going help Kipo to learn how to control her transformation.

31. Well y’all. That is the end of my review of episode 1 of Season 2 of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. This episode absolutely exceeded my expectations; It was filled with so much excitement, action and of course, love. Stay tuned tomorrow for my review of episode 2. Thanks for reading! Till then, bye!

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 4 years

Text

Magia Record 4

There’s a fish behind Iroha. Also, I was confused about the ketchup cake thing Jenn mentiond in one of her posts until I saw it here.(On a related note, ketchup cake seems to really exist…but only in Canada.)

Ah! Tsuruno. I’ve heard of her from reading around about this mobage.

The coding of the episode went funny again…

I feel like despite this being everything Madoka was, this seems to have lost some of the charm somehow. I’ve been reading that others are having similar experiences, though. Update: I think I know why now…although there are magical girl events fuelling the entire thing, the show is currently more bent on being a CGDCT. That’s why I’m not so happy with it…I dunno about others, though.

I suspected Séance Shrine was Mizuna Shrine…I mean, it was right behind Iroha and co.

Who was that blonde girl…?

I thought I just saw face-stealing aliens swoop in (i.e. someone didn’t bother drawing in the girls’ faces). I thought that was just a Bones thing exclusive to BSD.

“Olibe oil” (sic). Also, there are creepy blue (green?) figures walking the aisles…

I notice Iroha needed an extra bounce to get over the gate.

What’s that orange marking on the girls’ faces…? Update: Reading the wiki reveals it’s the Witch’s Kiss, or something similar to it.

Uchitama 3

Well, it says “chome” but gets translated to “street”…which is a bit weird. A chome is a city district, which functions much like a street but isn’t the same.

I just realised the title card has a dog’s face on it. Maybe next time it’ll be a cat’s face…

Oh my gosh, it’s a Yu-Gi-Oh duel! Teenager-ness…(?) What is that (LOL)?! *squints at screen* Oh, chuunibyou. That makes sense.

They even materialised the (Gon’s) chair! (LOL)

At least this matchup isn’t Bull vs. Momo…thank goodness(!)

I seriously love how much skin they make Bull show…(LOL…?)

Well, if the race to the top is exciting then the race to the bottom should be humiliating, no? That’s how these things work.

LOL, just seeing a badass dude that’s meant to represent a wolf howling like one is hilarious. (But seriously, are any of these neighbourhood dogs a Bad Enough Dude, to paraphrase an old game meme?)

Don’t Naruto run, Pochi! It’s dangerous!

Ahhhhhhh, so that’s why people call Pochi “Shiro” and feed him tofu…

The video got encoded funny again…

Uchitama 4

This is like Wakasa all over again…

The “My Name is Gon” title is a reference to “I Am a Cat” (Wahagai wa Neko de Aru). It actually doesn’t have the word for “name” in there, which is a bit weird…Update: It’s about the day-to-day introspection and life of a cat and the wagahai suggests the cat thinks rather highly of himself, so I’d assume the former (applied to a dog of course), if not both of those things to be part of this.

The fact that Gon doesn’t move his mouth while telling us weird things (such as how Bull’s sweater reminds him of an old lady in Osaka) is hilarious. It’s almost like a play with Gon as narrator.

See? That titlecard has a different dog’s face now! (I believe it’s Kuro’s, actually.)

This series is actually really informative about cats and dogs!

The Detective Conan parody cat is pretty interesting in regards to how the series wants to play with the human/animal dichotomy.

Now the titlecard has a cat’s face.

This song is so energetic! The banners are pretty funny too – I mean, “trying to get a ripped body” is impossible for a dog, right?

Yyyyyyyyup, Ume is singing this song (Sanchome no Hoshi* or The Star of 3rd District*)! I’m being spoilt!

Eizouken 5

Iron Giant…I thought the name sounded familiar. Turns out it’s a Brad Bird-directed movie.

This episode is very Scott...LOL.

I like how they showed the back of the guy to correspond with the back of the robot.

Iruma 17

Gap = sukima, as you might know from a post I made re: Mairimashita! Iruma-kun puns.

“Yes, boss!” in English.

Why do people being questioned at a koban always have katsudhum? (Hataraku Maousama reference)

Ooh, this long-haired demon from the Game or New Magic battler is hot!!!

That's the 1st time Acchan and Bakemi appear...

I'd assume the ga in Gabuko means gakkou (school).

Now it's ki su ma...(instead of sukima)

Iruma 18

Aw, Kiriwo's so cute...

...and he's now a sadist. (Good job, me...I don't like sadists much.)

The cyclops girl's name is Dosanko, huh?

Hanabi are "fire flowers" (translating somewhat literally), which is why they "bloom" in the translation.

Update: Oh, I accidentally skipped ep. 17. I was wondering how Sabro got to hold up Comecome's stall…

BnHA 76

I’m not sure how the subbers got “Go entropy! Plus Chaos!”, although it might have something to do with Saikou da! (which I made out from listening to the audio).

Okay, now you can hear them say “Plus Chaos”.

Note Overhaul’s eyecatch background is purple, which contrasts Deku’s green. By the way, the eyecatch says that Overhaul belongs to the Shie Hassaikai and not the League…the guy’s always been picky about not being associated with the League.

The one time I turn the volume off, I don’t need it (LOL).

Dame da is closer to “It’s useless” or “You’re useless” than “Naughty girl”, subbers.

The coronavirus has taught me that masks make people seem less human, especially those with weird mouths like Overhaul’s plague doctor/bird one.

BnHA 77

In one of the Discord servers where Mudamaid appears, I decided to take Chronostasis. Why? He isn’t that bad-looking when he hasn’t got his mask on, to be real with you.

Froppy uses “senpai”, not Tamaki’s hero name.

I believe Tamaki calls Tsuyu “Kero-chan”, hence “Miss Ribbit”.

I wanna cry…I know Nighteye won’t see All Might again until All Might himself dies…(and this is because I’ve read the manga – thanks Viz and Shonen Jump for doing that!)

Shigaraki makes me beg the question…where do those hands of his come from??? Update: Ewwwwwwwww, those hands come from individuals affected by Tomura’s Quirk! (I think that’s a spoiler though…)

I almost got to the point of crying. I mean, I knew it would happen, but seeing it animated…makes it worse, y’know??? (Also, I accidentally might’ve stuck my finger in my eye when I was trying to wipe away tears, so either way, I teared up.)

BnHA 78

Huh? This OP is awfully cheerful after Nighteye’s death…I think it’s called Star Maker? Update: Star Marker by Kana Boon.

Well, you do realise I don’t know about anything after this point…all over again. So your surprise will be mine too.

LOL , it’s a Titan! (Apparently – according to the wiki pages I read – Gigantomachia is based on the Titans of lore, so…that’s true in more than one sense when you take into account Attack on Titan.)

The birbs are so cute!

That was just a few solid minutes of recap. Not as bad as Detective Conan where they frontend it, but still bad.

Hmm? I thought I saw black hair on Kurogiri…?

“He’s a walking disaster.” – That’s what I’d say about Bakugou, LOL.

Shouto “Daddy Issues” Todoroki taking the stage again…not that I mind, but…isn’t this Midoriya’s story?

I think I saw a Funko Pop All Might in the ED…?

You can see someone with a red wing Quirk. Based on what I’ve read around, that guy is Hawks.

Deku’s shirt at the end says “sheets”, not “shirt” (it’s missing a small ya).

BnHA 79

“…and I like udon better!” - *facepalm* That’s not how you make friends, Yoarashi.

Gang Orca’s like the Gordon Ramsay of heroes…with much less swearing.

*laughs behind hands as kids spill out the door* Welp, this is going to be real good.

This blonde kid is basically Monoma ver. 2!!! I hate him already!!!

Oh…that’s surprisingly strategic, Bakugou…*shows image of kid being dangled by a rope* Uh…or maybe not.

Who’s this guy with the bolo tie, anyway…?

Uchitama 5

I seriously thought this cat was Nora…(Sakura)

Does “big sister” refer to Lilly or another cat…?

Oh, I was wondering why Sakura didn’t have a cat tail…turns out she’s a pig. (Huh. It reminds me of a kinder version of the Africa Salaryman mixer joke.)

I like how open the series is in regards to interspecies love. Then again,…bestiality is an absolute no-no in my books, so maybe not.

Is it just me, or is there a slight bruise around Nora’s left eye…?

It’s like a Boueibu reunion! Shirai and Ume at the baths! Yay~!

There’s something absolutely silly about seeing anime boys hide in cupboards like cats. It puts a stupid smile on my face, like Eizouken does.

“I told you to get in the bath already!” – Gaddammit, Koma!

How do Gon’s glasses not fog up in the bath? (MST3K mantra required)

Oh, Nora does have a bruise around his eye! What’s it from, though?

Way to upsell Koma’s services, Kuro. (partially sarcastic…?)

“Can I say we’re having a doggone good time?” – Remind me to check what that sounds like in Japanese later. Update: Kuro says something that sounds lik izoizo in the line beforehand and then matches it in this line. In order to match the puns, there’s a pun in the English translation too.

ID: Invaded 5

Matsuoka’s glasses thing reminds me of Kanamori (Eizouken)…

“hole experience” – Is that a pun…?

Never ask a woman her age.

Hmm…”maidenly innocence”…

Why do some people believe “never mind” is one word???

I just noticed there’s a differently coloured bar on the title card…maybe that’s how far into the episode you should be. Also, is this well a pun on “falling for you”?

I noticed the blood had a weird texture to it. Also, I noticed the woman had heterochromia bfore it was pointed out she’s not real.

I have a theory. See, John(nie) Walker is an alcohol (sake) brand, right? This is Sakaido (as opposed to Anaido, who’s the Perforator and ana = hole). It’s the same character, so (I suspect) Sakaido’s crime has to do with alcohol…

Hmm…this ain’t gonna pass the Bechdel test after all…

Oh! Post-credits segment! Keep watching.

ID: Invaded 6

“Matsuoka was injured” – Er, he still has the knife in him…?

Ohhhhhh…this has gotta be Hondomachi!

I predict Hondomachi and Sakaido are going to go head-to-head someday. Update: Or those two vs. Johnnie Walker.

There was a cut-off footprint…

Isn’t it possible for a person to kill someone without knowing their name?

*cries* Sakaido! I’ve never seen you so emotional before…!

ID: Invaded 7

So Narihisago did look like Sakaido at one point…when his daughter was murdered.

The thing that reads cognition particles has “Back ground. Rad. Lev.” on the bottom of its screen.

I don’t have the sound on right now, so I dunno what Matsuoka was reacting to specifically…(aside from the guy owning up to whatever was done.)

Interestingly, Katsuyama has the character for “win” in his name. However, this is the only link I’ve found between the serial killers and their names.

There’s a character which appears in both the word for “martial arts” and one of the (dead) professional fighters – Takehiko Fujita. It means stuff like “war” and “military power”.

Oh! There’s a bar on the titlecard and this one is up to 900 of 1200…I wonder what that means? Is that an indication of time, perhaps? Also in the bottom left, “CAM 025”.

Miyo Hijiriido?! Oh my gosh! This is new, indeed!

Okay, so the characters for Miyo look like this: 聖井戸御代 The first character in “Miyo” is the same one that denotes “go” in goryoushin (formal way to denote “parents”) and similar words in keigo. The characters which aren’t “well” (water well) are the character for “saint/holy” and “age” (as in the period of time, alternatively “generation”), aside from the one I’ve already discussed. Therefore, I’d suggest Miyo is actually “the great detective [who ushers in a new] age” or “the great detective [of the current] age”. Update: Apparently Miyo means “age of a ruler”, as in the period of their reign (specifically referring to the emperor if it needs to be). I’ve heard there’s specific words in the Japanese language used only to refer to the imperial family…this is probably one of them. That specific name combo (as “odai”) is also a very polite way to refer to spare change, although that doesn’t seem very useful to know.

What’s that thing on Tamotsu’s wrist…? (A watch? Wouldn’t that be illegal in a prison like this?)

Interestingly, all other killers wear white. Narihisago is the only one in black (or brown…or whatever colour that is).

What would Miyo need a key for? The key to the mystery, or a physical key?

I don’t think you can see Narihisago’s face in any of the pics he has of Muku or his wife.

Ooh…Sakaido’s pretty ripped. (Me likey…not that I would like a killer…)

Why is Sakaido…or I should say Narihisago…dead in his own imagination, huh?

Hmm…Miyo wears a black singlet or sleeveless top of some sort under that cape...poncho…Holmes cosplay thing. She still has a gun in her detective form, too.

Notably, no detective wears a skirt in this world…*sigh* So much for Nancy Drew and Miss Marple…

Muku has smiley faces on her hair decs.

Does that mean you’ve met the real Muku…? (I think this is Momoki speaking about Muku.) Update: It might be Habutae, actually. I never really got a grasp on the names of the peanut gallery.

Hondomachi’s never seen the cockpit in real life, right?

Well-ception! (It’s a bit of a joke that when there’s something in something, I call it [X]ception as a homage to Inception.)

Table flip! That meme hasn’t been around for a while, come to think of it…

I find it interesting that they point to the circles of the roof when talking about pi. As you know, the circle and pi are related.

Hmm? I don’t remember seing the quote “Let us try to make this world a better place” in this episode…

#simulcast commentary #uchi tama?! uchi no tama shirimasen ka?#uchitama?! have you seen my tama?#keep your hands off eizouken!#Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu Na!#Boku no Hero Academia #My Hero Academia #ID: Invaded #mairimashita! iruma kun #Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun #Magia Record #Chesarka watches ID: Invaded #Chesarka watches MI-k #Chesarka watches BnHA #Chesarka watches Uchitama #Chesarka watches Magia Record #Chesarka watches Eizouken

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mirkwoodshewolf · 5 years

Text

The boys meet Jack; Queen x reader

*Author’s note*

Hello all, I would like to thank you all for reading this series once again and taking interest in it both old and new followers/readers. And thank you for all the patience and cliffhanger I left you all on the last chapter :) Now the long wait is finally over, here we see Jack being introduced to the boys and things will get a little intense at some parts. Also I imagined this in the last chapter so I’m gonna link a song up and I hope you all will listen to it and just imagine just the first half of the song during the beginning part of the story and when you the reader take Jack into the studio to meet the boys.

Now warnings are very minimum, just swearing but overall TOOTH ROTTING FREAKIN FLUFF :)

Taglist *open*:

@onebigfangirlworld

@phantom-fangirl-stuff

@mr-badguymercury

@labessieisallama

@starswin

@5sos-wdw

@naturalswifty89

@isabella-bby

@dj-lowkey

_________________________________________________________

Once we arrived at his place, he bid me a goodnight and thanked me for allowing him to see the studio and having a first look at my upcoming music video. I smiled and told him it was no problem before bidding him a goodnight.

Finally after a seriously long day, I finally reached home sweet home. I opened my door and let out a yawn ready to hit the sack.

Play video

“You’ve got some serious explaining to do young lady.” I froze in shock. Oh shit it can’t be them. As I turned around there they all stood at the entry way between my front corridor and the living room. Each of them with their arms crossed over their chests staring me down.

Looks like my long night is about to get even longer.

“Boys. Hey, I—I thought you all weren’t getting back till tomorrow. When-when-when did you get back?”

“Through Concorde airlines that get you to your destination in half the time. And it was right after we found out about this,” it was then Freddie took out another gossip magazine of Jack and I enlarged on the front cover with the title.

ROCK ANGEL WITH MYSTERIOUS BLONDE MAN. POTENTIAL ROMANCE?

“So start talking. Who is he? How old is he? Where exactly does he live and where can I find him so I can kick his arse?” Roger hounded me with all the questions.

“Whoa Rog, you are not going to kick his arse. He hasn’t done anything to deserve it.”

“Actually he has, and that’s talking to you.” He reasoned.

“And since when did I need your permission to talk to boys?!” I snapped getting a little irritated by his possessive attitude.

“Roger cool it!” Brian snapped as he pressed a hand against Roger’s chest to stop him from coming up towards me.

“Guys can’t we discuss this in the morning? I have had a long day of interviews and music video shooting, I need to sleep and I really don’t want to say what I may regret later.”

“Nope. We’re going to discuss this now. If you can spend hours recording songs with us then you can handle a few questions.” John sassed. I growled out a groan before saying.

“Alright fine!” I stomped towards my living room and sat down on my favorite lounge chair, opening up my jacket and turning towards the guys as I said in a firm tone. “Sit.” They then went to my couch opposite of my chair that was separated by the table in front of me. All four of them were able to fit the couch entirely with Deacy and Brian taking the ends of the couch while Freddie sat beside Deacy and Roger between Fred and Bri.

Soon I began to explain the whole story to them.

“His name’s Jack. He’s an American just coming to visit London and see the sights for the summer. Studied music like me for college and graduated about two years ago, and he stopped Duke from harassing me.”

“Wait, wait, that loser’s back to stalking you. I thought we got him fired?” asked Brian.

“Apparently not. He ambushed me when I went out to a club for a break. But Jack saw what was happening and called him old man which made him back off. So I thanked him with coffee for helping me out but I guess that’s when Dukey boy there snapped the first picture of us together at the café.”

“And you’re sure he’s not just getting close to you just to shag you?” asked Freddie.

“Freddie! What the hell!?”

“He’s got a point. Remember Daniel? Jackson? And that one other boy uhh…..” Roger began but Deacy finished for him.

“Nathaniel.”

“Thank you Deacy.” Roger thanked.

“God this is even worse than when you guys interrogated me about Adam.” I groaned as I rubbed my face with my hands tiredly. “Look guys, he even knew who I was the minute I went into that club but he didn’t approach me at all until Duke ambushed me with the camera. Doesn’t that at least count as something?” They all looked at each other and quietly whispered to each other. “And he loves the same music we do. Zeppelin, Bowie, my music but out of all of them he loves you guys the best for your creativity process. And he even looks up to one of you guys.”

“And just who pray tell would that member of Queen be?” asked Freddie almost thinking it would be him.

“Deacy.” I stated bluntly as I pointed to him. At that statement, Deacy actually looked at me in shock, as did the other guys.

“You’re lying.” Deacy said.

“No I am not. He told me that you were the reason he picked up a bass guitar in the first place after hearing your solo for Liar. Now every time he plays that song, he plays alongside it, imagining that he’s playing with his hero. Deacy you mean more to the fans than you give yourself credit for. Take this compliment and praise and never deny it again.”

“Okay so I’ll admit he has good taste in music so that’s one plus for him. Acknowledging Deacy gets another plus, and based on the picture you both do look good together so I tick that as a plus. The only thing missing is to finally meet the boy.” Freddie said.

“I’m sorry what now?”

“Bring him by the studio tomorrow when we record our duet album before the tour by the end of this summer. We want to meet him.”

“Freddie I can’t—you can’t just…..this is too sudden. We’re just friends honest!”

“We still demand to see him. Even if you say you’re not dating or even shagging each other as a friends with-benefits kind of thing.” At that remark, Freddie got a slapped over the head by Roger. Freddie cried out in pain as Roger said as he took a swig of beer.

“Don’t ever mix (y/n) and shagging again.” I looked at him unbelievably and shook my head at him and that’s when Brian said.

“In all seriousness (y/n), we would at least like to meet him. Just so this whole mess can be put aside. Because you know we’ll keep hounding you for a meeting, and you know just how resilient we are.” Oh boy do I.

Even when I was still an intern with Miami, all the times when the boys would beg of something or get me to join in and I’d refuse, they’d always get me to go along with it. Whether it was always kneeling and pleading before me at my desk while I was trying to work, or there was that time when I was ambushed and trapped in a Queen puppy-dog eyed circle.

Filled with puppy dog eyes, cute whimpers (mainly from Roger and a bit from Deacy) and puppy nuzzles with their noses touching all over my face. God that was a brutal mess, but secretly I liked it.

“I’ll bring him to the studio tomorrow, but you guys need to arrive there first so that way I can break it to him gently about confronting you guys. And please, please, please, please, please guys. Don’t scare him off,” I mostly looked towards Roger as I said this and I continued, “You lot have to swear to me that you won’t scare him tomorrow. Swear it on your lives and the life of Queen.”

“We swear.” They chorused out as they each held their right hands out and crossed their hearts with their left index fingers.

“Good, now I am exhausted. It’s 1am and I need to sleep. Goodnight guys.”

“Goodnight love.” They chorused out again. I walked upstairs to my room and finally got to turn in for the night.

I woke up to the rare sunlight that London gets with it shining through my curtains. I stretched myself out and let out a yawn that according to Freddie reminded him of one of his cat’s. And it was then I looked at the time to see that it was almost 11am. I tiredly lifted myself up and that’s when I also took notice of a note right by my nightstand.

I reached over for the note and unfolded it and it was a letter from Deacy. It read:

Dearest (y/n),

Last night we did come off as the Queen’s royal guard but you must know that when we heard about this, it came as quite a shock to us. I know that we aren’t your family by blood but we all see you as a daughter (in my case a sister) to us. And we just didn’t want to see you get hurt again after what Adam did to you. It broke us to see how he had treated you when you deserve the world, if not the universe (according to Brian).

If you don’t wish to come to the studio that’s fine. You and I can do a one on one meeting with Jack and I will make the decision for the band on whether he’s the chap for you.

At that point I rolled my eyes playfully as I kept reading on.

And I know you’re rolling your eyes right now missy so watch it. Anyways, I hope you will enjoy what’s waiting for you downstairs and hope that it can be a sign of forgiveness from us to you.

Your loving big brother,

Deacy 😊

I smiled at the last part of the letter and kissed it before holding it close to my heart. I then set aside the letter and went downstairs to see just what he also meant by what was waiting for me and that I would enjoy.

As I turned into my kitchen there at the table was a delicious breakfast filled with my favorite breakfast meals and right in front of my tray was one of my vases filled with water and four yellow roses with a note tucked in front of it. I walked up to it and took the note and it only said.

Forgive us?

I smiled softly and said to myself.

“Oh Deacy, you really are the sweetheart of Queen. How can I stay mad when he does stuff like this?” I then sat down and ate my breakfast which was surprisingly still warm. Perhaps it was recently made in the last few minutes, who knows? But I went ahead and ate up my breakfast then I cleaned up the area and decided to get ready for the day.

After showering, doing my hygiene stuff, and getting dressed I debated whether I wanted to call Jack and get this whole thing over with. I thought about it for a good fifteen minutes before finally I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I held the phone to my ear and it rang a good three times before I heard it being picked up.

“Hey Jack, it’s me. Listen, you’re not busy in the next little while are you?”

By 2pm Louis and I had picked Jack up and then by almost 3 we finally arrived at the studio. I turned to Jack and I was finally gonna break it down to him that this wasn’t just going to be a normal studio visit.

“Jack there’s something you need to know before we go on inside.” I told him in a low voice.

“What is it? Is everything okay?”

“Well that depends,” I took a deep breath in before exhaling out and I continued, “Okay you know how in the news or the papers or wherever the hell they post it up or when I’ve said it. The Rock angel’s name and Queen are always clashed with each other’s?”

“Yeah, I know all about how you’ve toured with them. You sometimes collaborate with each other on songs or albums. Like your recent album that came out earlier this year. Which I thought was amazing by the way.”

“Thanks Jack, but there’s more to the story than that. Remember how I told you I was an intern for a big record manager before I became the Rock Angel?” He nodded and I kept going on, “Well, that manager was Jim Beach. The current manager of Queen. And from day one the boys of Queen…..they’re my family. They’ve become like my four fathers or brothers at times, they’ve helped me become a better musician. And by being my family that also means, our relationship is close. I mean really, really, really close. Which in turn means they are like four aggressive guard dogs when it comes to boys who try to come near me.” His face was slowly starting to show signs of fear. “Well they were doing a show in Japan when last night they…..they came to my house and heard about the rumors that have been going around between us. And so……the real reason why I brought you here to the studio, is because…..they want to meet you.” I swear to you it looked like Jack was ready to shit himself.

“You—you mean that they…..”

“Please I know I’m asking a lot, hell I almost didn’t want to do this but I knew they’d keep on persisting and they do a hell of a job at that, especially with the puppy dog huddle but we don’t have to do this. I can have Louis take you back home and you never have to meet the guys and do this, and—” I rambled on frantically. All the while Jack kept trying to get my attention until finally he grabbed me by the arms and called out my name.

“(Y/n)!” I stopped and just looked at Jack fearfully. He released my arms and he said.

“Sorry you were frantically rambling so hard that I almost couldn’t understand you. If this is what they want, then I would not want to get on Queen’s bad side.” I looked at him in shock.

“Okay are you sure you weren’t some former Rockstar that I don’t know about in America.” I asked which made him laugh. I then composed myself and I asked him, “You ready?” He exhaled a deep breath and said.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” We then exited the car and thanked Louis for driving us here and we then entered the studio.

Walking in the first person to greet us was Miami. He came up and he said.

“So this is the boy—”

“Please not now Miami, you will get your turn after the boys have a go at him.” I interrupted him.

“As a matter of fact I was just on my way to meet with the boys right now, as well as you. So knock two birds with one stone right?” I cringe at his explanation and I said as I turned to Jack.

“Jack this is my manager as well as Queen’s manager Jim Beach. He makes sure that the boys don’t kill each other during rehearsals and afterwards and makes sure that I still stay the same humble intern that he always knew and loved.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Beach.” Jack said as he extended his hand. Miami eyed Jack up and down like a father would before finally taking Jack’s hand and shaking it.

“(Y/n) is like a daughter to me. Any funny business out of you then—”

“Okay moving on don’t want to be late! See you upstairs Miami bye!” I took Jack’s arm and quickly raced towards the lift and quickly pressed the button for the level of the rehearsal room and sighed in relief. “My god he’s even worse than usual.”

“Now this may not be the perfect question but, why do you call him Miami?”

“Freddie gave him that name when Queen was first rising to fame and glory. Once I became an intern after a couple of weeks, he allowed me to call him that after telling me that I was the best intern he’s ever had since I treated the boys like normal people instead of just obsessing over the floor they walk upon. That and I was the first young intern they’ve ever really gotten along with. Freddie knighted me by my first week the official ‘Queen’s younger audience taste’ just so that they wouldn’t be forgotten or be washed away by the current age of music that’s going on with either pop or what they call disco. Mainly by Rog and Brian.”

Soon the lift dinged and we arrived at the rehearsal studio level. I guided Jack down the hall then we made a right until finally we walked through the double doors. We now stood in the sound booth and through the mirror, there sat all around the various furniture or even the makeshift stage were my boys of Queen.

Freddie looking through the paper, Deacy sitting on the stage fiddling with his bass, Roger on the chair having his smoke break and Brian muttering out some chords that were probably going through his head and trying them out on his guitar.

“So this is Queen?” asked Jack.

“Yeah. Not a bad looking bunch if you don’t count Roger of course.” I never really liked his habit of smoking but hell he’s older than me he can do what he wants, I just told him to never smoke around me since I can’t stand the smell of it in the studio. I turned towards Jack and I saw him physically tense up as I knew where his eyes were looking at now.

“Oh my god, is that—”

“Yep. That’s our Disco Deacy.” I said as I looked towards Deacy before turning back to Jack. “You ready to meet him?” He was nervous I could tell, but he nodded and smiled widely. “Alright, you might wanna cover your ears first, trust me.” I butted in the last part.

He did as I told him and I pressed a couple buttons which made the speakers make that ear-piercing high pitched feedback sound which in turn made the boys scream and cover their ears before turning around to face me.

“Hello boys.” I teased.

“What the fuck was that for (y/n)!?” snapped Roger.

“Consider it payback from last night interrogating me till 1 in the morning.” I teased. That’s when Brian took notice of Jack.

“Is that Jack?” I turned to him and then faced back towards the guys and said.

“Yes…” suddenly before I could get another word in; Freddie, Brian and Roger all ran for the door. I quickly raced towards it and closed it as best I could. I could feel Roger and Brian trying to open it but I pushed back. “What the fuck you guys stop it!”

“No you let us in right now!” Roger cried out. I let out a powerful scream as I used all my strength to finally close the door and lock it. “(Y/n) this isn’t funny. Open the door right now!” Roger said through the window of the door.

“No! If you guys want to meet Jack. We are gonna do it by my standards! So you three need to back up and let Deacy come meet him first.” Roger and I stared each other down and I said as I lowered my voice, “You know how resilient I can be Taylor. So if you lot don’t move, we’ll get nowhere. I can do this all day.”

We kept staring at each other waiting for the other to back down, but both of us are too stubborn (I got it from him) that neither of us were backing down. It was then Freddie came up and touched Roger’s shoulder and he told me.

“We accept your demands darling.” Roger went to argue but Freddie shushed him and he and Brian had him back away from the door. I sighed heavily and turned to Jack and said to him.

“God I apologize immensely for this Jack, you must think I’m crazy or a freak or something.”

“No, no I just….find it sweet that the members of Queen would go to such lengths for you.”

“Hope they haven’t scared you off quite yet. Cause get ready that will come.” I gave him fair warning as I unlocked the door.

“I think what I’m more scared about is that I’m going to be standing in front of John Deacon. I mean what if I make a fool of myself? What if he doesn’t like me?”

“Don’t worry you won’t, Roger makes a fool of himself all the time and Deacy still likes him.” I said as I opened the door and Jack and I now walked into the room.

“Watch it love.” Roger said as he doused out his cigarette. Deacy set aside his bass and stood up from the stage and walked towards us. Jack and I met him half way as I continued.

“Besides,” as we now stood before Deacy, I came up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him and he wrapped an arm around me as I finished, “Deacy’s my big brother.” Deacy looked down at me with a soft smile at that statement and I looked up at him. “Deacy, I’d like you to meet Jack Kline, Jack, this is John Deacon. Bass player of Queen.”

“So this is the mysterious boy who saved our angel from Duke’s persistent stalking.” Deacy held out his right hand for Jack to take. I could tell Jack was star-struck being in front of Deacy like this, not only that but nerves of meeting one of the four boys who basically adopted me and is now playing the big brother figure that every boy fear’s.

“It’s okay Jack, he won’t bite.”

“Unless he feels like it” butted in Freddie. I glared at him but I quickly turned back around and saw Jack take Deacy’s hand and he said trying to find his voice.

“It’s a….great honor to meet you Mr. Deacon.”

“So (y/n) tells us that you’re a bass player.” He said as they released each other’s hands.

“Well I—”

“He is, actually he’s pretty good at it too. Although he’s never shown me his skills.” I said.

Yeah I know it sounds cruel to do this but hey what better way to get to John Deacon’s heart than through the strums of a good bassline, right? Unless Veronica was here but that’s a different story.

“I mean I’m mediocre at best but I wouldn’t say I’m good.”

“Well why don’t I be the judge of that?” Deacy said. He then walked over and picked up his bass and held it out for Jack. “Let’s see how good you really are.” Jack was mortified.

He took Deacy’s bass and slowly walked towards the stage and I followed behind.

“I think I just forgotten how to even play. (Y/n) this is too much.”

“Hey, if I can perform for a sold out Madison Garden show for the first time ever when I could barely come out of my shell, then you can surely play for your men. Don’t think of them as Queen right now, just think of them as if they are four normal guys looking for another bass player.” I whispered back to him. Jack adjusted the bass onto his lap and tried to think of a song.

Soon the opening bassline for ‘Another one bites the dust’ echoed through the bass guitar. I bobbed my head softly to the tune, even though this was the easiest bassline to follow I thought Jack was pretty good.

“Hold on, that’s too easy.” Said Deacy. Jack stopped nervously and looked up at John fearfully. “Play the bass solo for Liar.” Jack tuned the bass guitar and plucked the strings till he got the right pitch it needed to be and then he began to play the solo.

Now he may not be Deacy excellence but if I had to pick a close second to someone who could play the Liar bassline solo, I would definitely pick Jack. He had all the right notes in his head and he really got into it as his head popped as I could tell he was running the song through his head.

As the solo picked up the sudden key change and got faster, I could see a faint smile across Deacy’s face and a glimmer of admiration in his eyes. When the solo was done, Jack looked up at Deacy and said.

“Was it bad?” Deacy pondered being the secret little shit that he can be, leaving Jack on the edge of anticipation before he finally said.

“Actually, the only other person to ever nail that solo was me. There were a few notes that you missed but, I must say I am impressed. I’d be willing to show you some of my tricks to get the perfect note out of a bass.” I smiled at him.

The only other person Deacy ever gave tutorials to was me, and hearing him offer Jack some tutorial lessons, made me realize that Jack had gotten the Deacy seal of approval.

“I admit, that was impressive. We might actually replace you Deacy.” Freddie joked.

“While that is kind of you to offer, I’ll have to decline that rule. Queen just wouldn’t be the same without their true bass player.” Jack said. I playfully shoved him and winked at him telling him that he had won his hero over, as well as the other boys.

“So Jack how long have you been playing bass?” asked Brian.

“Ever since I was a junior in high school. My friends and I tried to start a high school band but none of us were agreeing on songs, or who got credit for what, it was just a mess and within 2 months we broke up and practically never spoke to each other again.” Damn, I can’t imagine if that had ever happened to my boys.

I mean yeah there’s fights and arguments but thankfully after taking a break from each other they come back and make more beautiful music together and still remain friends and not let past arguments affect them. At least not too much.

“So what exactly are you doing here in London, really?” Roger interrogated. I glared at Roger warning him that if he goes too far, then I’m kicking him out of the studio.

“Well it’s like I told (y/n). I’ve always wanted to see London, wondered what all the fuss was about that some of my old college friends made a big deal about moving to London once they graduate. Wanted to see if it was as grand as they say it is.”

“And do you think it is?”

“I mean…..it’s okay. Not crazy about the weather though. Back in Kansas there’s always sun except during the hurricane or tornado season. One year it rained almost the entire summer, flash floods were everywhere.”

“Must’ve been rough.” Said Brian.

“Yeah it was, especially where I live. My mom’s had this farm in her family for years and when the floods hit my hometown, it was just a mess to try and get everything back in order. But we prevailed and did it in the end.”

The rest of the day was spent by the boys asking Jack the most random or regular questions. Of course Roger always made it feel like an interrogation, but after a few glares from me and smacks from Deacy, he slowly made his tone from bad cop to slightly good cop tonality.

After the long and brutal interrogation I mean conversation, Jack got to sit in on a rehearsal and whenever there was a break, Deacy took him aside and would give him his first bass tutorial as well as helpful tips on what to do to when the strings would get stuck.

Eventually it was getting late and Jack said he needed to head back to his flat. I called Louis and told him to meet Jack downstairs to take him home. Just before he left he asked me.

“When do you think you’ll be free next?”

“Oh god I don’t know, the next several weeks will be pretty busy. Plus there are some small individual concerts I’d said I’d attend to. But if something does open up, I’ll give you a call.”

“Sounds good, it was nice meeting you guys.” Jack said to the boys.

“You too Jack, take care darling.” Freddie said, and with that Jack left the rehearsal room. A silence rang through the room and I asked the guys.

“Tell me the truth, all of you. What did you think of Jack?” They all looked at me and Brian was the first to speak up as he shrugged his hands upward.

“I think he’s a good chap.” I smiled at Brian and then Freddie was the next to speak up.

“I think he’s gay.” I scoffed out a laugh as the guys lightly chuckled.

“He’s a good lad, definitely has an ear for bass playing.” Said Deacy. I then turned towards Roger and said.

“Rog?” He looked at me before exhaling heavily and he said.

“I’ll admit….he does sound like a good kid. But I still don’t feel too good about this.” I smiled softly and shook my head at him gently. At least that was a start.

“Alright we’ve been working all night and I’m starving, whose up for a late-night supper?” Freddie asked. The boys all chimed in and I raised my hand agreeing. As the boys left the rehearsal room and just before Deacy got up to leave, I walked up to him and hugged him. I held onto him for a moment before he looked up at me and I kissed his temple.

“Well, what was that for?”

“Do I even need a reason?” I asked him. He grinned up at me and said as he brought me close to him.

“Well from you I’d take a free hug and kiss anytime.” He kissed the top of my head and I was kept in his arms for a little bit longer before finally he stood up and said again, “C’mon love, let’s go eat.”

He stood up and we each kept an arm wrapped around the other as we both walked out of the studio together to join up with the others for some late night supper.

That night it was me and my boys at a nearby Chinese restaurant of them telling me about their show in Japan, or just random stories of family life or past humiliation stories. A night filled with smiles, laughter and the typical bonding time between Queen and the Rock Angel.

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prettylittleliarsxxxx · 6 years

Link

This is the shot: A slim, twentysomething white man, pale and dark-haired, waits in the center of the frame, head tilted fractionally to catch a glimpse of something (someone?) the viewer can’t see. He is wearing a dark jacket with a high collar, and a dark ball cap, even though he is inside, even though it is night. The collar is pulled up to obscure his too-romantic silhouette; the cap is pulled down to obscure his too-soulful eyes. This is the kind of man who literary heroines—or at least literary-minded ones—swoon over, but with so much of his face obscured, it is only his cheekbones, high and almost too pronounced, that signal such classic desirability.

Such a signal is important. Because everything else about this shot shouts that this man is a stalker: From the blurring of important details in the background, to the juuuust too-closeness of it, to the shadows cast from odder angles than seem natural, every aspect makes us want to scream at the heroine, RUN AWAY, LEAVE, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHO THIS PSYCHO IS???. And so we need something, some small thing, to remind us, when this man is not actually dressed to kill, when he’s not staring at the device he’s got tracking her every digital step, why she can’t see what we see. And that small thing is: He is attractive.

Duh.

This, of course, is why this man’s story works. The fight-or-flight reflex his behavior should provoke in the object of his obsessions is counteracted by his charming physical appeal—lust, at least initially, wins out over fear, and as it does, provides the tension necessary to drive the narrative we keep tuning in for.

The trick is, how the show wants to resolve that tension is a question of cultural time. As in, when the handsome stalker was Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding) in Freeform’s teen thriller, Pretty Little Liars, just four short (long) years ago, the romantic hero vs. predator tension was invoked only as a means of creating a temporary road block to eventual nuptial bliss between A Good Man and his (high-schooler) sweetheart. Now, when the handsome stalker is Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) in Lifetime’s adult thriller You, here in the year of Goddammit Are We Collectively Still Not Taking #MeToo Seriously (a.k.a. 2018), the tension is very clearly meant to resolve not only in Joe’s psychopathy being found out, but in his sweetheart’s (and our) delusions of obsession-as-romance shattering completely.

Understanding that this is You’s endgame is helped, of course, by the fact that (spoilers) Joe straight-up whacks a romantic rival in the skull with a book mallet in the series’ pilot, then kills him with peanut oil after holding him hostage for all of episode two. But even if he didn’t go that far, that early, series creators Greg Berlanti (of the Arrowverse) and Sera Gamble (of The Magicians) make no effort to suggest that we in the audience should be ambivalent about Joe’s character, who addresses the narration of nearly every sequence to an idealized fantasy of Beck (Elizabeth Lail), the “you”-object of his affections, whom he spies from the other side of the book shop he manages in the series’ opening scene and immediately starts scheming to own. In fact, if Berlanti and Gamble make any effort in any direction, it is to keep reminding us that Joe is bad: Take centuries of art romanticizing the unwavering fixation of a handsome man on a single woman and add to it the sea of mundanely callous dudes in the modern dating scene, and you get an audience that’s been trained out of any ability to keep an attentive, clever, present guy, who likes books and making jokes and who is, on top of it all, moppily handsome, at any kind of wait-and-see remove. Like cognitive behavioral therapy, but for the propagation of violent loopholes in rape culture—without intervention from the puppeteers behind Joe’s dark adventures, we might trip over those loopholes and fall to our Joe-shaped doom.

It’s tempting to think that they aren’t doing this, as so much of You is staged as the exact kind of dreamy romance Joe imagines himself to be facilitating and Beck believes herself to be living. Each episode opens on a series of slow, bird’s-eye pans of New York City in early autumn, set to some kind of unobtrusively sweet indie-ish acoustic background music. Scenes with Joe and Beck together are filmed with a warm, golden filter, the background details and even the edges of the foreground taking on a comfortable kind of soft-focus that seems to snuggle them together like a big, metaphorical duvet. If they are outside, the melody of bird song is prominent. If they’re inside, the shush of pages turning and life being lived together is turned high. But when juxtaposed with the brittle, hard-focus, doom-soundtracked reality of the scenes of Joe’s life outside of his and Beck’s “romance,” the delusionally fantastic nature of those softer scenes is made obvious: They are all in Joe’s head, and while Beck may be living in the same fantasy at the moment, Joe’s head is a bad, dangerous place.

“Yeah, but he loves her, but he’s sweet, but it’s a love story!” Badgley imagined eventual fans arguing when he and Lail sat down for an interview with E! News earlier this summer. “In what world?! I don’t believe that’s love. I don’t think that love equals this, so I think we have to question, what is love, and if we think this is love, where are we mistaken?”

Where is throughout all of hetero-romantic pop culture. More acutely, where, I would (and already started to) argue, is in Pretty Little Liars, which not only features Joe’s stalker ancestor in the form of Ezra “I’ll Be Watching You” Fitz, but is in actuality one of the two other shows about attractive young people swept up in cyberstalking that every elevator pitch of You invokes. (The other, of course, is Gossip Girl. ) I spent the better part of three years and many hundreds of thousands of words arguing exactly how many rape culture/toxic masculinity balls Pretty Little Liars and the creator-blessed endgame of #Ezria dropped, so I neither need nor want to retread rageful ground here. But I do need to point out that none of those elevator pitches invoking Pretty Little Liars are doing so for the fact that You is finally juggling all the poisonous balls PLL, and, in its earlier way, GG, let fall—they’re doing so because stalking is a superficial thread throughout all three, and because You’s stars include PLL’s Shay Mitchell and GG’s Badgley. That’s it.

The thing is, the fact that You is treating the subject of violent masculine entitlement and obsessive, possessive “love” with more deadly gravity than either of its teen predecessors isn’t subtle; watch the first five minutes of the pilot and you’ll get that. But that’s the point I’m trying to make: You have to watch the first five minutes of the pilot to see it. If you just look to the promo interviews and red carpet soundbites and fluffy entertainment news tweets and headlines, our collective inability to accept the violent potential of the bad men in our midst is laid bare: Joe’s psychopathic character is translated as him being a mere “creepazoid,” according to the photo caption in Vulture’s review, while You itself is cheerfully summed up as a “messy, murderous romp.” According to a teaser interview with Entertainment Tonight last fall, Mitchell declared the show to be “juicy… It still has all those elements that PLL had with it being sort of a mystery, there’s a romance part to it and it’s just exciting.” Back on E! News, while the article anchoring Badgley and Lail’s interview sports the title, “Penn Badgley Is ‘Really Troubled’ By Anyone Thinking You Is a Love Story,” it eventually can’t help but suggest that, “What Joe does is not really harassment from what Beck can see, but from the viewer’s perspective, it’s not quite not harassment and also not quite not [sic] love.”

!!!!!!!

It’s true, as Kathryn VanArendonk argues in that Vulture review above, that the tone of You isn’t steady, but I’d argue in response that this is less an indicator of the show not being serious enough to be more than a romp, and more a reminder that we are not, as a species, that great at metabolizing the idea that multiple, contradictory things can be true about a person or a situation at the same time. Especially if that person is a man, and especially if the contradictions involve a woman. I am filing this piece on the weekend before the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony in the alleged violent attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl by then-17-year-old Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and likely no one reading these words is unaware that “boys with be boys,” “that was just horseplay,” and “what is harassment anyway???” have resurfaced, in response, as an apparently reasonable foundation for the debate between men’s ability to gain fame and fortune and women’s basic humanity. “Two things can be true at the same time” has become a kind of clarion call across justice-minded social media, but that doesn’t mean it has been absorbed by everyone, on every level.

And so we get: Romp. Juicy. Romance. Not quite harassment. We get Ezra Fitz as pop culture’s most recently successful romantic stalker model. We get the urge to make excuses and carve a path for a bad man’s not-all-badness, even being inside Joe’s head in a way we could never be in Fitz’s, even knowing how he thinks, how he watches, how he transgresses Beck’s digital and physical privacy—even knowing how he murders people to get closer to her. We get that urge because we are also getting Joe swinging from murderously delusional to relatably jokey (his inner monologue as he disposes of his romantic rival’s body in episode three, and later as he picks up jogging to better follow Mitchell’s Peach, is particularly funny) to empathetically invested in making the daily life of his neglected kid neighbor just a bit richer and safer and less sad in a way that isn’t inconsistent so much as it is human, and in its humanity is challenging for us to accept.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most emphatically unequivocating take I’ve found on the non-romance of You comes from Badgley himself, whose every interview has centered his utter rejection of anything positive one might try to shake out of Joe, or Beck, or Joe and Beck’s “relationship.” One of the most illuminating is the one he did with Devon Ivie at Vulture. It is worth reading in its entirety, but his response to why he took on a stalker role now, in 2018, stands out:

“Now that we’ve made the first season and I’ve been gauging reactions with critics and friends and viewers, I can say there’s a certain accountability—an emotional and psychological responsibility—that we hold the viewers and Joe to. It’s not this wildly irresponsible, escapist fantasy at the perfectly wrong time. I think the show came out at the right time, because any other time, we wouldn’t have had the courage at a social level and have conversations about why we’re drawn to it, but also why we know we shouldn’t reward it. We don’t want to reward Joe more than how he’s already being rewarded.

And as to whether or not he thinks that “viewers will cheer on this depraved man for being a self-described ‘fool in love’,” Badgley responded, “To me, a conversation I hope it starts is, What is it about the show that’s compelling? Why am I watching it? Am I enjoying it? Am I agreeing with Joe? What about all of this do I enjoy most? […] The degrees of which you’re enticed and excited by a show, there’s a lot more scrutiny in terms of the stories we’re interested in telling and consuming—the things we’re still charmed by and attracted to. Because Joe shouldn’t be allowed to behave the way he does. But only the viewer can decide.”

Shortly before Pretty Little Liars was set to air the last half of its seventh and final season, I flew out to Los Angeles to join my co-recappers at the show’s final PaleyFest panel. There were still ten episodes to go before the finale, and we held out hope that the series that had, in its bravest moments, been the most subversively anti-rape culture on television, might be about to burn the whole of Rosewood’s toxic patriarchy to the ground. The viewers who congregated in our comments section every week had certainly decided that that was the only way Pretty Little Liarscould end with integrity. Ten episodes! Ezra could STILL be A! His stalking could be revealed as the toxic danger it always was! But then we got to PaleyFest, and the entire theater was filled with fans whose only interests were the romantic lives of the cast, both onscreen and off, with the #Ezria endgame front and center.

Reader: #Ezria was endgame. And after giving fans like me a single fever dream of the show’s best character beating the daylights out of a jailed Ezra before letting his high-school sweetheart forgive him, the show was so proud of its own cleverness.

It’s 2018 now. #MeToo is only growing stronger as it complexifies, and as more projects like You get made by people who, like Badgley, Berlanti and Gamble, are entirely disinterested in giving bad men a path to not-all-badness. Joe is an outlier, but our willingness to soften the evil of his—fictional, patently obvious, easily condemned—violent obsession is the water we’ve been swimming in for too long. We can decide, as viewers and as people, to start demanding cleaner pools.

You airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Lifetime.

#anti ezria #you #you series #lifetime's you #lifetimes you #rape tw #rape culture

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inawickedlittletown · 6 years

Text

Walking The Wire (71/?)

Summary: Tony Stark always knew about Peter Parker. He didn’t know that Peter was going to get superpowers and become Spider-Man, but he always knew about Peter because Peter was his son.

This will span from pre-Iron Man up through the rest of the MCU (eventually including Infinity War) and will be for the most part canon compliant except where I’ve taken some liberties and interpreted canon a certain way.

Pairings: Pepper/Tony, Tony/Steve (endgame), Tony/Mary (past)

A/N: If you want me to tag you when I post new chapters let me know. This fic is also on AO3

I used Collider’s MCU timeline to stay canon and the title of this fic is an Imagine Dragons song that is just so fitting for Peter and Tony

Masterpost

Chapter Seventy

May could tell that Peter was acting odd. Then again, since most of the summer had been spent with him barely speaking to her, May could accept that Peter was changing and growing. After all he was going through his teenage years but on top of that there was also Tony Stark. He was spending so much time with Tony Stark lately. May couldn’t actually believe that Tony just seemed to make time for Peter all the time. May was glad about it, of course, because Peter needed to know his father and clearly Tony wanted to spend time with him. It was just that Peter wasn’t really telling her much anymore. It meant that if things kept going the way they were that May was going to have to ask Tony for updates on Peter even though Peter lived with her.

She hadn’t seen Tony since Peter’s birthday dinner which had gone well even though Peter hadn’t wanted to invite him in the first place. She couldn’t believe that Peter was already fifteen. He was too old and too young all at once.

The whole time they were out at the Thai place, Peter seemed quiet. It was the kind of quiet and reserved that Peter had been whenever he was being bullied in school. Some kids had always loved to pick on her Peter in part because he was so brilliant. Not even having him go to a school full of kids like him made things easier. Some kids were just always going to be mean and maybe Peter made an easy target.

“How’s school?” May asked.

“Fine. The same,” Peter said.

May nodded. It was odd to see Peter just move his food around a plate since lately he’d been eating more than his share of food. It had concerned May a little when she first noticed because she didn’t want Peter to get unhealthy eating habits but Tony had told her it was normal after Peter ate three helpings of their birthday dinner. Tonight he seemed distracted.

“What’s the matter? Thought you loved larb,” May said.

Peter didn’t respond.

“Is it too larby?”

No reaction.

“Not larby enough? How many times do I have to say larb before you talk to me? You know, I larb you.”

Peter sort of smiled then, but there was still clearly something wrong. Something that might also explain why he was so quick to send Ned away even though Ned had been waiting for him for a while.

“Did anything happen with Tony today?” May asked.

Peter shook his head. “No,” he said. Since he never really shared anything about his time spent with Tony it didn’t surprise her that he wasn’t filling her in on his afternoon.

There was a tv on and a news report started, showing some sort of explosion that had happened earlier in the day. The mention of Delmar’s caught her attention because it wasn’t far off. Peter probably walked past there every day on his way to and from school and he was often in there grabbing food.

Then they mentioned Spider-Man’s involvement stopping an ATM robbery. May had heard about the new hero in passing. Actually, it was a bit surprising to her that Peter didn’t gush about him at all especially since this hero seemed to mostly be spotted in Queens. The report continued and May was glad that at least no one had been injured in all of it, but May still didn’t like how close something like that had happened.

“If you spot something like that happening, you turn and you run the other way,” May said to Peter. “Actually, if you see that Spider-Man you run the other way too.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course,” he said and yet he sounded weird, almost like he was lying but maybe he was just shocked about the destruction of Delmar’s.

Peter’s phone rang a few times and May was distracted from questioning him and since it was on the table May saw that it was Tony calling.

Karen, who May was slowly getting used to, spoke up from the phone. “Peter, Mr. Stark is calling. Should I tell him you’re busy?”

Peter picked up the phone at once to answer.

“Hi,” Peter said and then paused. “Yeah, having dinner with May right now.”

May didn’t hear what Tony said back, but he seemed to keep the conversation quick.

“Okay. Okay. Bye. See you tomorrow,” Peter said.

“What was that about?” May asked as Peter put the phone down.

Peter hesitated before answering. “He, um, he wanted to make sure I knew Happy was picking me up tomorrow.”

May nodded, but she was sure that hadn’t been all. Something like that could have been told via text and she was well aware of how often Tony texted Peter and vice versa. She didn’t want to demand that Peter tell her everything. He was old enough to keep things to himself and do things on his own, but she was still curious and still hoped that Peter would willingly open up to her.

Peter took a few bites of his food and May watched him as he ate. It was a while before Peter said anything again.

“Hey, May, I need a new backpack,” Peter said.

“That’s the fifth one,” May said. “What did you do to this one? Destroy it while doing lab work with Tony?”

Peter was saved from answering when their waiter brought over sticky rice pudding and Peter had to poke fun at how often guys tried to flirt with May while they were out. It had happened a lot before too even when Ben was present which had made for a lot of fun jokes. She didn’t find it quite as funny anymore, but Peter grinned at her.

“I think he larbs you,” he said.

May laughed. “So, what happened to the backpack, Peter?”

“Lab accident,” Peter said and he sort of scrunched up his nose.

“Then it is possible that the person who owns the lab is responsible for the loss of so many backpacks, hmm?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll try to be more careful.”

When she called for the check, the waiter came back and smiled at her and then when she looked at the check she found a phone number on the back of the receipt and Peter just grinned at her harder.

“Shut it, Peter.”

---

Tony had been in a meeting with some UN officials, Rhodey, T’Challa over video conference, and Maria Hill when he got alerted to Peter being out on a patrol in the suit. Then a little while later, he was alerted by Friday about an explosion in Queens, but more importantly that Spider-Man was involved. Peter’s vitals were normal and he was uninjured, but that didn’t make Tony worry less. The meeting was too important to cut short, but his attention was divided between updates from Friday via Karen until Peter had taken off the suit -- which at least meant that he was home -- and the discussion at hand.

They were getting very close to finally getting a completed document to amend The Accords. It was going far easier than Tony had expected it to, but then they were at the beginning stages of it. Still, they did have the support they needed especially since Ross had been pushed out of the special council set up by the UN which gave Tony hope.

When the meeting was finally over, he excused himself and called Peter. Peter answered at once.

“Hey, kiddo, you okay? I heard what happened.”

Friday turned the tv on and they were discussing the incident on the news and seeing the actual explosion was jarring because Peter had been there -- he could have been hurt.

“Hey,” Peter said. “Yeah. I’m having dinner with May right now.”

It meant that he couldn’t explain, but for Tony it was enough to just hear his voice.

“You should come by tomorrow. I’ll call later when you’re alone.”

“Okay. Okay. Bye. See you tomorrow.”

Tony let out a sigh as Peter hung up. He was okay. It was what really mattered. The other thing that mattered was figuring out just why there had been an explosion in the first place. Mostly, though, Tony didn’t like how the coverage of the incident mentioned Spider-Man. The Accords weren’t yet amended and he didn’t want any unnecessary attention on Peter at least not until things had finally been amended.

Friday alerted him when Peter was back in his room. It really was helpful to have Karen in Peter’s phone, suit, and laptop. Eventually, she would be a bit more free and not constantly reporting back to Friday, but for the time being it was better if she was following the Babysitting Protocol.

He gave Peter a little longer before he had Friday initiate a video call. In the meanwhile he did a bit of work on a new Iron Man suit. The Mark XLVI.

Peter answered the call at once. He was in pajamas and was holding a pen in one hand and clearly working on homework.

“Hey, kiddo, so, what happened?”

“ATM robbery. I came upon these guys and it was possible they had guns, I knew that going in. They had Avengers masks on and I just went in there and planned to just web them up. Except, well, they apparently had weird high tech weapons instead of regular guns. Nothing I’ve ever seen before. It made it a little more difficult and then one of the weapons -- it made the explosion happen. One of them shot out and hit Delmar’s and I had to run out and make sure Mr. Delmar made it out. I tried to call but Friday said you were busy so I figured I’d tell you later and anyway by that point it was all over.”

The way that Peter told the story, he made it sound like it wasn’t as bad as it probably had been. He didn’t look like he had been scared and there were no clear injuries but still, Tony couldn’t help but worry about him. It came with the territory of being a father.

“I was in a meeting, Pete,” he said. “Couldn’t have answered unless Friday determined it dire.”

“Oh,” Peter said.

Tony smiled. “It was hard not to make the meeting short once Friday told me what was going on. She didn’t say you called, though.”

“I asked her not to,” Peter admitted. “I didn’t think I should bother you.” After a long pause, Peter spoke again. “My friend Ned knows I’m Spider-Man.”

He seemed a little worried about it and Tony knew that Peter had somehow managed to keep the secret for a while but this had been bound to happen eventually.

“He was just here in my room waiting for me and I came in and I think Karen tried to warn me but I was distracted because of what happened earlier and anyway, he saw me in the suit,” Peter said. “I don’t know -- he said he’d keep the secret but it’s Ned and he got really excited about the whole thing so I don’t know if he really will. He wants me to tell him everything tomorrow.”

“You say he’s your best friend, kid,” Tony said, “which means he probably will keep the secret. And it’s good that he knows. You need someone else your age to know about it. Are you going to tell him the other thing?”

Peter shook his head at once. “No. Definitely not. That would -- he would freak out even more.”

They had never really talked about telling the public about Peter being Tony’s son. Not doing so was in part to protect Peter from the attention that it would send his way. It kept him safe. And yet Tony found that he did want people know. He wanted everyone to know. One day they would.

“It’s alright if you want to tell your friends,” Tony said. “You must want to talk about all of this with someone.”

Peter shrugged. “So, those weapons. Where do you think they came from?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said and it really was something to think on. Something to worry about because if just some bank robbers had been able to get ahold of them then there had to be someone manufacturing and then also distributing the weapons.

“What should we do?” Peter asked.

“We,” Tony said a little amused, “nothing. I will figure out what’s going on with the weapons and deal with it. This seems exactly like the kind of thing that I told you not to get involved with. And I know you want to help, but, Peter, please don’t go looking for trouble.”

Tony didn’t know how effective it would be to just warn Peter off of going after anything related to the weapons but he had to try and hope that Peter had more sense than to actually go looking for more trouble than he was already encountering on a daily basis.

“I won’t go looking for trouble,” Peter said.

“Good. It’s getting late, kid, and you still seem to have some homework left. Get to it and get to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”

“Good night,” Peter said.

Chapter Seventy Two

#peter and tony #peter and tony fic #mcuwriting #mcu fic #iron dad #iron dad and spider son #stony #stony fic #marvel

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kennyamongus · 3 years

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Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) Review!

Ishiro Honda returns to direct Mothra in her sophomore outing, this time pairing her with the one and only Godzilla as they share the screen for the first time in their respective histories. When one thinks of the relationship between the two characters, it isn't prototypically adversarial. But much like when comic book super heroes meet in team-up stories, it usually begins contentious, and they soon work it out and band together to ward off the true threat. I suspect we can expect the dynamic of these titans to more resemble that as their relationship evolves through the various continuities in future films, but for this film, they clash, and man, is it awesome.

Echoing the opening of Mothra's self-titled first film, Mothra vs. Godzilla begins with a typhoon causing incredible destruction, this time to Japan's coastline. It's here where I start to see a pattern emerging from the creative exploration of the other through the lens of Japan in this time period. Typhoons are one of the perpetual threats of the country, and seeing it continually associated with these big monster movies makes a certain amount of sense. The disastrous storm washes ashore a gigantic, technicolor egg, which sets the story in motion.

With a title like Mothra vs. Godzilla, we know that the showdown between these strange beasts is what's drawing the audience, so one might expect the focal human characters to take a back seat to the main attraction to at least some degree. Compared to the previous film though, the characters here take an even more ancillary role, though not to say to its detriment, or to say less of the performances. It was a sincere joy to see the return of The Peanuts, Emi and Yumi Ito, to their roles as Mothra's miniature telepathic communicators (presently billed as the Shobijin of Mothra's human-desolated home, the now retconned Infant Island), and in a true return to form, they are just as charming as ever. When they sing Mothra's prayer song in unison, I found myself raising my arms in victory at the sheer excitement of Mothra being called to action through harmonious delight. The Ito sisters are simply fantastic, and I can't write enough about my appreciation of them.

Rounding out the cast are journalists Ichiro Sakai (Akira Takarada), and Junko Nakanishi (Yuriko Hoshi), whose brief, heartfelt speeches to the natives of Infant Island on behalf of the humans endangered by Godzilla's fury resonated convincingly. The villainous duo of Yoshifumi Tajima's Kumayama and Yu Fujiki's Jiro Nakamura successfully play toward another apparently recurring theme of these films as over-zealous, enterprising capitalists who trip over each other in their relentless efforts to appease their single-minded, boundless greed.

Godzilla's attack on Japan showed marked imrpovement in effects quality over the last movie, and the design of his suit here, for me, defines his exemplary look in the Showa era. Mothra dazzles again in bright orange hues, and displays improved maneuverability as the creative team continues to give her more varied actions to perform.

The eponymous battle of these gargantuas is ultimately the star of this show, and the entire fight is wholly enthralling. It's here we get to see Mothra armed with a new power for this movie, and apparently her deadliest one yet (at least according to the Shobijin) - her yellow powder attack. Curiously, while visually exciting, this doesn't seem to do much to Godzilla as he's up again only seconds later, and proceeds to make short work thereafter of our mighty winged protector in her weakened state. It is, however, still nice to see the incremental building of her abilities as we progress through the films.

And with our first on-screen death of Mothra, she is thus born again through her two children who crack out of the bright blue giant egg, and splash on to the scene in their caterpillar forms, ready for the fight that awaits them. After tangling in close-quarters with the bipedal nightmare, the two eventually coordinate their previously established silk attacks, claim victory over the beast in his drowned entrapment, and head back to Infant Island with the miraculously quick-footed Shobijin in toe. (Did the Shobijin really hold on to the backs of Mothra's children the entire way as they swam all the way across the Pacific!?) All's well that ends well as the sun sets on a grateful Japan. Until next time, anyway.

Mothra vs. Godzilla is a movie that lives up to the premiere marquee slobber-knocker it promises. It touches on the ideas and themes its predecessors laid the groundwork for, and grows upon them with blockbuster bravado in its grandiose execution. Seeing these two towering giants of pop culture meet for the first time is a singularly special experience not to be missed by fans of either character.

#Writing

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themisadventuresofcando · 6 years

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Life #5 (South Park)

Character Sheet

Face Claim:

Basic

Name: Carmencita D. Tweedle

Pronunciation: Car-men-SEE-tuh

Meaning: Little Song

Nicknames: Carmen, Tweedle Dee, Mutt, Snow Bunny

Name Origins:

Carmen: Shortened from Carmen

Tweedle Dee: Used with Tweedle Dum, Middle Initial, and Last Name

Mutt: Racial Slur for Mixed Race (I will actually beat that living shit out of you if you call me this AHEM Cartman AHEM)

Snow Bunny: A weird combination of my love of snow and Kenny’s love of Playboy Bunnies

Titles: N/A

Aliases: Princess Kenny’s Personal Knight, Estrella

Alias Origin: Games with The Boys

Orientation: Heterosexual

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Date of Birth: June 4th

Star Sign: Gemini

Birth Flower: Rose

Meaning: True Love

Birthstone: Pearl

Meaning: Purity

Species: Human

Affiliation: Humans, Freedom Pals

Social Status: Middle Class

Dead?: Eventually

How?: This is South Park probably really stupidly

Last Words: “SHIT!!! WE’RE GOING TO DIE!!!!”

Appearance

Eye Color: Grey-Blue

Glasses/Contacts: Glasses

Skin Tone: Pale with Freckles

Hair Color: Dark Brown

Hair Length: Just Past Shoulder

Hair Type: Curly

Hairstyle: Ponytail Normally,

Loose When Estrella,

Braids When Knight

Height: 5’1 (Yes, I’m short… only means i’m closer to hell)

Body Build: Skinny and Scrawny

Notable Features: N/A

Piercings: N/A

Tattoos: N/A

Scars: Small Mark on Left Cheek

Birthmarks: Thigh

Wardrobe

Style: Casual and Warm

Favorite Outfit: Dark Blue Coat Lined with Dark Grey Fur, Blue Jeans with Black Star Pattern, Black Fur Lined Boots, Grey Gloves with Ugly Sweater Pattern, Gray Knit Hat with Dark Grey Poof, Black Moschino Backpack with Optimus Prime Bear, Star Ring

Formal Outfit: Black Off Shoulder Asymmetrical Dress, Black Kitten Heels, Black Shoulder Bag with Silver Star Print, Silver Star Necklace, Silver Star Bracelet, Silver and Pearl Star Clip On Earrings, Silver Star Ring

Alter Ego Outfit:

Stick of Truth: Grey Tank Top Cut and Sewn Together with Shoe String, Long Sleeve Black Shirt, Black Hoodie, Black Leggings, Black Boots, Plastic Champion Belt, Plastic Gauntlets, Toy Bow and Arrow

Freedom Pals: Black Tank Top, Blue Galaxy Skater Skirt, Black Tights, Black Leather Jacket with Silver Star Pattern, Black Sneakers with Gold Star Pattern, Multiple Silver and Gold Star Bangles, Black Choker with Dangling Silver Stars, Silver Star Crossbody Bag, Silver Star Headband, Silver Star Ring, Black Lace Masquerade Mask

Accessories: Silver Star Ring

Scent: Vanilla, Green Tea

Relationships

Mother/Mother Figure: Roxane Tweedle

Relationships:

My mother is a very strange woman. She is very paranoid and always moving around the town. She is very attentive to my sister and I’s needs and tends to try to give us anything we could want (which doesn’t mean we actually want it). Whatever time she spends with us usually driving us around to wherever it is we’re going and it’s usually spent with us all terribly singing along to the radio and laughing. Mom isn’t one to want to sit and listen to us or to give us advice as she has a short attention span (probably where Olivia gets it from). She might not be the best mother but she does try and I still love her.

Father/Father Figure: Jackson Tweedle

Relationships:

My father, on the other hand, tends to love to sit and listen to (gossip with) us. He loves to try and smother with us with anything we ask for (Olivia and I honestly made it a game to see how far he would go to get us what we wanted… he has to fail). Dad is just as paranoid as mom is but he hides it a lot better. He was also the one that signed me up for martial arts which caused a huge argument between parents. My dad has been known to also beat the shit out of anyone who dares insult us or my mother (probably where I got it from).

Brothers/Brother Figures: N/A

Relationships: N/A

Sisters/Sister Figures: Olivia Tweedle

Relationships:

As dumb as Olivia can be, she is a very loyal friend and sister. I have, obviously, known her my entire life and she has never let me down (In terms of loyalty and reliability not much else). She can deal with my violent tendencies ad overly snarky demeanor. I can (most of the time) deal with her oblivious, careless attitude. We rarely fight and get along better than most sisters do and I’m pretty happy to have her as my sister.

Aunts/Aunt Figures: Nancy Tweak

Relationships:

Aunt Nancy is very sweet. She is always supportive whatever decision we make even if it might not be the right one. She is also pretty good at telling right from wrong and standing up when she thinks we’re doing something terrible. As supportive as she is she doesn’t really listen and is known to just leave us to our devices for long periods of time. She honestly borders on child neglect with how little she pays attention to us or Tweek.

Uncle/Uncle Figures: Richard Tweak

Relationships:

Uncle Richard is much worse than Aunt Nancy. All he cares about is his business and pays no attention to anything any of his family does. That’s not to say he doesn’t care, he does... he just cares more about his coffee shop. He also does anything to boost his shop which includes manipulating us and Tweek to do his bidding. Yeah, I don’t like my uncle.

Cousins/Cousin Figures: Tweek Tweak

Relationships:

I adore my cousin Tweek. As jitter and jumpy as he is I find him absolutely adorable. I’m usually the one to take the late night calls and now late night talks about pressure and Underpants Gnomes. I try to comfort him but it doesn’t always work cuz this kid is riddled with anxiety. When he’s calmer (calmer, NOT calm) he is pretty fun to hang around and his friends are pretty crazy. You wouldn’t think this but Tweek is surprisingly protective of Olivia and I. He has actually attacked some people he thought had hurt us emotionally or physically.

Nieces/Niece Figures: N/A

Relationships: N/A

Nephews/Nephew Figures: N/A

Relationships: N/A

Sons/Son Figures: N/A

Relationships: N/A

Daughter/Daughter Figures: N/A

Relationships: N/A

Current Guardian: The Tweaks

Relationship: I get along well with Aunt Nancy (I mean she tries), I hate uncle Richard (I know for a fact he’s the entire reason for Tweaks anxiety), and I adore Tweak

Current Significant Other: Kenny McCormick

Relationship:

Kenny McCormick was never the boy I saw myself dating. Simply put he was a major player and I wanted commitment.Kenny went around on any girl that moved and I was no exception, however, I was one of the very few who resisted his… charm. That got him interested and he is surprisingly persistent but so am I. It was a long game of cat and mouse where he would find me and drop cheesy pickup lines, offer compliments, and ask me out over and over while I offered sarcastic comment after witty comeback (if I do say so myself). The game turned into a surprisingly close friendship where the flirting got more jokey and less serious, where his true colors showed and that was when I finally caught feeling for the real Kenny McCormick. The overly perverted, vulgar, overprotective big brother Kenny. It didn’t take me to long to ask him on a date and imagine my surprise when this guy decided to actually give a committed relationship a try. I’m glad he did because now I know the jealous, overprotective, poorly timed joke slinging Kenny too. Obviously, we have a very touchy-feely relationship (which is weird because I’m not a big fan of being touched).

People

Mentors:

Advisor: Kyle Broflovski

Confidant: Kyle Broflovski

Teammates:

Stick of Truth: Humans

Fracture But Whole: Freedom Pals

Friends: Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Tweek Tweak, Butters Stotch, Token Black, Craig Tucker, Jimmy Valmer, Timmy Burch, Heidi Turner (I AM going to beat Cartman for what he did), Karen McCormick

Best Friend: Olivia Tweedle

Love Interest: Kenny McCormick

Rivals: Wendy Testaburger, Bebe Stevens

Enemies: Eric Cartman

Person Hated Most: Eric Cartman

Most Important Person: Olivia Tweedle

Awkward Around: Wendy when she breaks up with Stan, Tweek, and Craig when they’re fighting

Admires: Dad, Kyle

Past

Hometown: North Park

Childhood: Pretty normal, lived in a small town, small house, small family. Then, of course, our parents decided to go on some big trip and dump us with relatives for God knows how long.

Childhood Hero: JK Rowling (What? I like Harry Potter)

Most Important Memory: When my parents finally signed me up for martial arts after months of begging OR When I won my elementary school art competition

Present

Current Location: South Park

Living With:

Occupation: Student

Pets: Wiener Dog/Golden Retriever Mix named Oz

Health

General Health: Meh… I tend to get colds every few weeks

Reason: Apparently I have a sucky immune system

Mental Health: I’d say I’m sane, though, according to others that’s up for debate

Reason: I’m violent and pretty loud once I’m comfortable

Sleep Habits: I sleep like a log

Diet: Umm… I’m not on one

Exercise: Martial Arts, I Ride My Bike A Lot

Allergies: Dairy Products

Injuries: I get scrapes and bruises (I’m kind of a klutz)

Disorders: N/A

Deformity: N/A

Disabilities: N/A

Mutations: N/A

Handicaps: N/A

Medication: N/A

Education

School: South Park High School

Best Class: Art

Worst Class: Biology

Sports: Martial Arts

Clubs: Art Club

Languages: Spanish, English

Memory: Ok, I Guess

Abilities (Fracture But Whole)

List of Powers: Stellarkinesis

Moves:

Gravity Slam: Using the force of gravity to slam and hold opponents to the ground (Kick them in the balls/punch in the boob)

Shooting Star: Bringdown a star from space to hit a target (Chuck Firecrackers at them)

Plasma Beam: Use beam of plasma to harm enemies (Shine flashlight in their eyes)

Stellar Healing: Use stardust remaining from destroyed stars to heal teammates (Neosporin and Band-Aids)

Stardust: Use stardust to confuse opponents (Chuck glitter in their faces)

Abilities

Gravity Manipulation (Basically Telekinesis AKA Imagination)

Stardust Manipulation (Glitter)

Plasma Manipulation (Flashlight)

Origin: As a child, I was taken by a space god worshipping cult who attempted to sacrifice me to their god in a special ritual. Instead of dying, the ritual gave me the power to control the stars and become someone who could protect other children from being attacked and suffering my fate,.(AKA I wear star-shaped ring and own a lot of things with star patterns)

Elements: Space

Strengths: Stars, Night, Evasion, Long Range

Weaknesses: Cold, Water, Over-Exertion, “Nightmares from cult experience” (what the hell does that even mean?)

Restrictions: Over-Exertion of Powers

Immunities: Fire, Light, Sun

Combat

Fighting Style: Quick and Hard, Use Opponent's Strength, Momentum, and Weight Against Them

Weapons: Bow and Arrow (Stick of Truth), Hand to Hand

Personality

Good Traits: Loyal, Creative, Smart, Strategic, Athletic (Fast), Funny, Hard to Get Angry, Romantic

Bad Traits: Snarky, Overly Sarcastic, Explosive Temper, Likes to Hide Bad Feelings, Insecure About Glasses and Relationships, Stubborn

Likes: Animals, Art, Martial Arts, Laughing, Family, Games, Friends, Snow, Stars, Silver, Cheesy Romantic Dates, Reading, Cooking

Dislikes: Getting Angry, SOMEONE Insulting My Friends/Family, Swimming, Hunting, Being Touched by Most People

Turn Ons: Dirty Talk, Compliments, Jokes/Cheesy Pick Up Lines, A Little Rough

Turn Offs: Insults, Silence, Lies

Talents: Drawing, Martial Arts

Sense of Humor: Laughs at Just About Anything

Darkest Secret: Loves Cheesy Pick Up Lines

Does Anyone Know? Who?: Olivia and Possibly Kenny

Greatest Fear: Drowning

Why?: Can't Swim

Other Fears: Cartman Finding Out About Insecurities/Fear/That His Words Sometimes Hurt

Why?: Cartman is Cartman

Most at Ease When: With Karen, Kenny, Olivia, Kyle or Butters (or Any Combination)

Most Uncomfortable When: With Literally Anyone's Parents (They’re all so stupid… how are they even parents?)

Enraged When?: SOMEONE (CARTMAN) Insults My Friends/Family

Depressed When?: I Let My Stupid Insecurities Get to Me

Frightened When?: Getting Too Deep in Water

If Granted One Wish What Would It Be?: That I Didn’t Need Glasses

Habits

Hobbies: Art, Martial Arts, Reading

Instrument?: Nope (It'd be cool though)

Sport?: Martial Arts

Spending Habits: Um… If I Get Excited I Just Buy Shit but I MOstly Hate Shopping

Drinks?: NOPE

Smokes?: EW

Drugs?: EXTRA EW

Nervous Tics: Tugging on Earlobe, Chewing Lip

Favorites

Prized Possession: Star Ring

Color: Silver

Song: When The Day Met The Night by PATD

Quote: “Twinkle twinkle little star, do you know how loved you are”

Movie: Peter Pan

Food: Honey Butter Biscuits

Season: Fall

Book: Harry Potter

Genre: Fantasy

Flower: Stargazers

Flavor: Blueberry

Dessert: Blueberry Coffee Cake

Either/Or

Pessimist or Optimist: Optimist

Pacifist or Fighter: Fighter

Introvert or Extrovert: Extrovert

Proud or Humble: Humble

Messy or Tidy: Messy

Risky or Safe: Risky

Strength or Wisdom: Strength

Flashy or Simple: Simple

Long Range or Short Range: Long Range

Cats or Dogs: Dogs

Hot or Cold: Cold

Book or Movie: Movie

Loud or Quiet: Quiet

Logic or Emotion: Emotion

Work or Relax: Relax

Confident or Shy: Confident

Night or Day: Night

Out of 10

Knowledge: 6/10

Wisdom: 5/10

Motivation: 4/10

Agility: 6/10

Power Control: 7/10

Hand to Hand: 8/10

Long Range Accuracy: 6/10

Offense: 7/10

Defense: 4/10

Reflexes: 5/10

Speed: 7/10

Strength: 6/10

Sociability: 5/10

Bravery: 7/10

Confidence: 6/10

Generosity: 5/10

Endurance: 4/10

Evasion: 6/10

Kindness: 5/10

Creativity: 8/10

Charisma: 6/10

Memory: 5/10

Temper: 2/10

Patience: 8/10

#south park #south park oc #south park rp

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Watchmen Episode 7 Easter Eggs Explained

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More big secrets are revealed in HBO's Watchmen episode 7, and we're here to help you make sense of it all!

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This article contains Watchmen spoilers.

Watchmen episode 7, “An Almost Religious Awe,” is the hour where the remaining big questions finally start getting answered. And in the case of its last scene, it may even answer a question that you might not even realize had been asked in the first place. But from its first scene to its final moment, there’s a ton of info packed into this episode, from the mystery of why Angela Abar adopted the masked identity of Sister Night to the actual whereabouts of Dr. Manhattan. In fact, that last one is a good place to start.

AN ALMOST RELIGIOUS AWE

- The episode’s title “An Almost Religious Awe” takes its name from a line in the book, where it’s revealed via Dr. Manhattan’s own narration that many North Vietnamese wanted to surrender directly and personally to him, “...their terror of me balanced by an almost religious awe.”

You can see that “almost religious awe” in how VVN day is celebrated in Vietnam, where Dr. Manhattan is more omnipresent than Santa Claus at Christmas or Uncle Sam at the Fourth of July.

DR. MANHATTAN

The episode opens with footage from a documentary about Dr. Manhattan, which is thoroughly packed with Easter eggs and even some new revelations about our good pal Jon Osterman.

Among those, we get a New Frontiersman newspaper headline with Jon on the moon alongside Neil Armstrong, with the words “The Right Stuff,” our first HBO-ified look at great moments in Dr. Manhattan history like Osterman Fine Watches or the exterior of Gila Flats, magazine ads touting Manhattan-led technology innovations like the lithium batteries that powered his first wave of cars (one of which is named the Ford Andromeda), the color news footage of the famed panel from the book showcasing a giant Dr. Manhattan on the battlefields of the Vietnam War, the October 30, 1985 New York Gazette headline announcing his departure for Mars, and more!

Another important one is the Nova Express cover story that ended up being so pivotal to the events of the book, where Doug Roth wrote the expose (based on false info planted by Adrian Veidt) about the link between Dr. Manhattan and cancer deaths in people who associated with him.

There’s one more hidden detail in that New York Gazette headline, as a side story seems to say something along the lines of “Italians Flock to Rome to Protect Decaying State City.” Presumably, this is a reference to Vatican City, and it’s it’s “decaying” in 1985, it’s another clue to the idea that religion has fallen almost completely out of favor in the Watchmen universe after the arrival of Dr. Manhattan in the mid-20th century.

- The Dr. Manhattan puppeteer on VVN Day being the mastermind of an attack is apt because of Manhattan’s whole “I’m just a puppet that can see the strings” philosophy from the book.

- The episode ends with Angela holding Dr. Manhattan’s symbol as a blue glow envelops her. Yes, it turns out that Cal is actually Dr. Manhattan. We wrote more about the implications of all of this right here.

- Incidentally, if you ever catch me misidentifying Jon Osterman as Jon (or Jim) Osterberg, it’s because I keep confusing Dr. Manhattan’s former name with the former name of Iggy Pop. Both of these gentlemen are beings of immense power with a penchant for nudity and zero percent body fat, and both have been known to inspire “an almost religious awe.”

YOUNG ANGELA

It’s tough to find an exact date for this first sequence depicting Angela’s childhood, however, there are a few clues. You can clearly see a VHS copy of Ghostbusters on one of the racks. Ghostbusters wasn’t released on VHS until October of 1985, so that, along with the fact that the documentary narration audible in the store indicates that this takes place after Dr. Manhattan left Earth. We can also assume that VVN Day takes place in May or early June, thanks to a mention in the book, where Dr. Manhattan talks about being in Vietnam in May and that “the Vietcong are expected to surrender within the week.” So most likely, this is taking place in May or June of 1986, which makes Angela approximately 10 years old.

- The song that plays during the VVN day sequence earl in the episode is another tell for the fact that this comes after November ‘85. James Brown’s “Living in America” wasn’t released until December of 1985. It was also, notoriously, a centerpiece of Rocky IV.

- Burgers n’ Borscht is a fast food joint from the book and its presence also places the events of Angela’s childhood here after the events of 11/2/85. Why? Because the melding of US and Russian cultures in such an absurdly commercial way comes about AFTER a new spirit of cooperation is forged because of the “threat” of extradimensional invasion successfully forged by Ozymandias.

- There are three key movies on the VHS spinner rack that young Angela Abar is perusing. The first, obviously, is Sister Night, which should need no explanation. Amusingly, the blurb on the cover reads “A nun with a motherfucking gun” which is also the name of a track on the Watchmen soundtrack from episode 1. In many ways, giving Angela a relatively straightforward origin story (inspired by a fictional hero) puts her almost in line with both versions of Nite Owl from the book (and, of course, Hooded Justice as we now understand him), the few characters who become heroes because it's the right thing to do.

Now, as for those other two movies…

One is Fogdancing, the movie adaptation of the novel by Tales of the Black Freighter writer and unwitting pawn in Adrian Veidt’s schemes, Max Shea. The movie apparently is quite good, as there’s an awards laurel visible on the box and hell, it was directed by David Cronenberg! The painting of the protagonist, with his back to us, is of a man with a ponytail and blond hair, which is very similar to what Max Shea looked like in the book. Its tagline? “When War Makes Monsters of Us All…” Ugh, can you imagine how amazing a Watchmen movie directed by David Cronenberg circa 1986 would have been? Between this and Steven Spielberg's Pale Horse, the alternate history of Watchmen also has some intriguing movie projects.

The other is Silk Swingers, a crappy exploitation movie from the late ‘40s that dramatized (apparently quite poorly) the early career of the first Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter, the mother of FBI Agent Laurie Blake.

There are also several kids movies about elephants, Trunky and Tusky. Considering how important elephants are later in the episode (and how Lady Trieu's mother wrote a book called Pachyderm Mom) these are also significant. We won’t talk about some of the other showcased fare like Porked! Down on the Farm and The Raunchy Pistol.

- Angela lying to Lady Trieu about what she sees in her memory with something innocent (a pony at her birthday party) mirrors Walter “Rorschach” Kovacs lying to his prison psychiatrist in the book about what he sees during a blot test (Rorschach sees a dog with its head split in two, he lies that it’s “a pretty butterfly”).

THE FATE OF LOOKING GLASS REVEALED

- There are back issues of New Frontiersman in Wade Tillman’s bunker, specifically ones related to the squid rain, so he probably isn’t a reactionary kook. That’s the only thing worth noting, right? NOPE!

- In other/better/more important news, Detective Looking Glass lives! The carnage left after everyone’s favorite lonely masked cop turned no fewer than five members of the 7th Kavalry into racist McNuggets is kinda reminiscent of the disarray that the apartment of the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, was left in after a gang of Knot-Tops broke in and murdered him in the book. Only here, things turned out very differently for the home invaders.

THE TRIAL OF ADRIAN VEIDT

- Ozymandias has been on trial, in full uniform no less, for a full year. I believe we just need one more year to get Adrian’s story caught up to the main story back on Earth.

- The one commandment that Veidt is supposed to live by, and that his “subjects” certainly live by, is “Thou shalt not leave.” It makes the circumstances of Veidt’s arrival that much more questionable.

- You can see a courtroom sketch of the squid that Veidt used to kill millions, as well as a Black Freighter seal behind the head of the Judge/Game Warden.

LADY TRIEU

- So it turns out that Bian, Lady Trieu’s daughter, is...actually a clone of Lady Trieu’s mother. Who was also named Bian. The elder Bian wrote a book called Pachyderm Mom (there’s that elephant symbolism again) about how she intended to raise Lady Trieu to be exactly the kind of embodiment of genius and perfection that she ultimately turned out to be. And according to Peteypedia, those methods sound awfully similar to how we see Lady Trieu raising the younger Bian. So, while it sounds crazy...is it possible that Lady Trieu is ALSO a clone of her mother?

Lady Trieu’s Millennium Clock launch speech refers to how she wanted Nostalgia to be a way for us to evolve. Veidt, incidentally, had hoped to evolve people into a more superheroic mindset with his “Veidt Method” and Millennium line, both of which were failures.

It’s also worth noting that the 7th Kavalry are using stolen Trieu Industries tech to build...whatever the hell it is they’re building. Unless, of course, it isn’t stolen. But that’s too dark and I prefer not to think about that.

MISCELLANEOUS STUFF

- I don’t know why the remote control for Mrs. Crawford’s trap door says WILSON on it. There is indeed a “Wilson Electronics” but this doesn’t seem like the kind of product they make.

- While Paul Young had the big hit with “Every Time You Go Away,” the version that’s playing in this episode is the vastly superior Hall and Oates original.

- Cal is reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

- The closing credits are an instrumental version of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Reznor's Nine Inch Nails toured with Bowie in the ‘90s and they collaborated on several songs. This brilliant, beautiful version of one of the most brilliant, beautiful songs ever written is killing me dead.

Mike Cecchini is the Editor in Chief of Den of Geek. You can read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @wayoutstuff.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Books

Mike Cecchini

Dec 1, 2019

Watchmen

HBO

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#aion-rsa #Books

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spreadmywings · 7 years

Text

Flaws Pt 1

On AO3

I’ve renamed the story and reworked slightly; it’s going to be 5 parts. The Dick/Babs is minor, not the focus, and takes back seat to the storyline/plot and there won’t be more than a kiss on the cheek towards the end of the fic. Thanks for a ton of advice and encouragement and beta from @caramelmachete and @audreycritter :) Title and chapter titles from the song Flaws by Bastille.

Summary:

Oracle trusts the Bats, but she also knows them all too well, which is a very good thing, because the best laid plans... aka the fic with the gunrunners, explosions, an injured Nightwing, and the swear jar.

We Pick Ourselves Undone

“Wind speed's picking up. Cloud cover should hold steady for the next 20 minutes, but it's going to clear.”

Oracle checked the little blips showing everyone’s locations. She saw Batman’s marker on the roof of a building near a warehouse. It wasn’t as close to the action as he preferred, but there were limited positions to choose from.

She heard his grunt of acknowledgment over the comms. Definitely annoyed. Other near silent replies let her know everyone else had heard her updated information. She ran over the other positions in her head. Batgirl and Black Bat were absent; Steph had finals coming up, so she was on call in case anything went down elsewhere in the city while they were busy, and Cass remained in Hong Kong for the rest of the week. Red Robin was in one of the small boats moored to the pier, ready to give warning of reinforcements or block an escape by water; a sprained ankle had sidelined him the previous week, but Alfred had given him clearance to help in a limited capacity.

Red Hood and Robin moved from shadow to shadow on the pier, a physical confirmation of their intel. They placed tracking devices on as many of the stacked crates as they could manage so they could retrieve them, afterwards. Babs spared another glance for Red Hood’s blip. She had a hunch he had something to do with Batman’s mood, too, though she could only guess why. Well, she could always snoop a bit and watch the footage from the cave, but that was a last resort. If she was patient and listened, she was sure she’d figure it out soon enough.

She didn't have to look to know Nightwing’s position. She knew he was in the shadows on the roof of the warehouse itself. He'd made a few comments over the comms earlier in the evening, bellyaching about the cold but openly thankful it wasn't raining like earlier in the week. He’d kept up a whispered flood of random chatter until the Red Hood had told him in no uncertain terms exactly what he could do with his chitchat.

“Language, Hood.”

“Fifteen for the swear jar,” Alfred chimed in from the cave. Babs smiled at the reminder of Bruce and Jason’s ongoing contest. Alfred refereed and kept their swear jar in plain sight in the cave.

But even Nightwing’s endless stream of jokes and flirting trickled to a halt as they all waited for their chance to eliminate this one threat, at least.

She didn’t see anything out of place with their positioning, but she still hoped the cloud cover would remain as long as possible. They’d observed the head of the Vasiliev crime family for months and this was the final transaction of a sizable arms shipment. The plan was to get ironclad evidence he was buying and re-selling illegal weapons, capture him quietly after he left, and follow the crates of guns to their future buyers.

But Vasiliev was uncharacteristically late. It was yet another complication that could derail weeks of work, especially if the action went down in full moonlight. Maybe that was why Batman was ill-tempered tonight. He didn’t have direct control over the multitude of variables. She couldn’t blame him for getting his bat briefs in a twist over that.

The air was silent and tense - expectant. There was no serenity or peace in this night. And she knew of each of these boys, men. The waiting was getting to them, too, even if they didn’t show it. Even from her distance, the anxious hush grated on her nerves. Extra caffeine from the week of stakeouts probably wasn't helping, either.

The next fifteen minutes was an hour to her, until a small fleet of trucks and vans converged on the waterfront. Vasiliev’s boat must have been watching and waiting close by, because Red Robin alerted them before she had a chance to give the update.

“Places, gentlemen…” She counted the series of clicks that came over the comms and nodded with a grim smile. They were ready.

A sleek motorboat glided to the pier and half a dozen armed men followed as Vasiliev approached the crates. Ten men stepped out of the shadows to meet him. She was miles away, but heard every word as the transaction concluded, thanks to the mics Red Hood and Robin had placed along with the tracers. All was going according to plan.

Until a moment later, when it wasn’t.

Oracle frowned as the mics picked up a clang and she watched everyone freeze and then jump into action.

“Fuck!” Not good. That was Red Hood. This wasn’t pre-operation joking around; their targets were in sight. A matter of keystrokes and mouse clicks and voice commands activated even more monitors, and she had multiple birds eye views of the entire area. A shout summoned at least a score more goons from inside. Vasiliev’s men aimed their weapons at the other group but searched for outside targets as well.

This was not how they’d planned for this to go down, but the Bats still had the advantage in skill and training. Very few battle plans survived the first engagement. They had this. No reason to worry. They did this every night. Maybe Hood was winning this month’s bet and hadn’t cared about his language.

Red Hood remained hidden in the shadows, but the clouds were traitors, revealing the night sky. Robin was in motion, jumping for a stack of crates, cape trailing behind him, visible in the sudden moonlight. One of the henchmen pointed. She saw Batman’s blip approach out of the corner of her eye. She’d predicted that the moment things headed southish. It wasn’t a wash, yet, but it definitely wasn’t ideal. Still, they had some of the best training of any of the current costumed heroes; they’d get this creep.

Robin gained the relative safety of the darker shadows, but the goons knew they were there, now, and they were nervous. Shots rang out, but the gunmen fired, blind. It was time to end this. Everyone but Red Robin moved closer; readouts told her he had activated the boat’s trolling motor. He was ready for action while remaining hidden.

Oracle had a front row seat as it all went down.

She didn’t have to see them to know Red Hood and Robin were poised, readying themselves to take out as many of the thugs as possible in that first strike. She didn’t expect the harsh round of coughing that exploded in her ear.

Gunfire exploded again, seeking the source of the noise, and a dark cape swished to the ground like avenging angel wings shrouding the moon as two lesser shadows enveloped their share of the gunmen. A bare moment later, sleek night himself flew into the fray as well, taking out three men on his way to the ground.

Batman was in the middle of everything, using brute strength and power of will as Red Hood dropped back to pick off the more heavily armed men. Rubber bullets caromed off sensitive areas and knocked guns from hands all over the pier. Robin took out anyone who came near and Nightwing leapt everywhere, taking out multiple opponents at a time with flying kicks.

Oracle zoomed in on the incoming roads as they fought. She trusted them, trusted their skill and training. They knew what they were doing. She leaned closer to the monitor when Nightwing doubled over, coughing yet again. Okay, most of them knew what they were doing. She sent him a glare every bit as potent as their mentor’s. Robin and Red Hood covered for him while Batman took out anyone unlucky enough to come within his reach. Nightwing took a few deep breaths, waved them off, and continued the fight.

“Three headed back to the boat. One of them is Vasiliev. And more trucks incoming.”

Nightwing signaled he had them. He was the quickest, so it made sense, but Babs was still concerned. He took out the first man and then caught up to the second. The man pulled a pistol, but a kick and a few blows disarmed him and knocked him unconscious, though not before he got a round off.

“Stand clear!” Red Hood took cover as all hell broke loose.

Babs heard Red Hood through the comms and through the mics scattered around the waterfront. Automatic filters dimmed and muted audiovisual output when it exceeded pre-set parameters, so she scanned the monitors even as the crates exploded.

Apparently Red Hood had been carrying more than bullets in his jacket. He’d learn what a mistake he’d made in not keeping her informed. She’d lost two camera feeds in the explosion. Extreme heat had melted the housing on another, and it was stuck. It wouldn’t move enough to give her any useful data. But that was for later.

Batman pulled Robin beneath the shelter of his cape for the worst of the blast. None of the explosions should have been strong enough to be lethal, but they still had to keep an eye out for flying debris and for dangerous injuries among their opponents.

They were fine, but now that the explosions were dying down and the smoke was clearing, she heard Nightwing coughing and gasping even as he gave chase to the last of the three he’d pursued. Vasiliev. She knew he wouldn’t let him escape. It sounded bad, but it was just a cough. He’d been far worse than this when he’d retaken Blackgate Prison for Batman. They knew what they were doing. She knew that; she trusted them. She trusted him.

She focused on the previously approaching traffic and was relieved that several trucks had stopped while others had turned around. They’d be trapped when the GCPD arrived. Red Hood and Robin secured the fallen criminals and dragged them away from the flaming debris. They were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

“Problem, guys. I’m blocked in!”

“Can you clear it, Red Robin?” Oracle couldn’t see the boat, just the smoking and flaming debris near his position.

“Negative, O. Not in time to catch our runaway.”

Vasiliev jumped into his motorboat with Nightwing cursing and muttering under his breath several lengths behind him. Labored breathing. And curses, not quips.

Birdbrain. No way you should have gone out, tonight. Just wait until Alfred gets hold of you, mister.

She glared through the monitors hard enough he should have been able to feel it.

Babs checked the status of the GCPD. En route, but only ground units. The fire department would be close behind, as well, but that wouldn’t help them catch the culprit, only the transport trucks.

“Up, up, and away!”

Nightwing rallied and took a flying leap off the pier, clambering onto the moving boat. She had to grin at his display and the phrases she heard Batman growl under his breath. She’d have to remember to tell Alfred Bruce owed $25 for the swear jar. At least she had the sense to stay out of contests between those two.

She ignored the other monitors for the moment and focused on the ones showing Nightwing. There was definitely something off, not quite ungraceful, but the movements lacked a certain fluidity she associated with him, and they’d slowed noticeably. “Nightwing, are you alright?”

“‘M fine, O…”

He wasn’t. She trusted him, but she trusted her instincts more, knew he was worse than he realized. She opened a private channel to Batman.

“Send him back to the cave, ASAP, B. Something’s wrong.” She didn’t hesitate, didn’t say maybe there was something off. She knew. She had no qualms ordering the Batman, trusted he’d listen to her assessment. Catching Vasiliev and cleaning up was all that was left. They didn’t need Nightwing for that. Maybe the smoke was getting to him, maybe he was sicker than he’d let on. She didn’t care right now. Nothing here was so earth-shatteringly important that they needed him to stay.

Batman nodded and tapped his comm in a silent acknowledgment as he grappled onto the nearby crane. “Robin. Red Hood. Hold.” His tone was not one to ignore.

Nightwing took Vasiliev down simply, heavy-handed, then restrained him. He jumped over the Russian to get to the wheel of the motorboat, perching precariously on the gunwale, holding onto the windshield as he tried to steer.

The boat crunched to a stop on something in the water, knocking him backwards over the side.

Dick!

“Nightwing down!”

Oracle clenched her fists and alerted them over the comm even as Batman flew through the air. The monitors showed her almost everything on the pier, and she had four of the best operatives she’d ever worked with at her command, but she couldn’t directly affect a damned thing from her tower, couldn’t catch Nightwing when he fell. She had to watch and warn and wait, directing everyone else, pulling their strings and moving them around to best tactical advantage. She hated this frustration. Did Alfred ever feel this way when he had to watch from afar?

Somehow, Red Hood had already shed his jacket and made it almost to Nightwing’s last position by the time Batman dropped into the boat, rocking it with the force of his fall.

“Red Robin, can you get clear?” She was still watching the place he’d gone under, hating the dark uniform that made it even more difficult to see.

“Already on it, Oracle. Slight damage to the boat, but she’s seaworthy, still.”

Batman plunged into the water as well. It was too long until dark figures bobbed to the surface, grabbing onto Red Robin’s boat and clambering inside, dragging Nightwing between them. She gasped for breath, dizzy, unaware she’d been holding it all this time.

“Dickface retrieved.”

“No names in the field, Hood.”

“Language, Jay…” Batman’s stern reprimand drowned out Red Robin’s feeble attempt at relieved humor. No one commented on his slip.

A dark glove highlighted by electric blue landed heavily against Red Hood’s armored shoulder, and then again, patting, before giving a thumbs up to Red Robin. The Batmobile edged forward towards the pier, a heavy shadow against the shifting flames, waiting.

Babs took a deep breath and let it out. “Send the Bonehead Wonder home.” Now that she knew he was alive, she could plan how she was going to kill him for this stupid stunt.

#my fic #dick grayson #bruce wayne #barbara gordon #jason todd #tin drake #damian wayne #alfred pennyworth

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placetobenation · 4 years

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Fantasia

Release Date: November 13th, 1940

Inspiration: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Budget: $2.28 million

Domestic Gross: $76 million

Worldwide Gross: $83 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

IMDB Score: 7.8/10

Storyline (per IMDB): Disney animators set pictures to Western classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” features Mickey Mouse as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits. “The Rite of Spring” tells the story of evolution, from single-celled animals to the death of the dinosaurs. “Dance of the Hours” is a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators. “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Ave Maria” set the forces of darkness and light against each other as a devilish revel is interrupted by the coming of a new day.

Pre-Watching Thoughts: We now move onto a very interesting piece in the Disney film canon and that is Fantasia, not so much a film as it is basically a concert with animation. This is a film that I can say that I have never seen in its entirety as I have only seen “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and nothing else. I am curious as to how this film manages to hold up especially after how great Snow White and Pinocchio ended up being, but I have a feeling I might be in for a bit of a letdown though hopefully I’m proven wrong.

Voice Cast: So in a break from tradition, we have no voice acting as the film was mainly music pieces set to animation, but we did have a host for the event which was composer Deems Taylor who does a good job in setting the scene for each piece. We also hear briefly from the conductor of the orchestra Leopold Stokowski who speaks briefly with Mickey Mouse after “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Finally, we do have history made here as Walt Disney himself makes an appearance as the voice of Mickey Mouse when he congratulates Stokowski for his work. While this would be the least amount of talking in any of the Disney films, it worked out since it was more about the music.

Hero/Prince: N/A

Princess: N/A

Villain: While we don’t have a hero or a princess for this film, we actually do have a villain in the film and that is the evil Chernabog who appears in the final piece “A Night at Bald Mountain”. During the piece, we see the Chernabog summoning the spirits of the dead and they roam throughout the sky until the coming of day and the ringing bells return the spirits to their slumber and the Chernabog to its place in the mountain. As a result, the Chernabog is not one of the major villains in the canon though his presence in the film is enough to cause numerous nightmares. I do want to make an honorable mention as well to the T-Rex in “The Rite of Spring” as he does battle with and ultimately kills a Stegosaurus, but he will not be included in the main list of villains.

Other Characters: This is an interesting category for this film because we have various segments throughout the film and the characters included were confined to their specific segment. We of course have the icon of Disney himself, Mickey Mouse make his official film debut as the apprentice to the sorcerer Yen Sid along with the broom that Mickey brings to life and the numerous brooms that materialize out of the remains of the destroyed brooms. We also have the various creatures that are featured in their respective segments which help the animations keep moving through the pieces, and while the focus of the film was on the music the animations were the perfect compliments to these pieces.

Songs: Now as opposed to other films which have songs that are sung, this film features some classic musical pieces from various ballets and works from some of the most influential composers in history. We kick things off with “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach and segue into “The Nutcracker Suite” by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and then we have “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas and “The Rite of Spring” by Igor Stravinsky before going into the intermission. After a brief jam session and a demonstration of the soundtrack, we continue on with “The Pastoral Symphony” by Ludwig Von Beethoven and “Dance of the Hours” by Amilcare Ponchielli. We then close out the film with “A Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky and “Ave Marie” by Franz Schubert, and this was a unique collection of music that did well complimenting each other.

Plot: This is pretty interesting as well as there really was no central plot for the film and it was just a collection of musical pieces that were coupled together with animations. Now a funny note is that “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was originally set to be a short in the same vein as the Silly Symphonies as a way to help rebuild Mickey Mouse’s popularity. Ultimately, the budget was growing too big that a simple short would recoup it so the decision was made to make this into a full-length feature film including the other pieces featured in this film. In this short, Mickey is an apprentice to the great sorcerer Yen Sid and after he retires for the night, Mickey decides to put on his hat and bring a broom to life so it can get the buckets of water Mickey is supposed to get. It works briefly until Mickey can no longer control the broom and tries to destroy it with an axe, but multiple brooms spawn out of the remains and continue to fill the room with water until Yen Sid returns and sets everything right. Realizing the error of his ways, Mickey returns the hat to Yen Sid and walks away with the buckets with Yen Sid giving him a push with the broom as punishment. While the short would’ve worked by itself, being in this setting was fine and it would end up being the most memorable segment from the film as the image of Mickey with the hat on would become part of Disney lore in the years to come.

Random Watching Thoughts: I wonder what people were thinking when the film started and the first thing they saw was the orchestra taking their place; First film to not have an opening card or even credits; Did they film this in front of a live audience because we don’t hear a lot of crowd chatter; I also wonder how much this orchestra got paid to do this film; What kind of name is Deems Taylor?; It is interesting that this is considered part of the animated canon since it is a mix of animations and live action; The animation for the first song was really well done even though it was just a random sequence; It is funny that Tchaikovsky detested the Nutcracker Suite and it ended up being his most popular piece; It is weird hearing the Nutcracker Suite and not seeing anything related to the actual Nutcracker ballet or even Christmas; According to one of the animators, the Three Stooges were used as inspiration for the dancing mushrooms; Considering that there was a scene later in the film that caused a lot of controversy, I’m surprised the dancing mushrooms weren’t called out as a potential stereotype against Chinese people; Kudos to the animators for doing a great job matching the choreography to the music perfectly; The goldfish in the Nutcracker Suite looks like it was modeled off of Cleo from Pinocchio; How naïve is Mickey to think that Yen Sid’s powers came completely from his hat and not from years of work?; Of all the things to bring to life to help you, why would you pick a broom?; Mickey got pretty cocky with his ability so it shouldn’t come as a surprise what happens; It is fairly interesting that Mickey’s debut on the big screen in a film involves no dialogue during the short; Mickey learns the important rule about magic in that it’s all about being able to control; How many brooms were able to materialize out of the shards of the broom Mickey destroyed?; Shouldn’t the water be flowing out of the window when it reaches it?; Where did those whirlpools come from if they are in an enclosed room?; Of course, Yen Sid is such a badass that he can cause all the water to disappear in such a short time, but where did all the brooms go?; It was cool to see Mickey appear with the conductor after the short ended; So to fill time, they had the chimes fall apart and cause a scene even though it was pretty humorous to see; The Rite of Spring was apparently supposed to feature the early days of humanity, but reportedly creationists threatened action because of their beliefs; I wonder if the scene where the water overcame the volcano was an inspiration for Roland Emmerich’s “2012” when the water rushed over the mountains; The scene where the dinosaurs are being chased by the T-Rex is a pretty terrifying scene and of course the slow Stegosaurus would be the one he catches; How thick is the T-Rex’s skin because you would think the Stegosaurus’ giant spikes would pierce right through and kill him?; Considering there is only one T-Rex, wouldn’t the other dinosaurs help the Stegosaurus instead of just watching the T-Rex kill him?; It is weird hearing the upbeat music in between the shots of the Stegosaurus dying; It is interesting that they depicted the dinosaurs going extinct due to the lack of resources when the common theory is an asteroid hitting the Earth wiping them out; Did we really need an intermission and I wonder if it really was 15 minutes in the theaters because it wasn’t that long in the Disney+ version; Very rare to see the title card in the middle of the film; It was pretty cool to hear the orchestra do a jam session and to see how sound is rendered through visual film, but it does kind of bring the film’s momentum to a halt; It was pretty risqué for an animated film to have the female centaurs originally be bare chested before having something covering their breasts; Even more controversial was that there were black female centaurs acting as servants to the white female centaurs though that was cut out of future airings including the Disney+ version; I feel bad for that poor unicorn that has to carry Bacchus; Why is Zeus so upset that he crashes the party and has Vulcan throw down lightning bolts, was he not invited to the party?; Only in a Disney film can they bring together ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators to act out a comic ballet; So the 1940s had a bunch of ostriches fighting over a thing of grapes while the 2010s had a group of Minions fight over a banana; Those must be the most light-footed hippos if they are able to keep that sort of balance on their toes; That must’ve been an extremely strong gust of wind to blow all those elephants away; If the T-Rex was terrifying, the Chernabog is the stuff that nightmares are made out of; This last scene is so creepy yet so disturbingly beautiful in terms of the animation coupled with the ominous music; For as powerful as the Chernabog is, it is weird that it simply takes the tolling of bells and the coming of day to put him and the demons to rest; How many monks are there walking through this forest?; It is pretty unsettling to see a film just end without closing credits.

Overall Thoughts: Overall, this ended up being a pretty solid film though unfortunately it was a step down from the previous two films. While the film was not actively bad as the music was really good and the animations were beautifully done, it does seem like this film requires a certain taste since it is not like the rest of the films in the Disney canon. It almost feels like the film is in its own category apart from the rest of the canon since there is no real story and it is just a collection of animations coupled to the music. Considering that this was just supposed to be a simple short that was changed to a full-length film, Disney did a good job in making this film and a lot of credit goes to the animators who worked on the film. These next few years are going to be an interesting time for Disney as we inch closer to World War II, but we do have two films to get too before we get to that period of time. As for Fantasia, it is a pretty solid film though again it is a bit of an acquired taste to enjoy otherwise you might find yourself a bit bored even with the beautiful animations.

Final Grade: 6/10

#IFTTT #Place to Be Nation

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Study: Smelling farts may be good for your health

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July 11, 2014

The next time someone at your office lets out a "silent but deadly" emission, maybe you should thank them. A new study at the University of Exeter in England suggests that exposure to hydrogen sulfide — a.k.a. what your body produces as bacteria breaks down food, causing gas — could prevent mitochondria damage. Yep, the implication is what you're thinking: People are taking the research to mean that smelling farts could prevent disease and even cancer.

The study, published in the Medicinal Chemistry Communications journal, found that hydrogen sulfide gas in rotten eggs and flatulence could be a key factor in treating diseases.

"Although hydrogen sulfide gas is well known as a pungent, foul-smelling gas in rotten eggs and flatulence, it is naturally produced in the body and could in fact be a healthcare hero with significant implications for future therapies for a variety of diseases," Dr. Mark Wood, a professor at the University of Exeter, said in a statement.

While hydrogen sulfide gas is harmful in large doses, the study suggests that "a whiff here and there has the power to reduce risks of cancer, strokes, heart attacks, arthritis, and dementia by preserving mitochondria," reports.

Dr. Matt Whiteman, a University of Exeter professor who worked on the study, said in a statement that researchers are even replicating the natural gas in a new compound, AP39, to reap its health benefits. The scientists are delivering "very small amounts" of AP39 directly into mitochondrial cells to repair damage, which "could hold the key to future therapies," the university's statement reveals.

You'll have to decide for yourself, though, whether exposure to hydrogen sulfide in flatulence is worth the potential health benefits.

1:33 a.m. ET

Move over, Molly, and step aside, Samantha — there's a new American Girl doll, and his name is Logan.

The company will release Logan Everett, its first boy character, on Thursday, with the doll and his accompanying book costing $115. He lives in Nashville, plays the drums in a band with his friend Tenney Grant (a blond, brown-eyed doll), and comes with his own set. "We do an enormous amount of research with girls and their parents, and the one thing we've heard loud and clear is a desire for more — specifically more characters and stories from today," spokeswoman Julie Parks told CBS News. The company will also introduce two other new characters on Thursday: Korean-American Z Yang and Nanea from Hawaii.

1:24 a.m. ET

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned Monday night, after a record 24 days serving in President Trump's White House. "Twenty-four days — I use disposable razors for longer than that," Seth Meyers marveled on Tuesday's Late Night. "He didn't even last as long as a David Blaine stunt." Meyers played a cheeky highlight reel of Flynn's short tenure, then went to the video library. "To be fair to Flynn, he may have broken the law and then lied about it, but it's not like he accused any other public official of breaking the law and called for them to be thrown in jail," he said, setting up a clip from last July's Republican National Convention. He calls the excerpt from Flynn's "lock her up!" speech "really ironic to watch now," but you can judge for yourself.

Meyers briefly recapped why Flynn stepped down, then walked through the rapidly shifting White House response to the Flynn revelations, up to Trump's tweet about it on Tuesday. "Apparently the problem for him is not that Flynn lied, but that we found out about it," he said. Other Republicans didn't seem that concerned with the resignation of a top White House official just three weeks in, either, Meyers said, ending with a movie reference and some skepticism about lawmakers having Valentine's Day breakfast with their wives.

12:50 a.m. ET

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Rumor, a 5-year-old German shepherd who came out of retirement to compete, was named Best in Show Tuesday night at the 141st Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City.

Rumor is only the second German shepherd to win the event, with the trailblazer, Manhattan, taking home the title in 1987. Nearly 2,800 dogs entered the competition, covering 202 eligible breeds and varieties, reports. An Irish setter named Adrian came in second place, and Rumor also beat out a Pekingese, miniature poodle, boxer, Norwich terrier, and a Norwegian elkhound in the finals. "The German shepherd standard talks about quality and nobility," judge Thomas Bradley III said. "When you recognize it, it hits you at home, and that's what it really is. She is just magnificent."

Named after the Adele song "Rumor Has It," this is the dog's 104th career win. She's going out on a high note — handler and co-owner Kent Boyles, who called her win "unbelievable," said Rumor is going back into retirement from dog shows, and will spend time relaxing before having puppies.

12:11 a.m. ET

His early life wasn't easy — as a child, Ralph Burns, now 64, was abandoned, and he had to drop out of school in the third grade — but he found his calling in music, playing the guitar at parties and bars and becoming a pastor.

Burns never learned how to read during his youth, and while it "embarrassed me sometimes, I got over that," he told Local 8 News in Knoxville. He wanted to learn and people tried to teach him over the years, but things didn't click until Burns met Sydney Osborne, a volunteer with the Friends of Literacy group. The pair have spent the last 18 months working together for two hours a week, with Osborne teaching Burns the letters and sounds of the alphabet. Burns can now read at a first grade level, and is looking forward to improving his skills. "This opens up a whole word," he said. "I can go into a restaurant and almost read the menu."

February 14, 2017

High-level advisers to presidential candidate Donald Trump were "in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to U.S. intelligence," CNN reported Tuesday night, citing "multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement, and administration officials." Like a from Tuesday evening, CNN says that investigators have not yet determined the motive for the frequent contact. If collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to damage Hillary Clinton's rival campaign is uncovered, one official tells CNN, "that would escalate things."

Investigators were not targeting Trump associates when they picked up on the contacts, merely conducting routine intelligence gathering on suspect Russian officials and nationals, but the "frequency of the communications during early summer and the proximity to Trump of those involved 'raised a red flag,'" CNN reports, naming two of the officials "regularly communicating with Russian nationals" as Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, and Michael Flynn, who just resigned as Trump's national security adviser. Manafort denied any improper contact with Russian officials .

President Trump was briefed on the frequent and extensive contacts between suspected Russian operatives and people in his campaign and business, as was former President Barack Obama, CNN reports. As CNN's Pamela Brown notes in the video below, investigators' concerns were heightened when, after the election, U.S. agencies intercepted communications between Russian officials celebrating their special access to Trump, according to two law enforcement officials, though the Russians may have been exaggerating their access to the incoming U.S. president. The investigations are ongoing.

February 14, 2017

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Gunmen entered a radio station in the Dominican Republic on Tuesday morning and opened fire, killing two people, including a journalist reporting on Facebook Live.

Luis Manuel Medina, the host of FM 103.5's news program Milenio Caliente, was broadcasting live when he was shot dead, and producer and director Leo Martinez was killed in an adjacent room. Viewers watching Medina's livestream could hear shots and a woman screaming, before the video abruptly stopped, reports. The station's secretary was also shot, and rushed to the hospital where she underwent emergency surgery. Police say three men have been arrested, but no charges have been filed and there is no motive.

Medina, who was also the announcer for the Estrellas Orientales baseball team, had a well-known show in San Pedro de Macoris that covered politics and social issues, and in recent weeks, he repeatedly spoke out against pollution in the Laguna Mallen lake. Experts say that while it's rare for journalists to be murdered in the Dominican Republic, those who report on organized crime and corruption are often harassed and intimidated.

February 14, 2017

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Their phone calls were intercepted at around the same time U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies found evidence that Russia, in an attempt to disrupt the election, had hacked the Democratic National Committee. The officials told The Times they have so far not seen any evidence of collusion, but the discovery was worrying because Trump often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and during a press conference in the summer called on Russia to steal Hillary Clinton's emails.

The officials identified only one person picked up on the phone calls, Paul Manafort, who served for several months as Trump's campaign chairman and had worked as a political consultant in Russia and Ukraine. Manafort told The Times the report was "absurd" and he had "no idea what this is referring to," adding, "It's not like these people wear badges that say, 'I'm a Russian intelligence officer.'" The officials would not reveal to The Times the other Trump associates and aides who made calls, the Russians they spoke with, or the topics of discussion, but did say this is not connected to December calls between Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in which they discussed sanctions imposed by outgoing President Barack Obama. These conversations led to Flynn's resignation on Monday.

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