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fandomandflowers · 3 years

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About Beta Readers: For Authors

This is a guide for those who are wanting to work with a Beta Reader.

I posted a guide for Beta Readers here, but even though this is aimed at authors, I think it is good to read as a Beta Reader too, as a lot of the messages apply both ways.

(There is also the fact that many Beta Readers are also Authors, and many Authors are Beta Readers)

These are just my thoughts on the matter having been a Beta Reader, had help from Beta Readers, and having friends who are writers and Beta Readers alike.

It should also be known that I don’t always listen to these. I’ll not say no when I should, or I’ll leave a fic in the middle for months before picking it up again while my Beta Reader hangs on, just waiting to know what happens next. But even so, I hope that anyone who reads this will take the information into consideration and do their best to consider things from a different perspective:

Beta Readers don’t work for you.

I wasn’t planning on putting this up the top, but actually, I think this rule is most important (watch out, I’ll say that a lot!) They work with you. They don’t work for you. While there are some who work for hire and money, that is not my point!

So work with them. Talk about your ideas. Ask questions. Open dialogue. This is an opportunity for you to grow as a writer, to learn from mistakes, and to see things from a different perspective.

And just as they don’t work for you, don’t expect them to do all of the work for you.

They’re not your personal spell-checker! That is what Grammarly is for, so use it. And if you can’t use it, then find a basic spell-checker. They’re very helpful! It is also helpful to have a dictionary and thesaurus so you don’t sound repetitive. Grammar guides and “The Emotion Thesaurus” by Angela Ackerton are good to have handy while writing.

I think one of the more annoying things as a Beta is when you put all this work into correcting SPaG, sentence structure and repetition; then the author just accepts all the corrections, not even looking through them. It is fine if you agree with every suggestion/ correction, some Beta Readers are just amazing like that. But what I mean is that you should be reading and considering each of them. This way you can see where you are making the same mistakes over and over, and learn, not repeating the mistake again.

Some things I have learned from Betas: When to capitalise titles, when to use a full stop rather than a comma in quotation marks, that it is great to be passionate about what I write, and that con-crit is super helpful when you ask for it.

Respect a Beta Reader’s limits.

If your Beta Reader tells you they have Arachnophobia, then it is your job to let them know if there are spiders in your piece of writing. This goes for everything. Just because you don’t get triggered or squicked by something doesn’t mean they don’t. Everyone has different things they can and can’t tolerate and different reactions. There are certain things where if I read them then it can lead to me spiraling and not being able to think of anything else for days.

It is your job to know what is in your fic. If someone says they won’t read a certain thing and it is in your fic. You must tell them. They might be okay with it, they might ask you to black it out, they may have to leave you to find another Beta. But you won’t know unless you tell them. Because I know for me, nothing will make me want to leave a fic more.

Know what you want.

Before you even start looking for a Beta Reader I recommend you have some clue what sort of help or advice you’re looking for. I am likely to think all of these notes are the most important, but trust me when I say that this one really is. Or if not the most important than for sure one of the most helpful notes.

Some things you should think about before asking around for a Beta Reader:

Are you after a critical analysis, or a cheerleader?

Is there a time restraint?

Is your writing in the final stages, or are after ideas?

What are you needing checks for? (these are some common ones)

SPaG

Britpicking

Flow and pace

Plot holes

Sentence structure and wording

Canon accuracy

Realistic dialogue

How you’re going to talk to them throughout the process

What content warnings you may need to give

The word count. (less something you have to think about, but definitely something you’ll need to communicate)

Once you think you have a general idea of what you’re after, then you need to actually tell your Beta Reader. They’re not mind-readers. This is really the most helpful information to receive as a Beta Reader.

If you have no clue what you’re really after then that is okay, just say that! You can ask your Beta what they think needs work… If they’re a regular Beta or have done it a couple of times then they’ll probably have a pretty good sense.

Communicate!

I’m trying not to be a Google Docs advertisement here but seriously, it is amazing! You can see each other in the doc, in real-time! There is a chat function in the top-right corner. Maybe I need to write a Google Docs fan piece. (*Writes that down in my notes*)

If your Beta corrected something and you don’t know why, having the ability to point it out and ask why is great! Talking things through and having someone to bounce ideas off of is one of my favorite parts of having Beta Readers!

It is also important that you be open and honest with them, if you have a preference for a certain platform then tell them! If you’re both going around in circles saying ‘oh, I don’t mind,’ then nothing is getting done, is it?

If you’re having issues in your personal life and can’t devote as much time to writing or looking over things with them, then tell your Beta that. Don’t ghost. Talk.

Commit to your story.

Be passionate! Care about your story! You don’t have to be in love with every aspect, you can not love it in general for all I care… But there has to be some sort of attachment to it, because if you don’t care about your own story, then why should I?

While there are different types of Beta Readers, for the most part, if you’re asking for someone to look over your work then you’re usually not far off posting. If that is the case then please do so! Or at the very least tell your Beta Reader

Don’t make us feel excited about the fic and never finish or publish it! If there is a valid reason then that’s okay, but really, if you’re looking for a Beta Reader you should either let them know that you may never finish it, or that you may not publish.

I am 100% guilty of this. And I am sorry to my friend A. who is still waiting for me to write an ending. I’ll get there, I promise!

If a reader says no, or drops out, don’t get angry at them.

Please! Things happen. Don’t get angry, it just makes everyone feel worse in a situation no-one is happy with to start. Besides, if you get mad then it is a pretty easy way to make sure they won’t come back or Beta for you again.

You’re allowed to say no, too.

This is my favorite note. This applies to everything in life, and sometimes it can be difficult to remember that you’re always allowed to say no.

If you put out the details of a fic and say you’re after a beta Reader, you’re allowed to say no to anyone who puts their hand up. As a matter of fact, I recommend it! It is your fic, your writing, your baby. While it is nice to help out people who’ve never Beta read before it is also important that you feel comfortable with the person who is about to be looking at your writing. (Especially with the amount of self-projection I put into my fics.)

You’re allowed to say no to suggestions. If your Beta Reader gets offended that you’re not accepting all of their suggestions then I would be questioning if they’re the right fit for you. I always recommend you read through every suggestion and think about them before accepting or rejecting them.

You’re allowed to say no to a Beta in the middle of them going through your document, (just tell them first.) It is your creation, and you should always feel safe and comfortable with whoever is looking at your rough, unfinished work.

You’re allowed to say no to anything and everything.

Don’t say ‘I don’t take criticism well’ to your Beta.

It is perfectly valid not to take con-crit (constructive criticism) well; I certainly don’t. The point of a Beta is to give you con-crit to help you improve. It is okay to have feelings about your writing; I am very sensitive about everything I write. But if you’re asking for a Beta Reader, then that is what you’re asking for. You can tell your Beta if you’re more after cheerleading or critical analysis, or maybe a bit of both. (Always communicate what you’re after.)

But if you tell your chosen Beta that you’re not good at taking con-crit, then it can put them in a tough spot; they may feel like to be able to help you then they have to hurt you, and I don’t think anyone ever wants to feel like that. And for me, if it is a choice between hurting my friends or leaving them. Then there is no choice, I will leave.

If you’ve already told them in another context that you’re not good at taking con-crit and they are worried, then tell them that there is a difference between unsolicited con-crit and asking for it. A big difference.

Stan our beloved Beta Readers.

I know someone who records themself reading the document and correcting things as they think of them. That is pretty gosh darn cool! I wasn’t sure where to put that… but I think it is important to say that writing and Beta Reading, they’re fun! That is the whole point, so have fun! Chat about your creation and as I frequently do, gush about the characters! Talk about your favorite lines! Because you’re allowed to love and be proud of your work. I recommend it, it is such a lovely feeling.

We stan our Beta Readers. They give us so much help and encouragement; help us learn and grow. I hope that every passionate writer finds a Beta Reader just as passionate. Because making friends, to me, is the best feeling in the world.

#beta reader #fandom #fanfiction

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amwritingmeta · 4 years

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hey! i was just wondering if you think spn will actually make destiel canon by the finale? it seems like in interviews they're trying to let us down gently w/a cas death (which possibly makes it seem like cas's ending might be related to his empty deal?) + all the parallels between saileen and deancas, and it looks like dabb and co (while not rly bringing arcs into conclusion and generally making a mess of spn) are fighting to make it canon, i was wondering what ur take on it was, esp after ep09

Oh, my dear, my heart is swelling with love for those two right now. I just watched the show through from 12x19-15x13 and I swear, that moment they share in 15x12, clinking those glasses and sharing all those smiles was like balm. It’s not even five minutes of screen time, and still it was like, okay, yes, good, thank you for the room to breathe. :D

It seems to be that Cas hearing Dean’s prayer has ushered in some much earned peace between them. They’re shown to be on the same page and taking each other’s side unquestionably. Dean trusting Cas’ judgment regarding Jack without pause. And that’s a good word for it: there’s trust between them, mutual respect, understanding. It’s so lovely, isn’t it?

So, there’s this line that’s sort of stuck with me. Actually, there are two things that have stuck with me (apart from all the gorgeous symbology baked into every episode) and it’s that the word “complete” has been mentioned twice.

Once in reference to Mary in Heaven, and once by Amara in reference to God.

Then we have a line that’s recurred twice: I had to die to get what I want.

The fact that its spoken verbatim twice made my antennas perk up a bit. It may mean nothing, as some things in this narrative sometimes do mean nothing, but it’s still interesting to take these things into account: that we’re searching for completion and that sometimes, in order to get what you want, you have to die.

So. Will Cas die?

I don’t think so. I don’t think so for many reasons that I’ve laid out here (I just posted this) (it was like you read my mind that this was coming today), but foremost because I cannot see how him dying does anything for his character arc, or for his joint journey with Dean.

You know, dark!Kaia (Kaia’s Shadow) going back to the Bad Place (Kaia’s unconscious) and accepting the ending waiting there, releasing our!Kaia back to the world where she belongs, makes me think, more than ever, that the integration of the main character’s Shadows are a necessity.

The Empty, way I see it, is representative of Cas’ Shadow, his unconscious, all the repressed and suppressed emotions of guilt, shame and doubt that has kept his self-worth down until Jack came on the scene.

And this is just my reading of this situation, but I’m not sure I can see Cas defeating the Empty in the Empty, if you know what I mean? The last time Cas intruded, the Empty made him suffer greatly. I don’t think Cas holds any sway there, nor should he.

To me, the weapon our conscious has against our unconscious ruling our decisions, is our ability to grow aware of our own impulses, our own thought patterns, and making choices to break away from them.

I think Cas can only beat the Empty through making a choice and, well, for a long time I’ve felt that choice should be to become human, because by making a final choice of who he is and who he wants to be, he brings himself into awareness, integrating his Shadow in the process, and narratively nullifying the Empty’s hold on him, since humans don’t go to the Empty when they die: they go to Heaven.

But that’s wishing and hoping and speculation, of course.

Here’s where the Destiel question comes in though.

Do I believe they’ll make it canon?

Personally, I can’t think of anything more a part of our story than the love story between those two, but I know what you mean. You mean a representative, tangible, clear, statement type of making it canon. Textualising it, so that there’s no room for doubt whatsoever. No more arguments, no more queer baiting complaints, just Destiel in plain sight. Undeniable.

I do and I don’t.

Watching these last few seasons through again made me realise what a different feel to them this last season has, because the emotional stakes for Dean and Cas have everything to do with what they mean to each other. Yeah?

Dean taking his anger out on Cas and it pushing Cas into a turning point where he chose to leave, to move on, which was a moment of clear independence a statement of his sense of self-worth, and it in turn pushing Dean into a turning point where he faced a side to himself that he’s needed to name since forever, admitting to not having any control of himself, which is something he has to acknowledge if he’s to move into trusting himself fully, all of this has been gosh darn breathtaking to get to witness.

And having them land back in this ease, where they work together seamlessly as a team, being kept together more than not, the framing of them, all of this makes me feel like they could give us canon Destiel. I’m not going to say they absolutely won’t.

I believe the writers want it. I believe the actors want it. But, again, that’s just what I take from the narrative itself, because the subtext is stronger than ever this final season.

Especially with Sam and Eileen being reunited.

Because it’s been that clear parallel you mentioned, but it’s been that clear parallel to those of us who see it. The echoes of the Saileen romance that trace through the Destiel progression won’t be as resounding to those that don’t.

And because of that, at this point, I also feel quite reserved with my belief that Destiel could become canon. Because there’s so much, but there’s also nothing. There’s so much for us to enjoy, there’s so much evidence they keep throwing at us that the writers support this reading of their story, but still, there’s nothing, really, to let on that they’re building towards these two men, at some point, declaring their love for each other.

There has been zero textual foreshadowing of that.

There have been throw away moments, like the cop flirting with Dean, for example, but he frowned at that, and then got sincerely flirted with by a woman, so that deescalated that very quickly.

There was Dean at first rejecting Garth’s compliment of “You smell SO good”, becoming uncomfortable, to then, by the end of the ep, tell Garth he didn’t smell half-bad either.

And there was that amazing moment with Cas calling out Sam being “sexually intimate” with Ruby and Dean repeating the words as if he can’t believe Cas even knows how to pronounce them.

So, there’s... you know, stuff?

But it’s not foreshadowing if it can be overlooked by the wider audience.

That said.

This show isn’t about this love story of ours. The fact that it’s so downplayed could mean that what we’ll get is something textual, but extremely subtle. I mean, for me, lingering eye-contact and a shared smile in a context that makes us understand they’re choosing each other would be enough.

If, by canon, you mean do I think we’ll get them kissing, then the answer is I want to believe that we might get that, because they could build towards that on the foundation of ease and trust that they’ve put down over the last few episodes and they could build it effectively, but I just don’t know if the studio (who own the characters) is onboard.

My hope is that they are, because the topic of healthy representation is so hot right now, and the question of the longevity of Supernatural to the younger generations (you know, you young ones who are proving exceedingly more open-minded and looking for something beyond the superficial brothers-hunting-monsters aspect of the show) would bank on the show opening itself up to the possibilities of solid representation already seeded throughout its run.

But Dean has flirted with more women than men this season. You know? I mean, he hasn’t flirted with any men. So.

Look, I’m not going to say I don’t think we’ll get it, because I don’t know.

I watched S15 yesterday and finished it today and suddenly I feel this wave of hope that it actually might happen, because they’ve already changed how Dean and Cas interact, they’ve given them so many scenes with just the two of them, and we have Sam clearly meant to end up with Eileen, and doesn’t Dean and Cas deserve that same happiness? That same sense of completion? That internal peace of loving unconditionally and being loved in return?

Sam and Eileen could be foreshadowing. These writers are subtle and they could be gleefully rubbing their hands together at the thought of springing textual Destiel on the GA, you know? The green light from the studio might make them diabolical. *sadism* And I love that thought.

Because that’s been the point of the love story for me, this slow, slow build to the moment when Dean and Cas have reached a point in their progression when what they’ll have together is a healthy, balanced, loving relationship because they’ve both let go of the past and are looking to the future.

But I won’t expect textual Destiel. If we do get it, I’m going to treasure it as a big cherry on top of an already perfectly inviting and exquisite pie.

What I do believe, more than ever, that we’re getting, though, is closure. Even if it’s only at the subtextual level, I believe that those of us who read the subtext will have Destiel verified beyond a shadow of a doubt. And yes, I will be quite surprised and disappointed if we don’t get that. Because of how these first 13 episodes have been shaped and how strong the subtext is in them.

I believe we’ll end on a hopeful note.

And wouldn’t that just be gratifyingly phenomenal?

(it really would) (honestly I just need to know that they are happy and alive and together and well and finding peace and carrying on) (you know?) (thank you and amen) :)

#answered asks #spn s15 spec #cas #dean #destiel #deancas #canon #oh I have the hopes #just not the expectations #:)

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basilflowers · 4 years

Text

About Beta Readers: For Authors

This is a guide for those who are wanting to work with a Beta Reader.

I posted a guide for Beta Readers here, but even though this is aimed at authors, I think it is good to read as a Beta Reader too, as a lot of the messages apply both ways.

(There is also the fact that many Beta Readers are also Authors, and many Authors are Beta Readers)

These are just my thoughts on the matter having been a Beta Reader, had help from Beta Readers, and having friends who are writers and Beta Readers alike.

Beta Readers don’t work for you.

So work with them. Talk about your ideas. Ask questions. Open dialogue. This is an opportunity for you to grow as a writer, to learn from mistakes, and to see things from a different perspective.

And just as they don’t work for you, don’t expect them to do all of the work for you.

Respect a Beta Reader’s limits.

Know what you want.

Some things you should think about before asking around for a Beta Reader:

Are you after a critical analysis, or a cheerleader?

Is there a time restraint?

Is your writing in the final stages, or are after ideas?

What are you needing checks for? (these are some common ones)

SPaG

Britpicking

Flow and pace

Plot holes

Sentence structure and wording

Canon accuracy

Realistic dialogue

How you’re going to talk to them throughout the process

What content warnings you may need to give

The word count. (less something you have to think about, but definitely something you’ll need to communicate)

Communicate!

If you’re having issues in your personal life and can’t devote as much time to writing or looking over things with them, then tell your Beta that. Don’t ghost. Talk.

Commit to your story.

I am 100% guilty of this. And I am sorry to my friend A. who is still waiting for me to write an ending. I’ll get there, I promise!

If a reader says no, or drops out, don’t get angry at them.

You’re allowed to say no, too.

This is my favorite note. This applies to everything in life, and sometimes it can be difficult to remember that you’re always allowed to say no.

You’re allowed to say no to anything and everything.

Don’t say ‘I don’t take criticism well’ to your Beta.

Stan our beloved Beta Readers.

TL;DR

Beta Readers don’t work for you.

Respect a Beta Reader’s limits.

Know what you want.

Communicate!

Commit to your story.

If a reader says no, or drops out, don’t get angry at them.

You’re allowed to say no, too.

Don’t say ‘I don’t take criticism well’ to your Beta.

Stan our beloved Beta Readers.

#beta reader #basil guide #writing #advice #fanfiction #snarry

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knb-matchups · 4 years

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Okay, so how would you think Sakurai and Kise would confess? 👀 idk if this really fits your blog but humor me.

˚✶⋆｡˚☆ﾟ✦

oho . . . ask & you shall receive! these are a bit on the shorter side, but hopefully you like this!

˚✶⋆｡˚☆ﾟ✦

confession from . . . 𝐒𝐀𝐊𝐔𝐑𝐀𝐈 𝐑𝐘𝐎𝐔 !!

in my opinion, i think this apologetic mushroom will take a long time to confess.

he strikes to me as someone who wants to get it right the first time. it doesn’t help he has shy tendencies, and the fact you’re just amazing doesn’t help either . . . & gosh he’s getting anxious just thinking of confessing.

if worst comes to worst, sakurai will go to aomine or imayoshi for advice. and they basically tag team in giving him the worst advice. he might get a little peeved.

in addition, aomine just thinks it’s dumb how sakurai is so nervous and basically jokes that he’ll ask you out if sakurai doesn’t man up. sakurai literally freaks out at that prospect, and just pouts.

imayoshi, on the other hand, just tease the boy mercilessly for asking such a request; a saccharine smile ever so present on his face.

even momoi ends up butting in & tries to give advice too, but it all doesn’t work out the way sakurai wanted !

yeah, sakurai regrets doing that.

in the end, he’ll have to calm himself down & do what anyone would do as a self-respecting person. . .

he practices in the mirror on how to ask you out.

he’ll have to give himself credit for that. it shows he’s trying! yet, somehow, he still manages to apologize to the mirror.

honestly, in spite of all the preparation in the world, sakurai’s confession will be very spur of the moment & just not what he planned for.

but you have to admit, sometimes the best things happen when they’re not planned for in advance.

sakurai ends up confessing when he just can’t take it anymore-- i imagine it would probably be a place where you two are alone. perhaps, he’s escorting you home on a walk, and you’re probably talking about a slew of ideas about this certain character you’ve constructed. . .

he knew this already but it really hits him: you’re just so darn cute. your passion about writing really moves him.

the feeling of wanting to be around you more and more just consumes him. . .

he really wasn’t planning on just stopping & confessing there- with you looking over your shoulder to see why he’s stopped in his tracks.

you weren’t expecting that.

but his confession is so heartfelt. his face flushed to the tips of his ears, and he caught your gaze before quickly adverting his eyes to the ground after his confession because oh wow he really just did that-

you’re probably a little embarrassed for him. it’s not every day sakurai just admits his feelings for someone so . . . so openly & earnestly.

but you realize-

for once, he didn’t apologize for his feelings?

˚✶⋆｡˚☆ﾟ✦

confession from . . . 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐑𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐀 !!

with kise’s boyish charm, i don’t think he’s that worried of being rejected. yep, not that worried. not worried at all.

okay- he may feel a little bit of nerves (it’s natural), but that’s only because you don’t openly shower him with affection & whatnot like most girls ! for all he knows, you’ll friendzone him.

due to this, a small part of him reminds himself of the fact there’s a chance that you may outright reject him.

he’ll become so depressed if he gets rejected- poor boy.

but in spite of the initial wave of insecurity, kise is quick to bounce back. reverting back to his confident self, he truly trusts he’ll be comfortable in these affairs.

although he’s used to being the one confessed to, confessing to you should be like an open layup, right?

his charming, cheery & confident persona isn’t just for the basketball court after all.

he’s not the type to fret over his nerves for too long; after a while, they just disperse, and that’s when he’s ready to go.

kise definitely keeps it more lowkey than you’d expect. he’s confident in himself, yes, but he won’t go as far as publicly announce his confession in front of the whole school with a megaphone or anything.

but he might as well have because the boy just straight up, out of the blue, looks down at you (because he’s tall and you’re short), with a dazzling smile, and asks if you want to go out publicly. during your class break.

timing wasn’t ideal. he’s kinda dumb.

it wasn’t a huge deal, but you feel so embarrassed because the people in your classroom overheard this & are awaiting for your response-- you can feel it.

you become so overwhelmed, and kise realizes this before apologizing and saying that he’ll be happy to wait for your response after school & that he didn’t mean to drop this on you, out of nowhere. he could’ve sworn you’d say yes there though. you both were vibing after all, chatting comfortably.

in all honesty, kise probably felt a rush of confidence in order to pull that off because he still feels confident that you won’t reject him when you guys meet after classes.

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— lily ! ♡

#knb matchups #kuroko no basket matchup #kuroko no basuke matchups #knb matchup #kise ryouta #sakurai ryou #matched #request #askbox #confession #love match #kuroko no basuke #knb #kuroko no basket #matchups #knb headcanons #headcanons

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ducktracy · 4 years

Text

165. porky’s building (1937)

release date: june 19th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: frank tashlin

starring: mel blanc (porky), billy bletcher (dirty digg), berneice hansell (rabbit), tedd pierce (sandy c. ment, dog)

alas, the photo limit prevents me from placing this in here, but the cartoon opens with a highly amusing disclaimer:

any similarity of characters or happenings in this picture to actual people or events is definitely intended................. if you think we're going to sit around for days thinking up new ideas - you're pixilated!

somewhat of a strange anomaly is mel blanc voicing fat porky. this is the first frank tashlin cartoon since porky’s romance, the last cartoon to feature porky’s original voice actor, joe dougherty. fat porky wouldn’t survive past 1937—frank tashlin was the sole person who kept him going, after tashlin’s porky’s double trouble he got a diet. this is more of a personal anecdote than a concrete observation, i always found this so-called “transitional period” amusing. nevertheless—it’s up to porky you beat his rival, dirty digg, to see who can build the best town hall the fastest.

frank tashlin, ever the cinematographer, introduces the cartoon with a silhouette behind a closed door, the door identifying the silhouette as sandy c. ment, city building commissioner. tedd pierce provides the voice for sandy, discussing the plans for the new city hall about to be built. we see porky and a particularly grizzly brute as the gentlemen sandy is referring to, the only two contractors in the city. they’re both tasked with building the city hall--whoever can come up with the cheapest bid wins. i believe it’s norm mccabe who does some particularly funny animation of porky waving to his rival, only to receive a steely glare in return, much to the rejection of porky. i’m certain frank tashlin’s feelings towards porky were projected into that glare.

sandy displays the city hall plans, revealing a poster of an art deco feat of modern architecture. tashlin’s cartoons in the 30′s are particularly rife with the streamlined, art deco feel, supported by his tendency to use jazzy underscores as we see here as well. more norm mccabe(?) animation as porky and his rival get the papers they need to sort out the bids. lovely animation as any sense of camaraderie between the two is gone in a snap, both nose to nose (or nose to snout?) as they stalk over to their desks to crunch the numbers, not once breaking physical contact or eye contact until absolutely necessary. mel blanc and billy bletcher’s voices collide as the two crunch the numbers aloud, the billy bletcher brute deliberately copying porky’s numbers. the two finish, the staring contest resumes, and they do the same furious tango back to sandy.

as fate has it, the two reach a tie with their bids at $3,000,000.02 each, with a hilarious detail of dirty diggs’ paper including scribbles of a stickman and a self serving game of tic tac toe, indicating just how dedicated he is to his craft. the tie stumps sandy on how to determine who gets to build the city hall, until he reaches a conclusion—both get to build the city hall. whoever finishes first, wins. a lack of sound effects hides the detail, but there’s some rather amusing animation as sandy jabs a finger in porky’s face and honks dirty digg’s nose daffy duck style.

transition to the two now at their respective construction sites, waiting to take off like runners in a race, accompanied by a crowd no less. sandy fires a starting pistol, and the two take off to build. digg hops into his backhoe, clearing the land for his building. can’t go wrong with the backhoe scooping up a giant boulder and crunching it up with an anthropomorphic mouth, spitting the chunks into a cart. porky’s dinky little contraption is just as whimsical, with a mechanical boot slamming itself against an actual shovel suspended by a pulley to clear the way. frank tashlin does a wonderful job juxtaposing the personalities, through mannerisms and extraneous details such as their equipment.

the rubbery animation associated with digg is only furthered as he struggles to pull his backhoe out of the deep hole he dug for himself--we see that the street lamps in the city are caught in the machine, bobbing up and down in their respective “posts”. finally, digg prevails, pulling out a tangled mess of rubbery street lamps. points for creativity.

elsewhere, the cartoon takes a rather morbid yet wonderfully hilarious turn: a dog construction worker loads crates of dynamites into a hole, chuffing halfheartedly on a pipe as he waddles back to the dynamite lever, hands in pockets, marching along to a whimsical rendition of “boulevardier from the bronx”. rolling up his sleeves, he prepares to pull the lever, when a crowd of spectators approach, leaning in as the dog prepares to fire. the dog opens one eye and grunts “step back folks, ya bother me,” VERY well timed to a nice little oboe underscore with each syllable. the crowd gives him his space... until the dog prepares to fire again. another “step back folks, ya bother me.” they oblige, until they don’t. the charade continues, until finally the dog waddles back to the hole where the crates are stashed, rendition of “boulevardier from the bronx” and all. the dog pokes an eye open as the lemmings inevitably wander to the hole of dynamite (a fitting underscore of “let’s put our heads together” to boot.) the dog squeezes his way through the crowd, heads to the lever... and BOOM! cold blooded murder dismissed with a mere dusting off of the hands. a WONDERFUL gag timed succinctly and purposefully prolonged--the same dog would reappear a year later in porky the fireman, another tashlin piece, doing the same prolonged waddle and same accompaniment of boulevardier from the bronx.

a collection of some whimsical animal gags, gags that feel like something out of a harman and ising cartoon, albeit more polished. two beavers load cement and sand into a cocktail shaker strapped to the side of a camel, a pelican dumping water from its beak into the makeshift cocktail. the camel shakes the shaker, all of the animals swaying along. perhaps slightly outdated, yet still fun nonetheless. turtles flip their shells open (wheels attached to the top--or in this case, bottom--of the shells) and tow away the mixture created by the animals. meanwhile, a dog carrying a load of cement, the hod carrier, marches up a support beams thanks to suction cups tied on his shoes, complete with some jaunty music and animation. dirty digg lives up to his namesake by playing dirty, hurling a brick at the dog. the dog falls, his suction cups continuing to ascend up the scaffolding, underscore and all.

we meet camera shy porky for the first time in a few minutes, a reflection of frank tashlin’s distaste and uncertainty regarding the character, who encourages his team to “get in there and fight!” they’re all lined up along a bench, a sign above labeling them as “HOD CARRIER SUBSTITUTES”. thus sparks the running gag of the cartoon: as the substitutes dash off do to their duty for porky, a diminutive rabbit (voiced by berneice hansell, of course) zooms up to porky, donning a sweater that reads “HOD CARRIER” as she squeaks “how ‘bout me, porky?” porky isn’t at all convinced by her diminutive stature, snapping “no!”

on porky’s team, a few pelicans pull the appropriate levers to mix water, cement, and sand in their bills, flying off and twirling their heads and bills around to create the mixture. one pelican successfully discards his load down a long chute to the construction site. the next, however, isn’t so lucky. ever the conniving weasel (or dog), digg attaches a dead fish to a balloon for the oncoming pelican to feast on. the pelican, eager for the snack, spits out its mixture in favor of the fish, the mixture pouring from the sky and landing right on porky. none too deterred, porky encourages his cement mixer substitutes, a line of pelicans, to, once again, get out there and fight. as they fly off, the eager rabbit from before, now donning a sweater labeling her as a cement mixer, squeaks “how ‘bout me, porky?” the same routine as porky once more yells “no!”

digg’s construction site is going swimmingly, as to be expected. a wonderful slanted layout as we spot the builders hard at work. despite the success of the building, digg barks “okay boys, c’mon down. i don’t need you anymore.” digg marches into his office, a makeshift shack on the site, and we’re left to ponder what it is he’s scheming as a rolling pan of the exterior shields us from digg's view, the billy bletcher laugh the only thing cluing us in to nefarious acts. tashlin loved to do the concealing pans, and they work out well in his favor, adding a sense of suspense and anticipation. out on the other side comes digg in a fancy new machine--DIRTY DIGG’S BRICK BRICK LAYING MACHINE.

porky, who’s dutifully laying his bricks the old fashioned way, spots digg’s new trick, and is hardly pleased. mel’s stuttering is particularly heavy, still attempting to emulate joe dougherty as porky complains “say! you can’t do that!” digg takes no offense. “well, i’m doing it, ain’t it?” settings on digg’s machine include start, full speed, super speed, super colossal speed, gosh darn fast, and reverse. digg pulls the lever to start, increasing the speeds as bricks inevitably hurtle out of the chute and land right into place on the site of his building. wonderful (and tedious!) complex animation as the bricks pile on, one after the other, even porky taking a moment to admire the handiwork. tashlin’s cartoons always seem to entail bits of animation that seem so tedious and complex to animate, such as a whole mess of train cars zigzagging on train tracks in porky’s railroad, or the interminable pile of luggage carried by daffy in porky pig’s feat. tashlin’s eye for detail is keen.

a score board gloatingly displays digg’s lead over porky: digg has 22 stories, porky 2. as porky mourns his loss (”woe is me... woe is me!”) no matter--the eager beaver bunny from before is there to cheer him up, donning a “brick layer” sweater with the same “how ‘bout me, porky?” porky declines. a quick zoom in and out, and the rabbit asks the same question, now donning a “colossal brick layer” sweater. porky once more declines. with the third and final “super colossal brick layer”, porky finally yells “no!”, to which the rabbit sulks off. thankfully, porky has a change of heart. “ok-ok-o-oka-ok-ok-oka--alright, eh-geh-geh-go in there and eh-feh-fi-feh-fight!” little rabbit is ecstatic.

the power of popeye compels the rabbit as she flexes her muscles, even flexing her ears to make a pair of makeshift muscles. one ear scoops the mortar, the other tosses a brick on top, and we very quickly realize she is MORE than capable for the job, laying bricks three times as fast as digg’s machine. the scoreboard hurries to adjust porky’s “score”, both of them now tied at 77 stories each. even better is the little “whew!” the rabbit sighs after pausing to rest, a lovely bit of comedic timing both underscoring and highlighting her work.

now, digg rushes to beat porky’s building, realizing he has a worthy competitor on his hands. the two are neck and neck... until the poor mechanical design of digg’s brick layer lands him in hot water. he mistakes the reverse setting for the highest speed setting, and with a hearty kick to the lever, the lever breaks and is now stuck in reverse. mel blanc seems to provide digg’s exclamation of “gosh! it’s stuck in reverse!” instead of bletcher. just as quickly as he had laid the bricks, the bricks of digg’s building come hurtling back into the machine, the machine swelling bigger and bigger as it threatens to burst from the congestion. digg’s entire building is now without a brick, and to make matters worse (or better), the machine finally explodes.

porky’s dinky little backhoe from before comes to life, digging a plot of land the perfect size for digg to fit in. digg flops to the ground from the impact of the explosion, receiving a swift kick to the ass with the machine’s shoe and a konk on the head via shovel for good measure.

elsewhere, porky triumphs, his city hall now complete. the cartoon’s motif of “fifty-second street” triumphantly underscores porky’s victory as he shakes his fist in the glory, perched on top of his architectural feat as his adoring fans shout from below. suddenly, we’re visited by a familiar friend: the little rabbit from before zips to porky’s side. “how ‘bout me, porky?” instead of shooing her away, porky is more than happy to lift her up and have her pose on his outstretched hand. a wholesome iris out as the little rabbit clasps her ears together like fists, reveling in the glory.

truthfully, this is probably the one porky cartoon i forget about the most. not that it’s bad by any means, but out of his hearty filmography of 153 cartoons, this one isn’t the most notable. with that said, this is a fine cartoon. the animation is certainly the highlight: whether it’s porky and dirty digg doing their furious nose-to-snout tango, the dog lumbering around the site of the dynamite hole, the animals mixing cement together, or the entire brick laying montage, there is a lot to admire, the climax of the cartoon especially. the “how ‘bout me, porky?” gag is especially amusing, albeit taxing (as it was intended to be), and the dynamite gag with the dog is wonderfully morbid. porky still has a very transparent personality, yet mel’s deliveries are fun to listen to, especially at this stage when he’s still figuring out the speech patterns. the cartoon’s music score is absolutely WONDERFUL, very jazzy, very upbeat, a fitting score to match the streamlined look of the cartoon.

while this isn’t my go-to recommendation for porky cartoons, it makes for an amusing watch. i wouldn’t urge you to drop everything and see it, and if you don’t watch it you’ll be just as well off, but this is a fine cartoon with a lot to admire.

link!

#lt #porky’s building #looney tunes #reviews #tashlin #long post

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devintrinidad · 4 years

Text

Oh I’m doing great! Working hard and stuff. Hope you’re doing awesome too! Thanks for asking! =)

Oh wow so that’s the broader definition. Uhm, when you put it like that… 1146 can scarily fit it if he really wanted to. The guy does have a great need to be loved deep down and when he gets deep for someone. It’s deep.

Basophil: His want is as the nature of cytokines. Powerful and needed. But as a cytokines storm emerges from the heavens to reign down hell upon those who used to look to them for sanctuary. He too has become a weapon against the heart. Deadly and chaotic in it’s absolute assurance.

3803: I don’t know what you mean at all! D= But I think you’re talking about White Blood Cell and trying to validate my feelings so thanks… (I think).

I think 3803 would totally forgive 1146 for anything so long as it was related to his work. After all 3803 is just as dedicated to the job as 1146 is. It might get overlooked but she is sooo dedicated to being a good red blood cell and helping the body even 1146 is incredibly impressed and is inspired by her. If 1146 ever had to abandon her or kill her for the sake of the body she would not only accept it but welcome it. She doesn’t want to die. But even more then that she doesn’t want to be a burden to the body. She loves her job so much it’d kill her if she was ever in the position to get in the way of the body’s wellbeing or even in the way pf other more competent cells. Even if 1146 kept his suspicion that the Normal Cell she was hanging out with possibly being Cancer a secret. She would most likely still blame herself for not distancing herself better from Cancer because she had her own suspicions and did nothing about them until it was too late. She would figure 1146 had to keep it a secret or something for his work.

But if he did something hurtful that had nothing to do with his duty - Yeah that would definitely hurt her.

It’s something like,

3803: I understand you have a duty and I will never get angry at you for doing anything you can to save the body. I have nothing but immense respect and gratitude to you and the immune system for putting your lives on the line for us all the time.

1146: Thank you Red Blood Cell. I can’t tell you how much I really appre-

3803: But what does invading my privacy and breaking your promise to me have to do with your job?

1146: I needed to know in order to help you both better and-

3803: Do you really expect me to believe that!

1146: !

3803: How does knowing anything that Cancer did to me ‘help’ either of us? If that was the case Macrophage would have asked for the full story a long time ago… or Commander T or Dendritic Cell or anyone who’s job is about knowing things and stuff. It’s not important for your job to know about my privacy. If it was why did you promise not to learn about it only to ask NC right after?

1146:….

3803: You lied to me. I bet you knew you wouldn’t keep your promise. But instead of being respectful or honest. You went behind my back. You practically manipulated me. What else have you done that I don’t know? I told you I needed time. It was hard to talk about it. Maybe I needed to talk to someone else. I did promise I would be ready someday but not right now. I only asked for time. You said you understood and respected that. But You only pretended to care about how I felt!

1146: I do care! That’s why I needed to know. It’s my job to care and protect you and you wouldn’t… no I didn’t want to bother you. I thought if you didn’t know. It would help things better.

3803: What you think for the best for me, someone who experienced lies, deception and a violation of my space, Is to lie, deceive and ignore my space?

1146: That’s not fair or the same Red Blood Cell…

3803: …I just… I just never thought you’d care so little for my feelings…(gets teary eyed). I almost can’t believe it. White Blood Cell. Did I ever really know you? Am I really as stupid as I sometimes thought I was growing up?

1146: No! I-

3803: Because I even when I saw something wrong with Normal Cell before I knew he was Cancer. I didn’t do anything. I was so stupid I can’t believe I was manipulated so bad even when I saw all the signs something was wrong. I almost died. Everything was a lie or maybe it wasn’t I don’t know anymore. Now you. I thought I knew you. I thought you would never do that… I thought you valued me as a friend. But you don’t. Friends don’t deceive. They don’t lie. They’re not always right and we all make mistakes. But you knew exactly what you were doing. You lied to my face when you told me I could trust you. W-What else don’t I know about you. I feel so vulnerable. I feel so useless. I feel so stupid. Is NC better then I think he is now because of what I’ve seen and what others have said? Are you better or… White Blood Cell what are we to each other. =(

1146: = 0

3803: Because right now I don’t think we’re exactly friends. I- none of this makes sense to me. You don’t make sense to me. My personal life is not your duty… and I’m really sorry but I don’t think right now I can have you in it. *angry then devastated sobs*

Ouch. I think 1146 has never had consequences in his friendships before. He’s always been able to not suffer anything beyond a punch (he’s just so darn charming) and win the day anyway. 3803 values trust thanks to how much she’s had to rely on her trust in others and has always tried to repay said trust. In Abnormalities she’s suffered a lot thanks to deception and lies and her own inaction. I think she’d be very sensitive and need to know her friends can be honest and respect her personal boundaries more then ever. Especially since manipulative clingy NC is back and she’s not sure how much she can trust his growth/sincerity even if she’s gotten better at accepting he’s around now. To have 1146, whom she thinks is one of the most trustworthy cells she could ever meet, go out of his way to lie to her and act like he hasn’t (only to be cornered into admitting, maybe NC told her). That wouldn’t be good on her burns.

It’d be nice if the other immune cells like 4989 and Eosinophil let her know she’s in the right to feel upset. I think Eosinophil would especially be a good bridge between 1146 and 3803. She knows 1146 and knows his pov as well as his great traits and faults. I think she’d relate to 3803 because they’re both a little similar and I think she’s better at dealing/understanding the emotional situation from 3803 better (Eosinophil does seems like the type of immune cell the average non immune cell would get along with well so she might have more practice and understanding of feelings in general). Which would be helpful to 3803 because there’d be a part of her that would feel like she did the wrong thing and be surprised her other immune cell friends are still her friends. She’d think they’d abandon her for rejecting 1146. But they’d assure her she’s still a friend they care about and know she has a right to get angry.

I don’t think any of 1146’s friends would give him the cold shoulder. But I don’t think any of them would validate what he did either. Like Yeah buddy you could have handled this a little better and it wasn’t really that necessary to do this or that as a white blood cell. You better fix this soon because you don’t meet a nice red blood cell like that every circulation. Also do you really want to be the cell that lost your woman to NC of all cells. Now that’d be sick. Hmm maybe 4989 should try to date her instead. Hey don’t give me that look. They’d be a better pair then her and NC. =/

Then you get moments where 3803 still worries about 1146 going into battle. But she steels herself to not follow after him. She doesn’t offer him a handkerchief. She doesn’t wave back to him when she sees him. If he pops up to save her she quietly thanks him and even suggests he get his wounds looked after before carrying on her way. If they get stuck together for a few minutes - it’s a very awkward silence. 3803 deep down wants so badly to be his friend again. But she’s sticking to her guns. She can’t have friends who lie and deceive her for personal gain even if their intentions are good. Even NC is trying to be very honest with her (which is weird because he doesn’t hide his… weird and horrible thoughts. But she guesses that’s better then his dishonesty). Until 1146 earns her trust and asks for forgiveness: he won’t get it. 1146 meanwhile is both stubbornly thinking he did the right thing yet feeling like he’s the worst lifeform in the body for hurting her. He still follows her around to make sure she’s okay and he’s racking his brain to figure out how to fix things between them and how does he see her.

Oh gosh your descriptions make me think he’d pop up in her room at night just to make sure her house is okay. Maybe sit on her bed and pat her head if she’s having a nightmare (imagine the cases where he’d sleep next to her like a cat and leave before she got up. Uhm yeah 1146 could do a lot without 3803 ever finding out. I guess she attracts a type X/).

You know I think even NC would get annoyed by how strained their relationship is and oddly enough have good pointers for the both of them in his own sharp and blunt way. Lol. XD But this could also be him oddly enough telling 1146 they both really are similar and more monstrous then appearances would suggest. But it also means if NC can make the effort to make it up to 3803 then 1146 certainly can as well.

~~~

So I read all of your entire analysis (as always, great job and I love your feedback so much!) and I am ashamed to say that something so trivial stood out to me:

That I should ship 4989 with 3803 in Abnormalities. Hahaha! NC/3803 and 1146/3803 are always continuously hinted at within Abnormalities and now you want 4989 to throw his hat into the ring? Are you insane, given how unstable, yandere like 1146 and NC are, they would definitely try to get rid of 4989.

However, I do believe that in the Abnormalities verse, if I were to write him like I always do 4989 would definitely be a better partner here. But who knows? Perhaps after all that 3803 has gone through and will go through (heheh), she won’t need a partner. Perhaps that’s the end goal here of Abnormalities... to cut out the cancerous and toxic relationships, let new friendships and loves grow, and then... let go...

BUT THAT’S JUST A THEORY. A FILM THEORY!

But, in all seriousness, after reading your comments, I would be feeling guilty if I were to ship either of those two (or both) within the Abnormalities verse. I mean, it would be an interesting development and would help showcase how far gone all parties have fallen, but still... If this was real life and if I’m writing NIA how we’ve been picturing it, I would definitely take 3803 into protective custody, even if 1146′s actions are motivated by good intentions and he isn’t as “bad” as NC.

Ah, well.

Thanks for the submission and I hope that you have a wonderful day! I especially love your snippets and conversation here. Real nice dialogue, kudos for Basophil, hahah.

#cells at work #hataraku saibou #caw #caw anon #anon ask #devin trinidad author #devintrinidad #devin trinidad #devintrinidad author #caw cancer cell #caw cancer #ae3803 #3803 #ae-3803 #u1146 #1146 #u-1146 #submission

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prince-liest · 4 years

Note

Okay I was just internally screeching over how I can't figure out if this arc is gonna be a hero or villain win. And looking at all the 'polish yourselves, for the day of reckoning! something something when the promised day arrives in the coming spring.' Little notes Horikoshi added at the end of the chapters you know. Really adds a serious tone to it all. Crazy hype. And then with all these promsies going around, I was like 'hold up-' wait a gosh darn fucking minute. (Part 1)

I had to pace around my house for this, because guess whose fault it is. Yep that's right, SHIGARAKI AND HAWKS AGAIN!!! Of course it's the two guilty of too many parallels throwing everything into chaos in this war arc. Shigaraki with his 'the next time we meet, I'll likely have to kill you.' At the mall. And 'Next time, will be the last.' Then there's Hawks' fucking monologue the fucker who gave him the right. In the same chapter as Tomura mind you. (Part 2)

'uwu I hope everyone can be smiling when next cherry blossoms fall' *shakes tail feathers* owo nuuu pls viwwans won't win, the students are stwong. Ur plans will fwail owu vwv. YEAH WELL I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU MR. REJECTED BIRD-OF-PARADISE-!!! Can you believe these two. So dramatic, they cancel each other out. When an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object. Where is y'alls chill? (Part 3)

Anon, I cannot overstate the depth of my disappointment that we have yet to see Shigaraki and Hawks interact at all let alone in any meaningful way, and I can’t figure out if it’s because Horikoshi didn’t think the parallels were worth exploring, if he’s prioritizing Shigaraki’s parallels with Deku, or if he’s just saving it for later, but every option disappoints me to some degree. Both of them have so much going on both in their backstories and their present missions that parallel each other, and their mutual importance is as instruments of making or breaking their respective side’s victory.

And yes, they’re both so fucking intense about it, ahaha!

I honestly have no idea where this arc is going in terms of win, loss, or pyrrhic victory for anybody involved. Shigaraki was hamstringed deliberately by plot to not be at 100%, but the involvement of Gigantomachia seems almost like an automatic victory for the villains considering the power we’ve seen from him. On the other hand, the heroes have taken out the other most powerful member of the League of Villains - and that’s not mentioning most of the stuff going on at the hospital.

I’m definitely with you overall, I’m very excited to see where Horikoshi takes this! I think I’m not very nervous, however, because I can pretty easily resign myself to trusting his hands with taking the plot wherever it needs to go! I’m kind of hoping that both sides ‘lose’ to a certain degree in a way that highlights the need for the currently blossoming generation’s genuine good will and intentions in approaching heroism - basically, in a battle that is fundamentally the legacy of the Hero Public Safety Commission versus All For One, the victor in the end is what Deku represents: the quirkless kid who came in with a genuinely pure heart to make the world a better place.

#anonymous #replies #personal #bnha #long post

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justkpopjokes · 5 years

Text

Nice to Meet You, Angel. || Demon!Joshua

Ft. Joshua/Jisoo(s Chri—actually no, the complete opposite)

Anon: Demon Joshua😏

A/N: This AU has gone through 4 whole plot rewrites rip. kinda inspired by Good Omens!! (also 2 aus in a week?? whaaaaaat)

!! This is a gender neutral!reader fluff with 1945 words~ !!

Before we begin the plot, lemme quickly go through the basics of the universe

yayy lin’s doing world building again

there are angels and demons in the universe, simply just the optional jobs of people’s souls once they die

if they choose this job, they don't remember much of their life on Earth, but they do remember events they associate w/strong emotions bc it helps them

for ex. an angel could remember how sad a death made them feel so they know to prevent it

and a demon can remember how angry a bully made them felt so they can make people that level angry

both angels & demons take the form of their bodies when they were alive and roam on Earth

they can also return to Heaven/Hell and observe Earth from their respective realms

also yes demons can be summoned, but lmao you can also just give em a phone call via incantation

the angel equivalent to this phone call is praying

demons can pretty much do anything as long as it relates somehow to the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth)

angel powers are more holy/good, and they can grant things in prayers if they choose, etc

Anyway, YOU KNOW THIS BOI??

THiS bOi sHUa

he's chill af for a demon ok

one of the first demons so like no one really knows how he’s a demon bc he’s so polite

there’s some speculation that he was one of the first to fall but like

what the hell did he do???

But also some say he became a demon out of spite bc he saw a demon commit a “sin” that actually helped someone

so he became a demon just to help people in a more… unholy way

and then he was upset angels hated him just because he was a demon

like wow spirit discrimination

NOW YOU—

you are an angel (literally)

you’re the angel that protects like. atheists/"non-believers" bc c'mon just because they don’t believe in God/gods doesn’t mean they shouldn't have access to that protection service

(yes hello you’re calling APS, the Angel Protection Service sponsored by God, how may I help you?)

so yeah you’re pretty chill yourself since you have to constantly deal with people who don't believe in you lol

One fine day, you were listening to a prayer from a sick college student

ok it wasn't really a prayer but they were like "oh please, my god, let me get some sleep tonight"

you gladly put them to sleep and they slept soundly at night

when you checked on them the next morning, you noticed—

A dEmON?!?

…lying right next to the student (but above the covers, he has boundaries), who isn't stirring at all

if the leather jacket and ripped jeans didn't tip you off, he had some horns on his head to confirm ur suspicions

You: "Hey what in the world are you doing here?!"

???: "What? If they get up rn they won't be able to pay attention in class. I'm letting them rest first"

You: "Wha—who—okay, okay okay… who are you?"

"I’m Joshua, nice to meet you, angel"

Shua knows he has the name of an angel so afterwards he's like. Don't get it confused bish.

you ask him what he's doing, and basically, he's using the sin sloth on this sicko student so they stay in bed and recover instead of going to class

Even tho you feel iffy abt letting a demon affect a human right in front of you, an angel, you are a bit intrigued

you haven't seen a demon use their powers for good before…

who is this guy??

anyway he disappears, presumably to Hell, once the student needs to wake up

which is when u miracle them some bread to get

But don't worry, you're destined to meet again~

which you did, on several occasions

and ok maybe you were glad to talk to someone who was actually interesting

so, yknow,,, if another angel was like "hey y/n uhh there's a demon… bothering? someone? idk but it's a non-believer, that's ur jurisdiction right"

you had a guess on who this demon was…

…and you were right

Joshua: "Oh hey angel"

You: "Ew, you make it sound like a pet name"

JS: "Well I don't know your name, do I?"

You: "Oh. Right. It's Y/N."

he still calls you angel tho, smh that flirt

y'all just bicker and/or chat for a bit whenever u go help the same person

Like one time when he insisted that you let him use gluttony on a teen so they'd eat a lot of ice cream that day

they had just been through a bad break up so u let it slide

Or another time he used wrath on a timid kid so they could stand up to a bully

all of these ended w/you two bickering while walking away

There was this little girl you were watching from heaven who was writing a letter to "Whoever Can Do This"

little girl started listing a bunch of things, which you assumed were toys

but then you realized it was actually stuff like food, friends, a puppy, a loving dad who will go out to the park with her—

so u go down there to check on this lil child

…and that's when you see a familiar leather jacket watching over her and suggesting other things to write

you can’t see him from heaven so ur like gosh darn it I should’ve known

"Joshua?? I should've known it was—"

*cue both shua and the child turning around*

JS: "Oh hey, nice to see you, angel"

Lil' Nugget: *GASP* "Mr. Josh is this ur s/o???"

JS: "Hm? Oh, I mean, no, but um…"

You: "Josh what have u been putting into this one's head…"

Shua's all like "greed! Her dad's been ignoring her since her mom died so we're writing a list of things she wants"

then the smol girl smiles so wide and is like "Mr. Josh is helping me! He's my new friend!!"

ur like awww dangit ok I'll let it slide if u let me help

Once she finishes it, Josh hands the girl's list over to you

he explains quietly he wants you to miracle her dad to pay attention+love his daughter again so they can have/do all the other things on the list

you read it over again and do just that

The little girl gives the list to her father, your miracle allowing them to have a fun afternoon eating ice cream and playing with her toys

And you and Josh have a nice time too~

once y'all left that girl's room, he invited you for some soda

"Coke? I hope you mean Coca Cola"

"Yeah, uh, there's a place with a vending machine not too far from here. We can walk"

You don't spend time on Earth often, but you learn as you walk w/Josh that he "prefers the air up here"

mainly bc he doesn't fit in with the other demons, but he also just likes spending time with humans

(obviously tho he needs to go down to hell occasionally for like conferences and such)

you don't remember if you've ever been on a date before lol

Josh doesn't either, but he does remember how jumbled up ur emotions get, which he is not ready for

then again of course he has, I mean look at that charm

however, you can't remember if the feeling you get when going on ur little date with Shua is love :/

it isn’t really, but just bc this is ur first “date,” so it makes sense

But Josh makes sure to take you out again… for dinner!!!

you were investigating the use of lust and pride at the same time

of course, it was just Josh helping a guy find someone to hook up with

you were kinda disgusted and wanted to leave, so shua gladly took your arm and pulled you away to a restaurant!

y’all had a nice dinner, paying with some money Josh had collected

and then you went to walk together and chat some more

he’s breathtaking, and he actually wants to spend time with you despite y’all being on opposite sides of an inevitable war

You don’t care, going on more dates just to talk and not have to care about ur jobs and other stuff

Shua hears you yell “what the hell” at some point and he’s like woAH you can say that???

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not really polite, but I can. Can you say ‘Thank God?’”

“‘Thank God?’ Well look at that, I can. Good point”

you love him because he’s so chill and doesn’t give a f*** abt anything

except you and humans, apparently

like he could’ve burned or smth by saying “Thank God” or be confined to the basement of Hell for helping people/talking with you, but he doesn’t care lmao

However, no one really knows you’ve been talking with a demon tho so uhhh

when they do you get in a little bit of trouble w/the archangels

ur boss was essentially like “y/n what the HECK are you doing?!? you’re on thin ice rn”

you get mad at him, trying to defend Joshua

and you’re right in doing so, since he just wants to help people with a different set of powers

ur archangel boss sends you back down to Earth, saying you can’t return to Heaven until they work smth out

(they probably want to burn you with Hell fire)

You warn Josh, knowing they might burn you

he’s adamant on keeping you with him, so y’all try to hide or smth

which won’t work of course, but you can try, right?

right?

Shua and you sit together on a bench, with you leaning on his shoulder

“Joshua… I’m scared, I don’t want to be burned!”

“Don’t worry y/n, it’ll be okay. I love you, angel, nothing bad will happen”

and just like that, you remember what it feels like to love

“You’re right. I love you too. Help the non-believers for me if I go, alright?”

“I’ll help them just for you.”

Your archangel boss is smart, knowing the worst punishment for you is to be reincarnated without memories

you wouldn’t remember Joshua at all

and when he drags u back up to Heaven, you want to cry

do angels cry holy water? anyway

you’re sent back to Earth as a baby that can’t fend for itself

You remember nothing.

You’ve recently graduated from college and are out looking for a job

you’ve gotten rejected and fired so many times

for ex. just now, after you were arguing with someone who spoke another language that you didn’t know and there was no translator available

the customer wasn’t willing to cooperate either, ignoring your attempts to use an online translator smh

it’s late and you’re tired, so you leave, angry, and start coughing frantically when you inhale too much smoke coming from the alley next to you

naturally, you’re like “What the hell?! Dude, you’re not supposed to be smoking this close to an entrance!”

“Why do you care? You don’t work here anymore”

you take a better look at the stranger once he steps into the light of a nearby lamppost

it’s a dude in a leather jacket and ripped jeans who drops his cigarette

“Need help getting a job, y/n?”

“how do you—what—who are you?”

he extends a hand out to you, which you shake reluctantly

“I’m Joshua. Nice to meet you, angel.”

#seventeen imagines #seventeen scenarios #seventeen joshua #joshua imagines #joshua scenarios #joshua hong #hong jisoo #joshua fluff #i never know what to tag josh's fics smh #jkj fics

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mswyrr · 5 years

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favorite bits about deckerstar in s4

-Chloe gets to screw up. Badly. And be forgiven and accepted as a flawed person rather than a paragon who never gives into fear or confusion. Her desire for moral clarity is a beautiful part of her; it can also be terribly cruel when she’s lost and desperate for certainty. IMO she prioritizes doing the right thing so much that what she did was a kind of... selfless selfishness? The selfishness of needing desperately to figure out how to maintain her identity in this new world, to be the person who does the right thing. I love her.

-If loving her was always easy for Lucifer the story would be so much weaker. It wouldn’t be about what loving people is actually like - which means accepting that everything beautiful about them is connected to their weaknesses and flaws. You cannot rip someone into pieces and only have the good, you have to take the bad with the good.

-GORY EMOTIONAL PORN METAPHORS. Sure... for us normal people, when someone judges you harshly or withdraws their love/acceptance they don’t *actually plot to send you to hell*.

But it feels like it, doesn’t it? When you’ve been finding trust and love in someone and, for whatever reason, you find judgment and condemnation instead?

It’s like the whole Devil Face/body thing. which I also love.... like, it’s just this beautiful on-the-nose literalization of what it feels like to share yourself: how agonizingly ugly and “disgusting” and worthless it can feel, to want someone’s love so much and be so afraid of sharing your truth. So certain that rejection is inevitable because you cannot even stand yourself so how could anybody else stand the real you?

That is what this show is perfect at: shamelessly expressing big feelings through metaphor to talk about how freaking intense it is to love people. All the family stuff does that (it’s a show about a guy whose authoritarian father who kicked him out of the house for teenage rebellion is actually God and his judgmental hyperreligious brother is actually an angel, etc) and the romance does too.

-”Acceptance” isn’t a shining, perfect instant, it’s a series of tough choices, for both of them. It takes time. It’s 9+ months of repeating a friends-to-lovers arc, this time in full view of their respective imperfections. Lucifer tries to frame it as a simple yes/no in an instant decision early on--because of his own issues around abandonment/rejection and because of how deeply hurt he is by her lying and plotting--but they actually live out this “slow boil” mutual acceptance.

By the end their body language and behavior is back to where it was - these are best friends who trust each other like nobody else. Who are real with each other like nobody else. And they’re in love.

-The fact that she doubted Lucifer actually makes it possible for her to get at the core of what’s going on in 4x09: he’s subconsciously making the same mistake she did, and believing all the lies. That things he didn’t do are his fault. If she were an easier woman, a less complicated person, she would have never had that insight. She had to walk a tough path to actually join him in their thing as an equal, instead of being forever kept in the dark. Or being unrealistically accepting immediately of everything.

At the end of S3 Linda said “emotions are hard, that’s why they make you strong” and I think that, as an example of mutual failure and choice, Deckerstar in S4 is saying: love can be hard but that’s what makes it strong. Choosing, doing the work, communicating, struggling with your own issues and your partner’s flaws and struggles.

And, gosh darn it: they *argue well*. Which is one of those things Tumblr hates? All people arguing is supposed to = abuse. But really loving someone long-term will inevitably involve arguments and it’s important that both parties know how to be upset and argue but do it as “fair” as possible. It’s an important skill and, even in the most awful scenes of conflict, they’re both clearly trying.

#deckerstar #lucifer netflix #lucifer spoilers #lucifer meta #my meta

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kusunokihimea · 4 years

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[ Okay y’all. I am not a harsh person. I am a soft bean that’s far more likely to apologize than speak my mind, but gosh darn it I’ve reached a limit. So I’m going to talk about something that has been bothering me. Feel free to skip if you want, but odds are you need to hear this.

I am getting very...worn down of people following my blog, and me following them back...and me making opens, and starter calls, and inbox calls...and all of them sitting empty beyond my old tried and true partners. I get that not everyone is online all the time. I get not everyone sees them. But when I reblog those things to a busy dash where new / yet-to-interact mutuals are currently blogging and I still don’t get anything? I get really, REALLY disheartened. Of course I am not going to force anyone to interact with me or my posts. It’s your choice. I’m not trying to ‘monitor’ when you’re online, I’m just trying to be around when you are!

But I assume that people follow me because they WANT to write with me. I assume that, if you bother to hit that follow button, you’re interested in my muses, and having them bond with yours, and making stories, and having fun! And yet over and over and OVER, I get new followers, and then just...nothing! I reblog memes, I make open starters, I offer to go into people’s inboxes, and the only people who seem to jump on that are people that always have. It’s like new followers either don’t see them, or are too...shy? Scared? I don’t know? But the longer a blog goes without making SOME kind of move...the harder it is for me to believe they’re here to write.

I know a lot of you reblog memes, and I do see them. But 95% of the time, the content OF those memes isn’t really appropriate for a first interaction, or I feel like my muse would be out of character being that bold when first approaching your muse(s). That’s why I LOVE to do inbox calls, because I can custom tailor something to your muse and mine that I feel would be more fitting than a cookie-cutter meme that my muse isn’t comfortable doing so quickly with new acquaintances. All you have to do is like! And I’ll do all the work! And yet it seems like no one new ever does. And that’s...really disheartening.

I know I’ve been on hiatus, and my activity has been sparse, but that does not mean I’m not still here to write! I may be slow, but I still love this community, and I want to reach into newer parts of it. But I also want to do so in a way that’s respectful, so I ask first. And when no one responds...I feel like no one wants me to. Silence feels like rejection. Which it isn’t always, I know - people are busy, and I get that! But again, when I reblog it to a hopping dash, and still nothing...what am I supposed to think?

So, I guess the long and the short of it is...if you don’t have any intention of writing with me - if you either aren’t around to see, or just skip over, when I make opens and TRY to get new interactions - then I have to wonder why you’re here. If writing with me isn’t what you want, then do us both a favor and just...don’t follow me. Don’t give me that false hope of a new partner and then never act on it. I get you might be nervous, or unsure of how to get started, but that’s why we need to COMMUNICATE! So PLEASE, just...let me actually interact? Like that starter call, like that inbox call, hop into my IMs with a plot or an AU, whatever! Just...give me SOME SIGN you want to write. Meet me halfway! Otherwise...what’s the point? ]

#sylvie speaketh [ ooc ]#long post #it's late and i'm tired and i'm frustrated #and this has been bugging me admittedly for months #long before my semi hiatus #it just feels like NO ONE NEW wants to interact with my muses #and that makes me really insecure about them being here at all #because if no one wants to interact then...there's literally no point #i have and love my old partners #but a big point of rp is to keep reaching out #keep finding new partners and expanding both ic and ooc!#and yet for my blog that feels like it hasn't happened in ages #and it frustrating and honestly really draining on my muse

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gatesofember · 4 years

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(1) Hey Ember! I have trouble in commenting on works bec. One time, I was a tad bit dramatic *ahem* with my comment (lots of capitalization and screaming aka fangirling but essentially all positive vibes) ((also, I'm not refering to you!! It was actually on another fandom and when I was younger)) And they replied... not unkindly but... It still made me hold back in commenting on any fic I read in the fear the author would take it negatively.

Firstly, I think this might be the sweetest ask I’ve ever received! This is such a good question and I’m flattered you reached out. I suffer from this kind of rejection-sensitivity too and I’m honestly such a hypocrite because as much as I love receiving comments, I can also be scared to leave them. I can even be nervous to reply to comments on my own fics! (Especially if I’ve been ignoring my account for a month, then it’s like “I waited too long to respond and if I do it now it would just be awkward.”)

But back to your question! I’ll try to make this specific enough to ease your anxiety. (At least, that’s what I’d want. I really hope I don’t end up making you more anxious.)

Your experience must have been a bad one-off because I don’t know a single writer that doesn’t like getting comments that are just people screaming in caps with infinite exclamation points. Short messages like “I enjoyed this update!” are always appreciated, of course. I love getting comments where readers pick specific things that they liked, such as “this part was so moving,” “I ADORE this character,” “this conversation really hit home,” or “I laughed so hard when X happened.” With AM au, I love it when people ask about the universe, but be prepared for a long reply because I could ramble about that for hours! I’d love to discuss thoughts that I didn’t get to include, or how I came up with ideas, or why I did something a certain way. (There’s at least one long thread somewhere in am au when I talked about a bunch of random stuff like that Leo’s mom was a soror who broke her vows and that Hades, Persephone, and Maria had a happy healthy polyamorous relationship.) I think my favorite comments are questions and opportunities for actual discussions. It is so flattering to know that someone wants to talk about my work. It means that you were willing to expend the time and energy to think deeply about it. And of course I like to talk about it! I wanted to talk about it so badly that I wrote it!

As for comments I don’t like...first and foremost, asking for faster updates. But to be clear, I don’t mean that you have to tiptoe around even mentioning future updates in your comments. I just mean things like “You are taking forever!” and “how much longer???” It’s ok to say “I can’t wait for the next chapter!” or “I hope this continues soon!” or to jokingly say, “I need an update, like, stat!” because those are expressions of excitement! (If it’s unclear to me whether you’re joking or not, I’ll choose to assume you’re joking, don’t worry.) And sometimes if I haven’t updated in a long time, readers leave comments like “I miss this fic so much and I hope you get back to it soon” and that’s ok too! What I don’t like is the unpleasant ones that remind me of how much you guys hate waiting because gosh darn it, I hate making you guys wait! I want to know that you’re excited about it continuing, not that I’m making you miserable by not going faster.

Another kind of comment I don’t like are when people say things to control my writing. Like “can you write about X next?” or “I don’t like where this is going, can’t they just do X?” or “I wanted to see X happen, not Y.” But again, there’s a line. “I wanted/expected X to happen and I’m curious as to why you chose to do Y instead” is very different and wouldn’t bother me. That expresses that the reader wasn’t happy with something, but also opens it up to discussion and respects the decisions I made. No one’s going to like everything that I do and I know that, but what happens in my work is ultimately up to me. If you want to see a certain thing happen, then you should write it yourself or find a writer who has clearly stated they are open for requests.

And I’ve gotten some comments that were just...odd. Weird, cryptic comments that I had no idea how to decipher. Comments on smut that included wayyyy too much information on a reader’s physical reaction to my writing (please do not tell me about how horny you are). Thankfully, the ‘odd’ comments don’t appear very often.

Thank you for this ask! I was honestly delighted to receive it. In summary, keyboard smashing and all caps are, in my opinion, quite delightful. Just be polite and respectful when you comment! And please, please do not tell me how horny you are. I don’t want to know how horny you are.

#anon #gabbing gates

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tlbodine · 5 years

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Every Single Last Thought I Have About Game of Thrones

My rambling obsession with Game of Thrones has cost me at least a dozen followers so far, and I promise it’s nearing an end now that the show is finished and the fervor is dying down. But I do have some Final Thoughts(tm), and I thought I would assemble them all here as best I can. In the interests of saving you all from a million future Game of Thrones posts, I will endeavor to put Every Single Thought I Have into one monstrously long GoT masterpost. You’re welcome, I guess?

Rambles under a spoiler tag, as much for actual spoilers as for, uh, rambling. Buckle in. This post is a monster.

In a contentiously-named Vice article called “Game of Thrones Was Doomed From the Start,” Peter Slattery makes a point that maybe we all needed to hear: Whatever our problems with the Game of Thrones TV show, they’re not wholly endemic to the show itself. The article is worth a read, but the tl;dr is this: GRRM created an astonishingly complex world with his book series, and the story has spun out to ever greater complexity as it approaches its supposed end.

Anyone looking for a way to wrap it all up is going to have a tough time. Just ask GRRM himself, whose inability to finish the series in a timely fashion has basically become a meme at this point.

Now, of course, D&D did not need to try to end the story in 6 episodes. They could easily have kept the series going on forever and HBO would have allowed it, because GoT is pretty much single-handedly keeping the network’s lights on at this point. Why the showrunners chose to turn down that opportunity is a matter of speculation.

What I will say is this: There had always been an expectation that the show would be seven seasons. The internet has a short memory about these things, but back when this all started, the intent was clear enough: There would be 7 books in the series, and 7 episodes in the show, one for each book. At the time, four of GRRM’s books were out, with the fifth being released during this time period, and there had been an expectation (even then, a bit over-optimistic) that the books would finish before their respective seasons, or maybe just trail it by a year or so.

The anticipation, in other words, was that A Song of Ice and Fire would roughly follow the trajectory of the Harry Potter films in their relationship with the books.

That’s not what happened, obviously.

But I do remember there being some grumblings of unease when we audience-folk started to realize the show might not wrap up tidily in those 7 planned seasons. And I definitely remember some grumbling about how Season 8 would take more than a year to come out (surely you all remember that impatience!)

And facing that -- a restless audience, source material that stayed stubbornly unwritten, the increasingly complex logistics of an enormous cast including young actors who were picking up other roles -- I can understand the impulse to speed it along. If your options in finishing a story are to rush it a bit to force the plot points out, or else risk being caught plodding forward indefinitely...I can see the appeal of rushing. I won’t say it was the right creative choice, but it’s one I can understand and one I don’t think is indefensible. I’m not in love with what happened, but I can think of far worse ways for the show to have gone.

Here’s more analysis on that which you may find interesting: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18633029/game-of-thrones-got-ending-season-8-george-rr-martin-apology

Scope Creep & Themes that Get Away From You

So why is the ASOIAF universe so gosh-darn complex, and why are these books so hard to finish, and why is the show’s ending so hard to stick?

It’s not just because GRRM is pantsing his way through the story (excuse me, tending his garden) but because ASOIAF is not actually a story so much as it’s a history. Part of what makes this world so compelling is that it is indeed its own world. And not just in the Tolkien sense of multiple cultures and complex histories and languages fleshing out the world. What’s made GRRM’s work the most interesting and compelling from the beginning is that it promises even more than that: Here is a richly textured world of geopolitical intrigue, populated by real people; each and every character has their own fears and hopes and aspirations and petty squabbles.

ASOIAF tells a story about normal people and the way they get caught in the machinations of war, and it doesn’t take any shortcuts. And I think we need to take a moment here to appreciate how unique that actually is as a concept.

In Lord of the Rings, we receive a richly detailed world with its own history and culture and grand war, but the war is also limited by the parameters of the story: It can all be ended if Frodo destroys the ring.

GRRM did not give himself such a straightforward McGuffin for ending his story.

And that, indeed, is part of the appeal of the ASOIAF series. A big part of what makes it all so compelling is that it’s a deconstruction of the fantasy genre and, really, a deconstruction of epics in general.

Game of Thrones, the first book in the series, dares to ask: What happens when being the good guy is what gets you killed?

Maybe GoT has been part of our cultural fabric for so long that this doesn’t seem all that shocking, but let’s just take a moment to appreciate here how utterly wild it is that this story begins by spending hundreds of pages (or many hours of film) with a protagonist, only to lop his head off -- and that, really, the rest of the series isn’t even about avenging that death. Oh, sure, vengeance for Ned Stark colors the motivation of some characters, especially in the beginning...but the story soon spirals way beyond that, because the Starks are just one piece in the epic machines of war.

So by its very nature, ASOIAF is not just complex in terms of its sheer scope and number of characters and storylines, but also in terms of its themes. It’s a story that raises a number of difficult questions about the nature of good and evil, of the influence of power, the personal vs the political, and so forth.

These are difficult questions, the type of questions at the very core of the human experience, questions that we’ve been grappling with for thousands of years, and GoT’s deconstructive nature means that it can’t take shortcuts to answering them. The answers simply cannot be as satisfying as “good triumphs over evil” or “evil wins” because the very nature of ASOIAF is complexity and the rejection of such simple platitudes.

From that angle, I think the show did a brilliant job of wrapping things up. The plot had its share of inconsistencies (although not as many as people argue, more on that in a minute) but I think it stayed true to the spirit of what Game of Thrones had always been about. Season 8 raised some really important questions and touched on some extremely interesting themes, and I personally found it both thought-provoking and powerful.

But, well, I will confess that my aesthetics have always leaned more toward intricacy, and that I do not have what many would call “good taste” about a great many things. I always prefer for things to be interesting rather than beautiful, and from my perspective, the home stretch of Game of Thrones was exceedingly interesting.

How Did You Honestly Expect It Was Going To End?

For all of the belly-aching on social media about the ending of Game of Thrones, I have both a rebuttal and a genuine question: What did you think was going to happen?

A lot of people seemed to think that something like this would happen:

(art by https://www.instagram.com/raymondwaskita/?hl=en and no, this isn’t saying the artist believes or endorses any of this, just saying I saw this image on Facebook accompanied by a lot of wistful sighing)

I saw so many people who were all so very angry that Daenerys doesn’t walk away the winner of everything, that Cersei doesn’t get a more satisfying death, that Jon didn’t get to be the true king, that Jaime and Brienne don’t get a happily-ever-after, etc. etc. etc. And to all of those people I have just one question to ask you: What the fuck show have you been watching?

Daenerys deserved better?

Tell that to Ned Stark. Tell that to Robb and Catelyn and Shireen and Margaery and all the rest of the Tyrells. Just for starters. We could do this all day.

Just because we had a few bad guys get some deliciously just endings does not mean that the Game of Thrones universe is fair or that anyone gets what they deserve. That’s just silly.

But okay, fine then: Was it fucked up to tell a story where the breaker of chains and inspirational strong woman becomes the villain?

I mean, sure, maybe. But doing so allowed us to ask some other really interesting questions (and, as previously noted, I always prefer when things are interesting).

Is excessive force justified when it’s against evil men? Who gets to decide who is good and who is evil? How many losses are acceptable? Can you fight monsters without becoming a monster yourself? Should you be uncomfortable with how happy you are when “others” are slaughtered? Are you a little bit culpable too?

Was Dany’s heel-face turn perfectly executed? No. But it was believable, and it was powerful, and I think the questions it asks are good questions that deserve to be talked about.

Game of Thrones is all about subverting tropes, and Daenerys is the obvious Chosen One. She’s the one with the fantastic birth and the underdog story and the magical powers. She and Jon Snow are both the characters that every story tells us will be the heroes. So of course they don’t get what they “deserve.”

If the first episode of Game of Thrones asks, “What happens if being good doesn’t save the hero?” then the last episode asks, “What happens if being the hero doesn’t make you good?”

And that, to me, is interesting enough that it more than makes up for shortcomings in the road we traveled to get there.

A lot of the criticism of the show -- take, for just one of many examples, this: https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a27527950/game-of-thrones-finale-character-endings/ -- seems to fundamentally misunderstand what the show actually is or what it was attempting.

And like...I can understand being disappointed, but...like the scorpion & the frog...you knew what this show was when you picked it up.

Here’s a Twitter thread I really liked about this point: https://twitter.com/leighalexander/status/1130750999684161537

So Am I Just Some D&D Apologist Who Loves Everything About This Show?

I’m so glad you asked, hypothetical reader!

No. No, I am not in love with every creative decision made by the GoT showrunners. There are plenty of things I disliked about the show and its creative choices.

Re-framing Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s sex as rape, and then making the same mistake later when Jaime and Cersei have sex after Joffrey’s death.

Giving Sansa to Ramsay Bolton. Not only do we get more unnecessary rape plots (and, honestly, wasn’t there enough rape in the source material?) but it just is so much less interesting than what was happening with Book!Sansa, who is my favorite character (and was my favorite long before it became cool to love Sansa).

The entire three-eyed raven arc and “hold the door.” I mean, it was cool and tense, but I never got a really good idea of wtf the three-eyed raven’s powers actually do and what Bran inherited, and I kind of got the feeling that the showrunners didn’t understand it either and thus skirted around it. (Overall the show seemed uncomfortable with its more fantastic elements and knowing what to do with them).

I thought Rickon was a wasted opportunity of a character. I wanted to see him do something cool. I admit that this is based entirely on my pet theory that the direwolves represent the souls of the Stark children, and I hoped Shaggydog’s vicious nature meant that Rickon was going to become a badass somehow. Alas. (I am also deeply sad that Arya and Nymeria don’t reunite to go fuck some shit up together)

Euron Greyjoy was a disaster. He is so much more interesting in the books, and so much weirder, and he’s just so pointless and annoying in the show by comparison.

I didn’t like the “let’s go beyond the wall and oops there went my dragon” storyline very much, and honestly at no point did I ever really believe Jon and Dany’s relationship because it was rushed and the actors have zero chemistry.

So no, I don’t think the showrunners made a perfect TV show. But I do think it’s deeply unfair to say that they are incompetent writers or that they can’t work without the original source material.

My Criticism of the Criticisms

The internet is full of idiotic opinions, and I could be here all day if I addressed all of them (I’ve already been working on this for two hours) but I will address a few of the complaints I’ve seen that have most rankled me.

“Daenerys goes crazy because a boy rejected her”

I think calling Daenerys the “mad queen” and writing off Targaryen madness as A Real Thing That Definitely Exists And Is Not At All A Metaphor For Power And Entitlement is silly and reductivist. Yes, generations of inbreeding have probably unsettled the Targaryens a bit. But Dany didn’t just go crazy. As I’ve said before: She was already prepared to sacrifice the lives of the commoners on King’s Landing. She knew that Cersei would use them as a human shield and Dany wasn’t going to let that stop her. She had endured so much on her journey to get to this point, and nothing was going to stand between her and the Iron Throne. I talk about this in great length in another post so I won’t get into it here, but just...don’t be stupid.

“Cersei’s ending was stupid and pointless”

I’ve spent so much time dissecting Daenerys that I haven’t had a chance to talk about Cersei, which is a shame because I love her character a lot. I really loved her ending. All this time, the only thing she wanted was the security that power would bring her. Watching the look on her face when she realizes that Daenerys is going to destroy everything and that no political maneuvering can save her -- it was really powerful acting, and a major moment of change for her character. That she dies in Jaime’s arms, admitting at last that she is frightened, that she doesn’t want to die, that she doesn’t want her baby to die -- not only is it heartbreaking, but it’s honest. That is Cersei laid bare. She is who she has always been. That encapsulates her arc in a way that no other death really could have, and I personally found it a lot more satisfying than if Arya or whomever had just stabbed her in the back.

“All of Jaime’s character development just went out the window”

I’ll give you some of this. I don’t know that the show has ever fully understood Jaime. Just as Cersei is so much more sympathetic in the show, Jaime is much more sympathetic in the books. But I don’t think that all his character development is for nothing. I think we still have his journey, no matter what. And in the end, I can understand why he chose to leave Brienne. He didn’t think he deserved that happiness, for one; Brienne was too good for him, not just as a person but as a knight, and he knew that. And what was his long-term plan, anyway? Daenerys certainly wasn’t overly fond of him. There’s a non-zero chance she might have executed him for killing her father once he’s outlived his usefulness. Cersei and his unborn child were in the path of danger. He had a chance to maybe go rescue them and save the family, somehow, as he’d so horribly failed to save any of his other children. It was a stupid choice, but Jaime is the dumbest Lannister, and his self-loathing go deep. Did we think that Brienne’s redemptive vagina was going to save him from himself? Come on.

As for his last moments with Cersei...well. He was already mortally wounded by Euron. And I loved that the fight was so inglorious, so raw and dirty and stupid. They wrestle in the mud and it was perfect, as far as I’m concerned. So Jaime knows he won’t get out of this alive, and here’s Cersei, frightened and vulnerable. What else CAN he do but try to comfort them both? I thought it was a beautiful end for both of them and just because Jaime’s story ended up being tragic doesn’t invalidate his redemption arc. (I mean, for fuck sake, how many people go through rehab just to die of an overdose when they backslide?)

“The scorpions are deadly weapons except then they’re useless”

Okay like. This is annoying to me. By the time we see Rhaegal, he has suffered a lot of damage courtesy of the white walkers. His wing has a big freaking hole in it. He’s not 100%, and he’s not being ridden by anyone, and the attack comes as an ambush. Drogon evades being shot down because he’s being steered by a rider and he’s not injured and exhausted.

“D&D are incompetent writers who have no idea what they’re doing”

This one just makes me mad, and not just because of the fandom entitlement that I hate so much. (in this house, we stan for creators). Look. If they’re so incompetent, how did they manage to make a show that y’all loved for seven seasons previous to this? Also, like it or not, they know exactly what they’re doing. Like, they had such a clear idea of what they were doing that they managed to foresee the exact counter-arguments that fans would have and directly address them in the show.

Like. Hot damn. I will admit: I was very nervous about this season in the first few episodes. Dany was making me uneasy. She was acting selfish and entitled, and her attitude toward the war was making me uncomfortable -- because she was still in the role of hero, and I wasn’t sure if we-the-audience were meant to just swallow this as being OK. And then Varys and Tyrion have a conversation about exactly that, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Because that made it clear that the show knew what it was doing.

And then later? Jon and Tyrion have a so-accurate-its-painful discussion about Dany’s heel-face turn and her potential motives, and it so perfectly mirrored the discussions on Twitter the week prior that I almost wondered if they’d snuck off to film it last minute.

The point is: Like it or not, D&D knew exactly what they were doing. And, remember, GRRM gave them an outline, and while we don’t know for sure what’s their invention and what’s his, I think we can safely say that the broad strokes of the ending were GRRM’s invention, not theirs. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/game-thrones-showrunners-know-how-687589

So love it or hate it, the ending of GoT cannot be blamed on incompetence.

Okay Fine But the Pacing Was Still Really Bad

Yep. I’ll grant you that.

The ending blazes through plot points at breakneck speed. A lot of really important character development is left to performances; we’re forced to infer, as the audience, what a character is thinking or feeling at any given time. A lot of really important plot information is delivered by way of single dialogue lines. There’s a lot of “if you blink you’ll miss it” storytelling.

It’s not ideal by any means.

But it’s still pretty fucking good. The performances are good enough that, to me anyway, it’s pretty easy to intuit what’s going on internally. And the show still gave me things to think about, and made me feel things, and the impact may actually have been stronger by virtue of leaving so much to the imagination. By leaving a lot of questions unanswered, the show invites conversation and thought and speculation, and I think that’s valuable.

Would I Have Done It Differently?

Here’s a fun relic from history -- check out GRRM’s original story pitch, back when he thought this would be a trilogy: https://www.insider.com/game-of-thrones-original-story-2017-8

Talk about scope creep.

It’s fascinating, though. I know myself all too well that the book I set out to write and the book I end up with are never the same. There are some really interesting ideas in here, but I think the story we ended up with is a lot better.

But as for the ending of the Game of Thrones. Was it perfect? Would I have handled it differently?

Thematically, I think the resolution is mostly fine. Putting Bran on the throne is...well, it’s a choice. I have a little bit of a hard time with it just because it’s not really clear what Bran is, exactly. What are the scope of his powers? Is it a bit of a cop-out to put a supernatural king on the throne?

But what I do like about it is the idea that it doesn’t actually really matter who we put on the throne. The story makes a difference -- we need something that makes for a good song, because maybe at the end of the day one of the messages is that we need to believe in all these tropes we’ve deconstructed because reality is hard, it’s painful and boring and often nonsensical, and maybe we need stories in order to survive.

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who we put in charge, because the people who are actually in charge are the council, and they will deal with everything the way they always had. After years of bloody rebellion, maybe the best thing really is the status quo. Maybe the solution to the game of thrones is to just stop fucking playing it. Put somebody on the damn throne and get back to running the country. I like that a lot.

I also like the idea that change is important, and it’s possible, but it’s slow. That strikes a good balance of realism and optimism. No, we’re not bringing democracy to Westeros, but we’re establishing the roots of a Republic. No, a queen doesn’t sit the Iron Throne, but a queen does get to rule in the north, and the north gets its sovereignty. No, Jon Snow doesn’t get to be the hero, but he does get to go beyond the wall with the Freefolk, which honestly will probably make him happier than anything else (and while he doesn’t get to claim his birthright, he does know now why Ned did what he did, and gets some closure on the daddy issues front).

All in all, it’s good. It’s not a happy ending, but we were never going to get a happy ending. And it’s not a particularly dramatic ending, because we weren’t going to get one of those either.

THAT SAID. I will say there are a few things that really bothered me about the way the finale plays out.

Drogon spontaneously melting down the throne for....some reason? Uh? I mean thematically it’s great but like....why though?

It would have made more sense if the dragon roasted Jon, except Jon doesn’t burn because fire can’t burn a dragon, but the throne behind Jon melts down. It also would have made sense of Jon hopped on the dragon and melted down the throne himself, and maybe went and either killed Dany’s force or made them surrender/yield to him.

I also have a hard time believing that the Unsullied who were just executing Lannisters would have locked Jon up instead of executing him immediately for treason.

And wtf have they all been doing after Dany died? OK, fine, maybe the Unsullied don’t have any ambitions of their own, but you’re telling me the Dothraki were like “oh, ok, queen’s dead, guess we’ll just hang out and not do anything then?”

None of that made any sense to me.

Also wtf how are there still so many Dothraki and Unsullied left? Didn’t, like, a whole lot of them die fighting zombies?

Ugh.

Anyway.

Perfect? No. Thought-provoking? Absolutely. Thematically on-point? Yeah, I’d say so. One of the best shows on television, still? Definitely. Are there valid criticisms? Yes. Are most of the criticisms valid? Not by a long shot.

One final thought:

We never do learn why the Night King doesn’t burn. Our pet theory in the house (courtesy of my husband) is that he is of Targaryen descent. He can ride the dragon, after all. What if that’s not just because he resurrects it with his powers, but because he is himself a dragon-rider?

So with that as a possibility...Well. I’m just saying.

We don’t know where Drogon took Daenerys after she dies. But wouldn’t it be interesting if she is somehow resurrected, and somehow gets to spend the next few centuries amassing an army of the undead to come back and take what’s rightfully hers, effectively re-starting the cycle and bringing winter back once again?

(this is what happens when you give a fantasy series to a horror writer)

#got spoilers #game of thrones #writing advice #rambles #thoughts #long post #analysis #this is going to get like five notes #and that will make me very sad #but here it is #here are all of my thoughts #everything that's been swirling in my brain for weeks #please enjoy

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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O Maidens in Your Savage Season – 10 – Maiden Abyss

God, where do I even start? I knew I’d be navigating an emotional minefield with a show like this, but in the spirit of one of this episode’s themes, the difference between thinking you know something and actually experiencing it in the moment is as vast as, well, the holes that threaten to swallow up every single character. Certainly far larger than the holes in the sexy underwear Kazusa is investigating on her phone.

Rika just happens to be hanging out with Amagi across the park where Hitoha gets picked up by Milo-sensei. Rika finds Hitoha’s underwear in the trash, freaks out for a minute, then calls a cab to follow them and hopefully save Hitoha and/or Milo from themselves/each other. She’s acting as a good friend would: as best she can with what little, highly concerning information she has.

Meanwhile, after all the hard work he did finding porn not set aboard trains, Niina has likely well and truly ruined them for him as anything pure and innocent, what with her placing his hand on her bum and keeping it there. Izumi pulls away and exits the train, but Niina follows him and demands to know why he’s going so far to refuse her.

Since he asked for advice, Niina offers to let him practice doing it on her. With all of her (not always consciously) honed powers of seduction in overdrive, she asks him straight up if he wants to do it with her, and he rejects her again, but not in the most convincing way. Before leaving on the next train, Niina passes by and takes note of how hard he was.

If Niina can’t ever get Izumi to love her like he loves Kazusa, she’ll do everything she can to make him desire her. She’s determined to kill that virginity of hers, and at the moment she has eyes only for him.

Momo plays Street Fighter alone in an empty arcade, and as she watches Chun Li get mercilessly wailed on by Ryu, she comes to a realization that had probably been gestating in her head and heart for some time. She texts Niina, asking to meet up and talk. Just then, Satoshi, a name I rather naively didn’t think I’d have to type again, texts her asking to meet up and talk.

Last week the window (or rather “hole”) seemed to be closing fast for Yamagishi-sensei to put a stop to a situation that, while not strictly illegal in Japan, is still a very bad idea for both parties involved. While yes, he picked up Hitoha, there’s still a possibility he’s just trying to scare her straight by only taking things so far.

Little does he know as he’s driving Hitoha is planning exactly what she’s going to do when they hit a red light: grab Milo’s hand and put it in her. It’s a bold plan to be sure, one I’m not sure she would have actually done, but we’ll never know, because they don’t hit another red light. Instead, Milo pulls in to a love hotel…the cheapest, seediest, least sexy love hotel he could find.

Rika arrives at the love hotel district, but there Hitoha’s trail goes cold, and Amagi really doesn’t want to hang around such a place, as it’s making him think and feel weird things when he’s committed to treating Rika right, a sentiment that makes her swoon when he expresses it.

To our unending relief, we finally learn definitively through his inner monologue that Milo has no intention whatsoever of going through with anything in that dingy lovenest, but makes the mistake of letting Hitoha go off to the bathroom to steel herself up, desperately swiping webpages on what to do in this situation.

She bursts out of the bathroom, pounces on Milo, positions herself over his crotch, and starts unbuckling his belt and unzipping. Suddenly, a very stunned Milo has lost control of the situation. Hitoha is just as stunned, but feels if she’s gone this far there’s nowhere to go but forward.

But, once the zipper is down, and there’s no erection, Hitoha gives up and starts to cry, noting how unattractive she must be to him. Always so condescending and rude in so many of their interactions, Milo drops that act, gently places his hand atop her head and tells her she’s wrong; this isn’t happening not because she’s ugly, but because he’s a coward.

As she cries in his arms, I breathe another sigh of relief. In the end, Yamagishi was the adult here, recognizing he had to try to let her preserve her pride, and realizing the best way to do that was to abandon his own for her sake. That may not satisfy or comfort her in the long run, but it stopped something very bad from happening for the wrong reasons.

Then comes an exchange I wish we didn’t have to witness, because it’s just so hard to watch and so gosh-darn realistic. Satoshi, “The Nice Guy,” didn’t take too kindly to being embarrassed in front of his friends at the cultural festival. He accuses Momo of leading him on, calls her a slut, and demands an apology lest he make it impossible for her to come back to cram school.

Momo isn’t apologizing, and she’s not going back to cram school either, and that’s that. But as she walks away, Satoshi grabs her arm, because he’s not done with her yet. She’s not showing him proper respect, you see? For that, Momo cries out so all the passersby can hear, and naturally Satoshi calls her weird and crazy and scurries off. What an apocalyptic boob. Maybe don’t grab girls who couldn’t be less interested in you and are trying to walk away, brah!

As Niina walks around the same district where we’ve already seen Rika, Amagi, Hitoha and Milo, she thinks about how she always, always gets comments and cat calls whenever she walks down this street…until now. It’s as if Izumi’s rejection of her has marked her as some kind of hideous creature from which all ment will keep their distance.

After years being looked at the wrong way, suddenly she no longer feels the attention…and she’s not feeling so great…like withdrawal from a drug you were forced to take. Then Momo calls her, again asking to meet up. After being touched by a guy, Momo wants Niina to touch her, to “purify” her, because she’s in love with her.

No longer feeling waves of desire from men in her radius, suddenly Niina is confronted by a woman, stating in no uncertain terms she wants to be touched by her. Niina isn’t sure how to respond, so she apologizes and ends the call.

And that, inexorably, brings is to Miss Smartphone Sexy Underwear Shopper. Kazusa is in a wonderful little bubble of bliss, as she has been ever since she and Izumi became a couple. That bubble only grows larger when Izumi gives her a quick “just calling to say I love you” call from the station where he’s still processing what happened with Niina.

It’s clear with this call Izumi is trying both to assuage the measure of guilt he feels and ease the swirling of confusing thoughts in his head by reiterating his feelings to Kazusa, clearly, out loud. Clearly, it didn’t work.

After the short call, Kazusa beams like we’ve never seen her before, then continues her underwear shopping. In voice-over, she states that at that time she had no idea what vast and widening holes her friends were staring down, nor that she’d soon be staring down her own once her blissful bubble inevitably bursts.

The next morning, Izumi won’t hold hands on their walk to school for some vague fear of “the neighbors.” Sure looks like it could be the beginning of the end for these two…before so much as a peck on the cheek. Devastating.

That just leaves us with Rika and Amagi, the one couple that seems to actually, ya know, be okay! Just as Rika is starting to contemplate getting a little closer to him, a teacher announces that her friend Sonoe got pregnant and is dropping out of school. As if the previous twenty minutes of carnage weren’t enough, one last savage dagger before the curtain.

I need a drink!

By: sesameacrylic

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

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firedragonalchemistofcourage · 7 years

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Hinanami Week Day 2: Date

So I just realized I forgot to post yesterday’s entry for Hinanami Week! Sorry about that, I have literally no excuses. A bit of a warning, though: I haven’t finished editing today’s or tomorrow’s entries, and I haven’t even started the other three. So I can’t guarantee I’ll get any of them out in time.

But let’s not think about that just yet, and enjoy what we have here, today.

Hajime slammed the door shut behind him, panting audibly.

“Alright, just calm down and think this through, Hajime. It can’t possibly be as bad as I think it is, can it?” After telling himself this and taking a second to calm down, Hajime thought back on the events of the last few hours.

He and Chiaki were exploring the island together, looking for materials they could use for Usami’s latest group project, when it happened.

“Say, Hajime...Are we on a date right now?”

Shocked, Hajime had looked down at her. Her big, pink eyes, usually pointed down at her game console, were focused solely on him. He’d never seen her concentrating so hard on anything before, not even her game.

“Ummm….Heh, heh, why would you ask that…?”

“...No particular reason. I just wanted to know. They’re supposed to be pretty fun, and I wouldn’t mind going on one with you...Probably…”

“...” Hajime opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Sure, he had entertained the thought of dating Chiaki, she was adorable, she was funny, and she seemed to draw out the best in him whenever she was around. But what if it didn’t work out? Would they still be able to be friends afterward? Was it worth risking his friendship with Chiaki on the chance the two of them might be a good couple?

“-ajime? Hajime?” He became aware of something waving around in front of him. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be Chiaki’s hand. “Are you listening to me?” She pouted. Oh my gosh, she was so cute when she puffed up her cheeks like that!

No, stop thinking about that! There are more serious things going on here!

“L-let me get back to you on that.” Hajime forced an uneasy smile onto his face, turned around, and bolted back to his cabin.

“...Okay, yeah, it’s definitely as bad as I thought it was. What am I gonna do?”

“Why not ask for some help?” Hajime stiffened, then turned around.

“...How did you get in here?” He asked the person standing in the doorway.

“Oh, that was easy! Ibuki just broke the lock on your door! She’s surprised Hajime didn’t hear it! Must be because he was so busy talking to himself about his lady troubles!” Ibuki’s grin stretched from ear to ear.

Hajime sighed. “How much did you hear?”

“Oh, Ibuki just got the general gist of it. Chiaki’s been showing interest in you, but you’re afraid of what might happen in the future? That sound about right?”

Hajime looked down. “Yeah. Pathetic, huh? The cutest girl on the island - no offense (“None taken,” Ibuki replied. “You’re right!”) - actually asks me out, and I’m too scared thinking about what could go wrong to give her my answer.”

Ibuki’s smile dropped, and she sighed. “Hajime, I’m not sure what to tell you here. I don’t know how it’ll work out between you two either. But I do know that the longer you avoid Chiaki, the longer you wait to give her your answer, the more you’re hurting her. Think about it for a second. Chiaki rarely gives away her emotions. Yet she was willing to tell you she wanted to go out with you. That says to me she really cares about you. And you ran away. You gave her an evasive answer and ran away. It would have been better for her if you had actually just rejected her on the spot, because at least then you’d be showing her that you respected her enough to give her an answer.”

“So how do I fix it?”

“Do you care about Chiaki?”

“Huh?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Fine. Yes, I care about her.”

“Do you want her to be happy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be happy?”

“What?”

“Do you want to be happy? It’s a simple question.”

“Yes, I want to be happy. Is there a point to this?”

“Of course there is. You just gave yourself your answer, there.”

Hajime blinked. “What?”

“Chiaki wants to date you. You want to date her. You want her to be happy. You want to be happy. It’s a pretty simple equation. There’s nothing in there pointing to the possibility of a failed relationship between you two. That doesn’t mean it will work out, but I think you owe it to yourself to give it a try. So get out there, and give Chiaki the best darn date she’ll ever have!”

“So get to it, lover boy!” Ibuki grabbed Hajime, yanked him over to the door, slammed it open, and shoved Hajime through.

Directly into the petite frame of the Ultimate Gamer, one hand raised as if she was about to knock on his cabin’s door.

“Oh, hey, Hajime. I was just coming over to see you.” Chiaki’s muffled voice sounded from where her face was buried in Hajime’s chest.

“U-umm..” Hajime stopped for a second, then put his hands on Chiaki’s shoulders, moved her back a bit so he could look straight into her eyes, and cleared his throat.

“Chiaki, what we were doing earlier today...Was not a date.”

Chiaki lowered her head. “Oh. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable there-”

Hajime put up his hand, stopping Chiaki’s sentence in its tracks. “Therefore, I’d like to show you just what a real date entails. How about this Sunday, when we have time off from Usami’s projects?”

He grinned down at her. Slowly, she lifted her head and started smiling back at him.

“Sure. Sounds like fun.”

#Hinanami Week #Hinanami #hinanamiweek #Hajime Hinata #Hinata Hajime #Chiaki Nanami #Nanami Chiaki #Ibuki Mioda #Mioda Ibuki #Ultimate OTP #Ultimate Cinnamon Roll #Still don't have a tag for Hajime #Punk Rock Sunshine Child

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