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thedeaditeslayer · 3 years

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INTERVIEW: Bruce Campbell on the enduring legacy of horror classic ‘Evil Dead’.

Bruce Campbell, the multi-hyphenate actor who has had a tremendous cultural impact in the world of entertainment, has put together a résumé like no other performer. He’s known for playing the iconic character of Ash in the Evil Dead films and its spinoff TV series, Ash vs.The Evil Dead. This horror credibility is by no means exclusive; he has also acted in many other projects, including Burn Notice, Bubba Ho-Tep, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Add to that a couple bestselling memoirs, and his professional life has been a full one.

Now he’s ready to talk about perhaps the best-known bullet point on that résumé: his starring turn in the original Evil Dead. On Saturday, Jan. 23, Campbell will take part in an interactive virtual watch party while the horror movie plays for an online audience. The Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio is one of the national venues hosting the event. Tickets are $25-$50.

Recently Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Campbell about his career, about the horror movie that started it all and his new “retirement.” Here’s what he had to say …

On what fans can expect from the virtual event …

They can expect amazingness at every turn. You know what it is, it’s not your father’s commentary. Your father’s commentary was on the old DVDs, and the movie starts, and the actors sit around and shoot the shit about what they remember. But it’s real time. It’s OK, but you miss a lot of stuff. So in this case I’ve got some kind of device that’s going to allow me to stop, start, maybe even rewind because you can get a lot more detail. My problem with the old commentaries I would do: You tell a story, something, something. You look up, and you go, ‘Oh, I wish I could have told that story, but it’s already gone.’ So this is a chance to expand the experience, get a little more detail, more trivia. I can kind of tease stuff up. I can pause it and go, ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ and let the people know something [is coming], so it’s just a different type of format done in a very safe and responsible fashion in this modern era.”

On his other work during this pandemic …

My agent kind of put this together because I’ve done similar stuff. I have worked with Wizard Entertainment a lot over the years, and I’ve been doing Last Man Standing as a game show host virtually through Wizard Virtual. And we’ve done that a bunch of times, and we’ve done this sort of Hercules type of reunion sort of stuff. So we’ve danced around it, but this is a way to kind of do another version of something where you go, OK, let’s do a little sit down. You know what it is, it’s just a live performance without the theater. I would be doing essentially the same thing in a movie theater, but until those open again, this is a pretty good second opportunity because the cool thing about the broadcast is it’s open to the world.”

On his hopes for the future of this type of virtual programming …

I hope it works because there are a lot of other movies that I’d be happy to sit with and watch.

On whether he knew Evil Dead would be so legendary …

We knew it from day one. [laughs] No, we did not. Honestly, it was a struggle just to finish the movie. We were under-funded. We shot in Tennessee, but we left 12 weeks later. We were supposed to be there for four weeks, so everything fell apart. We put it back together again. It fell apart — raise a little more money, shoot a little more. So most people think it was 1981, when it came out, but you’re close. But it’s really 1979 is when we actually shot the movie, and then it took several other years just to cobble the thing together. So, no, there was no heightened sense of oh my God we’ve got Star Wars on our hands. We felt fortunate that we had just enough money to finish the damn thing.

On whether he was OK with the gore …

Going in, we knew we wanted to have no holds barred. The only scene I objected to as an individual was the vine rape scene, but it wasn’t my character they were doing it to. So my dog wasn’t really in that fight.

On how he approached the role of Ash …

Well, look the first Evil Dead is pretty straight. It’s kind of a melodrama. There’s not a lot of cracking jokes. By the second Evil Dead, he’s sort of like a veteran with a little more sardonic cracks here and there. By the time you get to Army of Darkness, he’s sort of the ugly American. He’s morphed into the full braggadocious guy — I’ve been through stuff; get out of my way. And then by Ash vs. Evil Dead, now he’s on the downslope. The guy is picking up chicks at the Last Call. He’s doing mescaline. It was fun to follow the character as he progresses and digresses.

On whether he wanted more episodes of Ash vs. Evil Dead …

You can never tell a company that’s putting up the money that they need to pay you more and finance more seasons because they have their own agenda, and they gave us three seasons, which is a fair shot. … Hey, they allowed us to do three seasons of basically unrated television, so fans certainly got their mouthful.

On whether he likes changing it up in his career …

I come from Detroit where in manufacturing they would do job rotation, like Fridays you’d work on tires, next week you’d work on fenders. This is in the factory, working in the auto factory, so it would be a way to keep the workers sort of interested. So, yeah, I love bopping in front of the camera, behind. This year I’m going to be a publisher. I’m going to publish a bunch of books later this year. I started a publishing company because there are a lot of projects that’ll never get made into movies, but doggone it, they sure can be made into novels and books and all kinds of fun stuff. … I’ve got 10 prospective books that I’ll sort of squeeze out over the next couple years. I’m just prepping each one, coming up with a cool cover. There’s tons of projects over the years that I developed. You look at it, and you go, well, no one is going to put up $10 million for this movie. But it won’t cost that much to put it out as a book because I think there’s a lot of stories that we thought were cool. I’d hate for them to wind up in a digital graveyard.

On whether he would ever play Ash again …

I’m officially retired, but I’m sure actors have said that before. I feel like I left it all out on the table for the TV show, and then beyond that, there wasn’t much I was either able or interested in lending to it. I’m going to do the voice for the video game. We’re doing an official Evil Dead game.

On whether he likes to meet fans at conventions …

I have no problem with it. It’s a fun interaction. You get to see new towns and see what folks are up to. You can do your own market research about what are they into, what are they like, what are they all about, who are they, how old are they, what do they look like, so that’s pretty fun. And staying relevant in front of a crowd is always fun, to torment the kids, so I’ll probably get that done if they’ll let us. I might do a drive-in movie tour later this summer.

On the fans who like the sequels as much as the original Evil Dead …

I just know that it was nice of them to embrace the rest of the movies, for different reasons. There are aficionados who like the straight horror of Evil Dead. There are people who like the wackiness of Evil Dead 2, which is sort of splat-stick. And there are some people who can’t really handle the gore, and they like Army of Darkness. It’s jokes; it’s talking skeletons. I mean a 12-year-old could watch Army of Darkness.

On being remembered for Ash above any other role …

You can’t predict how the viewing public will want to remember you over the years. I’m OK with it because Evil Dead got me into the film business and has given me gainful employment for years. What I found in the past is there’s no point grousing over what you think you are perceived as. Every person perceives an actor differently. If you only watch westerns, you might watch The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. and love it, but hate Evil Dead. You might love spy shows and watch Burn Notice, but you’re still not going to watch Evil Dead. So I’ve found I’m sort of known by what people watched, and that’s good. I’m OK, as long as they watch.

#Bruce Campbell #The Evil Dead #Evil Dead

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morgynemberisagenderfluiddaddy · 3 years

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All of them *^*

Heya Ash!! Oof you're giving me a project lol thank you so much for the ask!!!

1. How big is your mods folder?

That is a really great question. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but it got to the point where I had to put all my mods on a thumb drive and only move them around as I need them because I'm computer was running so terribly. So I'd say it's a lot 😅.

2. How would you describe your style?

Uh, I would say very graphic novel type vibes. I'm a huge graphic novel buff and the story I'm actually working on I intended to be a graphic novel, but it really got away from me and is much too big for that now (not a brag, just my legitimate crack head antics) so when I got into Sims editing the thought was always to kind of keep the drawn/comicbook-y feel to it.

3. What is your favorite challenge?

Thus far it's been the stereotype challenge ! It was a lot of fun and I got to do it with four of my OCs who ended up fitting the criteria pretty well! I just think it came out really well both as an edit and as my OCs.

4. Do you make CC?

Aahahaahahahhaahahaah!!!!!! No. I tried to make poses one time! One singular time and it ended so poorly that I decided to swear off making anymore off my own CC for the distant future. Maybe I'll try it again, maybe I'm scarred for life, only time can tell!

5. What type of CC do you hoard?

I had answered this one before, but I FUCKING LOVE POSES!!!! And like I said I didn't have the best experience making my own so I prefer to use downloaded ones. But I never really clean out my poses in case I need them for something else! So my pose folder is astronomical at this point.

6. What default eyes and skin do you use?

You know.... This really is a question I should have the answer to but I'm totally drawing a blank right now so I'll go ahead and put a link to the eyes here and the skin here when I can look it up! ✌

7. How many URLs have you had, and what are the meanings behind them?

On this blog I've only had the one? And I feel like it's pretty self explanatory, I love Morgyn because 1.) They're the absolute best 2.) Untamed magic? Yes ma'am! 3.) They're gender fluid / nonbinary like me!! And 4.) They're an absolute snack!!!! So it was a perfect fit for me.

8. Who is your favorite gameplay blog?

Why would you do me like this??????? I can't choose!!! I love them all and I'm friends with all of them because they're absolutely amazing people that I love so much!!! I don't have a favorite! 🥺

9. Favorite story telling blog?

Please see above answer!!!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS ALL SO MUCH I AHDHAHSGA I CANT!!!!

10. Who is your favorite CC creator?

I don't really want to answer this one either 😭 but I think the only person I know that makes CC is the awesome @barbieaiden they made a really kick ass emo glove CC that I absolutely love and you should check out. (Sorry if the rest of you make CC I'm sure I've probably seen it, probably even downloaded and reblogged, but this is all I can think if right now 💜) Also my go to for all pose stuff is the glorious @katverse they do incredible poses for pretty much anything you could think up, highly recommend.

11. How do you edit you photos?

This is certainly going to get a few gasps, but I make all of my edits on my phone!!!!! I use just a basic free photo editor app and kind of bend it to my will to get what I want out of it! I'm really bad at figuring out stuff like Photoshop and I'm not willing to pay the expensive price when I can do it and get just as good as a result as I want from something free easy and portable.

12. What's the last screenshot you took?

Once again it has to do with an edit I'm working on so here's the last one I put up if you're interested.

13. What do you do when you are unmotivated?

Honestly, this! Editing and the Sims are my escape from the real world. It helps me when I'm having a hard time with my anxiety because it gives me control over something, it helps me a lot with writer's block I can't tell you how my stories have been inspired because of it. But I guess if I'm bored in the game I usually just start a new save or play another game for a bit, I always come back after like a day though! To be fair I haven't been doing this long enough to feel unmotivated yet, maybe we should revisit this when I've been doing this longer than two months 😅

14. Who is your current favorite Sim?

Ugh!!! As you guys have found out about me I don't like to play favorites......... But if I had to say maybe my OC Parker's Sim, he just came out perfectly and is just spot on.

15. Who is your current favorite Sims that isn't yours?

Guidry!!!! He's frickin' hilarious and just so great. I honestly didn't expect them to put as much into him as they did but I'm glad they did!!! He's the best!! He's no Morgyn, but he's pretty great too.

16. Recreate someone else's Sim in your style.

So this sounds like a lot of fun! But I really don't want to change anyone else's Sim, I know how much we all put into them and they're basically like our babies. They mean a lot, so unless I get explicit consent from someone saying I can use their Sim in my style I'm going to pass out of respect this time.

17. Do you talk about the Sims with people in your life?

Yes! One of my really close friends is the whole reason I'm into editing and mods and stuff! She showed me everything I know and is totally awesome for that. (@jennifermakesstuff on Instagram, go check out she's absolutely amazing and a crocheting god, go do it)

18. How many packs do you own?

.......... I don't want to answer this..... It's honestly a problem..... But I have them all.... Minus the star wars one I just I cannot bring myself to get it, it just looks terrible. But yeah I collect the packs and it's a problem 😅 but if you need advice on what pack to get next I'm your person!

19. How many posts do you have on your blog currently?

141 👀 I uh.... I have nothing else to say about that lol

20. How many drafts do you have currently?

Too many. But they're all like ask games and stuff for my OCs so yup!

21. How many posts are currently in your queue?

Only two 🙃 I need to get back to editing so I can hopefully have some more but I'm sick right now so... Maybe it's time for me to start that gameplay I've been threatening.

22. Have you ever moved blogs?

Okay yes, but not intentionally but I've moved three times? I had a blog for when I first started on tumblr it was for music stuff but I forgot to pass code to it so now it's just there, the other one I had was for my art & make up stuff but it wasn't doing good at all so I just turned it into my personal blog, and then from there I moved to this one! Also I'm avoiding my personal one like the plague right now because of a whole disaster that happened with someone I followed and I don't have the balls to unfollow them so I'm just pretending that account doesn't exist 😅.

23. Are you in any Sims related discords?

Yep! This one right here by the very amazing @clumsyghostie I'm really new to discord so it's the only one I've been apart of (EVER) but everyone has been really nice and friendly!!

24. What are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (Paranormal)

I like it! It added more to the gameplay than past packs have, but I always felt it left something to be desired in the way of CAS and build mode. Spoilers starting here if you care: Also it would've been cool if you could have had more interactions with Temperance like you can with Guidry, and if the specters did more that would be cool too. Either way I think it's good, I wouldn't say it's groundbreaking for the game experience, but it is fun.

25. How many hours have you played the Sims?

Let's find out 3,215 hours 😅 that's board line a problem hahaha if my math is right (it probably isn't because I'm gay and bad at math) that's a hundred and thirty three days straight? Jesus I might need help lol.

26. If you play gameplay, do you play with mods?

I used to! But I play on a regular laptop so it can't really run gameplay mods unfortunately so unless I'm doing edits my game is vanilla.

27. What's the furthest you've gotten on a challenge?

So I'm really bad at challenges! My favorite lately has been rags to riches it's a lot of fun but I always get bored after they get married and pregnant :/ I never know what to do after that because like the challenge is over but I'm so invested in these Sims 😅

Thank you again for the asks! This was a lot of fun 💖 I know I answered all the questions just now but feel free to send me an ask for whatever you want! I love interacting with you all, you're all so amazing 💖💖💖

#get to know the simblr #get to know me #izzy answers things #izzy speaks but i really shouldnt #lilypixels #love ya ash!!!#ask game #ask #send me an ask if you want

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script-a-world · 4 years

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Clearly there are some settings which make no sense scientifically. But how do I decide when to intentionally ignore reality, can't bother to do research, don't understand research, and thus create scientifically impossible places? When are such things considered be offensive or overused cliche or have a reader point out the impossibility and can't get into the story? I'm guessing some of this might be structural issues instead of world building?

Tex: One of the perils of attempting to write about highly technical subjects is that you run into the issue of not understanding your writing. I do raise a nominal objection as your first sentence, because sensibility is a sliding scale based on one’s familiarity with a given subject. I don’t know crap about, say, textile art (however much I might have bluffed readers in the past - no, no, this is just good googling skills on my end), but that doesn’t mean the textile arts are an inherently incomprehensible subject.

Scientifically, automobiles were once thought to be insensible. Scientifically, phones were thought to be a flight of fancy. Scientifically, 3D printing was improbable. Scientifically, quantum computing was the stuff of sci-fi nerds who just wanted to slap the “quantum” label on everything.

And yet we are now on the verge of robotic vehicles, mostly functional smartwatches, laser printing cells (PDF), and quantum computers (VentureBeat, IBM).

So I would argue that the insensibility of a setting would be due mostly to, yes, a structural issue - on the part of the author. No matter what you put into your world, internal consistency is key; nothing, no matter how ostensibly outlandish, will make sense if you contradict yourself.

I’ll volley a few questions back to you:

“[...] when to intentionally ignore reality” - Are you ignoring reality entirely, or just parts of it? Why? How does that decision benefit your world? How does it detract from your world?

“Can’t bother to do research” - Is it because you are discouraged by the breadth of your comprehension of a subject, compared to the subject’s depth? Or is it because of something else?

“Don’t understand research” - Is this because you don’t understand the academic papers that turn up in your search results, or because you have a fundamental lack of or misunderstanding of the given subject? Or is it because of something else?

“When are such things considered to be offensive or overused cliche” - As someone who intentionally arranges their studying around the plausibilities of the future, I would quite frankly be delighted to see more conceptual stretches of the imagination in this regard, as do many others on this blog, and beyond it. Why have you already passed judgement on the offensiveness or clichéd-ness of incorporating scientific things? Is this related to your other comments?

“[...] or have a reader point out the impossibility and can’t get into the story?” - If you are writing to please a specific individual or demographic, you are inevitably always going to fall short, because it’s genuinely impossible to meet every single item on a group’s wishlist without devoting your life to it (not an entirely worthy pursuit, in my opinion, but alas). What made you decide to be so concerned over the potential reaction to your stories that you worry about it before the story is even written?

I think I will put the majority of my curiosity’s weight on the last bullet point, as I’m seeing similar themes with the other portions of your question. It’s a fruitless endeavour to tie yourself into knots over a possible (not necessarily probable!) reaction - and quite likely from a stranger, to boot. Education is a relatively easy situation to fix, so long as you’re patient with yourself; dealing with anxieties over readers is… not so easy.

I can really only recommend that you take a close look at the goals of your worldbuilding, and see where you contradict yourself - once you have that in hand, it’s a relatively simple yes/no process of what concepts you want to keep. If the issue of decision comes from a lack of understanding, then make a note to yourself to seek out either the million wikis we Pylons utilize ourselves like any other worldbuilder, or to chalk it up as a genuine lack of context.

Please understand that even someone who’s dedicated their life to a certain aspect of science won’t know everything about it - that’s the point of research! We’re constantly asking ourselves questions, and pushing the envelope of known boundaries. Star Wars has lightsabers, but we don’t need to know how they work; likewise with holodecks in Star Trek. So long as an audience is reasonably entertained with the least amount of head-scratching, you can get away with handwaving quite a lot.

Lockea: On a scale between Star Trek and Star Wars, how “hard” is your science fiction?

I mention that mostly to illustrate that science fiction exists on a continuum, wherein science fiction with more “science” than “fiction” drives a story towards the harder end rather than the softer end. Also, a story’s place on the continuum will change based on what we know and understand about science.

I feel like everyone always beats me to saying all the important stuff about questions, so I’ll just give a few thoughts from my personal experience as a science fiction fan with two engineering degrees and a thesis about robots on the moon (yes really, I wrote my thesis on AI for moon robots). I really, really, love the creativity of science fiction writers. I think so often in defending the genre, we can get caught up in saying things like “science fiction predicted XYZ!” Well, sure, I may have studied Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics in my introduction to engineering ethics course, but I was also greedily reading my way through “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins at the same time. The fact that I sincerely doubt Panem will ever happen didn’t dampen my enjoyment of Katniss’s story. It was a fun read and it gave my friends and I something to talk about that wasn’t “feasibility of Battlestar Galactica” during our daily lunches.

The thing about writing science fiction is that, without a doubt, there will be someone who knows more than you about a topic who reads your story. Most of the time, I end up being that someone since everyone likes to talk about Skynet and robots taking over the world to a roboticist who sincerely refers to artificial intelligence as artificial stupidity. Y'all are seriously overestimating the field, my friends. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” even as I thought how impossible Project Insight would be. Honestly, something every READER of science fiction needs to make peace with is the fact that writers will get something wrong. Writers, despite their best efforts, are not always going to understand that a facial recognition algorithm will fail if you introduce tiny amounts of random noise and are thus going to treat The Algorithm™ as infallible in your crime drama novel.

It’s not the writer’s fault, though.

That deserves to be on its own line. It is not YOUR fault if you get something wrong. Would it be nice if science literacy was just better all around? Of course! But it’s not your fault if your science literacy isn’t up to snuff enough to parse the article I cited above. It’s also not your job. Your job as the writer is to tell the most interesting story you can and to maintain your own internal rules and logic such that the reader never breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.

I watch Star Wars and get really into the light saber fight scenes and forget that light sabers are basically impossible to make. Star Wars has the Force, which is basically magic, and that’s okay. Really. I KNOW it’s not possible, but I still have a lot of fun watching it!

So yeah, write that story about how the robots are going to take over the world. I’ll probably enjoy reading it even as I laugh off my friends telling me that I will be the first to die in the robot apocalypse (of course I will -- I have five robots in my living room alone).

Constablewrites: Tone and consistency are the biggest pieces of this for me. If it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is usually a detailed and plausible explanation, then getting an answer later that is implausible or slapdash will stand out more. But if it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is “You push that button and it goes whoosh” from the start, my expectations adjust accordingly. (It’s possible to have the latter version in a story that is mostly the former, frequently when it’s played for last. Again, tone is key.)

So yeah, a lot of this is execution and the way the story sticks to the rules it sets for itself, and also how central the implausibility is to the story. A realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic for a background bit might be a little jarring, but not nearly as much as a realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic to set up its main showdown. The more central it is to the story, the more consistency and accuracy matters. Learning how to balance this can take some practice and some insight from beta readers.

#pylons #research #believability #worldbuilding #Anonymous

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athingthatwantsvirginia · 4 years

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A Patti Smith Envelope

PART THIRTY-FOUR OF THE DO YOU SEE HER FACE? SERIES

Pairing: Jess Mariano x Original Character (Ella Stevens)

Warnings: anxiety about future, plentiful pop culture references

Word Count: 4.1K

Summary: Ella and Jess move into their new apartment.

A newspaper ad circled in red ink had led them to the cozy one-bedroom four blocks over from Truncheon and six blocks from campus. It was only late April, earlier than Ella was expecting for them to find something. But she had finished finals, had booked gigs working at the art camps at the college over the summer. She had a few weeks off to make art, and hopefully help out in Truncheon. After touring the place, it felt right. An excited tightness in her stomach. Jess, too, had squeezed her hand in elation as soon as they walked through the door. The place had built-in bookshelves on the far wall, the bedroom on the other side. Ella didn’t believe in signs, but even she could agree it was as close to perfect as they were going to get.

Luke had offered to help without even being asked. Chris, Matthew, Leo, and Mabel were all participants to different degrees of willingness, and they hardly needed any more bodies. But Luke insisted the minute Jess had told him the moving date over the phone. It was likely he needed some sort of distraction since April had moved to New Mexico anyway. She wasn’t going to be back until the summer. And it seemed neither Luke nor Lorelai had come to their senses about each other yet.

He rolled up to Philadelphia in his truck two hours before they expected him. He claimed moving wasn’t moving if there wasn’t a truck to help out. Packing up all the stuff in the apartment was easier than Ella expected, just as it had been when she moved out of her childhood home. Jess could be cluttered sometimes, but nowhere near the level of Chris, and most of Jess’s belongings consisted of old band t-shirts and marked up books anyway. Ella, likewise, had most of her records stuffed in the back of her car. The dresser fit in Chris’s SUV after a fair amount of squeezing stuff in. The bed was the real challenge. It turned out Luke’s truck wasn’t such a frivolous vehicle, after all.

A drizzle was just beginning to fall from the gray, cloudy sky as they finished moving all the boxes inside. The apartment, on the second floor of some ancient building, was not exactly up to twenty-first century standards. The pipes were old and cobwebs gathered in the corners. A splinter or two jutted out from the worn down wood floors, golden brown under the dim lights. But the bohemian rug and many lamps they’d scouted out from the thrift shop a week earlier were already proving helpful. Boxes, labeled with mostly Jess’s scrawled, cramped handwriting, were stacked high in the corner of the living room, others gathered on the cracked tile of the kitchen counter.

Ella blew the stray hairs away from her eyes, otherwise pulled back in her black bandana. Her bangs were growing longer, and she was just becoming able to fully tuck them behind her ears. Roses of flushed color bloomed on her cheeks, her skin hot and sticky. Chris had already sprawled out on the dark gray couch, Leo on the arm. The couch, too, was secondhand, bought for ten bucks at the ReStore off the interstate.

“You really should be paying us,” Chris huffed, throwing his arm across his eyes.

Ella scoffed from where she was helping Matthew and Mabel unpack the kitchen. There was actually not much to be done, as Jess and Ella were planning on getting most of their supplies in the following days. There were a few mugs, bowls, spoons. “Consider it payback for the amount of times I’ve made you pie.”

“I was under the impression those were ‘no strings attached’ pies,” Matthew chimed in.

“Or, at most, ‘friends with benefits’ pies,” Mabel added.

Ella rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m taking advantage of all of you. I’m eternally in your debt. But I think we got everything, if you guys wanna get outta here.”

The four of them exchanged glances, eventually coming to a consensus they were exhausted enough to leave and retire to the cold pizza in the fridge at Truncheon. Ella suspected they were excited to have their own rooms for the first night in forever, as Chris had already made work of moving his stuff into Jess and Ella’s old room, before they had even finished moving out. She gave them sweaty hugs and salutes goodbye, finishing with unloading the meager contents of the new fridge.

“Hey, Jess, we’re outta here!” Leo called.

Jess’s head appeared from the doorway to the bedroom. “Good. Better to save yourselves now before World War III breaks out in here.”

From beyond the bedroom door, Luke could be heard grumbling obscenities and fighting with the new bed frame he was struggling to put together.

“See you on the other side, then,” Matthew said, smiling. “Also known as Monday.”

“We’ll see if I make it until then,” Jess shrugged, offering them a small wave. “Thanks, guys.”

“You are not welcome,” Chris grunted, trudging out the door.

Mabel gave Ella one last hug before exiting the apartment, shutting the door softly behind her. A grin broke out on Ella’s face. She and Mabel had gone on more than one lunch together, had even gone shopping once. It was new and Ella was still a bit worried the timid woman would be scared away from a friendship with her, but they were slowly getting to know each other.

As Jess continued grappling with Luke, who went on grappling with the bed frame, Ella finished with their groceries. The kitchenware was more or less unpacked to a decent level. The books were next on her list, followed by the records. Rounding the corner of the counter into the living room, she stopped short of the book boxes.

She put her hands to the hips of her jeans. There were a few water spots on the popcorn ceiling, reminding her of Truncheon. The air smelled cozy, but more of lemon Pledge than anything else. Someone had dusted the built-in bookshelves in the initial flurry of unpacking. During the walk-through of the place, Jess had pointed out the corner next to the couch as the perfect spot for an easel. Looking over it, with familiar furniture moved in, the place seemed more real. Less like a dream for the two of them. The terrace past the small sliding glass door was empty, but she thought maybe they could fit a few chairs. It wasn’t as though the view was spectacular, just a vision of the city street below and the other apartment building opposite. But it was more than enough for two people who had both lived out of their cars for extended periods of time.

An odd sense came over her, one of total novelty. Never before had she had a real say in her home. Her parents lived in the blue house in Stars Hollow before she was born, Lane had moved into her house with Zach and Bryan long before Ella started sleeping on the couch, the apartment above Truncheon had been a simple convenience to everyone involved. But she and Jess had chosen the apartment together. They had admired the cheap price, the proximity to work, the odd seashell tiles in the bathroom. The place seemed to have been built before the contemporary requirements of architectural uniformity. It had a mind of its own inside: a leaky sink and a brick exterior and shag carpet in the bedroom. Not altogether a surprise, considering it was in the artsy housing district near the campus.

“Dammit!” she heard once more from the bedroom.

Heaving a tired but cheerful sigh, she crossed her arms over her Clash t-shirt (borrowed from Jess) and entered the bedroom, to the left of the living room and kitchen, opposite from the tiny bathroom. Luke and Jess were both hunched over the metal frame, trying to hold both the headboard and the footboard up and attach the middle section. Their faces were angry and red, frustration radiating off of them.

“Hey, so, it’s past seven,” she announced, eyebrows raised at their trouble.

Jess jumped slightly, his back to her, at the sound of his voice. The footboard slipped out of his grip.

“Oh, for the love of-” Luke began.

“It’s fine,” Ella interjected calmly, going over and placing a hand on Jess’s upper back. He panted but said nothing as his uncle continued fussing.

“Where did you even get this? There’s no damn instructions!” Luke said, readjusting the hat on his head.

“The discount store,” Jess answered, glaring down at the frame and over at the mattress, which stood leaning against the wall near the dresser. “Not all of us have diner money to fall back on.”

“Anyway,” Ella continued, “I bet we could all use some food. Jess, maybe you could drive Luke down to that place on Birch and get some sandwiches? I can finish with the bed.”

Luke shook his head. “Ella, I don’t think-”

“She probably can,” Jess interrupted dejectedly. “I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s those sculpture classes. But she can fix anything. Not just showerheads and cash registers.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Luke said, raising his hands in surrender and leaving the room. He went to grab his coat from the messy pile by the front door.

Ella stifled a laugh. “My god, he’ll never change.”

“Why is he coming with me to get the food?” Jess asked under his breath.

“Because I think he’ll have a stroke if he doesn’t stop with this bed. And he doesn’t know where the place on Birch is. You do,” she explained, giving him a peck on the cheek before going to try her hand at the bed.

Shoulders sagging with fatigue, Jess gave a begrudging nod, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Fine. Hopefully he’ll be less Vesuvius and more Mauna Loa by the time we get back.”

“Not everyday you hear a good volcano metaphor,” she quipped, assessing the middle section of the bedframe and deciding to take it apart altogether.

“I know. Imagine how dull your life would be without me,” Jess shot back, a small smirk tugging at his lips despite his frazzled state. “Turkey?”

She nodded. “You know me too well, James Dean.”

“Agreed,” he said with a teasing laugh.

“Fuck off,” she replied through a chuckle.

Jess’s smirk grew as he turned on his heel to leave. “Love you back, Stevens.”

. . .

The windshield wipers of Jess’s rust bucket screeched against the glass as he rolled down Birch Street, away from the sandwich shop. A white paper bag full of subs sat in the passenger seat atop Luke’s lap. In one hand, Luke held a bouquet of deep red tulips. Jess hadn’t remembered the florist shop where Ella had worked the previous summer was right down the road from the sandwich place. He’d stopped in for the bunch of blooms as they waited for their order to be filled. The plastic wrapper around the bouquet crinkled in Luke’s fist as he braced himself, Jess rounding a damp corner.

“I told you we should’ve taken my truck,” Luke grumbled.

Sighing, Jess fought to keep his jaw untensed. “My car’s fine. It’s driven us across the country more than once.”

“Before or after it broke down on the highway and Coop had to have it towed back to Stars Hollow?” Luke asked, his voice tired and strained.

“Not sure. I know for a fact it was after you stole my car, though,” Jess retorted, eyes on the slick roads. He wished the radio was on, but the memories of Luke whining about his album choices were still too recent in his mind.

Heaving a large sigh, Luke gave a shake of his head. “Fine. I give up.”

“Thank you,” Jess muttered.

“You’re welcome,” Luke shot back irritably.

But then he looked over at Jess. His hair was no longer greased, his clothes fit better, his eyes were clearer. Most of the time, his brow was no longer drawn in anger or his face a scowl. Even his posture was different; straighter, brighter, more self-assured. And then he thought of Ella. She looked much the same as she had during her last few weeks at work, with her wide smile and loud laugh. The smiles were more frequent, though, and she seemed so relaxed around her friends. Even around Rory she had sometimes seemed a bit nervous to Luke, as though she were worried over a misstep.

Luke couldn’t contain the small grin on his grizzled face. “I’m really proud of you, Jess.”

Snorting a laugh, Jess spared Luke a quick glance before turning back to the road. They were only a few minutes away from the new home, but Philly traffic was never reliable, even on a Saturday. “Let’s put away the pom-poms for now.”

“I’m just sayin,’” Luke began with a shrug, “got your own company, your own apartment with Ella. You really seem to be doin’ great.”

Jess gave a short, humble nod, but took a long pause before he spoke another word. “Lorelai proposed to you, right?”

Luke’s brow crinkled. “Yeah?”

“But you proposed to Nicole?”

“Yeah.”

Humming under his breath, Jess gave another nod. Red brake lights glowed in the rainy evening darkness. “When did you know...how you wanted to propose?”

“Jess, are you gonna propose to Ella?” Luke asked, eyes going wide and smile growing.

“Never said that,” Jess answered nonchalantly, shaking his head. “Just never really delved into that part of your personal history. Figured I’d ask. Maybe I wanna get to know you better, uncle dearest.”

Rolling his eyes at Jess’s old patterns of behavior, Luke didn’t let his smile waver. He looked down at the bouquet in his hand. “Well, considering it was an impulse cruise ship marriage, not a lot of thought went into it. It just sort of happened. If you’re asking me how to propose to Ella-”

“Which I’m not.”

“-then I’d say she loves you and she’ll say ‘yes’ no matter what. And I’d say that you know her better than anyone in the world, and you shouldn’t...second-guess yourself. Do what feels right.”

“And did an Elvis impersonator marry you two on that cruise?” Jess continued.

Luke bit back another sigh. “No, wiseass. It was a regular minister.”

“Huh,” Jess chirped wryly. “You learn something new everyday.”

. . .

Patti Smith spun on the record player as the rain grew stronger outside. Though it was a pain in the ass to unpack the record player, Ella decided it just wouldn’t truly be home without the grace of music on the first night. Luke had left about an hour earlier, though they insisted he could stay over. He said he was nervous enough leaving Lane and Caesar in charge of the diner for one day, and he didn’t want to be late for the morning shift the next day. It made Ella roll her eyes, but eventually she gave up trying to convince him. It wasn’t as though she expected Luke to change his ways. The tulips sat in a mug of water on the kitchen counter, to be placed in something fancier and on something fancier once they actually had a makeshift dining area. For the moment, only the big pieces from the old place and the bed were filling up the small apartment. Ella had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at Luke’s face when he saw she had put the bed together all by herself, finished before they got back with the sandwiches. An expression of extreme frustration had slowly melted into pride. Both were memorable.

Between Jess and Ella, who sat cross-legged on the floor on either side of the coffee table in the living room, was a half-eaten pie. One of the few leftovers from Truncheon they had lugged over to put in the fridge before an actual grocery run. The apple crust was a bit soggy, but the filling was surprisingly good cold. She found herself so wholly content as they sat together: eating pie, listening to records, in the dim lamplight of the first place which was solely theirs. It all struck her with a force she wasn’t expecting. She chuckled to herself as she grabbed another forkful, eating away at the half they had not even bothered to cut but just dug into instead.

“What?” Jess asked through a sweet mouthful, furrowing his brows at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t this all seem a little...surreal to you?”

“Does what seem surreal?”

“Just...we have an apartment together. And you own a business. And I only have a year left of grad school. I just...sometimes I can’t believe it’s happening. I can’t believe it turned out the way it did. You don’t feel that?” she asked, lowering her eyes sheepishly.

He cracked a small, crooked smirk. “I don’t know. I always just sort of thought I’d end up where I’d end up. And here I am. With you. Not a bad place to be.”

She rolled her eyes, a blush coloring her cheeks. “I know about your Kerouac philosophy. But just...when you first met me, did you ever think in a million years this is where we’d be now?”

“I didn’t know exactly where we’d be. But, I knew I’d land somewhere. I didn’t know if I’d land with you, but I wanted to. Maybe it’s a little surreal, but it doesn’t surprise me,” he explained, leaning his elbows onto the scratched wooden surface of the table with arms crossed.

Snorting a laugh at his insouciance, Ella finally locked eyes with him again. “It just feels a little too good to be true, I guess. I mean, you go to school your whole life, you work towards something your whole life. Once it happens, once you’re near the end...I just never thought it would actually happen. I don’t know what’s next.”

She tugged at her earring with her right hand. Jess noticed the chipped blue polish on her nails, though they weren’t bitten down. He couldn’t quite decipher her mood. Not that she seemed sad or distant, but he could tell she was having a hard time articulating herself. And he could tell she was letting an old worry creep up on her; she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He allowed his smirk to grow into a full smile and dropped his fork into the pie tin. “C’mon, you’re gonna figure it out. You know you are. I’m the directionless one. You’ve always been able to do anything. You’re plan girl.”

Ella gave a mirthful scoff. “You’re not directionless, Jess. And I’m not plan girl. Rory was always plan girl. I was try-to-make-it-to-the-finish-line-without-tripping girl.”

Jess hummed thoughtfully, about to reply. But she spoke again before he had a chance to.

“I thought you had a thing for her, y’know,” she said, taking another bite of pie.

“Who?”

“Rory.”

“Really?” Jess asked, and he couldn’t hide the bewildered amusement in his tone. “When was this?”

She shrugged and narrowed her eyes for a moment in memory. “Just when you first got to Stars Hollow. I mean, you hated Dean, and you like a lot of the same things, and you seemed to get along with her.”

“No. It was pretty much always just you,” Jess said, shaking his head slightly. “Maybe we liked a lot of the same stuff, but...I didn’t ever feel like she...got me like you do.”

“Oh, she didn’t, Kurt Cobain?” she teased, raising her eyebrows. She put her fork down in the tin next to his, her stomach full. Her eyes were beginning to get tired, her body starting to ache from the day of moving. She was glad the bed was put together.

He raised his hands in joking defense. “Hey, I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. Remember that night she was tutoring me?”

“The night you crashed her car? Yeah, it rings a bell,” she replied.

“Yes, that one,” Jess continued, smiling sardonically at her. “We were talking about the future. And she kept getting on me about how I had to do better and I had to go to college, just like she did, or else I would have no life.”

The smile which tugged at Ella’s lips was slightly bitter but mostly fond. “Sounds like Rory.”

“Everyone in Stars Hollow thought I was the antichrist. Maybe Rory didn’t, and maybe we were friends, but she definitely wasn’t okay with who I was then. Maybe she thought, with enough Schoolhouse Rock videos, she could get me to shape up,” Jess continued, taking small glances out the sliding glass door as he spoke. He could see a sliver of the city lights past another building on the right side. It was better than the bland brick wall and the dumpster which served as his view from the room in Truncheon.

“Hey, she is an amazing tutor. If there was anyone who could’ve converted you to the Ivy League conveyor belt, it was her,” Ella said.

“Yeah, but you and I both know school was never the way I was supposed to go. It was the way you were supposed to go, but you didn’t try to get me to be anything other than what I was,” he told her, voice light but eyes sincere.

Ella felt her heart skip a beat, but shrugged again. “I don’t know. I definitely tried to get you to ditch those CDs.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” he replied.

“Speaking of, I figured out how I’m gonna organize the books,” she said, tossing a look past his shoulder at the empty shelves.

“How is that a ‘speaking of’?” he asked, a confused smirk coming over his face.

“I’m doing genre, then alphabetical order by author. The way you used to do your CDs when we were in high school,” she explained.

“Oh.” Jess had his eyes trained on her, watching as she undid her bandana and ran her fingers through her mess of blonde hair. He chewed on his bottom lip. Then, after a pause filled only with Patti Smith’s poetry, he blurted out: “Y’know, you were the first person I ever said ‘I love you’ to. The only person.”

Her gaze softened and she nodded. “Me too.”

“No, Stevens, I mean anyone. Not just Nora Ephron kind of love. Not family either,” he said, most insistent, though he did his best to keep his tone nonchalant. As though it were just a run-of-the-mill fact about his past.

She stopped for a moment, brow crinkling. “Your mom never said it to you? Not even hippie dippie Liz?”

“No. We weren’t that kind of family. She wasn’t that kind of mom.”

A crease of concern deepened between her brows. Every time it had come up before, she assumed both of them meant romantic love. Familial was a different beast. But she had to remind herself never to assume with Liz, no matter how she seemed. Jess had arrived when Liz was a binge-drinking nineteen-year-old.

Before her brief interlude in the ‘love doesn’t exist’ frame of mind, before her mother’s death, Ella’s world had been filled with ‘I love you’s. Mostly from her mother, in her soft voice, with her delicate perfume. Some from her grandmother, and even from her father. And after, Lorelai had sometimes said them in passing. Rory, too. The three words, no matter how commonplace they could sound, were important, she knew. Especially when they weren’t uttered, or stopped being uttered.

She opened her mouth to say something, then bit the inside of her cheek and hesitated. Rising from her place, she rounded the corner of the coffee table and went over to him. Jess tilted his head at her in askance, but she only answered him by sitting down in his lap, straddling him as their noses drew only inches apart. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and simply hugged him. For a moment, he sat motionless, his muscles tense. It wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting, if he’d been expecting one at all. But then, he circled his own arms around her waist. They sat there, breathing slow and clinging to each other, for a long time. Patti Smith droned on around them, enveloping them.

Eventually, she pulled away and ran her fingers affectionately through his hair. He looked up at her, unsure of what to say. Fortunately, she took the lead, gaze unwavering as she spoke in her quiet, husky voice.

“Jess, you’re the fucking best. You’re my favorite person. And you’re gonna be hearing ‘I love you’ every day for the rest of our life,” she assured him, matter-of-fact. “So, I suggest you get used to it.”

“Right back at ya,” he replied after an awestruck pause, just before their lips met.

In spite of the fuss over the bed frame, Jess and Ella ended up spending the night on the worn rug in the living room, nearly naked underneath the first throw blanket they could find in the boxes around them.

#jess mariano #jess #mariano #jess mariano fanfiction #jess mariano x oc fanfiction #jess mariano x original character fanfiction #jess mariano imagine #jess mariano imagines #jess mariano au #gilmore girls fanfiction #gilmore girls oc fanfiction #gilmore girls au #gilmore girls imagines #gilmore girls imagine #luke danes

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kolbisneat · 4 years

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MONTHLY MEDIA: May 2020

Well there’s another month come and gone. TV and books seems to be what I gravitate towards whilst in quarantine. Anyway here’s the month of May in a wordy nutshell!

……….FILM……….

Blockers (2018) I was mostly drawing while my partner watched this but from what I heard and occasionally saw, it was fun! Silly and gross and I’m not reeeeally sure who the target demo was, but it had a modern and more nuanced perspective on sexuality so that’s cool.

……….TELEVISION……….

Mad Men (Episode 1.11 to 3.03) WHO KNEW THIS SHOW WAS SO GOOD?!? The amount of screentime dedicated to advertising seems to be dwindling a bit, but oooooh there’s still so much juicy office drama (something I think I enjoy because of being self-employed and working from home). It looks like we’ll fail at our attempt to finish the series before it leaves Netflix in June but it was fun while it lasted.

Sex and the City (Episode 1.01 to 2.06) Returning to this for something when we don’t have time to watch Mad Men (or need something lighter) and it’s hitting the spot. We’re slowly getting past the era of randos talking to the camera (and mostly past Carrie breaking the fourth wall). I was in college when I first watched this and I’ve come to realize how much I’ve grown as a human as I only now have enough self-awareness to recognize I’m a Charlotte.

Gravity Falls (Episode 1.09 to 1.15) We’ve since slowed down on this a bit but I’m really excited to get back into it as season 2 is just so good!

Disney Gallery: Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Episode 1.01 to 1.04) The first three eps didn’t really do much for me. The one on the directors was cool as I didn’t realize how many there were, but it would’ve been great if they talked a little more about what they brought to the table or why they took this on. Ep 4 on technology was more my speed but overall this still kinda just feels like surface level stuff. Loooots of time spent on actors and directors and professionals complimenting each other and I am not here for that.

……….READING……….

Illuminatus! Part 1: The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (Page 204/304) What a trip. It’s pretty much what I expected from an comedic book revolving around the illuminati/secret societies from the 1970s, though it took me ages to adjust to the writing style. I’m really enjoying it, but be warned that there’s no major break between narrators so it can jump between plots with each new paragraph. It feels, at times, like a tone poem, but maybe that’s me putting more of the generation into the text than was intended. Again, I think I like it, but am pretty sure I’m missing a lot.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (Complete) Such a stellar read. I loved Novik’s Uprooted and while you could read either in any order, they both feel of the same world. Both books are full of fairytale danger akin to the traditional stories. They’re beautiful and uncertain and familiar and new. I realize I’m being super vague and general but it’s because it’s so hard to pin down what’s excellent about this book. It’s just good and if you like fantasy and classic fairy tales with layered characters and a more nuanced approach to good and evil then read this AND Uprooted.

Umbrella Academy Volume 3: Hotel Oblivion by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba (Complete) It’s great to get back to this world but I think I need to give it another read. The first two volumes were frantic, but there was typically a clear drive or sense of what the big picture was. Volume 3 felt like a buildup or segue into the next story being told and that’s...not great.

Satania by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet (Complete) I’ve rambled at length about how much I love past books by these two (particularly Beautiful Darkness) but this one didn’t connect quite the same. The story only scratched the surface of (admittedly really interesting) themes and I would’ve loved for it to get fleshed out further. The art is consistently incredible and their take on a subterranean world is breathtaking. I recommend if you want to read every book by these two, but wouldn’t suggest this as your first introduction (for that, Beautiful Darkness, or Beauty).

Hellboy Library Edition Vol 5 & 6 by Mike Mignola, Duncan Fegredo, Dave Stewart (vol.5 and 6), and others (vol. 6) (Complete) A return to form. Fegredo is such a great choice for taking over from Mignola for the main story. The final story in volume 6 is still a weird choice to me (especially since the penultimate one would’ve been much better) but I’m so excited to read the next volume. Such an cool chapter in comics history.

GRRL SCOUTS by Jim Mahfood (Complete) Very late 90s. Like soooooooo 90s. Some of the writing hasn’t aged well, but it’s interesting to see how much things have changed in...oh jeez 20 YEARS!

……….AUDIO……….

Staying In with Emily & Kumail (Podcast) As a dedicated listener to their old podcast, The Indoor Kids, it’s great to listen to these two again. Also weirdly comforting that their dynamic and personalities (at least as far as podcasting is concerned) hasn’t changed over the years between then and now. It’s gotta be at least 4 or 5 years, right? Anyway, this is a good listen if you’re navigating the pandemic (jk, we’re all doing that).

Articles of Interest (Podcast) So I think this is technically a miniseries put out by 99% Invisible but I loved season 1 and season 2 is just as good. Every episode is concise and these latest episodes are really diving into new parts of the fashion industry. Very cool.

Unravel Season 4: Snowball (Podcast) I checked this out on a recommendation since our mutual friend went through a similar situation (getting romantically involved with a perpetual con artist) and it was so interesting to see the overlap. It’s just such a wild story of deception and habitual lying and theft and manipulation. Great listen.

Dedicated Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen Exactly the sort of pick-me-up we need right now. Good stuff. Always a treat. Very happy.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The latest session had the group spending...maybe 25 minutes sorting out how they were going to approach the Jolly Roger (ship of the dreaded Captain Hook). Their plan is a mixture of stealth and impersonating what amounts to Pirate Ship Quality Control. We’ll see how that goes. Anyway I’m really excited by how the group is exploring the island and for this book to come out in October!

D&D Homebrew Adventure (Menace of Merlin) The group is sorting out a curse/illness plaguing one of the character’s hometown and...the timing of this plot is not ideal BUT everyone seems to be okay with it. They took out some orcs and hopefully will be able to find the hermit that can help with the slow petrification of the village.

Tyranny of Dragons /Gainfully Employed (Wizards of the Coast) I’m not sure I posted about this last month but the party has just sorted out the cause of a failing lighthouse (that’s magical) and brought the culprit to justice! Now to head out of Phlan and sort out some silly rumors that I’m sure are nonsense.

And that’s it! As always, hit me with your recommendations if you have something I should read/play/watch/or listen to!

Happy Sunday.

#Monthly Media #Rambles #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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spacehologramcollection · 5 years

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Request; The Kombat Krew and Pop Culture.

This is the fluff post for tonight. I am so tired, but I want to upload! This week has been really hard on me. But here we are. Some trash. A little NSFW in places, so to be sure. I’ve added a cut! 18+ under the cut. GIFS do not belong to me.

Kabal;

· Vape nation represent. Kaballin. Got the spins? Ninja Mime 4 was bullshit!

· Pop Culture is something he’s well versed in. He’s a fucking meme spouting shit lord. To be fair.

· He’s seen Johnny’s movies. He invented the fucking drinking game for it. He’s fucking down to rip the shit out of them. Unless Tremor is about. Then he keeps his mouth shut.

· If you like them, he will tease you about them. But not too much.

· He doesn’t let on how much he’s into geek culture. Not to you straight away anyway. You kind of guess when you finally end up back at his apartment.

· First time you go there, everything’s getting hot and heated, he’s got you up against the hallway wall. Before you stumble into the living room and see everything.

· Neatest part of his apartment is his games and comic shelves.

· He goes fucking red. Pretends its not his. He certainly doesn’t play WoW and troll people till 2 in the morning, in nothing but his underwear eating pizza. Those glasses aren’t his either.

· He loves his geeky stuff. And hopes you’ll accept it.

· When you start smiling and rifling through his collection, noting how its impressive, most impressive. He’ll start to smile and relax.

· He explains his love for pop culture came from a need. He always wanted some of it growing up, but his family was poor. So, when he started earning money, he just bought everything his heart ever yearned for.

· He’ll live for movie nights in as well. Like, bad movie night just consists of all of Johnny’s films. You both made a drinking game out of them, take a shot for every explosion that wasn’t needed, when there’s overacting, underacting, just some bullshittery. You both end up on your arse. Fucking slaughtered.

· He loves music too. Like he loves indie music, but not the Smiths. He fucking cannot stand the smiths.

· Oh yeah two words. Trashy Emo music. He knows the lyrics to ‘Check Yes Juliet’ and you cannot tell me otherwise.

· Blurting out ‘Allstar’ whilst on a late-night drive. You trying not to laugh and also grabbing the wheel, as he does all the actions. You love it.

· Reading comics in your pjs/underwear, laid out on his bed, at 2 Am in the morning. Discussing the latest theories, directions for the movies and debating who’s the best hero/ villain.

· Is the type of dick to choose Rainbow Road on Mario Kart all the time.

· Is actually good at the course.

· Is loves vines as well. Whenever its time for him to tell a story, he will always start with some shit like, “There I was, BBQ Sauce on my tiddies”

· Walking meme lord.

Sub Zero (Kuai Liang);

· I’ve touched on this in his full smut fic but here we go.

· He doesn’t have time to himself, and the rare time he gets, he does not wish to devote it to Popular Culture.

· Kuai hasn’t had much exposure to popular culture, as he calls it. He will not refer to it as pop culture. I mean he calls movies, motion pictures in game. So yeah, the man is deprived.

· The brief exposure has had, mainly stems from Johnny and Cassie. Cassie with her memes, snark and references. And the fact Johnny made him watch a few of his films.

· That put him off pop culture for life… well sort of.

· He does love reading fiction, so he has read Game of Thrones, The Witcher and Lord of The Rings. He loves fantasy. It allows him to be transported somewhere other than the temple.

· Fiction was a crutch he used, though he won’t admit it’s a weakness. When he felt alone, isolated and just generally out of synch. He would read.

· He claims its for relaxation purposes, because a good warrior is well rested and in the right mindset.

· When he gets with you though, you’ll have to introduce him to stuff slowly. You don’t want to over-ride his system.

· He ends up watching Lord of the Rings and he does enjoy it. Does not enjoy the Hobbit films though. He does love it.

· He more loves watching a film, because you’ll always end up falling asleep on his chest. Your limbs tangled with his. And you looking so content.

· He doesn’t get a lot of time to himself. But he does love to spend it with you. If you’re really into pop culture, then he will try and devote some time to it. He wants to share your interests after all.

· Is an amazing Dungeon Master when it comes to sticking to the rules. He has a pretty decent campaign, but it takes him ages to craft it. His imagination has its limitations, because he’s trained it that way.

· Comics and Games do not interest him overly. He’s not into them.

· But he loves watching your eyes light up when you play/ talk about them. He loves the passion you have for them. It’s cute.

Scorpion (Hanzo Hasashi);

· Like Kuai, the only exposure he’s ever had to pop culture is from Johnny, Cassie and Takeda. Takeda comes out with some absurd nonsense. Which leaves him staring at him. Shocked, confused and a little grumpy.

· Johnny has made him watch some of his films, read screenplays and storyboards, in an attempt to turn the Shira Ryu into a fucking franchise.

· All starring Grandmaster Grumpy face himself. But there’s a lot more nudity, can you fucking believe it, and there’s a mystical opossum that spreads wisdom.

· Him and Kuai are very similar, in the fact they’ve both been put off it, but are willing to indulge in it. Because of you.

· He’s more into movies. He actually would love some Inception, Shutter Island type bullshit. Complex plots that thrill. He wants to be kept occupied or he’ll get bored.

· He’ll actually enjoy discussions at the end. What he liked, what he didn’t. What he thought he was stupid and if he’d watch it again or something similar.

· Exploration into pop culture.

· If you mention that a particular movies is your favourite, he cannot bring himself to say a bad word about it. So, he ends up growing to love it as much as you do.

· He’ll love to joint read a book together. Then spend hours talking about it. Sleep often eludes him, so its nice that you’re awake with him.

· Music is something he does enjoy, whilst he can see it as distracting, he also views it as a tool for relaxation. Just nothing too trashy. Do not expect him to serenade you with a rendition of ‘Tik Tok’ it’s not happening.

· He prefers slower music, more chilled out, things to relax and unwind to.

· He’ll on occasion, wrap his arms around your waist, holding you from behind. Before swaying gently to the music with you. Whispering sweet nothings in your ear. He loves it.

· He’s not overly into Comics or videogames. BUT, he does have a soft spot for Star Wars. He doesn’t know why he likes it. But he loves him some Space-Bullshit. Happy the family drama isn’t about him. Loves it. Just don’t tell anyone yeah?

Raiden;

· He’s very curious and willing to indulge in it. He knows of Popular Culture, he has seen many a Mortal enjoying it, using it as an escape mechanism. This is totally a dig at myself.

· He’s never understood nor experienced it. But he is very curious, and his eyes are filled with wonder.

· He’s read comics, played some games, watched some movies and read some fiction. He attributes all this exposure to you. You’ve really helped him explore it.

· He loves to read comics however. He enjoys the art style, the worlds created and how much artistry goes into them.

· He won’t admit the plots sometimes get him.

· He loves to explore anything to do with Mortals and their customs. He thinks of it as educating himself.

· He has seen some of Jonny’s movies, reluctantly. Once Johnny found out that you were introducing him to Pop Culture; he insisted on having some of his stuff in there.

· Raiden is not impressed at all. He’s confused by Johnny’s films, he’ll sigh, and comment on how it explains a lot. It explains how one man can be such an idiot.

· Imagine introducing Raiden to Mario Kart. He is so confused. You say its like driving a car, and he’s just like, what?

· Once he gets the hang of it, he really gets into it. He’s fascinated and amazed at technology. He picks it up really quickly.

· As far as music goes, he’s really open to listening to anything and everything. He would prefer more classical music. Anything that can help him relax.

Erron Black;

· Before he went to Outworld, there wasn’t a lot in terms of Popular Culture. It was like 150 years ago.

· So, when he finds out how much the world has changed, he has to admit he is very curious and is willing to explore it with you.

· He would love to binge watch movies with you. Watching Westerns with him is always interesting. With him scoffing and pointing out inaccuracies or stating how fake their accents sound… even though they sound the exact same as his.

· If you make a comment on Harrison Ford as Han, whilst watching Star Wars, he’ll raise an eyebrow and be smug. Because he knows damn well he has a resemblance to him. You cannot deny it. Do not @ me for this trash opinion.

· ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in that outift’ Of course you wouldn’t Erron, of course you fucking wouldn’t.

· Tremor loves Johnny’s movies, and when its his turn for movie night, he always puts one on. Nobody is going to argue with him. So yeah, he’s seen a fuck ton of his movies. Kabal is always bored on his phone. Tremor is really excited and pointing out his favirote bits. Kira is not present, she’s got a date, and the sausage fest that is the Black Dragon rec room, is not on her list of things to do. Kano is probably passed out in a puddle of his own Piss I don’t know.

· So, when you suggest watching Ninja Mime, he shudders and shakes his head. He’d do anything for you, but not that. Until you reveal that there’s a drinking game for it. Then he’s down.

· He would love playing Red Dead Redemption. He fucking loves it. Brings back some memories. He’s impressed by it so much he can overlook some of the inaccuracies.

· Looks after his Horse in RDR. Because he actually misses having a horse.

449 notes · View notes

mk-wizard · 4 years

Text

Review of Rise of Skywalker

I decided to do it now because I am sure that enough people have seen it. If you haven't stop reading right now please because there are spoilers. Also, I do not expect people's opinion to change. This is my personal review based on my point of view. Please be civil about it and don't judge me just as I am not judging you.

I personally think it was a great way to end the saga of Star Wars in general let alone the new trilogy. Everything came full circle, all was resolved, and not only was peace finally achieved, but the characters finally found there own peace as well with their own personal struggles.

Episode 9 really went out of its way to bring everything that had building up to this one final showdown. It really highlighted how tainted the dark side really is. The sith temple looks and feels dark, sad, angry and unnatural with its cubic form and how all the twisted science that was practised there. Things and places that were relevant in the previous instalments still held value now such as 3-CP0's memories, the ship on which Luke faced Darth Vader, the unique way Emperor Palpatine used the force and of course, the long struggle between sith and jedi. The bigger the world became, the more close everything got. And I like that because it showed how connected all these things are and how important they are to the story. And even the ending felt like one last salute to where everything started and where a new beginning may start. I think this is good story telling because the continuity is not only respected, but valued. It is not just a sequel. It is a chapter. It's a work of art to the next level.

As for resolutions, the movie spared no expense at finally giving them and not just for fan theories, but things for the characters that really made their struggles worthwhile. We know Finn who just wanted to do what was right, but he also felt conflicted with where he belonged because he felt like an outcast and as bad as being a storm trooper was, losing that sense of belonging takes a toll. I also suspect this is why Rey was such a special friend to him. He saw himself in her loneliness. Then he found out that there were other ex-storm troopers who turned away from the path of evil. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo who only turned to the dark side because he felt that is where he belonged after realising how everyone including his own teacher feared him. His true motive wasn't that he wanted to be evil. He wanted to be something more than what everyone thought he was and in his defence, people were underestimating him left, right and centre. This is why when his mother Leia finally reached out to him spiritually, it was so touching. He finally got what he wanted and also, realised what he really wanted: to be wanted as he was. Leia wanted her son to come home. She didn't care about what he did or whether he was a jedi or a sith. She just wanted him to come back. And when Kylo got that, he left the dark side for good and redeemed himself as a man.

Finally, there is the mystery of Rey. We all suspected she came from powerful stuff considering how strong the force was in her, but finding out that she was Palpatine's granddaughter was the ultimate reveal because she is, so unlike him and it puts a twist on her desire to be reunited with her blood family. Rey doesn't want to be a Palpatine or to even have power. She just wants to protect the family she found in the rebellion and that is the only reason she wanted to face off with Palpatine. And even when she does resign to killing him in order to take over the throne, it is still for noble intent which only drives home how far Rey will go for those she cares about. In other words, her being a Palpatine by blood didn't change anything. Sure it rattled her, but it didn't break her. And once the fight is all over, she decides to rebuild herself into something positive and finally stops looking behind her. It is also hinted that she intends to build a new jedi order. In other words, life doesn't end after the war. She is making plans and she is living free which is good way to write a character.

Overall, I give the movie a 9/10. It was a great movie that is definitely going to be remembered for generations to come in my opinion.

#star wars rey #star wars #star wars rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker #luke skywalker #finn #princess leia #han solo #ben solo #kylo ren #kylo redemption #review #critique #poe #bb8 #3cp0 #r2d2

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shattbigbang · 5 years

Text

Shatt Big Bang 2019 Master Post

Almost all works have now been posted so we’ve put together this handy-dandy master post for your convenience.

Thank you to everyone that participated in this bang. We really appreciate you sticking with it and we know it was a lot of work. Please know that your work was not in vain because everything posted was absolutely fantastic.

Please don’t hesitate to check out any fics/art you haven’t yet had a chance to look at!

Thank you again from the bottom of our Shatt-loving hearts. <3

@brittysauce and @pastellipastels

Fic: Teachings of the Heart

ART

Rating: G

Summary: Altea High is the home of the lions, famous for being a startup school taking over the boards. For more than a decade the school went under the radar, in every aspect. Funding, academia, extracurricular achievements, student accomplishments. They were all outmatched by the number one school in the state, Galra High. After Allura took over as Principal, her and her friends take the school and flip it upside down, so now they reign supreme among the districts.

These five people have left their high school years behind them five-fold at the least, but now a new High School challenge begins.

Shiro and Matt, high school friends, teachers and hardcore crushers on each other. Both too oblivious and self conscious to make the first move, so their friends and family have decided to finally step in on their behalf. It’s up to them to get these two starry eyed men to stop being so dense towards each other once and for all. However, that is not to say that Shiro and Matt exactly make things easier in any way, because they don’t.

They make it harder and more annoying and painful than stepping on a lego.

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@spazzcat and @luddlestons

Fic: Dragon Love

ART

Rating: T

Summary: Shiro never expected to be assigned to guard the crown prince on his annual inspection tour of the kingdom. And he definitely did not expect the prince to drag him up into the mountains, territory of the feared and deadly dragons. But as it turns out, Prince Matthew has a lot to teach him about dragons--and about his own heart.

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Not submitted.

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@luddlestons and @coogarajasmine and @leolikesromance

Fic: Found: Lost Dog

ART and ART

Rating: T

Summary: Extremely fluffy, approximately four pounds, will eat all of your cheese and none of your dog treats.On second thought, may be a human in a dog's body.Matt is a werewolf, an extremely ferocious beast who just happens to look exactly like a Pomeranian. Running away from Sendak's pack has left him injured and weakened, and he's unable to turn back into a human, which leaves him vulnerable to being unwittingly adopted by a handsome man who finds Matt hiding underneath his car.

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@silverineontherun and @dailycolleenholt

Fic: Because Summer Will Come

ART

Rating: T

Summary: Matthew Holt is a young and enthusiastic editor for Altea Publishing House, a renowned editorial company. After working on a few successful novels, Matt is more than ready for his newest challenge: when Coran is promoted to editor-in-chief, he entrusts him with his favorite writer, T.K. Kuron. Being a fan of his work, Matt is delighted to finally meet the idol he imagines as an old, kind gentleman… but Mr. Kuron, A.K.A. Takashi Shirogane, is not what he expected at all, and his wish to make him write a bestseller at any cost could be the biggest challenge of his career... and also his personal life.

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@velocitytimes2 and @seaglass-sunsets

Fic: To Reach the Top

ART - not submitted

Rating: T

Summary: Takashi Shirogane liked keeping the two most important facets of his life perfectly separate. At school he was senior varsity football captain and star quarterback. Football had been his dad’s dream for him, especially when Shiro ended up going to the same high school as his father. After school, he’d get in his hand-me-down Honda and drive forty five minutes, don a bright teal and white t-shirt and blindingly white shoes and become someone who would be unrecognizable to anyone who knew him at school. He’d become cheerleader Shiro, the Shiro who could do a layout-stepout-double and toss a flyer twenty feet into the air. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of that part of his life, just that he knew his teammates would use it as a way to undermine his football accomplishments, even though he left cheer even more tired than a football game.

So, he kept the two sides of himself completely separate from one another, kept his two things in their own corners. It worked, and he was happy. Until Matt Holt shows up and threatens to tear down the carefully crafted separation between high school and all star cheer, that is.

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@lureavi and @matesparkles

Fic: Heat of the Moment

ART

Rating: T

Summary: Shiro is a professional firefighter, back in the line of duty after an accident in his previous town left him with more than his fair share of physical and mental scars. Matt is a chemistry professor, who aims to take playing with fire to a new level. They can’t help but take an interest in one another.

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@shiroganetakashi and Kopescetic

Fic: Kiss Me Under the Moonlight

ART

Rating: T

Summary: Matt Holt has been quietly in love with his best friend for as long as he can remember, and had to watch as he fell in love with someone else. He can deal with that. Shiro’s happiness is most important, after all.

When they’re both selected for the Kerberos Mission, it’s a dream come true. Then Adam leaves Shiro, and it’s like that dream has fractured. Matt’s there for his friend – he always will be – but six months in space with broken hearts leads to a lot of spilling emotions.

It’s there, in the void of the cosmos, that Matt discovers his feelings may not be as unrequited as he’d thought.

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T12

@black-paladin-babes and @allarica

Fic: The Dancing King, Only Seventeen Million Miles Away

ART and ART

Rating: T

Summary: Heavy Metal.Singing in front of crowds of thousands.The bass thundering in his eardrums.It made adrenaline course and pump through Matt Holt’s veins.It made his heart race in his chest.He loved doing this.The stage raised itself as Matt readied himself in front of the microphone.He could hear the fans chanting their name just above them, sounding loud enough to come from all around them.It was their time to shine.Their hour to sing.

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@eilera-chan and @skydarko

Fic: Make A Little Magic

ART

Rating: M

Summary: “Oh, but where are my manners? I haven't introduced myself, gentlemen. My name is Matt Holt, and I'm a Circle mage for her Majesty Queen Allura Altea, Second of Her Name, Lady of the Sea, Breaker of Stuff, Mother of All, and a bunch of other titles I'm too tired to think of right now. It's my job to keep the peace and you,” he paused, looking them over. “you are not being very peaceful.”

(In which Matt is a mage of considerable power working for the Queen and Shiro is his partner, a werewolf stuck in his wolf form with no memories of his past.)

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@giraffvinu and @hydraxx

Fic: Blooming Into You (Or Under You, Maybe Over You, It’s All Good)

ART

Rating: M

Summary: A story of how Matt and Shiro finally get together after losing each other multiple times during the years they spent in space.

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@velocitytimes2 and @esshieru

Fic: Hidden Scars

ART

Rating: M

Summary:Matthew Holt’s intention had never been to be placed within the hard confines of a mental ward. His intention had been to, well, die.

Takashi Shirogane didn’t have any intentions. If he had any prior to the crash, he didn’t remember them. Neither boy had planned to spend the beginnings of their respective senior years admitted into the bright white and teal hallways of the “esteemed and recommend Altean Rehabilitation Center.”

After a horrific car crash coming home from his last summer vacation with his family, Shiro is left without them, a home, and only two friends. He has memories of none of them.

Matt has had demons living inside the confines of his mind for as long as he can remember conscious thoughts. A particularly bad spell has him on a bathroom floor with a stomach that needed pumping and gashes that needed stitching.

Both incidents lead to Altea in August, right as the leaves start their slow change over and a new season begins with the promise of healing. But sometimes healing isn’t a straight-lined process. Sometimes you need a hand to guide you, or maybe just one to clutch onto. To know you’re not alone.

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@professionalmess and @kuuskidi

Fic: he loves me, he loves me not

ART - not submitted

Rating: M

Summary: "Ever since he was a little kid, he wanted to explore the ocean. Since his family had lived close to the beach and went as often as they could, the ocean had been one of the first things to capture Matt’s attention and one of the only things to hold it. He was fascinated with the possibilities, amazed by all the things humans didn’t know, enraptured by all the secrets just waiting to be discovered. He wanted to be someone who made a discovery, a person that came to the surface with a breakthrough, and he’d been waiting his entire life for the chance to do it.

And now, a fresh college graduate with a shiny diploma that dubbed him an official marine biologist among other things Matt didn’t find himself rushing into the field."

--aka a soulmate au where everyone has a tattoo of their soulmate's favorite thing and some kind of way the universe leads them to each other

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@chestnutpatronus and @skydarko

Fic: Demons need saving too: this time, it's personal

ART

Rating: M

Summary: The Holt family has run the bar for years, unlike other places, the bar welcomes creatures of all sorts, demons, monsters, beyond your wildest imagination. Shiro has been a frequent patron of the bar, a sort of warden for the region that helps defend the humans in it from the creatures who step a bit too far out of line. When Pidge, Matt’s younger sibling, is kidnapped as a way to force the Holt family to turn over those patrons who are of the demonic sort, Shiro volunteers to help, bringing him closer to Matt than ever before.

#voltron #vld #shatt #shiro #matt #shatt big bang #sbb2019 #master post

47 notes · View notes

swan2swan · 5 years

Note

Okay, dude, look. Few, if anyone, are actually saying that Rey being Luke's daughter or that any characters related by blood are poorly written. It's more the whole "I am your father" twist that they were hoping the Sequel Trilogy wouldn't retread over. I mean, I absolutely do think that Rey should've bonded with Luke like he became more of a father figure through training together. That said, being blood related... well, it would've been cool but I'd hardly say it should've been mandatory.

I mean, I know that fans should vent about what a movie fell short in but I feel like a lot of your complaints run the gambit between "wanting Star Wars tropes for the sake of Star Wars tropes" and "tropes that would've flowed more naturally in the narrative." Was Canto Bight really in need of disguises? Is Rose's unseen mechanical knowledge really a point worth getting hung up over? Are your comparisons of TLJ to other media really in context as you think they are?

The blood-relation wasn’t mandatory by any means, but the problem is that the story treated Rey being not-related as some sort of huge reveal, and then treated the whole “anyone can use the Force” thing as some sort of new groundbreaking thing...which, after years and years of stories and sagas featuring all sorts of new characters, comes off as a “yeah...and?” sort of thing. Lucasfilm’s follow-up reinforcement has only been more of an eyeroll-inducer. “We wanted to show that anyone could have the Force!” Yeah, that’s why Finn heard the screams from the planet and was marketed with the lightsaber, but I guess only white people can use the Force (check the numbers in The Last Jedi, it’s a 100% ratio, only exception possibly being Maz) and that’s the point of Rey’s arc.

As for the following questions:

“Was Canto Bight really in need of disguises?” Yes, because this is something that happens in every story. How many editors would just raise their eyebrows and say “How did they get into this fancy establishment, aren’t there guards outside? A check-in list? A dress code?” This is basic writing stuff, space or no--any TV show writers’ group would have ping-ponged that idea back so fast they would have already started sketching Finn’s tuxedo before the first cup of coffee cooled (the fact that concept art revealed that they CONSIDERED having disguises means that they just decided No One Would Question This). It’s called realism and world-building--if I can get turned away from an Italian restaurant because I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I’m not getting into an upscale casino without good-looking attire, or some sort of proof that I have money (yes, casinos want to take your money but they also WANT YOU TO HAVE MONEY TO TAKE). This is why it’s much more common to have characters go into seedy dive bars like Mos Eisley or the places Lando was hanging out in--because no one bothers to look at you and the writers don’t have to worry about covering these bases. If you want your characters to enter a place filled with out-of-touch rich people, you have to make sure that commoners can’t get in-touch with the rich people. Because rich people don’t like being touched by people without money.

“Is Rose’s unseen mechanic knowledge really a point worth getting hung up over?” Not really, but I get hung up on a lot of other things, and sometimes it’s interesting to dive down to the other parts. It also exposes a lot of previous actions in the Original Trilogy, and cinema in general; Leia the diplomat flouts her credentials and tries to professionally talk her way out of the situation by citing legalities and threatening Senate action. Luke the farmer cleans up the droids so they can help with the farming and talks about the harvest. Han the smuggler makes a deal to sneak the droids off-world. Chewbacca the copilot hits the buttons. C-3PO the translator droid translates thing. Artoo the astromech fixes things. Lando the Baron Administrator orders everyone to evacuate the city. Boba Fett the bounty hunter hunts the bounties. This ain’t just Star Wars, either--Indiana Jones teaches classes, Marcus Brody investigates death on the beach, Alan Grant digs up bones and applies his knowledge, Claire Dearing checks in on how the park is doing, Ellen Ripley pulls her rank and recites procedure on the mining vessel and drives a power loader in the second movie...the list goes on and on. The point is, while Sarah Conner’s waitressing abilities don’t exactly provide her with some solution to killing the evil robot, her job puts her out of the house and into the line of fire in order to move the plot along.

It’s too late to fix The Last Jedi, but by pointing out the flaws, it lets writers know what to do. If your character is a mechanic, I expect that to come up at some point--either they fix things or it affects their schedule. Rose could have just as easily been a fighter pilot who was on a different shift from her sister and wasn’t cleared to fly and was put below so she could not do anything stupid while she’s potentially emotionally compromised; a simple line change and you’re set. Yeah, the mechanic thing is a bit of background enrichment, but it doesn’t help with the generic nature of her character (and you don’t know how much it hurts me to complain about her because Kelly Marie Tran is a BLESSING and Rose Tico was going to be my Favorite Character I bought her and her sister on Force Friday I was so excited to have them but the fact is I love Rose Tico in everything except The Last Jedi where she was, presumably, out of character like everybody else).

It’s also just a good foil to show the tight writing in other things that you might otherwise take for granted.

#tlj criticism #Anonymous

7 notes · View notes

shrunkyclunksbigbang-blog · 6 years

Photo

(i’ll leave my love) Between the Stars by Chicklette ART BY: Bear_shark

Steve never got the chance to meet his soulmate before he went into the ice. Now that he’s out, scientists have discovered a way to match you to your soulmate, called The Registry.The big question is, does Steve want to use it, and is it safe to give anyone a sample of Captain America’s DNA?

(You’re) The Magic In My Soul by CaliHart & cettevieestbien ART BY: Mypissedoffsandwich

A year after the Battle, Steve still finds himself adrift in the future. It isn’t easy connecting to his teammates, who do their best to crack his shell. During a night out he meets Bucky, who claims to be a friendly witch, as well as Steve’s soulmate. It takes some time for Steve to get used to the fact that magic exists, and that Bucky’s family is brimming with it.

One day Bucky and Steve find a dragon egg in the park. Unsettled, Bucky tells Steve not to touch it when they take it home–unable to resist, the egg hatches into a small, sun-colored dragon right in his hands. Now in the possession of an illegal baby dragon, they turn to Bucky’s grandma, who apparently has a whole life outside of family and the family’s magic shop. They soon discover that dragon eggs are being smuggled in the black market. It takes more than Steve expected to save the day.

helpless (i’m helpless) by Princessoftheworlds ART BY: TrishArgh

The Sokovian Accords were created right after the Battle of New York. It’s 2017, and the Avengers are stuck under the UN’s thumb. Captain Steve Rogers is mostly retired and doesn’t protest when Tony drags him out to a movie premiere. Out on the red carpet, he bumps into Oscar-nominated actor James Barnes and falls so hard that Tumblr and Twitter won’t stop shipping them.

It’s 2017, and the Winter Soldier can’t stand idly by while his city falls into ruins from the rampant crime, the Avengers made practically useless. He just doesn’t expect to run into Nomad in a back alley.

Or, a two-dimensional love story told in three parts. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

All That Is and Isn’t True by romanticalgirl ART BY: Mypissedoffsandwich

Steve meets and gets to know one of the chefs at Stark Tower. They’re pretty sure they’re perfect for each other, until a secret from the past comes to light. They have to figure out what’s true, what isn’t, and what matters to each of them. It’s not easy, but then, it wouldn’t be love if it was. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

You Make Me Feel… by kalika_999 ART BY: instagrims

All Steve wanted was to take a breather, decompress after a mission and go out for a jog in the rain. He wasn’t expecting to hide out in a bookstore filled with new and used books or that the employee that worked there thought he was an absolute loser and didn’t even realize he was insulting Captain America. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Call For a Good Time by Mypissedoffsandwich ART BY: Drowningbydegrees & Tyranttirade

Tony had probably been joking when he’d passed Steve the business card for a Phone Sex line. But Dammit, Steve was lonely and his neighbor had been driving him crazy for months.

Captain Cosplay by Ignisentis ART BY: alby_mangroves

James Barnes loves to cosplay as Captain America, and not just because he’s damn good at it, either. No, it’s the feeling he gets when he puts on the suit, the light in people’s eyes when they see him, the thrill of getting the details just right. It also helped him feel connected to New York after he moved back there for work. Well, cosplay and his landlord,Clint. So when Bucky gets an invitation to his dream cosplay event, hosted by none other than Tony Stark and judged by the Avengers themselves, he knows he has to pull out all the stops and make a new Cap cosplay: the elusive Stealth Suit. Clint turns out to be surprisingly resourceful in that endeavor, and Bucky’s more than pleased with how his cosplay turns out. As the day of the event dawns, he can only hope that Steve Rogers feels the same way. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Continuing Education by romanticalgirl ART BY: 743ish

Steve is invited to be a guest lecturer on the WWII unit for Bucky’s college course. Bucky’s more than happy to glean any extra knowledge (in more than just history) from Steve, and Steve’s happy to educate him. But then Bucky has to decide if he can handle the fact that Steve throws himself into danger, and if the sex is worth it. Or if it’s not just sex anymore. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

don’t quote the Wikipedia page by PolzkaDotz

Bucky Barnes is Steve Rogers’ (most commonly known as Nomad) boyfriend, but sometimes he kind of wishes he just… wasn’t.

Bucky and Steve can see ghosts, one of the ghosts is a fan of Bucky, mischief happens and Bucky fucks it up royally for the entire world to see. Typical.

Great morning in the neighborhood by capsiclemycaptain

FANART

Hey, Asshole! A New York City Love story by bunnymaccool

Bucky’s running late for the bus and he’s stuck in line behind some ridiculous shoulder to waist ratio bastard who’s too busy flirting with the baristas to get his frickin’ order in. After he tells the dude off, completely in his rights he feels, the damn oversized puppy-faced ass keeps following him around and trying to apologize. And okay, dude is hot like burnin’, but Bucky just doesn’t have the time or patience for soothing the wounded ego of some gymrat wannabe with an obsession for dressing like he’s hiding from the mob and …. why are you laughing, Sam? TUMBLR MASTERPOST

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood by deepspaceprincess ART BY: esaael

When Steve moves in next door to Bucky and his family, it throws Bucky’s comfortable reality for a loop. Steve shakes up Bucky’s belief that he needs to dedicate his life to his family and Bucky’s family seems to think that’s good for him. As much as Bucky fights back against the pull he feels to Steve, he can’t win when his family is doing their best to push them together. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

It grew on me by Bear_shark ART BY: esaael

Steve Rogers isn’t good at taking care of himself. So when Tony and Natasha strong arm him into going to a fancy hair salon, he’s not expecting to like it. Enter barber Bucky Barnes. Soon Steve is trying different hairstyles and growing out a beard, anything to get Bucky’s hands on him a little more. Unfortunately, on the path to true love, sometimes fate (and Hydra) has other plans. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Just Dropkick The Shame by rohkeutta ART BY: Missprintrash

List of Stuff Bucky Shall Never Do: 1. Give up spider solitaire 2. Tweet TMI shit to celebrities 3. Get a fucking raise, it seems 4. Sleep with a coworker He HAS tweeted TMI shit about celebrities, but he also has some common sense and knows that some people actually read their replies, so he a) posts only on his private account and b) never tags. Bucky’s pretty sure that he’s not the only person to have drunk tweeted about Captain America’s daddy level, but at least he doesn’t fucking call Steve Rogers ‘daddy’ to his face. Until he kind of does, and breaks his fourth rule in the process.

Life of the Party by AggressiveWhenStartled

“You know, kids,” Steve heard from the backyard, “one of the most common threats a superhero has to face is inside an active volcano! We’re going to have to work on your evasion skills, so for the next five minutes, the floor is lava!” This was met by a sudden spike in both volume and pitch from the small children as they scrambled onto every raised surface they could find and immediately launched themselves right back off.

“I’ve never seen actual lava in my entire life,” Steve said, vaguely offended.

“You got a superhero impersonator for The Falcon’s niece’s birthday party,” Sam said, incredulous. “The Falcon, who is an actual superhero.”

Memories Turn Into Daydreams by StarSpangledBucky

When Bucky heard the rumours about Captain America, he took a risk. The dating profile had his name, his picture, even the bio was accurate. But with the amount of times Bucky had been catfished, he wasn’t sure. That is until on the day of the meeting, Steve Rogers himself comes into his life. It becomes as bittersweet as every love story should be… TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Movie Barnes by SMDarling

While catching up on 21st Century pop culture, Steve hears about Blockbuster but misses the memo that it no longer exists. When he goes looking, he finds a video rental store run by Bucky Barnes, back from war missing an arm, with PTSD from his time as a POW, and unwilling to accept how much the world moved on without him. He used his combat pay to buy up an old Blockbuster building, full of old VHS rentals, moved in upstairs, and now “runs” a not-very-popular business, supplemented by his VA benefits and repairing electronics (specializing in VHS players). It’s a quiet life for Bucky, with only his movies to keep him company, until Steve shows up, confused and just as lost in the 21st Century as Bucky once felt. Bucky agrees to show Steve what he missed, and somewhere along the way, Steve returns the favor. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

No Rest by Luckybuckyboy ART BY: Mypissedoffsandwich

Steve is pulled from the ice, angry and tired and wishing he was dead. He is sent to the Retreat with Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. James Barnes to recover. Steve doesn’t want to be there in the cabin and also in the future, but the more he gets to know James, the more he’s not sure he wants to leave.

old situations (new complications) by ChibiSquirt ART BY: Drowningbydegrees

A soulmate AU where your soulmark is the first thing your soulmate thinks when they meet you. Bucky is a normal, Level Six SHIELD agent who stumbles into a time machine while on a mission. When he travels back sixty-four years and lands ass-up on the wartime desk of one Agent Carter, his soulmark—“Who’s that with Peggy?”—goes from fairly distinctive, as thoughts go, to maddeningly common.

The Weight We Carry by Queerily_kai

Bucky agreed to go to the PTSD support group at the VA, but he never agreed to stand up and talk. Things start to change the day Steve talks to him.

What’s The Sitch? by urbanconstellations

“A day where Bucky Barnes wasn’t thrown into some kind of insane, life threatening situation was an unusual one. He’d gotten used to the constant rush of adrenaline in his ears, and the way his focus sharpened in line with his goal. This wasn’t normal for someone in his line of work, but he couldn’t quite seem to break the habit.” Bucky Barnes is a war veteran/perpetually exhausted nurse who happens to think Doctor Steven Carter is super duper hot. Bucky Barnes is also in the habit of heroically running into burning buildings to help people. He can’t really help it at this point. When Bucky runs into Captain America himself for the first time, he has no idea how close the guy might really be. Steve Rogers wants nothing more than to have life that’s as normal as possible, and maybe get up the nerve to ask that cute nurse, Bucky out. He’s finally using his medical degree for something, as well as stopping the occasional terrorist when SHIELD asks. He’s changed his name and always wears the cowl when fighting, but a certain nurse might ruin the whole cover. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Where All Roads Lead by DrowningByDegrees ART BY: alby_mangroves

When Steve Rogers inadvertently touches a relic in the course of a mission gone sideways during WWII, he’s catapulted seventy years into the future. Before he’s even sure where he’s ended up, his search for help puts him in contact with Bucky Barnes, a historian and college professor who has built a career around studying Captain America. With Bucky’s help, Steve means to find out how exactly he ended up in 2017, and solve the bigger mystery of how to get home. There’s just one problem. The closer they get to their goal, the less certain Steve is that he wants to go home. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Opportunity Cost by detour ART BY: ChibiSquirt

It’s hard for killers to start over. But Buck comes to New York with a new name, a new identity, and and plans to discover who he is. It should be easy to be Buck the average worker, meeting this guy Steve to talk about baseball, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Between the secrets and the ghosts from his past following him around the city, it’s bound to get messy. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

The Passionate Gardener by velvetjinx ART BY: esaael

Bucky is feeling burned out by a string of unsuccessful dates, and would much rather just spend his time among his plants. Enter one mysterious red headed customer who wants to set Bucky up with her friend. Little does he know that his agreement will lead to an encounter with… the world’s least likely Angry Birds enthusiast? TUMBLR MASTERPOST

The Purrfect Brew by Florianna ART BY: Queerily_kai

Meet Bucky Barnes, reluctant owner of the café Purrfect Brew, in Brooklyn, where clients can get their fills of books, coffee and cats who are too smart for their own good. His life is quiet and that’s the way he likes it, until aliens hit Manhattan. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, has been in the 21rst century for two weeks when aliens hit Manhattan. He’s not sure what to do with himself afterwards and is half considering the offer to work with SHIELD. Bruce, recognizing a lost soul, drags him to his favourite quiet place, the Purrfect Brew. Steve, being intrigued by the quiet barista and his sisters, come back often by himself, determined to learn more about the Barnes family, mostly Bucky. And when the past comes back, somehow it’s still not as bad as it could have been.

The Rainbow by anice_1 ART BY: Brooklyn-bisexual

Bucky Barnes’ job as a nurse on the children’s ward is demanding, but he loves it. What he’s not so fond of? Obnoxious celebriities trying to use sick children to boost their own public image. So naturally Bucky isn’t exactly thrilled when Captain America himself, camera team in tow, is announced for a visit to the hospital. Maybe though, just maybe, not all celebrities are self-centered assholes after all? TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Relationship Goals: Have a Relationship by cleo4u2, xantissa ART BY: Fannishlove

When Bucky gets a message from an unknown number, he never expects it to lead him on an exciting journey filled with naked pics, hot sexting and surprise flights over Manhattan with Iron Man himself.

The Roommate by Niitza ART BY: layersofsilence

In which Steven G. Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, gets a roommate. Who rapidly turns into his “roommate"—in the euphemistic sense of the word. It takes SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers an absurd amount of time to notice. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Salt by littleblackfox ART BY: Chibisquirt

The cinnamon roll is gone in four bites. Four indecent, jaw-unhinging bites, and Steve sucks the last traces of lemon and icing from his fingers with a low, throaty sound of satisfaction. He glances up at Bucky, who is leaning against the counter and watching him with avid fascination. “Um…” Steve says around his index finger. There’s still a little icing on the bed of his fingernail, and he stops trying to work it off with his tongue. “You know those movies where the girl eats an eclair or something, and it’s really, like, sexually charged?” Bucky asks. Steve pulls his finger out of his mouth. He’s never seen that kind of movie, but the thought of Bucky eating an eclair is certainly… well, it lingers. “Uh?” “Yeah, well that was the exact opposite.” Steve scowls, and Bucky cackles gleefully. “You are something else, Steve.”

say you’ll bee mine by deceptivesoldier, obsessivereader, talkplaylove

When Steve glances over at Hot Guy again, Hot Guy catches his eye and gives him a tentative smile. Steve’s brain shuts down and he looks away. But the serum gave him great vision, so out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hot Guy stand up, take two steps, get his foot caught in a backpack strap, trip, and fall down. Steve’s out of his chair and next to Hot Guy before he even has time to think. “Oh my God, Hot Guy! Are you okay?” His hearing is sensitive enough to pick out Sam’s whispered “Did you just call Hot Guy ‘Hot Guy’?” at the same time as he realizes what he just said. Hot Guy blinks up at him from the floor, probably too confused to stand up. “Did you just call me ‘Hot Guy’?” TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Shared Life Experience by assemblingbrokenmemories ART BY: DrowningByDegrees

When Principal Morita offers Bucky the chance of having Captain America come into his classroom as a guest, he is over the moon. As a history teacher and an enthusiast when it comes to the story of the national icon, it was a dream come true. What he didn’t expect was the ridiculous PSAs, inappropriate laughter, and the burgeoning chance at something more. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Sorry, Not Sorry by SoftObsidian74 ART BY: DrowningByDegrees & The_She_Devil

All Steve Rogers ever wanted was to do what’s right. So when he drops in to volunteer at the Brooklyn VA Outpatient Center, he’s surprised to learn some veterans actually resent Captain America and everything he represents. One veteran in particular is determined to make sure Steve understands just how much he dislikes him. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

The Stars Crossed Right by cettevieestbien ART BY: everybodyhateselliot

Steve returns from the bathroom as soon as Bucky’s eyes close. “Buck!” He groans. “Nope. I’m going back to bed. Nope.” “Bucky.” “No.” “We’re going to be late.” “To what?” “Your surprise.” Steve waits for Bucky to move, gives up after a moment. Then, like an asshole, he settles his tiny ass on Bucky’s hips and fucking tickles him. “Goddammit, Steve,” Bucky nearly shrieks. He opens his eyes wide and pushes at Steve’s massive shoulders. “Off, off.” Steve relents, but doesn’t get off — apparently, it’s just too funny. He drops so they’re chest to chest, laughing so hard he’s making them both shake with it. “Stevie,” Bucky complains, but he’s smiling wide enough for it to hurt. It doesn’t quite hit the intended mark. – A fic spanning from April 10th, 2011 to August 21st, 2016. Read as Bucky and Steve encounter relationship woes, superhero-dom, cute animals named after beloved characters, Bucky’s hilarious family, tragedy, and the Accords. Not necessarily in that order. (Written for the 2018 Shrunkyclunks Bang!)

The Station by Queerily_kai ART BY: krycekasks

Bucky is a professional climber and writer trying to finish an article. Steve is trying to avoid the Avengers tower and team needing a break from it all. Despite recognizing Steve as Captain America from the start, Bucky ignores his superhero identity, and finds himself falling for Steve Rogers, the human. Steve is happy to forget about his public persona, and gets to be himself again, having his first friend since waking from the ice two years previously, and then the first boyfriend who doesn’t have to be a secret. Everything changes in the Alps when Bucky’ team is caught in an avalanche, and he ends up in a world he never expected.

Sunlight on Still Waters by sparkly_butthole ART BY: cobaltmoony

Steve Rogers lives in a broken-down building in Brooklyn, shops at Whole Foods, and plays Captain America as necessary, adjusting to the twenty-first century as well as can be expected. He’s not looking for a sub, not actively, but when he stumbles - literally - upon his neighbor Bucky Barnes, that old spark lights up once more. But things have changed since Steve went into the ice. Society’s gone forwards in many ways, but not all, not by a longshot. And soon enough, he’ll have to play a hero of a different kind.

Technicolor by starmaki, themirrordarkly ART BY: layersofsilence

Bucky Barnes has been cast as Captain America in an up and coming film. In researching the part, Bucky comes face to face with the living legend over a sushi lunch. Steve is uncomfortable about his life being portrayed on the silver screen. But it is part of the course of being famous and an icon. Meeting the actor who is to portray him, Steve is both annoyed and intrigued by the man. One meeting should have been enough, but Steve keeps finding excuses to see him again. All to help with the movie, he keeps telling himself. Steve was such a bad liar. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

Thank You For Calling by MarleyMortis ART BY: The_She_Devil

“Thank you for calling Superhuman Disaster Insurance; this is Bucky Barnes speaking. How can I help you?” Wherein Bucky Barnes, frustrated millennial, helps clean up after messes made by superhumans, stumbles upon a plot to ruin a non-profit charity, finds out his leukemia is back, and absolutely does not have a thing for Captain America’s smile. Probably.

Use Your Agency by romanticalgirl ART BY: Taste_is_sweet

Bucky is given the assignment (punishment) of being the agent whose job it is to integrate the newly-thawed Captain America into life in a new century. Only maybe it’s not so bad. Because Bucky ends up dealing with Steve Rogers, who is nothing like the Captain America in Bucky’s history books. From coming out of the ice through AoU. TUMBLR MASTERPOST

To Catch a Soul by layersofsilence ART BY: DrowningByDegrees

When Steve Rogers pilots the Valkyrie into the cold waters of the English Channel, he expects to die. He doesn’t expect to wake up on a beach, he doesn’t expect to bump into the wireless operator he’d talked to on the way down, and he certainly doesn’t expect to like Bucky as much as he does. But, according to the angel now following him around, it turns out that Steve had been supposed to die, on that fateful morning. And to stay on Earth – to stay with Bucky – Steve faces what is, quite literally, the fight of his life.

True Lord of the Dance by QueenoftheRandomWord42 ART BY: Thunderboltsortofpenny

Honestly, Steve never expected to have a moment in his friendship with Howard Stark that he’d regret. “…but It’s easy to get distracted by the big picture, so remember to stop and treat yourself to a nice dance from time to time.” Howard read aloud, then he paused, “Wait, is the fourth of July really your birthday?” “Yes, yes Howard, it is.” Steve laughed. “And I’ve seen one of your shows, you’re a real lord of the dance.” Howard rolled his eyes at that with a bit of a laugh. “Laugh it up Howard.” Steve muttered. But when a sarcastic comment gets taken out of context, and Steve wakes up in the 21st Century with a sudden dancing reputation and Steve is expected to perform, he’s gotta learn to dance. Learning to dance proves to be challenging, but it might be made easier by a classmate of his who answers to the name Bucky.

Walk, Walk, Fashion Baby by sunrow ART BY: Bear_shark

Tony, fed up with Steve’s utterly dull wardrobe, drags him to a fashion show in an effort to show him some more stylish options. But it’s not the clothes that catch Steve’s eye, and instead a gorgeous male model named Bucky. As luck would have it, not only does Bucky openly flirt with Steve, much to Tony’s amusement, but he also agrees to be Steve’s personal stylist. It would be perfect, if only Steve could get over his awkwardness and just ask Bucky out already.

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babykeithsmullet · 5 years

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New Year's Wrap Up 2018

thanks @imaginationcubed for tagging me!

Fics that you wrote in 2018:

• find me in the drift

• rid the hallways of light

• leave me your stardust

• send your cutest delivery boy

• nova

• dear shadow, alive and well

• lead us into battle and i'll lead you in a dance

• when soul meets body

• i'll be your sky

• sun and shadow

• echoes in my soul

• by any other name

• 1000 lonely stars hiding in the cold

• it will come back

And my as-of-now unpublished piece for Orion, and my in-progress piece for In My Scope

Ship/Character Breakdown:

Klance (2), shance (1), sheith (1), shklance (3), ryance (2)

Characters with a main focus:

Keith wins (duh) but also I wrote a lot of Shiro this year, and a couple times in his POV! That was a fun change bc while I feel like I've gotten pretty solidly into writing characters like Lance and Keith, I'd never really thought about writing from Shiro's perspective and I really enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed getting into writing new characters like Krolia and Ryan.

Specifics:

Best/Worst Title?

Best: Dear Shadow, Alive and Well / by any other name

Worst: lead us into battle and I'll lead you in a dance. (I could have done so. much. better.)

Best/Worst first line?

Best: After what feels like an eternity running, Keith finds waiting to be a completely foreign idea. (from i'll be your sky).

This line is the foundation of this fic - that Keith, who has spent the last year caught up in the war against the galra and now can do nothing but wait to go forward. I hope it embodies the fic as well as I think it does.

Worst: Getting hit by a car is not how Keith wants to start his day, but sometimes that’s just how things go. (from Send Your Cutest Delivery Boy) I just..... don't understand why this fic took off lmao it's SO JANKEY

General Questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I wrote WAY more than I thought I would!! I'm still reeling from the fact that people actually like my stuff and it's helped me keep up my creative drive.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

The fact that I wrote Beyond Good And Evil fic is still kind of hilarious to me, mostly because that fandom is TINY. Pairing-wise I could never have predicted Ryance because Ryan didn't exist last year, but I never expected to love them as much as I do now. I'm also surprised that Shance became a huge favourite of mine! I liked pairing them off before I officially shipped them but they shot up to my top 5 ships pretty damn fast.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Nova. It marked one exact year of me beginning the foray back into writing (which I had been blocked on for almost three years) and fanfic, which I had been out of longer. I poured a lot of my soul into that fic and dedicated a lot of time into making it into the story I envisioned. It's proof that I love what I do and that I can bounce back from hard times in my life, no matter how long it takes.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

Lead Us Into Battle!! I was SO surprised that it shot up the popularity charts but I couldn't be happier. The fact that people have referred to it as "a fave", added it to fic rec lists, and even drew freaking fan art of it is unbelievable to me. The fact that my first Shance fic was so embraced by the fandom warms my heart.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

My HZD Sheith au. It contains some of my favourite lines and moments, plus that good platonic Kallura. The fact that HZD seems to be kind of a rare fandom is probably to blame.

Story that could have been better?

Send Your Cutest Delivery Boy. I literally wrote it in an hour lmao

Sexiest story?

Nova wins by default, being the only story that contains even a reference to sexytimes lmao. Sometimes I remember that I wrote and posted the phrase

How was the sex? Hot. Heavy. Poetic. Like getting crushed in the folding mechanisms of a rogue sofa bed.

And I'm like 😳

Saddest story?

Nova and It Will Come Back are probably tied. One's realistic depression, the other is Pacific Rim backstory angst. You take your pick.

Most fun?

Both my crossover installments. Combining the universes of HZD and Voltron, or Pacrim and Voltron have both been really fun and I plan to continue with both series, adding more characters and fics as we roll into 2019!

Story with single sweetest moment?

I can't pick, so I have two:

Lance can’t help it; he laughs and brings his hand up to tangle in Keith’s hair. He knocks their foreheads together gently. “It’s not like you didn’t know,” he says softly. (from Nova)

The answer had come tumbling out of Keith before he’d even processed what he was going to say; “I’ll save you every time, and then some. As many times as it takes.” (from Sun and Shadow)

Hardest story to write?

All of them tbh. I still find it hard to put myself out there and I beat myself up for not finishing or abandoning WIPs a lot. Every published fic I have on my ao3 is victory achieved with time and effort (and probably some crying lmao). Unofficially it's my upcoming piece for Orion. Because it's a zine piece I really struggled to make it reach the high standards I had set, but one that I'm especially proud that I wrote.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Once I got the ball rolling on my pacrim au the words came FAST. Especially in It Will Come Back - I wrote furiously at 3am to the tune of about 4000 words over one weekend. Considering I usually squeak out maybe 300, that's A LOT.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

My Shiro POV pieces absolutely did. In writing him this year I really embraced his character and got to nail down some of my own interpretation of him, especially in Lead Us Into Battle. It helps that in that fic, he gets to be a leader but also has the tables turned on him. It pushed me to love his character even more, when last year he was kind of a rare bird on my blog.

Most overdue story?

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you can't ask me, a known fic killer, this. I wanna finish i'll be your sky this year.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I applied for zines!!! With standards and expectations and the possibility of rejection! And what I got out of the experience was an exercise in followthrough above all else. I had an outline that I stuck with and people to help me hash it out, and I'm incredibly grateful for the experience and the friends I made in the process. Shout out to the mods and contributers of Orion, you guys helped me grow 💖

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

• START AND FINISH A MULTICHAPTER. I have two main ideas kicking around that I want to see realized.

• Apply for more zines

• Finish my WIP series and leave no ends untied

• Either revive or gain the courage to delete Riven lmao. I just don't know how to continue right now, but maybe this year I'll find the solution.

I tag @mllecomtessedelafere @nutella0mutt and anyone else who wants to do it!

#new year's wrap up 2018 #not vld #personal #my fics #your blogger #this was a really fun foray into my writing this year #really made me think about what this year has brought to me creatively

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avengcrwanda · 6 years

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The Last Jedi Secrets Explained: Transcript

So I watched the video shared by @sleemo on the secrets of The Last Jedi as discussed by the Lucasfilm story group. I made a transcript of the interesting tidbits (at least, for me) and am sharing in case you guys want to read. I have interpretations also in between so let me know what you think!

(For the Reylo force bond one, I referenced the transcript of @felixazrael - you and @sleemo are awesome!)

I’m just halfway through the video so please forgive me. Will add when I watch the rest. :)

Topics I covered are:

Kyber crystal necklace of Luke

Resistance access to First Order blueprints

Millennium Falcon dice

Porgs and their colors

Holdo Hero Silence Scene

Rey and Kylo force bond

1) Kyber Crystal Necklace of Luke

Andi: I was asking you about the kyber crystal necklace... Pablo: That's right. Andi: And it's just something that he has? Pablo: It's just an interesting prop to suggest he's been out in the galaxy collecting clues and doing research about the history of the Jedi. So I mentioned that it was just a captured trophy from a Jedi crusader from ages past. What I'm hoping to is to just be evocative enough to pick up that thread and say, "Hey you know what, I bet you that's what this story is." And we definitely have the avenues and the channels to tell those kinds of stories.

Potential Knights of the Old Republic storyline? Revan? I just remembered all the fake leaks saying it was Darth Vader’s kyber crystal LOL. This was a case of reading too much into things.

2) On the Resistance having the layout of the First Order's ships

Matt: There's one more good Battlefront Connection. In the Resurrection DLC...(laugh on spoilers) Iden and her daughet Zay and Triv (?) actually find plans to the Dreadnought, which are then... They transfer it to the Resistance and that is what kind of helps with Poe's attack. They wouldn't have known where to plant those bombs if it wasn't for Iden and her squad. Andi: That's cool. Pablo: It's not only the Dreadnought but also more information about the First Order military and fleet. We'd like to think that's partially where the map that Rose has that she projects in order to explain what the plan is to get to the Mega Destroyer.

This explains a lot to me. I just found it so weird the Poe knew where all the canons were and that Rose suddenly had the layout of the First Order’s ships.

3) Millennium Falcon Dice

Andi: We have to talk about the dice: legendary Millenium Falcon prop. And we finally get to see it up close here. Leland: We were gonna put it in The Force Awakens and then they ended up changing it. Matt: I think they're technically there, you just don't actually see it in a shot. Leland: There was a shot where Han was gonna put the dice up. Pablo: JJ shot a scene where Han hangs them up and Rian saw that and that's why he made such a - you know - a meal out of the dice in The Last Jedi. But then JJ cut the dice appearance in The Force Awakens. So as a result, what Rian ends up referencing, is not so much The Force Awakens but A New Hope because that's the clearest thing - Andi: Right. Thats just something that people who've been fans for a long time - they just know it's there even if they haven't really seen it. Pablo: But even if they don't, the shot establishes that Luke goes onto the Falcon and reaches up so you understand that's something that's remained on the Falcon - Andi: Something sentimental. And that might be something that pops back up. Matt: *hinting voice* Maybe. Wink wink.

I’m pretty sure Luke never gave the dice back so maybe Matt’s “wink wink” doesn’t mean anything. Unless Rey is coming back to Ach-to to retrieve Luke’s stuff. Or Kylo/Ben might get it back one day? I’m not sure.

4) DJ

Andi: Speaking of DJ...who wants to tell the story of DJ? Rayne: When Rian was developing the story, he had this idea of this politically agnostic character that would be of service to them. So I feel like in the story group conversations we just called him DJ for don't join because that was his ideology - don't join. And I don't know when did we decide that that is actually gonna be his name. Andi: Instead of Ezra Bridger. *laughs* Pablo: That's what his hat says - I'm Ezra. Rayne: But that was a placeholder name that ended up working out really really well. Pablo: And it's a reference to Elvis Costello. Matt: Yeah, an Elvis Costello poster - really great kind of punk rock Elvis Costello poster. Pablo: And yeah, his hat does say "Don't Join." Leland: Which was on the action figure so that was actually revealed before the movie came out.

I’m putting links for both Ezra and Elvis in case you guys don’t know them. LOL. This tidbit we basically confirmed (as mentioned by Leland) before the movie came out. I just feel we need more DJ content. Hahaha.

5) Porgs and Their Colors

Andi: Has it been confirmed that Porgs look different based on their sex? Rayne: The male Porgs have the orange around the eyes. Pablo: Yeah, they're the more colorful ones. So Chewie's little sidekick Porg is a boy Porg. Andi: Does Chewie's Porg have a name? Pablo: No, but that's something that we could get Star Wars to hashtag. Matt: I feel that Chewie would have named it and we wouldn't have been able to pronounce it. Pablo: What if he named it Han? All: Awwwww.

I’m a fan of Porgs so this was really interesting. I noticed that the colors were different but didn’t think of attributing it to sex. And I don’t have a copy of the Visual Dictionary and Art Book (sadly, not available in my country yet) so I am putting this here.

6) Holdo Hero Silence Scene

Andi: One of my new favorite moments in Star Wars is that moment of silence. Rayne: Holdo the hero. Andi: Is there any specific inspiration that went into that, or what was the process of creating that moment? Because that was astounding. Pablo: All I know is that Rian - he had it in the story pretty early on. Rayne: We called it the Holdo the Hero Scene. Pablo: He was asking about the dynamics and the physics - Star Wars physics - could a ship do this? What does it mean? Does this upset anything? And we were like, well, the fact that the Resistance cruiser and the Mega Destroyer are so close in size - I mean obviously one's still much bigger - that kind of what allows you to have this Titanic explosion that happens. If you flew an X-wing into a ship at light speed, you're not gonna get that. You're only gonna get that if something is big as Holdo's ship, that's what it does. But in terms of how it was staged, I think we were all caught by surprise at how we did it because it was really beautiful. Matt: Especially the sound. I didn't l know that they were gonna cut the sound until the film. First time I saw the final cut - Andi: It's brilliant. Matt: It's amazing. And it's cool 'cause as an audience member it allows you to hear what everybody else says.

One of my favorite scenes - it was done really nicely. I think the silence really drives the impact home.

7) Reylo Force Bond (!!!)

Rayne: The little subtleties when you have the Rey and Kylo force connection moments, how the sound from each of their environments kind of seeps into the other's and just that simple way of telegraphing that they're connected. Pablo: And that's something Rian had in his idea from the very start - that we would use a very low tech - basically in-camera cinematic trick to understand that those two are communicating. You could have done a version where there was all sorts of wizardry shaping the screen but no. It's just the oldest cinematic trick in the book. Rayne: Eye lines and - Pablo: Yeah, and it works. Matt: Yeah, and it completely - just the eye line itself completely sells it. Leland: Plus there's some dialogue in there that Kylo Ren says: "Can you see me? I can't see you." Andi: That's why he was shirtless the next time. *laughs* Pablo: You never know. Working on his guns - Andi: *counting, exercising* Pablo: Oh, I didn't see you there. Andi: Oh, hey. Matt: He actually spent a lot of time walking completely shirtless hoping for that connection to kick in. Oh, sorry. Andi: So good, so good. Rayne: It kinda goes back to something that Larry Kasdan used to talk about when we were doing The Force Awakens. It's not in the script but when he peers into her mind, there's something profound that happens between them and the way that Larry used to describe it was there's this *emphasis* ENERGY between them like this kind of almost - and I don't want to say it - but something a little more than you expect and I think it's fun to see it play out in the story as well. Pablo: It feels like there's definitely a door opened between the two of them in The Force Awakens, where they pull from each other in terms of skills and memories. And then that is the more poignant at the end [of The Last Jedi] when that door essentially closes, it's sort of - it's The Godfather shot of the door closing between Michael and Kay. And that's like *door closing actions* Millenium Falcon door separates them. Andi: And actually the connection between Rey and Kylo made me think about the connection between Ezra and Maul that we see in Rebels. Something happens with them in the Force that links them. That's something that we've seen before. Pablo: Yeah. I think Rian and Dave share a lot of ideas and commonalities and interesting themes. The crystal foxes are an example of nature coming to the aid of those on the Light. And that's definitely part of something in Ezra's story line.

Reylos are right! Force bond in the interrogation scene! Rey pulled skills from Kylo/Ben! (although Pablo hinted at this before)

On The Godfather reference - I've linked The Godfather ending scene above in the transcript. I don't think they mean it's the same literally. It was just shot similarly and they both show two love interests who are separated by their ideals. I haven't watched any of The Godfather movies but I read the summaries and Michael and Kay reconciled in the end. There were still some tragedies but it's important to note that the two films/trilogies are very different. Star Wars won't follow The Godfather route.

Also, I don’t think that Pablo means the force bond is gone. It’s just that they’re separated at that moment - physically and on their ideals. I feel that it’s a waste of story potential to do away with the force bond. Everyone I know found it cool.

So there ya have it! I’ll watch the rest of the vid when I get home.

#star wars #star wars: the last jedi #reylo #rey of jakku #kylo ren #ben solo #porgs #!!!#finn #poe dameron #amilyn holdo #tlj spoilers #luke skywalker #leia organa #princess leia #han solo #rose tico #paige tico

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Cobra Kai Season 4: What to Expect

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This article contains Cobra Kai season 3 spoilers.

“Hey. Long time,” Kreese (Martin Kove) says at the end of Cobra Kai season 3 when he calls someone mysteriously, as if to ask a favor. Now just who could it be?

The most likely candidate is Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), Kreese’s war buddy and the main villain from The Karate Kid Part III. Season 3 of Cobra Kai explored Kreese’s backstory, adding credence to this postulation. We see Young Kreese’s (Barrett Carnahan) traumatic experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and how he saved his friend that he nicknamed Twig (Nick Marini). It’s implied that Twig is Silver. In The Karate Kid Part III, Silver was a rich CEO of DynaTox Industries, an unscrupulous nuclear waste disposal company. He helped to fund the Cobra Kai schools and was a major sponsor of the All-Valley Karate Tournament. Since the season 3 finale reveals that season 4 is headed to another yet showdown this tournament, Silver would be a good play.

And here is everything else we might be able to glean about Cobra Kai season 4.

Potential Villain Cameos for Season 4

There are some other possibilities for a potential Cobra Kai season 4 villain for as we’ve already seen, Cobra Kai Easter egg clues can be intentionally misleading. Tory’s (Peyton List) mom was an expertly played red herring, which we’ll come back to in a moment. The writers know that their audience is watching the callbacks closely and are game to toy with our expectations.

With the season 2 cameo of Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), Cobra Kai has exhausted all the villains from The Karate Kid Part II except for Sato (Danny Kamekona). At the end of that film, Sato had mended his ways so he wouldn’t have returned as a villain anyhow. In season 3, episode 4 ‘The Right Stuff,’ Sato is mentioned when a villager explains the changes at Tomi Village to Daniel (Ralph Macchio). But in the following episode, ‘Miyagi-Do,’ Chozen reveals to Daniel that he inherited the Miyagi-Do artifacts when Sato died.

Sadly, Kamekona died in 1996, so even if Cobra Kai wanted to revisit him, he would have to be digitally reincarnated like Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) in Rogue One, and that doesn’t seem likely. Those episodes also revealed that Yukie (Nobu McCarthy) died too, which is appropriate since McCarthy died in 2002. But back to villains, Chozen had some dojo-mates, Toshio (Joey Miyashima) and Taro (Marc Hayashi), who helped him harass Daniel (Ralph Macchio). However, they were tertiary henchmen roles. Few fans would recognize if they reappeared in Cobra Kai and Kreese had no ties to the Okinawan Miyagi-Do villains so he wouldn’t call them.

The other great villain from The Karate Kid Part III was ‘Karate’s Bad Boy’ Mike Barnes (Sean Kanen) although he was Silver’s guy, not Kreese’s. Both Kanen and Griffith are still alive so maybe they both can return. Kanen is still acting with movie and TV roles as recent as 2019. Griffith retired from acting about a decade and a half ago and shifted to writing. Most recently, he was a writer for the NBC TV series Grimm. Regardless, he’s still in the business. What’s more, Barnes had two henchmen, supplied by Silver, Snake (Jonathan Avildsen) and Dennis (William Christopher Ford), but they were peripheral characters like Toshio and Taro. They wouldn’t have much impact without Silver or Barnes. Most fans wouldn’t even remember their names if not for the Internet.

One other wild card for Kreese’s call recipient is Dutch (Chad McQueen) from the original films. When the Cobra Kai dojo-mates reunited in season 2, episode 5 “Take a Right,” Dutch was the only one missing from the original line-up. During that episode, the rest of the gang raise a toast to him, explaining his absence as due to his incarceration in Lompoc Federal Prison. Perhaps in season 4, he’ll be released.

McQueen is the only son of Steve MeQueen. He retired from acting around the turn of the millennium and has devoted himself to racecar driving since then. In 2010, he founded the custom car company McQueen Racing. There were rumors that Cobra Kai reached out to McQueen to reprise his role as Dutch in “Take a Right”, but he was too busy with McQueen Racing at the time. Dutch was arguably the worst bully of the original Cobra Kai members. When Kreese beat Johnny (William Zabka) after he lost at the All-Valley Karate Tournament, the gang abandoned their sensei, but Dutch could have remained loyal.

Mysterious Parents

One of the best red herrings of Cobra Kai was the identity of Tory’s mom. Most fans thought it was Ali (Elisabeth Shue) because Tory introduced herself in Season 2 as “Tory… with a ‘Y’” echoing Ali introduction to Daniel in The Karate Kid when she said “Ali… with an ‘I.’” Tory’s mom is bedridden due to health issues, forcing Tory to hold down two jobs while in high school to support her family. Her mom was offscreen in a scene in Season 3 which further stoked suspicions. But later in the season, we discover Ali is back and healthier than ever, and her two kids are Lucas and Ava, not Tory.

So, who is Tory’s mom? The only potential remaining lead female characters from the original films are Jessica Kennedy (Robyn Lively) from Karate Kid Part III and Julie Pierce (Hilary Swank) from The Next Karate Kid. Both actresses are still active in TV and movies. Tory had some martial arts background which she may have received from her parents (Tory’s dad could be in play too, but her mom has already been presented, albeit hidden from view, so she’s a more likely reveal for Season 4). Jessica wasn’t a student of Miyagi, but Julie was. So maybe Julie is Tory’s mom.

Fans are split on the possible return of Julie. The Next Karate Kid was a critically panned flop, so it is generally disdained by the fanbase. It was Swank’s first lead role, and she shines despite the awkwardly bad script. Swank went on to win two Oscars, two Golden Globes and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine. She is the most successful alumni of the Karate Kid franchise. What’s more, if Cobra Kai should bring Julie back into the canon, it opens the possibility of The Next Karate Kid villains, Colonel Paul Dugan (Michael Ironside) and his school security squad, the Alpha Elite, including Ned Randall (Michael Cavalieri).

Beyond Julie and Jessica, there weren’t many other women in the original films. Ali had some high school girlfriends in The Karate Kid, Susan (Juli Fields) and Barbara (Dana Andersen) but like Toshio, Taro, Snake and Dennis, they were peripheral characters. The dramatic impact of one of them being Tory’s mom would be minimal.

The other mystery parent is Miguel’s (Xolo Maridueña) father. His mom Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) describes him in Season 3 as “a very bad man.” Perhaps he could be Barnes or Dutch (Silver should be around Kreese’s age because they both served in Vietnam so he’s too old for Carman, although it’s noteworthy that despite playing his elder, Griffith is a year younger than Macchio). If Miguel’s dad is Dutch, that could really mess with Carmen and Johnny’s blossoming romance.

Return to the All-Valley Karate Tournament

A key figure to bring back at the All-Valley Karate Tournament in what will probably be the season 4 finale is the Referee (Pat E. Johnson). Johnson was the martial arts master behind the original franchise, a noted master of Tang Soo Do. And in season 3, episode 6, ‘King Cobra,’ Captain Turner (Terry Serpico) tells Young Kreese that the martial art he will learn is Tang Soo Do. This confirms a theory that many martial artists have held about what martial art Cobra Kai really practices – it’s Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art often labelled as Karate. Following the original movie, Zabka continued to train under Master Johnson. Coincidentally, Johnson also taught Steve McQueen and along with several other notable celebrities. Now in his 80s, Johnson still teaches Tang Soo Do. It would be so fitting to honor Johnson with a cameo because he was largely responsible for the Karate in the franchise.

One character we’d like to see developed in season 4 is Anthony LaRusso (Griffin Santopietro), Sam’s (Mary Mouser) punk little brother. So far, he’s only been a nuisance for the LaRusso family, the one slacker, but he has untapped potential for a more significant role. He appeared in almost every episode of season 1, but his role diminished to just two appearances in season 2. At least he’s still in the cast for season 3. Aisha (Nicole Brown) and Raymond (Paul Walter Hauser) were major characters who simply vanished in the third season.

A huge wild card might be a cameo from Dre Parker (Jaden Smith). In the 2010 redux of The Karate Kid, Dre was the reinterpretation of Daniel’s role, the bullied outsider who finds redemption in the martial arts. While many hardcore fans of the original reject this as part of the Miyagi canon because there’s no connection of any of the characters to the original films, there’s no reason Dre can’t be integrated. After all, if Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy) can meet Spock (Zachary Quinto) from the Kelvin timeline in the Star Trek redux, anything is possible with franchise reboots. Admittedly, the plot of Cobra Kai doesn’t include time travel (except for an overdose of nostalgia), however that doesn’t exclude the possibility of Dre existing within the world of Cobra Kai. More intriguingly, it would open the door to a cameo from Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). That would really raise the bar on the martial arts of Cobra Kai. And most significantly, Will Smith is an executive producer of Cobra Kai. Smith’s company, Overbrook Entertainment, acquired the rights for The Karate Kid to make the reboot and retained them for Cobra Kai. Cobra Kai has been incredibly witty with its homages to the original film franchise, but with more seasons to come, it will need to expand its scope lest it exhaust its supply of those golden Easter Eggs.

For years, there have been persistent rumors about a sequel to the Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan version of The Karate Kid. The film was by far the most profitable installment of the entire franchise, earning $359 million from a $40 million budget, more than all the original four films combined, so it is surprising that Hollywood hasn’t pushed harder for a sequel. But Jackie Chan is a busy man. There have been unconfirmed rumors of his involvement with Rush Hour 4 and Shanghai Dawn for years too and those are no closer to fruition. Nevertheless, a Dre cameo in Cobra Kai would be a good steppingstone for a redux sequel. And Dre could fit right in with the cast easily. Jaden Smith is the same age as Tanner Buchanan (Robby).

One of the reasons that Cobra Kai left YouTube Red to go over to Netflix was because YouTube wouldn’t commit to a fourth season. Given how the show has played out, the writers seem to have the underlying story arc sketched out, at least as far as season 4. With the escalating surprises that Cobra Kai has already brought, season 4 should be even more fun.

Cobra Kai never dies!

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Cobra Kai season 3 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Cobra Kai Season 4: What to Expect appeared first on Den of Geek.

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