#anyway if anyone knows where this scene has been properly giffed by someone who knows what they're doing

[charcubed]

Listen. I'm going FUCKING. INSANE. because it seems like almost no one on the internet gives a shit about Shy Baldwin/Reggie Harris from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which boggles my mind because like ???? they're in love?????? and their relationship is so compelling??

And what we see of what becomes of Shy's story is so tragic obviously but to me it also hints at potential for him and Reggie to maybe someday get out of showbiz and be together. And from what I can tell, no one in fandom TALKED ABOUT THISSSS when season 4 came out!!! What the fuck!!!!! This is maddening!!!

So. I'm making this post mostly to get this off my chest and as a yell into the void. Because maybe somewhere, someday, someone else will ALSO be searching tumblr to see even a glimpse of content about these 2 exceedingly compelling characters, and I will write this so that I save that person the despair of coming up empty-handed like I am.

I'm also gonna drag other people down with me if anyone who hasn't seen this show happens to be curious enough to read this, so in that vein, I will cover some basics to outline this. Because I want to TALK ABOUT THEM despite most of this being obvious and no one giving a shit, Goddammit!!

(Spoilers or whatever I guess but who cares)

This is Shy Baldwin. He's a singer (clearly) and canonically a Black gay man who (obviously) has to hide his sexuality because this is set in the 60s.

This is Reggie Harris, Shy's manager and longtime best friend.

This is how Reggie introduces himself:

Let me tell you what kind of manager I am, Susie Myerson and Associates. I've been looking after Shy since we were kids tossing rocks in vacant lots. We was running numbers for Stephanie St. Clair before we were ten. When he found his singing, I collected the money, kept him out of trouble, kept people from bumping him. I'll be at his side when he draws his last breath unless I get there first. I would lay down my life for him. That's what's going on here. You hear me?

–3x02, "It's the Sixties, Man!"

In episode 3, they casually sing "Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby" together just for fun.

INSANE harmonies. And their flirty banter in this whole 1 minute long scene makes me want to eat my own arm.

Anyway... hold those thoughts.

So, Midge Maisel (the titular character) is the opener for Shy on tour with her comedy act in season 3. The show reveals in episode 3x06 that Shy is gay, in a scene where Midge finds him bruised and bleeding because he hooked up with a guy and it went sideways. Shy comes out to her as part of his explanation, and she helps cover up the bruises on his face with makeup so he can get on stage that night.

That leads to him doing a sitting "stool set" with slower songs because his ribs are fucked so he can't stand/dance, and the unsubtle song the show has him sing is "No One Has To Know."

The clip isn't even on Youtube, which is indicative of how much I'm suffering with how under-appreciated Shy's storyline is, but you can listen to the song here or on Spotify.

No one else can tell I think you're beautiful No one else can tell You're my favorite view Let the world all think what they will I'll wait until they're through 'Cause no one has to know I need you No one but you

^^^ Literally the whole song is like this / about being gay but that's a piece of it.

Shy looks at Reggie as he sings.

Thankfully Tumblr user microclown made several GIFs. Here are two.

KILLL MEEEE

Clearly, obviously, this is deliberately not subtle. Everything telegraphs that Shy is in love with Reggie.

Now, considering wider context of Shy hooking up with a random man etc., one could be forgiven for thinking it's meant to be seen as unrequited love... but I really don't think that's the case. I think there's a delicious undercurrent of angst that ties into how Reggie tells Susie (Midge's manager) at various times throughout the season that their job is to make the hard decisions on behalf of their clients, and Reggie references making hard decisions on Shy's behalf or for Shy, because his job is to do what's best for Shy even at the times Shy doesn't like it. So... are they in love and Reggie tries to keep them from properly being Together to protect Shy? And/or does Shy think his love is unrequited at this point? Lots of room to play there.

So now comes the part that no one's talking about!

More explanation: season 3 ends with Midge being very straight and very white as she does a comedy routine in which she makes way too many cheeky references that out Shy as gay on stage if you know gay-related coding/lingo. There are Reasons why she sort of panics and does this, and the audience loves her jokes, but that is very much Not The Point. She's fired from the rest of the tour as a result–rightfully so.

In season 4, it's announced that Shy is suddenly getting married to his longtime girlfriend and it's totally a publicity stunt 🙃 Midge and Susie are invited to the wedding... but not by Shy; by the team of straight white dude management who stepped in to control Shy's every move in the name of "helping him to stay on the straight and narrow" to keep his career on the rails. Midge's fuck up gave them the opportunity they needed to control him. (Shy and Midge end up reuniting in a bathroom at the reception but we won't be unpacking that conversation and how I disagree with how Midge leaves things between them).

So the suits invite Midge and Susie to the wedding so they can escort them to a side room and have a meeting with them, and they try to pay them off to sign an NDA. (Midge declines for them both, saying she will keep her silence for the sake of Shy, not for the suits.) Come to find out that that management team also forced Shy to pay off / fire his entire band–who were shown to be like family to him throughout the tour in season 3–and also forced him to pay off / fire Reggie.

LOU: Look, he's a good guy, Reggie. I like him. But he's too close with Shy to control him. There's too much history.

...

SUSIE: Reggie got Shy to where he is now. You realize that?

LOU: Reggie's taken care of. Big severance. We threw him some publishing. He's buying a house in Westchester. Everybody's happy.

SUSIE: Oh, I bet. 'Cause when you think Reggie, you think Westchester.

–4x05, "How to Chew Quietly and Influence"

Here's the obvious thing: Shy and Reggie clearly had no choice in this matter.

There's no way in hell that Reggie would have left Shy willingly. Absolutely no Goddamn way in hell. Whether he's in love with him or not, Shy is "his boy" (his words, repeatedly) and he said "I'll be at his side when he draws his last breath unless I get there first." That was his character introduction! Holy shit!

But here's my hot take: I DO think Reggie is in love with Shy, and I do think he intends to keep that promise of being by his side as much as possible. And I'll tell you why.

At the wedding, Shy sings a short excerpt from his new single to his new wife:

Come close to me, baby Cool as the river When you're here in my arms Manhattan's getting dimmer I know it sparkles, too But city lights don't shine as bright as you

Once again the clip is not on Youtube and I am suffering.

There are a few more lines from the song in that episode referencing Paris and Rome (where Shy and Reggie and the band went on tour in season 3...), but it's a piece of a longer song. We thankfully have the song in full, here or on Spotify:

And in the episode, Shy says on stage that the song was written by Reggie.

"You just heard a little of my new single. And it's a special one because the lyrics were written by my boy Reggie Harris. Which is fitting because that man's been putting words in my mouth since we were kids begging his grandmom to buy us ice cream.

–4x05, "How to Chew Quietly and Influence"

This makes me FUCKING FERAL.

Especially because of the lyrics in the full version of the song... which, as it turns out, is all about giving up fame and the spotlight to be with the one you love.

There are hidden lyrics in the full track that are meant to actually be in between the shortened ones we hear in the episode. The lyrics from the full version that Shy doesn't sing at his wedding are as follows:

I’ve had the spotlight Been bewitched by wealth and fame But I’d give up that hot light Just to hear one special someone Call my name

...

I could search the world over Go as far as a man can roam But nothing I’d see Would mean nothing to me Like the vision of you when I’m coming back home Baby, you are my home

Buildings may rise And reach for the skies They twinkle and flash But they won’t ever last Like the beauty in your eyes

Whatever they may do Those city lights won’t shine as bright as you

Reggie wrote this song for Shy. He literally wrote this song for Shy. Shy says it himself! And Reggie's not in attendance at Shy's publicity stunt wedding because the suits are keeping them apart for now, but he's in Shy's heart, and Shy chooses to sing this song and share that backstory about the lyrics because they're each others' home in secret.

I can't handle it! I can't FUCKING handle it!!!!!

Like are you SERIOUS!!!! And in the episode where the suits say Reggie took his severance pay and went and bought a fancy house? BITCH. If he even actually did that (and didn't just claim he was doing it to fly under the radar), then he bought a house so Shy could one day join him there because ???? "You are my home." Ohhhh myyyy Goddddd ;___; A song about giving up the spotlight to be with the one you love........ I have connected the dots. Just wow.

So yeah I'm literally going insane. I LOVE them. I've been thinking about this for like 2 weeks and no one gives a shit but I love them! They are important to me and every part of their subplot is so compelling and makes me so emotional!

There is fic about all this that's in my brain and outlined in my google docs and if I ever write it I will post it on AO3 for the maybe 2 people who will care someday. But yeah.

WHERE is their spinoff!!!!!!!! Jk I don't want it because I don't trust they'd be handled properly. However, I am manifesting even a crumb of information about them in season 5 because Shy Baldwin is my son and I would like any kind of hint he and Reggie manage to eventually orchestrate their happiness <3

If you actually read this post, thank you so much for indulging me. I had to get this off my chest, okay, I'm losing it.

I love them and they're in love. That is all.

#shy x reggie #shy baldwin #reggie harris #the marvelous mrs. maisel #tmmm #shy/reggie #char writes things #FUCKING. LOOK AT THE MATERIAL. wah 😭

[schmweed]

#I really turned him into Mr Orange in the second gif didn't I #Freddy Newandyke #I've been trying to find a way to get the colors and brightness and contrast etc right for this scene for WEEKS but I'm not there yet #will keep trying #but in the meantime here we are because I really want this scene on my blog! not so garishly colored obviously #but since I can't find it anywhere and I really want it because look how adorable Freddy is! #so here is the exact same gif in three different color contrast brightness etc combinations #none of which works obviously #nothing can really replace Photoshop huh #I get it now -- all those posts raging at Adobe for their subscription model #sigh #seriously this scene is epic adorable Freddy -- chewing gum and grinning at his boss after he tells Freddy that he can tell a joke can't he #and Freddy says no and then gives the biggest lil shit grin ever haha #it's an adorable scene that I never seem to remember -- I always remember the diner #then Freddy practicing the commode story #and I'm always pleasantly surprised with this scene #anyway if anyone knows where this scene has been properly giffed by someone who knows what they're doing #could you link me please so I can reblog it and enjoy it? thank you so much!

[aesthyuckic]

AVENOIR | l.dh - VIGINTI QUINQUE (FINALE)

(gif not mine - credit to rightful owner)

Genre: High School AU (at beginning) ; Tarot Reader!Witch!Hyuck

Word Count: 2.7K

Warnings: (bold if in use) slow but with a purpose, belief contradictions, mentions of r*pe, blood, swearing, violence, mentions of abuse

Pairings: Lee Donghyuck (Haechan) x Reader (F)

V OF PENTACLES IN REVERSE: recovery, isolation

It was late at night when Johnny had heard a pounding on his door that had woken him up. Rather pissed off, he got up to go answer it, ready to yell at whoever until he saw them. Cosimia and Donghyuck standing there, both of them covered in blood with looks on their faces like lost children that had done something wrong.

“What did you do?” The oldest asked the both of them with widen eyes

In a rush, they had brought him to their trailer where a dead body in a pool of blood still lied on their floor. Random spots of red stained their carpet as well. The man had stood in utter disbelief at the sight in front of him especially with the two kids who had been involved.

“How could you kill someone?” Johnny asked, annoyed rather than concerned.

“It was self dense…” The girl replied. “He literally tried to kill Haechan and kidnap me.”

“It’s her father,” The boy added in a rather hushed tone as he stared blankly elsewhere. “Was her father now I guess…”

“Your father? How did he find you two? I thought you faked your deaths.”

“We did. I guess I was dumb enough to think he’d believe it. You’re surprisingly calm about us having a dead man on our floor.”

“There’s no point in freaking out when it gets us no where.”

There was a pause for silence as they looked at the literally crime scene in front of them. Though, Donghyuck was somewhere else still processing and thinking about what had happened.

“What do we do, Johnny?” The young boy asked, finally looking away from where he was staring just to turn his attention to the other with a scared look of hopelessness. “Do we call the police?”

“No,” He said. “That’d be too much time on our hands and too much money I don’t want to spend on fixing it.”

“But…” The boy started. “Why can’t we?”

“Really, Haechan? Why can’t we? Would you like to go to jail? Because I don’t know what happened exactly if this doesn’t exactly look very good when it comes to a self dense claim. Oh, and especially since it’s obviously you bashed his head in multiple times and he’s been lying here for awhile since he’s cold!”

“Johnny!” Cosimia yelled.

It had become quiet enough that they could hear little sniffs and cries. The eldest looked over to where Donghyuck leaned against the chair to see the boy had tears coming down his cheeks as he bit his lip trying to hold back any noise.

“God, look at what you did.” The girl huffed. “Outside, now!”

The man seemed taken back by her words and tone, “Excuse me, I’m your boss and I’m seven years older than you.”

“I said outside now!” She repeated herself, just much louder this time as well as angry.

The room had gotten quiet once again as he rolled his eyes and just did what the girl said by going outside. She went over to her boyfriend just to whisper a few sweet things to calm him down before kissing his forehead, gently. She then followed behind the eldest shortly, leaving him inside. The screen slammed behind her, making the anger apparent at the other.

“If you’re not going to help us, you can leave. I’ll figure it out on my own.” She sighed. “I don’t get why you had to do that to him…”

“Do what?” He pondered. “I answered his question.”

“Yeah, in a mean and unnecessary way when he’s not in a good state of mind!” She retorted. “You really don’t know what he’s been going through in the last hour… and Hyuck wouldn’t kill anyone, he didn’t kill anyone.”

“So what? Your dad just slipped and hit his head on your counter multiple times?”

“You know how he’s been seeing ghosts since he woke up from his coma? The first one he saw was my mom. You want to know who killed my father? It was her, she just used Hyuck as a way to do it. That’s why he has no scratches or anything even though he got stabbed by him! He feels bad enough as is, it’s not his fault and it’s not mine either. So help us or leave so I can figure it out and take care of Hyuck properly. The reason we even went to you is because we thought you’d be helpful and not do something like this…”

“That wouldn’t sound very good either in the eyes of a court.”

“No shit.”

It got rather cold that evening, everything about the atmosphere was heavy and gloom. The tall man stared at the teenager in front of him. Clothes still covered in blood, with her arms crossed as she seemed to think about the situation. Johnny sighed as he’d just seen a kid taking on more than she should at her age at the attempt of keeping her and her boyfriend together.

“Come on.” He said before going back inside. “I’ll help you guys.”

“You will?” Donghyuck heard as he came in.

“Yes…” He nodded. “I’ll take care of the body. Just clean the floors and take a shower after. We’ll figure things out from there I guess.”

Johnny wrapped a plastic bag around the body’s head, duct taping it shut so the blood pooled into the bag rather on the floor anymore. He had Cosimia help him drag the body right outside the trailer before he took over and told her to go help Haechan clean the floors. She seemed oddly desensitized to it, though the man understood why she would after learning about the past she shared with the person that was now just a body. The boy was inside putting blood soaked sponges and white towels turned red into a bucket.

At first, he was cleaning up without a thought as it was just automatic but the more he stared at the blood the more he thought about. He still blamed himself for the predicament they were in, even if he hadn’t had control of his body he was the one that killed him. Seeing it again just made him feel utterly guilty. It haunted his mind as he now just sat on the floor, staring at the yellow gloves that were messy and stained red.

Cosimia walked in to see him in a trance. She sighed out of worry. She bent down, quietly next to him. She made eye contact with him before she took the gloves off his hands. To the boy, it was almost terrifying to see how emotionless she seemed about it all, not even phased by the blood even if the sight of it made her pale.

“Go shower.” She mumbled. “But your clothes in a bag though.”

“I should help you...” He said.

“I can do it on my own, Hyuck.” She assured him. “You need it so, go.”

The boy nodded and did as he was told, all in silence. She hurried to finish cleaning up the puddles left on the floor before she scrubbed the kitchen floor spotless to get the tint out of it. It sparkled and the yellow shade on the other side was suspicious in all honesty. She moved on to the carpet after that, her boyfriend still in the shower. She scrubbed deep into the carpet as much as hard as she could. Again, the color difference made things feel off.

She sighed, sweating from how much ‘elbow grease’ she had to put into both floors all on her own. She was already just mentally done with the night. Donghyuck had come from the bedroom, freshly showered and with new, clean clothes on. A wrinkled plastic bag all tied up in his hand with his previous outfit in it. He saw the girl bent over the floor just breathing heavy with her eyes closed.

“Uhh…” He hesitated. “I’m done…”

She looked up at him at the sound of his voice. “Okay, just put the bag outside.”

“It looks good…” He said, awkwardly as he walked through the kitchen, noticing she had finished already.

“Thank you.”

“Cosi, I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, but you missed a spot…”

“What?”

She walked over to see what spot he was talking about. She apparently had forgotten about the ledge of the counter. The metal strip was a golden color, now mixed with a wine color. The boy was taken back at the sight, his breath hitched in his throat as he remembered his vague vision from the night of summer solstice that all made sense to him now. He caught himself in a trance again.

“Are you okay?” The girl asked him.

“As good as I can be right now.” He shrugged before he went outside.

It felt cold, she knew he was still process and everything but he was being avoidant especially with her which hurt almost even if she got it. It was an awkward situation, how exactly are you suppose to act with someone after that? She didn’t blame him. She held back her own tears and emotions as she she dropped to the floor to scrub one more thing.

It seemed never ending, like it went on forever. Guilt was so overwhelming… If she hadn’t asked him to run away he wouldn’t have gotten hurt whatsoever or be here in this mess. She wanted to sob so badly, it was painful to hold back as she cleaned. She felt like he hated her even if that was far from the truth. And even though her father was the scum of the earth in her eyes, he was unfortunately still a human being, that happened to be related to her, who died in front of her. She wanted him dead for so long she didn’t know how to feel exactly. Maybe it was bad that she felt relief over it or that she didn’t really care about the fact he was dead and ‘murdered’ by what others would say. She felt as if he had it coming, that he deserved it after all he had put her through, put her boyfriend through. It would’ve been her’s and Donghyuck’s blood anyway if not his so was it that bad?

As much as she wanted to be about love and felt best when she was, it was hard to be when others filled you with so much rage and pain… She always had to be strong and especially so right now. She finished up the corner before she put the bucket outside and went back in to clean herself up. She wrapped her old clothes in a plastic bag, just like Donghyuck before she got into the shower. Her hair dripped with every step she took once she had gotten out.

Johnny had found them and told them to follow him with everything from the crime scene. The kids look at each other in confusion but did as they were told anyway. The place he had lead them to was far away from everyone and everything else. There, a bonfire resided that touch the dark night sky. Wood burned as they stopped in their tracks.

“Just throw it all in…” Their boss said as he stared at the fire that burned bright.

It was a sense of relief when they saw everything set ablaze and watched it turn into ash.

“Is that it?” Donghyuck asked.

“For you guys.” The other male shrugged. “I’m going to be out here for awhile. Go get some sleep and this night never happened.”

They nodded, both understanding and left with a small ‘thank you’ into the darkness. Nothing felt real at that point. It was eerie, even when they stepped back in the trailer they called home for the many months. It left a dreadful feeling, knowing and seeing what happen all over again. It’s like… a ghost of what happened lingered among them just to haunt them. It was just spooky in a way it never was.

To think the evening has started out so lovely… Who knew it could go to shit so fast and stay that way…

It was clear both of the teenagers were exhausted, though they couldn’t sleep no matter how much they tried.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” The girl questioned.

“Huh?” He mumbled. “Who?”

“My mom.” She responded. “She’s gone, right?”

“Yeah… She thanked me before she disappeared.”

“I never got to say goodbye to her.”

“I’m sorry, Cosi.”

“She didn’t even say she loves me?”

“I think that goes without saying…”

“At least she’s in the summerlands now.”

Morning didn’t take long to arrive. The sunrise was a beautiful orange, yellow and pink ombré. They decided to go up on their roof to watch it since they were up and the inside was too suffocating for them. Donghyuck was once again the one to help Cosimia on the roof.

The sun started to peek more over the horizon more with every moment. The birds sang, cheerfully as everything around them glow a welcoming gold color. It seemed like the world really had no idea what had gone on or maybe it just proved life went on in many beautiful ways regardless of what horrible things took place in it.

Cosimia looked over to see her boyfriend looking off into the distance with no clue she was staring. He usually knew because he could feel it and he’d make some sly comment about it. She hurt because she had never seen him so quiet.

“Do you still love me?” She struggled to mutter out.

“What?” He was taken back by the question. “Of course I do! What would give you the idea I don’t?”

“Because,” She croaked. “It’s easy to say this is my fault… My father hurt you, my mother possessed you… If I didn’t ask you to come with me you would’ve never gotten hurt or gone through this. The question is how can you love me knowing that, really.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to say how glad I am that I came with you, honestly. I’ve learned many things because of you and I’ve become someone I’m happy to be because of you. I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for this adventure I’ve been able to share with you, Cosi. I know relationships and life in general have hard patches, but I do love you and I want to work through that and still be with you… I want to marry you one day.”

“You do…?”

She seemed shocked by the last part that had left his mouth. Truth be told, so was he. He should’ve learn to shut his mouth after he said ‘i love you’ the day when they started dating. Tears were streaming down the girl’s face which he reached over to wipe away.

“I do…” He smiled. “I hope that’s okay. I know we haven’t dated that long and we’re still very much kids and not ready for that yet… But I do hope to share the rest of my life with you.”

She started sobbing, “You really don’t hate or blame me for what happened?”

“You can’t control those things so of course not.” He reassured her. “I’m just happy to still be here with you right now and you especially, but we’re okay. Maybe not mentally, but physically. We can work on the mental part and get better.”

She laughed a bit through her tears. They boy pulled her over and kissed her forehead, gently this time, “I love you, okay? No matter what. We’ll get through this together even if it’s tough.”

She hugged him with a hum. It was nice to feel comfort for a moment after the stressful night they had been through.

“Should we leave?” She asked.

He breathed, “We’ve created our family here. Plus Johnny has done so much for us just in these last few hours… If you want to go, I’ll go. It’s up to you.”

“Maybe we should stay.” She hummed.

“We have all the time in the world to figure out what’s next for us.”

They intertwined their fingers, holding each other hands rather tightly. Cosimia leaned her head on the boy’s shoulder, feeling some tranquility now. The sun continued to rise in front of them…

T H E E N D.

#haechan fics #haechan x reader #haechan au #nct #nct au #haechan drabbles #haechan fic #haechan fanfic #haechan fanfiction #haechan fluff #haechan angst #haechan #haechan imagines #haechan imagine #nct u #nct 127 #nct dream #nct dream fics #nct dream imagines #nct 127 fics #nct 127 au #nct fanfic #nct haechan #donghyuck #lee donghyuck #donghyuck fanfic #donghyuck imagines #nct dream au #donghyuck x reader #haechan scenarios

[manggaetteokkie]

Luo Yunxi as Chu Wanning: the Perfect Casting

(are you guys ready for this post because I am not)

Okay, you guys might be thinking, “Woah, ‘perfect’ is a pretty strong word, are you sure?” to which my only reply is “Damn right I am”.

So I’ve mentioned in my previous post how I am absolutely notworried about how Luo Yunxi was casted for Chu Wanning in the upcoming 2HA live action adaptation, but after going back and rereading that part, I thought that what I wrote wasn’t really enough to drive my point across so that’s where this post comes in.

Beware: this is just going to be a massive word barf praising Luo Yunxi so yeah. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

As we all know (or maybe not, if you’ve never heard of the novel “The Husky and His White Cat Shizun” aka 2HA before), Chu Wanning’s entire aura screams untouchable, otherworldly and transcendent beauty. Basically, someone who embodies the word elegance, with a touch of haughtiness from an outsider’s perspective. He is aloof, enjoys peace and quiet, and is extremely strict. He has zero tolerance for rule breakers and will apply the same standards he holds others to onto himself. He also prefers to keep things to himself. Whether it be injuries or his own feelings, it’s easier for him to deal with them on his own than reach out to others because he considers that losing face. With all of this in mind, I’m sure you’ve all got an idea formed in your head as to what kind of character he is.

To be frank, this kind of role is hard to do, and most importantly, to do well. First, the actor must be poised at all times and display a certain level of elegance in his movements. It is so, so, so easy for the actor to try too hard or be slightly too aware of his movements, which in turn makes them robotic. In other cases, they manage to pull it off when the camera is on them but as soon as they are no longer the focus, they slack off and it’s like a splash of cold water to the viewers. The best case is when the actor is so seamless that you don’t even realize what they are doing, because you’re just enjoying the whole thing so much.

In this case, Luo Yunxi has the advantage from his experience as a professional ballet dancer. Years of dancing has allowed him to have great posture and if you’ve ever seen Ashes of Love, you’d know that he moves with a certain level of elegance that becomes blatant when you put him side by side with Deng Lun (not trying to put anyone down by the way, Deng Lun’s character is the fiery Phoenix who is righteous and direct, the God of Fire and War, so his movements fit perfectly given his character. Meanwhile, Luo Yunxi’s character is the Night God, who, comparatively, has a much calmer and more uptight disposition).

His fight scenes are also *chef’s kiss*. Again, his experience as a dancer really shines through:

That fancy fan trick he did? Absolutely blew my mind how effortless he made it look. He’s really one of the few actors that I actually pay attention to the fight scenes for because he doesn’t just charge and hack at stuff, he somehow turns it into an art form and I’m always curious to see what move he’ll pull next. This makes me excited to see what he’ll do in Immortality because Chu Wanning mainly either wields a whip or conjures barriers, meaning it’s mostly going to be CG. That also means that his hand signs and body movements are going to have to be solid, at the risk of looking awkward otherwise.

For this next part, I’m going to have to make a confession. I actually love watching scenes in which Luo Yunxi’s characters are in a lot of pain, emotional or physical. I wholly admit it, it sounds really sadistic, but understand that I don’t say this easily for anybody. When I say Luo Yunxi nails crying scenes or scenes in which he is in pain...

...I mean he absolutely nails them.

Man... seeing this gif just makes me want to give him the biggest hug and tell him that everything will be alright. Unknowingly, while watching, my own face twisted into a frown.

One of Luo Yunxi’s greatest strengths is his ability to micromanage his expressions. It would be so easy for a newbie actor to appear frozen while watching their costar act; however, just with the smallest furrowing of his brows, Luo Yunxi is able to convey all of his emotional turmoil.

Of course, we can’t have Chu Wanning be crying all the time, but the previous examples were perfect to show how Luo Yunxi can nail those small tells when it comes to Chu Wanning’s character. As mentioned before, our perfect shizun isn’t the type to broadcast his feelings screaming on rooftops, so we can only rely on small twitches of discomfort or slight frowns of pain. Given what we’ve seen from Luo Yunxi, I’m not worried about him being able to properly convey those tricky emotions.

Of course, how can you talk about Chu Wanning without talking about his many fits of anger. Do you perhaps worry that he seems too sad, too soft to properly portray the other aspects of our quick-to-whip shizun? Worry not, and simply feast your eyes upon the following:

I really love these stills, from the tousled hair to the glare that could send whoever he looks at 6ft under... I highly doubt he’ll have a hard time conveying Chu Wanning’s righteous fury given his previous performances.

Also, if you’ve seen him near the end of Ashes of Love, he had to act as a person impersonating him. It was a more comical and lighthearted break in what was quite a heavy scene, and he managed to pull it off amazingly well which really shows his range as an actor.

Anyways, this essay has been going long enough so it’s about time to conclude. Basically, I’m ready to watch this entire live adaptation from start to end just for Luo Yunxi because I trust him as an actor, and I feel like he’s given us more than enough proof to show that he can pull off the Chu Wanning character. Speaking of which, I’m actually lowkey salty because he was the actor I had in mind for Xie Lian as well, but it’s unlikely that he’ll take that role since he’s already been casted by the 2HA team. I’m not lying when I say that after Ashes of Love aired, a lot of fans suddenly had a face to go along with their favourite novel characters.

Bonus!

There was no purpose to these except to show how he looks beautiful regardless of how “unkept” he’s supposed to be. Even if his character is supposed to be at their very lowest point, he still manages to maintain that elegant beauty.

#二哈和他的白猫师尊 #the husky and his white cat shizun #2ha #皓衣行 #immortality #haoyixing #chu wanning #luo yunxi #leo luo #ashes of love #and the winner is love #my post #my stuff #talking with zb

[fluffyferalkacchan]

Kacchan & Deku: Win to Save and Save to Win - A circular path of parallels (part 1)

Okay so it had probably already been talked to death by now, but i'd like to write a detailed list of how Midoriya and Bakugou's respective paths are and had always been paralleled since the beginning. And it's not just with the whole "save to win and win to save" thing, which is the most obvious textual part of it, but there are a lot of more subtle hints along the way too. I mean in nearly every single arcs, for each of Midoriya development, Bakugou had one too (albeit in a completely opposite direction).

This post is also partly in response to some anime-only fans who complained about Bakugou's development in the Joint Training Arc coming from the left field... Which actually isn't? Like Kirishima said it had never been as obvious before but there were definite hints about it and I'll try to show them as thoroughly as possible in this post.

Warning ! This post will be quite long and will contain Manga Spoilers up to chapter 317 in part 3!

¤ From the Pre-UA era To Deku vs Kacchan: their starting lines

(more under the cut)

When I said that the parallel started early, I really meant early. In fact, it started as early as the very first panel they were in.

I think it is very telling that the first time we saw them, Midoriya is trying to defend another kid, while Bakugou is seen using his quirk (and actually introducing the reader/viewer to the whole concept of quirk in the first place). It tells us right here, right then on the very first second, that Midoriya Izuku is physically weak but a savior at heart and Bakugou Katsuki has a strong quirk but is a bully asserting his dominance.

This of course led to diametrical beliefs on what a hero is and should be and we've got those two very iconic moments to illustrate:

And of course it reflected into their behaviors, even as kids.

What I find really interesting in the way those flashbacks were presented is that Midoriya's saving moment was told through Bakugou's POV, while Bakugou's winning side was seen through Midoriya's eyes.

Those moments were deemed important because they deeply impacted the witnessing party and not actually the "wining/saving" one.

(I think someone commented once that while the river scene was highly pivotal for Bakugou, Midoriya probably doesn't even remember it. And likewise Bakugou probably doesn't remember fighting and winning against some random older kids, but Midoriya definitively does. And I totally agree!)

At those moment both Bakugou and Midoriya saw in the other something that they were clearly lacking and their reactions to this realization were wildly different as well.

"He doesn't take himself into account, you know. Something doesn't feel right. It makes me wanna keep him at arm's length. Back then, I ignored my own weakness, so I ended up bullying him" - Bakugou Katsuki

"You who had so many things I didn't have... To me, you were an amazing person much closer than All Might! That's why I keep chasing after you!!" - Midoriya Izuku

Midoriya saw this amazing kid kicking ass with his strong quirks and his first reaction was admiration and wanting to get as close as possible to this person, because he was all too aware of his own weakness and shortcoming.

Bakugou saw this selfless kid trying to help him and displaying qualities that he didn't have and his first reaction was to lash out and push that kid as far away as possible because he didn't want to recognize his own weaknesses and shortcomings.

Which, you know, probably describes their entire childhood dynamics haha...

... and then the sludge villain happened.

And it brought with it the iconic "My legs moved on their own" and "Your eyes were begging for help" moments which we all know about of course, but this scene also had another more immediate parallel that I'd like to talk about.

Bakugou tried to fight the sludge villain on his own but ultimately failed to win.

Midoriya tried to rescue Bakugou on his own from the sludge villain but ultimately failed to save him.

The sludge villain was a reality check for both of them, in a "Nope kiddos, you might aspire to be heroes, but you still have a very long way to go. Here let's insert an All Might to show you just how far away your goal is," kind of way?

Anyway fast-forward 10 months of intense training to prepare for the UA entrance exam.... and really do I even have to mention this?

I mean the only way it could have been even more textually obvious is if Midoriya had been ranked sixth instead of seventh so that his name would be right next to Bakugou's... like there's even this panel explicitly pointing everything out.

So yeah... nothing to add there, *shrugs*

After that came the Quirk Assessment Test:

I'm going to come back to this later on in a more detailed way, but regarding their personal development; Midoriya's development is external while Bakugou's is internal. And I don't quite consider the quirk assessment test as "progress" for any of them yet because both of them sort of completely miss the point.

Aizawa told Midoriya "How can you save anyone if you can't move after one hit?" which had the underlying message of "It's not okay to hurt yourself"... But Midoriya totally went like, "Okay then I'll just hurt myself in a way in which I can still move afterward!" So yeah he is just sidestepping the problem here, but well there probably wasn't anything else he could do here.

As for Bakugou, he had always feel threatened by Midoriya's presence, but not in a fighting skills context. They are not really competing on the same field and it had never occurred to Bakugou that Midoriya could really beat him in a one-to-one fight.

As hilarious as the thought of Bakugou truly believing that somehow Deku had managed to take head on building-high robots quirkless is, I think what really happened is... Bakugou saw his own 0 rescue points and thought "Oh... so that's how Deku got in. Damn nerd probably went and save shitty extras left and right!". Which is a more realistic feat to manage quirkless. Anyway my point is, Bakugou realizing Midoriya isn't quirkless should have been a "Shit! He's leveling the field and standing on my playground now!" moment...

But no, what overpowered him here is the thought that the whole time Midoriya had been hiding his quirk from him and went like "What? Am I not good enough for you to use your quirk on me?! STOP LOOKING DOWN ON ME!!! EXPLAIN YOURSELF RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, SHITTY DEKU!!"

So yeah... kind of missing the point too.

Which is why the quirk assessment test wasn't really their starting point but more like them trying to look for it but missing it?

Speaking of starting lines... Let's move on to the Deku vs. Kacchan first round.

B"From watching the match, it appears Bakugou acted n to surpass Bakugou, All Might pointed that those were the first passionate emotions Midoriya had shown other than "I want to be a hero!". This was the very first moment where Midoriya's desire to win was stronger than his desire to save.

As for Bakugou, this was the moment where he truly he realized that Deku is a threat and not just through his natural heroic/saving disposition like before but on the battlefield which used to be 100% Bakugou's area of expertise. And if even with his non-existent control of quirk Deku had managed to win to such extent, what would happen when Deku managed to truly master his own quirk? Total defeat?! Bakugou is self-aware enough to realize that while his own fighting skills and quirk mastery could still progress, they were already near the top with a not wide enough margin for improvement.

This was the moment where Bakugou realized where he truly stood compared to everyone else around him and that if he wanted to reach the very top again, then only relying on his fighting skills and his quirk control would never be enough. This is what prompted out his feelings of "I have to change or I'll be left in the dust".

And since Deku went and encroached on Bakugou's playground and beat him in the process, there's no way in hell Mr Complete and Irrefutable Win over there wouldn't aim to do exactly the same at some point.

Anyway the two gifs above showed us their motivation to reach their respective Win/Save side of the spectrum, but they both have big issues they need to work on in order to do so.

"From watching the match, it appears Bakugou-san acted on his own because of an obviously personal grudge. As as All Might-sensei said previously, it is foolish to launch a large-scale attack indoors.

In the same way, taking into consideration the damage he received, Midoriya-san's plan was also rash." - Yaoyorozu Momo

Yaoyorozu's analysis was super spot on and hit straight where their weaknesses lie: Bakugou needs to stop acting on his own and learn to cooperate with/trust his teammates and Midoriya needs to stop hurting himself/self-sacrifice and learn to properly control his quirk.

Both of them also have these super heavy shackles that keep pulling them down and impeding their progress at every turn:

Bakugou's complex feelings and emotionally explosive baggage towards Midoriya that makes him go feral and irrational at the drop of a hat and clearly prevents him from properly considering Midoriya as the rival that would keep pulling him up

Midoriya's total and utter idolization of All Might that gives him a tendency to imitate his idol and clearly prevents him from properly realizing and unlocking the potential of his own quirk

And at that point, they clearly don't realize how cumbersome those shackles could be if left unaddressed too long.

Anyway... this episode/chapter was called "Bakugou Katsuki: Starting line", but I think it can be considered both their starting lines, because this is when they were made aware of what they are lacking and showed their resolve to change.

Midoriya's progress and development is intrinsically linked to his quirk mastery and fighting style, which are inherently physical skills (which is where Bakugou's excels in). It stands to reason then that his progress would therefore be very flashy, hard to miss, and highly praised due to the external aspect of his development.

On the other hand Bakugou's progress and development hinges on him properly getting in touch with his emotions and connecting to other people in healthy way, which are inherently inner-strength qualities (which Midoriya has no shortage of) . It stands to reason then that his progress would therefore be very subtle, mostly unnoticed, and hardly taken into account due to the internal aspect of his development. (Like it'd probably only takes him having a full meltdown or throwing himself in front of someone else for other people to notice how far he had gone!)

#bakudeku #bnha #bnha manga spoilers #kacchan & deku #meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #win to save save to win #all the parallels #bnha re watch

[inessencedevided]

The Untamed, episode 46 - watching notes

Full disclosure: I'm not in a particularly good mood today. Have you seen that "no productivity. Only guild." Meme flying around? That's me today :|

Hopefully this will distract me (though distraction was the problem in the first place 🙈)

I apologise for any typos you'll finde in this post 😅

To recap, the last thing I learned was that apparently, Jiggy married his own sister because Jin Guangshan was a scumbag who raped more women than he could possibly remember

I was told by several people that this episode is their favourite. No pressures or anything :D

The way someone is dragging up Jiggy's secrets has a lot of poetic justice to it. Everyone is outraged and gossiping. Consensus is reached quickly. Kinda makes me feel that that someone (who probably also wrote the letter to jgy) knows exactly how to use the sect world's worst qualities as a weapon

Yao what's-his-name, resident gossip queen, at it again

Don't look at me my memory is as bad as wwx when it comes to names :D

I was about to write who is Lianfang Zum again and then I remembered that it's jiggy's honorary title. See what I mean? ^^

What does it say about me that my heart makes a leap when I simply see wwx leaning close to lwj to whisper to him? 😅 I'll probably die reading the novel, that's what that says

Oh so it was the maid who sent the letter

Come on Wei Wuxian! That was cruel

Yeah Yao what's-his-name, why would you need to know the identity of who ever is behind this? It's not like you've ever been deceived before!

What's... with that bracelet?

I love it how everyone looks positively startled when Lan Wangji says something unprompted :D

Wait ... Zwei Jun is in his hands? Shit, i don't remeber what happened there. Where did Xichen go again? 😬

I'm so confused right now 🙈 I can't watch and read the subtitles and type

Okay, watched the whole conversation again, now I'm following

I reiterate my earlier statement that whoever is pulling the strings here knows exactly what strings to pull to get the clans to act

Great, another mob 🙄

Loooool

NOW you want his help? 😂

Sure, as soon as he can serve YOU with his "evil tricks", that's okay!

You can see how much wwx changed because he does not hold their hypocrisy to their faces. He mostly seemed tired of it

And Jiang Cheng just realised that wwx might indeed not be responsible for Jiang Yanli's death, didn't he? He's almost stunned 🥺

Or is BEAUTIFUL to see Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji move in such unity! 😭

Oh ... those are the graves of his foster parents, right? :(

And Yanli ... oh God I forgot about Yanli 🥺

I'm crying again. Nothing on this show will ever hit as hard to me as the Yunmeng siblings' fate

I couldn't help myself, I legitimately just stroked my laptop screen where Yanli's plate was 🥺

So many conflicting emotions

Thanks to a friendly anon, I know that these three bows together are marriage thing! 😭😭😭

So yeah, they're married now. I dont make the rules :')

Somehow, this feels like them asking wwx's foster family's blessing

And now I'm imagining Shijie smiling back at them gently and I'm crying 🥺

And by God, I love lwj's gentle teasing :')

This whole scene, he's so soft! 😭

And it think that Wei Wuxian probably thought that he'd never get to step into Lotus Pier again. But here, he can finally say his goodbyes to his Shijie properly. He can heal! 🖤

And again, I cannot stress enough how wonderful that is! And how rare and precious in a show like this. So often character's get put through unimaginable trauma, but they either brush it off no problem or the show/movie ends immediately after the main action and you are left to imagine the number it did on the character's psyche. There are so rarely fantasy shows that really dive into the emotional fallout the plot has on their characters and then give them time to heal. Thus show does both and I'm so goddamn overjoyed my it!

Come to think of it, it reminds me of a very good hurt/comfort fic 🤷‍♀️

Jiang Cheng pleae, fir once, try not to be angry immediately when you're hurting :(

He still takes special offence that lwj is there. Makes me wonder if he still feels like wwx chooses lwj over the Jiang sect and is still hurt by it 😔 (note that at the same time, he reminds wwx that he's very much not a member of the Jiang clan anymore. God, the man has not worked through his own feelings ...)

For once, as much as I love it when lwj defends wwx (especially when it's not against any physical harm, but because he doesn't want wwx to be hurt emotionally) I think him interfering with this particular conflict does not help

Okay sorry, but no! lotus pier was not destroyed because wwx saved lwj in that cave. That was just an excuse for the Wen sect. They would have come eventually anyway

Ohhh

So there's my answer

He's still hurt because he feels wwx chooses anyone else over his family, which is to say him

And he probably can't understand because their positions are so different. The (future) sect leader and the son of a (dead) servant and a rogue cultivator who never felt quite like he belonged 😔

It's so goddamn tragic how much between these two was destroyed simply because they have such a different status in society and could never quite understand each other's perspective

And again, wwx just takes it 💔

Until, that is, lwj's honour gets besmirched

Don't fight in front of Shijie 🥺

Jiang Cheng's every action screams that he still loves his brother and that amidst all that pain for his lost family, is also deep betrayal and grieve for the brother he thought he could always count on 🥺💔

Can we appreciate for a second how much this shot tells us? From Jiang Cheng's angry desperation, to Wei Wuxian's quite acceptance of his rage (which must be so confusing to Jiang Cheng and probably hurt him even more. Because fighting is always how these two resolved their issues!) to Lan Wangji who is in full on protective mode (which I find more than heartwarming,but still think probably isn't helpful rn)

He ... what?

I still don't quite understand when exactly wwx's lack of golden core shows. Why does he have a nosebleed here?

What?

Oh!

Wen Ning 😱

I get what he wants to do!

Have we ever seen him this calm and determined before?

Abd they understand 😱😱😱

The look on all of their faces! Shiiiiit

I'm crying again

Oh wangii is crying 🥺

Wen Quing 💔💔💔 I'm crying even harder just looking at her. I've MISSED her 🥺

Lan Zhan your FACE!! 😭

The way he's looking at wwx in his arms, as if he's seeing him fir the first time

And by god, I can only imagine what he must be thinking

He must be reevaluation every single interaction they had since wwx started down the path of demonic cultivation 😭

I'm a bit in awe of Wen Ning here and how much he must have been holding in. That's the steadiest and most confident he's ever been

Oh Jiang cheng 💔

That looks like a man whose entire world has just been shaken to its core

And Lan Wangji is crying so much 🥺

God I hope he doesn't blame himself even more 🥺

Aaaaaaahhhh, so that is why he wouldn't just carry the sword for appearance sake and why he just had a nosebleed!

Jiang Cheng probably needs about a month to process all that :/

And therapy ...

Aaaaaaahhhh! The boat scene! I've seen gifs! 😍😍😍

A penny for Lan Wangji's thoughts ...

Oh I'm so so so so glad that Wen Ning gets to say thank you to the man who raised his ... cousin (?) :')

Oh god we get to see!!!!

Oh little a Yuan 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I wonder now, did Lan Qiren know who the child was that his nephew suddenly brought back to cloud recess?

I'm glad that we all learned from this that keeping secrets from the people we love, especially secrets that concern them personally, will eventually come back to bide us in the ass. Than you for delivering that important lesson, wen Ning!

Which reminds me that I hope they eventually tell wwx that they know 😬

I swear to god, one of these days I will melt from the gentleness in lan Wangji's gaze :')

Shit. He had to be awake? 😳

You can pinpoint the moment Lan Wangji's heart breaks for all the suffering wwx endured and how close he came to loosing him even then 🥺

Waking like that in you lovers arms in the middle of a lotus pond - that's the dream *sighs* (minus the passing out bit)

It's weirdly cute that wwx thinks that it's Jiang Cheng's insults that have lwj so upset 😅

Oh GOOOOD ...

I can't

The moment Yanli's themes started to play and she appeared I started to bawl 😭😭😭

And he's sharing the lotus pods with them ... oh please, lwj, please understand what he's saying. That's his pove language! His sister's food was how he received love and right now he passes it on to you! Please, please understand it! 🥺

Oh lwj, don't 🙈

Awwwwww ....

He's breaking the rules for you!!! Just to make you smile!!! 😭😭

And holy shit look at their expressions 😭

By now you should know that he's willing to break the rules for you :')

And poor third wheel Wen Ning 😂

Now there are glittering butterflies???

Do they have some kind of romantic aesthetic bingo going on in this episode???

Oh okay, messenger butterflies

Please appreciate wwx almost climbing into lan Wangji's lab in excitement :D

Thay scene transition was pretty af!

Hey! Why do they bully wen Ning? 😤

*shakes wwx by the shoulders* DO YOU GET THAT HE LOVES YOU NOW???

Huh, this episode was a roller coaster. you guys did NOT exaggerate! I loved it to pieces. I'm floored once more by all the actor's performances. Wen Ning revealed a lot about his character, Jiang Cheng broke my heart, Lan Wangji made it melt and Shijie is still able to make me bawl in an instant. But ... I'm not left with a bitter feeling. Sure, jiang Cheng and wei Wuxian havebt reconciled, but the truth is the first step to even have that possibility. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are both healing and whatever happens in the last 4 (4!!!😭) episodes, I'm not dreading it that much right now. I feel like we're climbing upwards :)

@sweetlittlevampire @fandom-glazed @elenirlachlagos @allhailthedramallama @luckymoony @kyrrahbird @i-love-him-on-purpose thank you guys for staying with me for this crazy ride 💙🖤💙

Also one last thing: please don't tell me what happens differently in the novel in any given scene. I am still reading it (about half way through rn) and I'd like to still be surprised by stuff like first kisses and love confessions 💙🖤

I should have put something like this at the end before, but I always forgot. That's on me 😅 so don't feel bad, if you've shared something before :)

#the untamed #sophie watches the untamed #wei wuxian #wwx #lan wangji #lwj #jiang wanyin #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #wen ning #a yuan #the untamed liveblog

[letsmellowjello]

Oh, Hello There

Pairings: Finn Collins x Reader

Warnings: none

Summary: you find Finn’s “art store” (the hidden bunker) but neither of you know that the other knows about it until you run into each other there.

Notes: I haven’t watched the first season of The 100 in a while so I don’t have the clearest memory of when the events took place. The gif isn’t mine.

Masterlist ~ Prompt/Request

The moon shone brightly through the trees as you put on your shoes and slipped out of your tent inside of the walls near the drop ship. You were thankful for it since you had no flashlight and not very well experienced with the terrain just yet.

You had had an extremely stressful day with the rising tensions between all of the 100. Multiple fights had broken out that day and you, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, had accidentally ended up in the middle of one of them. So you thought that you deserved a bit of a break from everyone else.

You had discovered the hidden bunker about a week before the whole Murphy incident. It was completely by accident and had happened when you were out hunting for food. But you were very thankful that you had found it.

You weren’t the most talkative person and normally stuck to behind the scenes work. You helped Clarke deal with people’s injuries a lot and you often volunteered yourself to Bellamy for hunting trips or explorations, but you knew that neither of them knew your name. You were actually pretty sure that almost nobody in camp knew who you were, but that was alright, you liked it that way because it made sneaking away for some time alone so much easier.

Now you quietly crept through camp and over the wall using the ladder that you had built and kept hidden for moments like these. Once you reached the top, you jumped over to the ground on the other side, landing lightly on your toes.

You walked through the trees, following the very subtle marks that you had made to lead you back to the bunker. They were unnoticeable unless you knew they were there and if you were looking for them, and of course, you were.

Finally, you reached the bunker and quietly slipped in. Once you were inside and had closed the door tightly, you lit a candle and then found a small bottle of some sort of alcohol. You popped it open and poured yourself a glass from one of the cupboards. Then you sat down at the table with a book that you had found and were now about a quarter of the way through.

You had been reading and just chilling out in general for about an hour when you heard the door start to creak. You weren’t sure if it was just the wind but you snuffed out the candle and put everything as it was before anyways. You grabbed your knife and hid in a dark corner, ready for a grounder or someone to come in ready to kill you.

You heard the door open and somebody step inside and move towards where you were but you didn’t think they had seen you yet. Then the area was flooded with light from a lantern causing you to shield your eyes.

“AH!” The person screamed and jumped back, knocking into the table. “Please don’t kill me! I didn’t know anyone was here! I promise!” It was only then that you kind of recognized the voice and you looked up to see Finn with his arms over his head protectively and watching you from a little space in between.

“Y/n?” He asked when he could see who it was.

“Finn? What are you doing here?” You asked gesturing to the room.

“I could ask you the same thing. But how about you put the knife down and then we can talk” Finn said warily as he watched the knife in your hand closely.

“Oh right yeah sorry” You put the knife back into its sheath and then pulled out the chair at the table to sit down. “So what are you doing here? How did you find this place?”

“Probably the same way as you: by accident.”

“Yeah... I found this place when I was out on a hunting trip a couple of weeks ago. I had gotten lost and couldn’t find my way back to camp. Thank goodness nobody noticed that I was gone though, they would have wanted to know where I’d been.”

“I noticed.” Finn stated simply.

“What?” You asked with a bit of furrow in your brow.

“I noticed that you were gone. You didn’t come back that night, I was worried that you’d been captured by Grounders.” 

“Why didn’t you do anything then?” Finn flinched slightly at your tone. You hadn’t meant to sound accusatory, you were honestly just curious. You were very used to people not noticing you and not following through with things for you, so him not doing anything about it really didn’t worry you.

“I did. Jasper and I went out that night to look for you, but by the time we got back to camp the next morning you were already back. I meant to talk to you about it, but then everything with Murphy and Charlotte happened.” He looked up at you through his long lashes that you loved so much. Even on the Arc you had had a thing for him, but you always knew that he liked Raven and Clarke, so you were pretty happy just being friends.

“Oh, I didn’t know that. Thank you, you’re probably the only person on camp who noticed,” You smiled at him.

“You’d be surprised. People may not have noticed that you were gone, but they definitely noticed that there wasn’t as much food and that it wasn’t as good. I’m sorry, that sounded rude, I promise I didn’t mean it that way.” He said quickly and grew a little bit red in the cheeks.

“It’s okay,” You laughed. “It really doesn’t bother me. I’m just glad that I’m a better hunter than Laura and Harry (made up people). So why are you here at this time of night?”

“I don’t know, I just came to get away from everyone for a bit, camp has been really rough lately. What about you?”

“Same deal, tensions have been running really high. I just needed a break to get my nerves under control. How long are you planning on staying here?” You asked but then added quickly, “It’s not that I want you to leave, you can come and go whenever you want, I don’t really care.”

Now it was Finn’s turn to laugh, “Don’t worry y/n, I know what you mean. I was thinking about staying all night and then going back right before everyone wakes up. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” you smiled at him warmly. The two of you sat talking for pretty much the entire night until you were both yawning and your sentences slowly became more sleepy.

“I think... I think we should probably catch some sleep,” Finn suggested. 

“I agree, you can take the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch...” but when you looked back at him he had already slumped over on the couch and was absolutely passed out. You chuckled under your breath and situated him so that he was laying down properly and put a blanket over him.

“Good night Finn,” you whispered and then lay down on the bed facing the wall. Before, you had thought that it would be awful if somebody else found this bunker and it would no longer be your ‘sacred’ place. But now that you and Finn had stumbled across each other, you were actually glad that you were able to share this space with someone who you knew you would become very good friends with. And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if people knew you, maybe it would make this dangerous world just a little more welcoming.

#finn collins #the 100 #imagine #the 100 imagine #finn collins imagine #finn collins x reader #mellow jello imagine

[starbuck]

Terror Notes: “Go For Broke”

well… I guess I’m really doing this! Some proper, bullet-pointed notes for each episode of The Terror, starting with ep 1: Go For Broke!

I wrote these out last night (and edited them this morning to make them readable - you’re welcome!) so I hope that y’all enjoy my thoughts and assorted nonsense! I tried to save my comments for points I actually wanted to make because I feel like they bring something to the table but I still ended up writing A Lot lol

I love that Crozier couldn’t even be bothered to be present in welcoming Sir John and Fitzjames onto Terror, making Little and Hodgson do it by themselves. One could argue that he had important captain-y things to be doing at that time or something but I’m not 100% sure that wasn’t the case. 

idk if it’s just the angle, but I paused the episode just as the shot of the officer’s mess is coming in from above and Hodgson’s hands make me so uncomfortable. They look so bone-y and weird. (Just what you came here for, I know. Hand commentary.)

Cannot tell you how uncomfortable it is, after many rewatches, to listen to Fitzjames recounting in a casual, lighthearted manner 1) shooting people 2) people catching fire (and burning to death), and 3) their burning flesh smelling “like roast duck” (so, like something edible) and it’s even more uncomfortable to have the closeup be on Hodgson’s face as he laughs at the ‘roast duck’ comparison.

On a lighter note: I love that Fitzjames felt the need to remind everyone what size cherries are by illustrating it with his fingers. In case they forgot, I guess? As someone who occasionally speaks unnecessarily with my hands, big mood tbh.

I LOVE it when Fitzjames gives Little that affirmative tap on the arm after he compares Fitzjames’s injury to Lord Nelson’s. My friend Eli and I refer to it as The Fitzjames Arm Tap. I would like a Fitzjames Arm Tap, pretty please.

God, Sir John loudly setting his hands on the table to try to dispel the tension from the ‘birdshit island’ debacle as he attempts to change the subject is so funny. I’m gonna stop just pointing out things I find funny soon, I swear, but I just cannot handle this scene.

Between Hodgson looking horrifically embarrassed by Crozier’s outburst at Fitzjames and Little looking nervous when Crozier shoots him a look as Sir John says that there’s no reason to be concerned about the ice, it really does seem that they were having to ‘manage’ him even back in ep 1 when his alcoholism wasn’t completely out of hand.

Personal sidenote about this: My Pop-pop is often rude to workers in stores and restaurants (he doesn’t drink thank goodness but he has Alzheimer’s coming on which has worsened his temper) so I very much understand the feeling of being on-edge that an outburst is going to occur and trying to deal with the fallout when it does. Just going by my own experience, I can imagine Little apologizing to Fitzjames for Crozier’s rudeness as soon as they were out of Crozier’s earshot (not that anything Little could say would heal the deep psychological wound that Crozier created but hey, it’s something).

The way that Sir John brushes aside Dr. MacDonald’s and Crozier’s concerns about moving Young when he’s in such bad shape never fails to upset me but also ~foreshadowing for hauling the ill on boats oooohhh~

I said I was done pointing out random things that amuse me but the speed and agility with which Des Voeux pops out of the hatch and onto the deck after Orren falls into the water is just so funny. I could watch that two second clip on repeat all day. Might gif it so I actually can.

Is this a good time to point out that there’s also a scene in Moby-Dick where someone falls from high up on a mast and drowns? It’s in a chapter all about bad omens experienced by the crew of the Pequod and The Terror definitely has some similar vibes going on with the sun dogs displayed in the establishing shot of Erebus in that scene and David Young, a “warning of things to come,” on his way over.

The second(?) time I watched the part where Young tells Stanley that he didn’t think anything of getting headaches since he’s always gotten them, I had this thought pass through my head that was like “oh god, I had chronic migraines for years so I’d never have known if I had lead poisoning either!” but then I realized that this probably was not a relevant concern I should have.

Not sure I have any deep commentary on this but as Gore informs Sir John and Fitzjames about the blocked propeller, he’s standing in the same spot, in the same room as Goodsir will stand next episode to tell them about his death.

Also regarding this scene, I love how Gore waits for Fitzjames to give him the go-ahead to leave before actually going. I know that Fitzjames is his superior officer too but, since Sir John already dismissed him, it seems like waiting for Fitzjames’s approval isn’t really necessary, yet a nice thing to do. Perhaps this is a legitimate formality, but something similar happens later in this episode in the command meeting when Crozier asks Gore how many sun dogs he’s seen; he looks to Fitzjames and waits for his nod before answering Crozier. He doesn’t look to Sir John, he looks to Fitzjames. I know that we know essentially nothing about Gore but like.. underrated ship???? Just saying…

Ten nights ago, I was unable to get to sleep for at least an hour because I started thinking about David Young’s saying “I want to go to my grave as I am” and, of course, that ultimately doesn’t happen for him but also, this, like all things about him, is a “warning of things to come.” I’m pretty sure that no one else was properly buried until, arguably, Fitzjames and ironically, that was explicitly not what he wanted done with his body (and, since his grave was later looted by Hickey, similar to the way that Young’s autopsy ultimately achieved nothing, it didn’t really matter anyway).

I know that this happened exactly ten days ago because I forced myself to wake up and write it down in my notes app, lest I forget, which only prolonged my sleeplessness. I suffer for my analysis. 

Ah yesssss Tozer’s lesbian haircut. We love it! Why does my hair not look like that when I take a hat off? I’d like to file a complaint.

Was just thinking the other day about how Hartnell being the one to notice that there was something up with the ice in ep 1 is followed up on with Blanky complimenting Hartnell’s ability to read the ice to Crozier in ep 7. I wonder if Blanky ever gave him like. ice-reading lessons after becoming aware of his interest and natural talent at it in ep 1? That makes me happy to think about.

The two people who we’re shown awoken by Young’s screaming are Sgt. Bryant and Morfin and like. Do I even have to explain why that’s an Oof?

The way that Goodsir hesitates before knocking on Stanley’s door and Stanley irritatedly closing his book before answering the knock in an exasperated voice would be comedic in any other context. If I’m being honest, it still makes me laugh. As does Stanley’s “As if that weren’t plain.”

I’ve pointed this out before but mmmmm... that shot of Stanley in profile with the open candle flame in the background… the foreshadowing in this ep is thicker than the smoke at… Oh alright, I’ll stop. 

God, the autopsy/dive scene…. Collins being lowered down and entering the water paralleled with Goodsir’s initial cutting into Young’s corpse, the breaking up of the ice paralleled with the cutting of the bone-saw. But most significant to me is the parallel of what is seen/not seen and the long-term effect that this has. Collins sees Orren’s corpse (and then presumably never tells anyone about it), reinforcing his guilt over Orren’s death, the beginning of his mental health decline. Goodsir doesn’t see the cause of Young’s death in his autopsy and this not knowing about the lead poisoning until it’s too late to do anything about it is the cause of many of Goodsir’s later problems as well. And, to finish it all off, both the autopsy and Collins’ dive were ultimately for nothing (considering a spinning propeller is useless when your ships are frozen in). 

Crozier and Blanky’s simultaneous face journeys as Sir John rambles on about how there’s nothing to worry about and they’ll find the passage any day now are truly legendary.

I wrote some pretty extensive tags on this already but man… Crozier’s comment about how not all of Sir John’s men returned from one of his previous arctic expeditions is just so nasty and awful. Like, yes, Sir John is wrong to undersell the danger they’re in and Crozier is advocating for the correct position here, but that was completely uncalled for and horrible to say, particularly in a command meeting, in front of so many people. And Sir John looks legitimately upset by it too. He gets over it quickly, at least on the outside, but I still feel really bad for him (and I NEVER feel bad for Sir John so this is weird for me).

“But of course we will not be abandoning Erebus, or Terror…” Let’s check back in six episodes and see how that’s going! 

Crozier slamming his fist on the table to prove he’s not being melodramatic reminds me of this one post (that I sadly can’t find rn) about Jesus Christ Superstar that’s like “‘CUT OUT THE DRAMATICS’ Judas hollered dramatically.” It’s such an Overall Mood.

I don’t have a developed commentary on this at the moment but it’s an interesting reverse-parallel that Sir John had no concern for Young’s well-being when he was alive, ignoring Crozier’s concerns about moving him from ship-to-ship when he was in such poor health, yet now that he’s dead, Sir John is the one to recommend that Young be buried which Crozier is surprised by, and seems to feel is unnecessary.

There’s been so much amazing commentary already made about Young’s burial scene so I’ll skip it except to say that Hickey’s irritated sigh when he hears footsteps coming towards the grave is SO funny. That’s exactly how I feel when I know that someone is about to tell me something that will annoy me.

Goodsir was really getting into the emotion of Sir John’s “eulogy”/motivational speech before he remembered the promise he made about Young’s ring. Also, what triggered his memory was Sir John saying “We shall earn our loved one’s cheers and embraces,” so no doubt a reminder of the traumatic “Your loved ones will be there in Heaven to welcome you! :)” “I never knew my mother or father” exchange (or maybe just a reminder of the fact that he was supposed to get Young’s ring to his sister but just let me scrape a little humor out of this. God knows I need it).

The shot of Bryant praying in his hammock the night before they get completely frozen-in is honestly deeply upsetting to me. Especially considering he’s a marine so he Did Not Ask To Be Here, yet there he’ll die.

According to Melville, ship’s compasses occasionally spun round-and-round when a ship was caught in a severe storm and this was an incredibly upsetting thing to behold because of how disorienting it was. So, considering that, Fitzjames keeps his composure pretty well but he clearly has some reservations about how things are going and Sir John has no comforting-sounding remark about ‘Magnetic North’ to offer him now.

The bit where Sir John “sees” Crozier, on Terror, turn away from him with a half-smirk on his face is interesting because there’s no way he could have possibly seen Crozier’s expression at that distance and I’m doubtful that he’d even have been able to make out the identity of anyone he might have been able to see on Terror’s deck. So really, it speaks mostly to Sir John’s mental state; his seeing their getting frozen in as a loss against Crozier and imagining that Crozier would see it as a victory for himself.

Ugh the final shot is making me think about @catilinas’s post comparing a shot of the two ships stuck in to the shot of the ink drops from ep 3 and I am LOSING IT but I was losing it anyway because it’s 2AM now and my entire body feels like gelatin. 

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT! 

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

#the terror #i'm REALLY proud of these!! this was so fun to do! #i definitely intend to do this for each episode #no promises for the timing on that but i legitimately have nothing better to do so lol hopefully ep 2 will happen soon! #hope y'all enjoyyyyyyyy #feel free to add comments if you like or you don't have to! whatever is good - i just appreciate anybody slogging through this lol

[grimelords]

My March playlist is finished! This one is slightly more diverse than usual, swinging all the way from vibraphone jazz to Bhad Bhabie to black metal so I’ve taken the liberty of actually sequencing it properly for you. So if you’ve got 3 hours you can listen to this straight through and be taken for a hell of a ride. No matter what you like I’m sure you’ll find something in here that you love.

Tahiti - Milt Jackson: For an unknown reason I had a big jazz vibraphone phase this month and when you're talking jazz vibraphone you're talking the Wizard Of The Vibes himself, Milt Jackson. I feel insane even having an opinion on this but it's a shame that some of the best vibraphone performances were made at a time when the actual recording technology wasn't really there, they all have this very thin quality that I think misses a lot of the great character of the instrument.

Detour - Bill Le Sage: Like compare this from 1971 to Wizard Of The Vibes from 1952, the sounds is miles warmer and gives so much more of the full range and detail of the instrument. I also listened to this song five times in a row when I first heard it, the central refrain is just so fuckin good. Like I said, big vibes vibe and who knows why.

Blowin' The Blues Away - Buddy Rich And His Sextet: Superhuman playing aside, it's unbelievable how good these drums sound. The whole first minute just feels like a tour of each specific drum and I absolutely revel in it. I feel like flute and vibes is a relatively rare combo so it's extremely nice to hear Sam Most and Mike Manieri go ham in tandem.

Yama Yama - Yamasuki Singers: A friend sent me this song that he's had stuck in his head for ten years ever since it was in a beer ad from the days when beer ads were incredible strange for complicated legal reasons about not showing people enjoying the product or something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfkh0OojxY and this incredible song is apparently from a 1971 French concept album where a couple of guys wrote a bunch of psychedelic songs in Japanese for an unknown reason that later became a massive drum and bass breaks album, and one of the guys was Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk's dad! Music is crazy.

Alfonso Muskedunder - Todd Terje: I'm starting a petition to get Todd Terje to write the soundtrack for the next Mario Kart. I absolutely love this song and this whole album because it's so joyful and strange and it just sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. He seem to truly operate in a world entirely of his own.

Pala - Roland Tings: I love this song. It's like he wrote it with normal sounds and then went back and replaced every instrument with the party version. This song hands you a coconut and says welcome to the island where bad vibes are punishable by firing squad.

Keygen 13 - Haze Edit - Dubmood: There's a fucking album of keygen music on spotify and it's absolutely great and so good that someone's doing the work to recognize the value of the music this extremely weird scene produced and preserve it. If you don't know, back in the day when you pirated photoshop or whatever, you would download a license key generator which was a program made by extreme nerds who had cracked the license key algorithm to give you a fake one, and for unknown reasons they would make the keygen program play original chiptune music that someone in their nerd crew would compose. Who knows why but god bless them.

My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Remix) - Feist: The very concept of a Boys Noize remix of My Moon My Man is hilarious and it turns out it sounds absolutely amazing as well. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Low Blows - Meg Mac: I had a big Meg Mac phase this month too, listened to her album a lot and it's extremely solid. Great timing too cause her new one comes out in a month or so too. I really am excited to hear her next album because she's so good but I've always got this feeling that she hasn't reached her full potential yet, she's only going to get a million times better in an album or two.

Patience - Tame Impala: I love that the cover of this single is a pic of congas because it feels like that's the central thesis here. Kevin Parker bought some congas and is making disco Tame Impala now and I really couldn't be happier about it.

Unconditional (feat. Kitten) - Touch Sensitive: I love a 90s throwback done with love. There's nothing cynical or ironic about this it's just fun as hell!

Last Hurrah - Bebe Rexha: Get a fucking load of this Bebe Rexha song that interpolates Buy U A Drank by T-Pain for the chorus! It's a testament to how good that song is that she's using the verse melody as the chorus. T-Pain will quite literally never get the respect he deserves. Also this song goes for 2.5 minutes. There's something happening where pop songwriting is getting more and more compact, completely trimming the fat and ornamentation and it's very interesting.

Hi Bich - Bad Bhabie: Also I'm fully six months late on Hi Bich but I'm of the opinion that it's extremely fucking good. A perfect little reaction gif of a song and it only goes for 1m45!

Friends - Flume: I'm doubling down on my thesis about emo rap from last month but this song literally sounds like a Flume remix of a Hawthorne Heights song. The whole melody of it, the overlapping yelled/clean vocals. The lyrics obviously. I don't know it's just very odd how close it is. A sort of emo trojan horse to trick people into thinking The Used are cool again. 

How To Build A Relationship (feat. JPEGMAFIA) - Flume: I've been meaning to check out JPEGMAFIA (AKA Buttermilk Jesus AKA DJ Half-Court Violation AKA Lil' World Cup) for a while but this is the song that convinced me. There's just so much to digest in this. Every line is gold and delivered with massive conviction even when he realises it's total nonsense like 'dont call me unless I gave you my number'.

Bells & Circles (feat. Iggy Pop) - Underworld: Underworld alive 2019?? I love this song becuase Iggy Pop has been riding a fine line between punk provocateur and old man yells at cloud for a while now and this song is the perfect mix of both. You can't hijack airplanes and redirect them to cuba anymore and as a result it's over for liberal democracies. Just yelling about air travel for six minutes and it's good.

Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death Pt. 1) - UNKLE: This beat is some of my favourite DJ Shadow work I think. The menacing organ bass throughout, and especially the distorted drum freakout near the end. It's just great all the way through.

Homo Deus IV - Deantoni Parks: Another Deantoni Parks track like I was raving about last month. This whole album is great and flows together as a single piece of work amazingly. I love the purposefully limited sample palette of each track forcing an evolving groove throughout. He absolutely wrings every bit of variation he can get out of every single sound he uses and once you get into the groove of it it's absolutely mind blowing.

Boredom - The Drones: I love that The Drones can write a song about joining ISIS that's also a lot of fun. Spelling out radicalization in a way anyone can understand and sympathise with and then switching it in the second verse to spell out how we got into this situation anyway. 

Loinclothing - Hunters And Collectors: I love how much this song sounds like a voodoo celebration in christian hell.

The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died - Queens Of The Stone Age: There's a good bit on the live dvd they put out after Lullabies To Paralyze where they play this song and they say it was supposed to be on the album but somebody stole the master recordings from the studio, which is an incredible and brazen crime. Then when they put it out on Era Vulgaris as a bonus track Josh Homme said in an interview "The tapes got lost. Actually, they were just at another studio, but we falsely accused everyone in the world of theft" which is extremely funny. This is really one of their best songs and I sort of really with it had been on Lullabies because it fits perfectly between The Blood Is Love and Someone's In The Wolf type of vibes, I love how it just kind of keeps shifting ideas and riffs throughout. An absolute jam overflowing with ideas.

10AM Automatic - The Black Keys: This song is an all time great in my opinion. It's so straightforward and so effective. I wonder if we'll get a blues rock revival ever or if Jack White still being alive and bad is souring everyone on that idea. This song also has one of my favourite guitar sounds in history I think - the outrageously huge sounding solo that comes out of nowhere and swallows up the rest of the mix like a swirling black hole near the end.

Gamma Knife - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: I've never gotten much into King Gizzard and because of their one million albums already it's hard to know where to start but I've been listening to Nonagon Infinity a bit and it's great, it's just good old fashioned 70s prog jams front to back.

Gina Works At Hearts - DZ Deathrays: I absolutely love this song and I absolutely love the second guitar sound in the chorus of this song that sounds like it's made out of thin steel.

Black Brick - Deafheaven: When I saw Deafheaven the other month I was right up the front and it was a life changingly great experience AND they played this new song live for the first time before it went up everywhere like three hours later which was very exciting to be given a sclusie like that. After they finished a guy behind me whispered to his friend "Slayer..." which was very funny to me.

Gemini - Elder: I found this band because one of my Spotify Daily Mixes was all stoner metal for a while, which is a good genre to see all lined up because it'll have Weedeater, Bongripper AND Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats right there in a row for you. Anyway this album is extremely good, the very best kind of stoner metal where it's groovy and fun and has big meaty riffs and ripping big solos and it's extremely easy to listen to three times in a row.

The Paradise Gallows - Inter Arma: My big obsession the past little while has been Inter Arma ever since Stereogum posted The Atavist's Meridian from their new album. It is just so fucking good and I can't believe I've never heard of them before. You know when you find out about an amazing band and then you find out they've been around for nearly ten years and you can't believe everyone in your life has been selfishly hiding them from you?

The Atavist's Meridian - Inter Arma: I think a big part of my enjoyment of this band has also been that I discovered them at the same time as I'm listening to an audiobook of the complete Conan The Barbarian omnibus so I'm very much in the brain space for music that sounds like it would be nice to swing an axe to.

Untoward Evocation - Impetuous Ritual: I love how halfway through this kind of just turns into a big swirling mist of dark sounds. It feels so formless and dark that it could just shake apart and dissipate at any moment and you'd look down to realise your skin is gone.

Eagle On A Pole - Conor Oberst: from Genius: 'In an interview with MTV news, Oberst stated “We were on the bus one day and a friend of ours that travels with us and works for the band kind of came out from the back of the bus and said that first line: ‘Saw an eagle on a pole… I think it was an eagle.’ And then this guy Simon Joyner, who is a great songwriter from Omaha and one of my great friends, he was on tour with us and sitting there and he was like, ‘You know, that’s a great name for a song.’ We kind of had a contest where he wrote a song with that first line, and [then] I did, and a couple of our other friends. We kind of all played them for each other. Simon’s is better than mine, but it is a good line to start a song.” Another version–Mystic Valley Band drummer Jason Boesel’s interpretation–is on the next album, Outer South.' The idea that such a good song has such a braindead origin only makes me love it more.

Lake Marie - John Prine: When I saw John Prine the other month he played this song that I had never heard before and I had to look it up after and now I'm completely obsessed with it. It feels like falling asleep during a movie and missing a critical plot point so the rest doesn't make sense when you wake up but is thrilling nonetheless. Also he absolutely screamed "SHADOWS!!!" when he played it which was a fucking cool thing to see a 72 year old man do.

Little White Dove - Jenny Lewis: The drums on this whole album are absolutely huge for some reason and I love it. My favourite recent sound is in the first chorus where there's a funny little pitch correction noise as she sings 'dove'. It's very strange and very very good.

Locked Up - The Ocean Party: I only found out The Ocean Party existed as they announced their farewell show this month which is a real shame but I'm glad I got to hear of them at all because they're very good. A very good song about that feeling we all know and love: driving for a long long time.

Plain & Sane & Simple Melody - Ted Lucas: I found out about this song from Emma Ruth Rundle's Amoeba Records video and she makes a good point about this whole album sounding like something's gone wrong and it got accidentally pitched down slightly in the recording process. It's unclear if that's what happened or that's just how he sounds but it adds a very softly spooky undercurrent to a very nice song.​ 

listen here

#playlists

[blapisblogs]

After that song ends and Corey Taylor gets a glimpse of something we’ll come back to later, we then cut to “young Corey Taylor” getting smacked and sassed by... Rob Scallon as the teacher? Yeah, Doug not only got Corey Taylor and his son Griff for this, he also brought in another musician. At least he got to contribute more to the music in this “review” than Corey Taylor did. Apparently he’s dating Tamara Chambers and that’s how he got involved with this (which makes the fact that Tamara’s here as one of his “students”... awkward at best), but judging by how desperately he’s tried to erase any mention of his involvement with this after the severe backlash it got, I’m guessing that he now regrets this. Anyway, hello, other Doug Walker regular Malcolm Ray. I have no clue who the other two “students” are, but I can only guess that they’re other regulars for Doug’s stuff. (Edit from the future: I think the other guy’s name is Walter? I know nothing about him except he works for Doug and I guess he likes Power Rangers.) All of them have high-pitched dubbed-in voices (I guess to make them sound younger in a “funny” way), and it’s really grating. Like... If you’ve read through my liveblogs about Sonic X, then you remember how I hated it whenever Bokkun said literally anything, right? Well it’s not quite as bad as him as far as the pitch goes, but it is just as annoying, if not even more so because there’s multiple people with high-pitched voices and the lyrics they get to sing in this part aren’t just annoying, they’re insulting.

Oh yeah, did I mention they sing for this next parody song?

If you know the album or the movie, you're probably already dreading this, and it's just as bad as you fear, maybe even worse. Yes, we’re at what’s probably the most popular song from The Wall: the BAFTA award-winning “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”. If you don’t know, that song is preceded by “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, which is so connected with it that most of the time it’s considered part of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” itself, as I’ve always heard it credited as part of that song on the radio. Doug does seem to know the difference though, as he notably does not parody the lyrics from “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, which to me is a problem: that part is integral to knowing the story behind the song that follows it because it’s the part that talks about how the children in the school were abused by their teachers. Again, since Roger Waters based a lot of this off his own life and he grew up in a time where the teachers were legally allowed to physically and emotionally abuse their students, it’s pretty obvious that’s what the song’s about. Even without including “The Happiest Days of Our Lives”, Doug still parodied the scene where the teacher was humiliating young Pink in front of the entire class, reading his poems aloud and calling them “absolute rubbish” (though for this “review” it’s the teacher insulting Taylor’s musical taste in Pink Floyd, which is still shitty and psychologically damaging, and really upsets me as an autistic person who’s had their interests mocked multiple times). Despite all this, Doug claims Waters is just being a crybaby and exaggerating how bad his school life was when the abuse he suffered and the damage it caused him was real and very serious. You can say what you want about Waters’s ego, Doug, but making fun of someone for being abused, especially as a child, is a line that you should never cross.

It seems like Doug’s not satisfied enough with mocking what Roger Waters was talking about regarding his school life, though, because he goes as far as to mock all people who complain about school, dismissing detailed dissections of what’s wrong with today’s education system as “long-winded rants”. I’m convinced he didn’t actually read these “rants” he’s mocking, because there are serious problems with our education system. I could go into all the shitty things that I personally had to go through as an autistic kid, but you can find plenty of better, more detailed posts and articles talking about how fucked up America’s education system is today, to say nothing of what England’s school system was like in the 50′s (you know, the time period and experience Waters was clearly talking about with this), and this post is already long enough before I can even properly rip into this dreadful parody.

As the turd on top of this shit sundae, Doug Walker does a Dracula impression for part of the song because he’s saying that Roger Waters is calling all teachers “monsters” (yes, that’s literally the only reason). More specifically, it’s the Dracula played by Adam Sandler in the Hotel Transylvania franchise, where Sandler was already doing a weak impression of Bela Lugosi. Basically Doug’s doing an annoying, shitty impression of an already annoying, shitty impression.

Kill me.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

NC: We need more victimization (There are no good teachers! Not one! Not even by accident!) We need more stuff to rebel

[I know some people will complain about literally anything, but did you actually pay attention to what the album and film were saying? That teachers who abuse their students and try to quash their creativity and individuality is bad, something that Waters himself has clarified in interviews regarding the very song you’re parodying here? Do you not agree with that?]

(We don’t want to help you! We just want to eat your blood and suck your brains!) Though our education system’s broke (Wait, maybe it’s the other way around. I don’t know, I got a high school education! Muahahahaha!) This is pandering like hell

[You reviewed Norm of the North, Boss Baby, and the Emoji Movie despite none of those having ties to anything nostalgic (you even admitted as much in your review of the former), which was the entire point of the Nostalgia Critic. If that's not you pandering to your fanbase who just likes hearing you yell about bad movies, then I don’t know what is.]

(Remember that one teacher who seemed cool? He wasn’t! He was all part of the plan!) Hey! Who cares? All this bitching sells!

[Clearly it does considering your whole internet career is founded on that.]

(Remember that one teacher who seemed really kind and gave you candy?) Well oh well, we’ve got another hit in The Wall (That candy was really sugar-coated children's’ souls!) L-O-L, so school sucks. Grow a damn pair of balls.

[Okay, Boomer. You first. (Before anyone goes “well actually he’s not a Boomer”: I don’t care. This is such a Boomer message that a Boomer may as well be saying it.)]

(Children’s souls! We’re so evil! Muahahahaha!)

[I’m sorry for including all the evil laughing in this transcription, but it’s just as annoying to hear it, trust me.]

Bokkun “Child” chorus: Real cool visualizations (It’s all part of the plan so that you’re more likely to get a job when you’re older!) Milking your gloom and pity (Muahahahahaha! How terrible is that? Muahahahahaha! Muahahahaha!)

[Considering how schools in the way they operate now make students lose sleep, stresses them out over numbers that are assigned to tasks that have been forced upon them, and has been outdated for years since that’s not how most jobs work anymore... Yeah, it actually is terrible. You even said earlier that there are problems with our current education system, yet now you’re making fun of people who criticize it? Make up your mind.]

You hated school, who the hell didn’t? (It’s like those ‘90s commercials where the adults look like bad guys!) What’s next, hating DMVs? (Except they weren’t 90s commercials, they were really mini-documentaries! It’s all true! Muahahahaha!) Hey! Waters! Leave it on F-B!

[We get it already, Doug, you really hate Waters’s ego and the things he talks about in these songs. You’ve already talked about that in your previous parody, can you move onto something else about the movie that isn’t that? So far you’re making it sound like that’s the only thing worth talking about regarding this film.]

(We really don’t see what makes Cinnamon Toast Crunch so great!) All and all, complaining doesn’t mean much at all

[Well, at least you’re able to admit that your career means nothing.]

(Because we’re old! Muahahahaha!) But who cares, it’s still a damn cool song in The Wall (Bleh bleh bleh bleh, I’m a teacher, bleh bleh bleh bleh!)

[In case anyone was wondering why I said it was Adam Sandler’s shitty Bela Lugosi impression he was doing and not just a shitty Bela Lugosi impression, there you go. (For those who don’t get it: the “bleh bleh bleh” thing is a recurring “joke” in at least the first Hotel Transylvania. Yes, it’s as lame as it sounds.)]

We still need more persecutions (Muahahahahahaha! Ahehahahahahehe suck your blood, bleh!) (??) need to hear you (???) (Stabula!)

[I’m giving this my best shot, I really am, but... all I hear for that last set of question marks there is a really inappropriate c-word.]

What are you big boys to say school’s lame? Based on a long-winded rant?

[Hmm, posts and articles made by people who know what they’re talking about explaining how the American school system (since that’s what you’re basing this on rather than the one Waters wrote about) needs some serious retooling in order to cause less burnout, stress and trauma with literal children that can and will affect them in the short and long term when they grow up, or some internet jackass who gets paid for yelling at things and hasn’t been to a high school since at least the 90′s. Gee, I wonder whose opinion on that subject matters more in this situation. (That was sarcasm, by the way, for those who couldn’t tell.)]

Hey! Twitter! (???) bloody (???)!

[I’ve tried my best to figure out what they’re saying here, but this is one of the few times that I cannot actually tell no matter how hard I try, I’m sorry.

So anyway, the TL;DR version of what I think of what this parody song has to say about the original can be summed up in one Kermit gif:

...Why aren’t I watching The Great Muppet Caper instead?]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #abuse mention // #child abuse mention // #long post #bold text warning #very long post #gif warning

[pacificwanderer]

Question! So I’ve noticed that you and a lot of others have been saying stuff about the months leading up to TLJ. I wasn’t into Star Wars at that time, so I was just wondering, what was it like? Was there a lot of content being released, was there a lot of crazy speculation and such? Was there a lot of reylo content in promos and pictures and such?

Hey Nonnie,

And for anyone who’s reading who remembers, this is going to be long, and I’m going to miss things (I’m certain I missed some gates) because I’m just going from memory and old posts from when I wasn’t as militant about tagging (hah), so feel free to chime in if you have any other memories. Also, this took forever to compile lol.

Unofficially, we had shots from Ireland (2016) and second-hand gossip from locals about Daisy, Mark, and Adam filming in Ireland (and lots of people screeching about how the only reason KR would be with those two would be so they could team up and murder them).

But then the conversation started to shift, and we got info that wasn’t from the reylo fandom regarding their “interesting relationship,” though we were always there, saying the exact same thing.

This podcast and breakdown in the comments from May 2016 really highlights when things started to shift for our space kids (and confirmed a lot about what people had been theorizing/writing meta about, etc). We weren’t pulling things out of our asses and we were not wrong for seeing what we were seeing. It’s also a really great snapshot of what the discussion on Tumblr was like back then. Lots of great minds and fun times, as far as I am concerned.

“But I mean like, right now, Rey’s story is kinda weird too. It’s like I don’t know where my mum lives, I wish my mum and dad would come get me on Jakku, oh, I’ve got the force? Oh Luke Skywalker, he’s here? Wow. And then, so, at some point, Kylo Ren and Rey gotta have something more going down. I don’t know if it’s romance, if it’s complete hatred, if it’s you know, but, erm…I know, we can’t talk about it, there’s certain things we’ve heard – and it’s not romance, it’s not romance, but there’s certain things that we’ve heard recently about what’s going down and what Rey, how Rey feels –“

“Yeah, let’s just leave it at that.”

And then there was a very long wait for 2017, when things started to shift even more.

It was pretty much radio silence concerning Kylo Ren (officially) right up until the second trailer (the first only showed him for a split second). Boxartgate happened earlier in the year. (February) when the marketing started to come out for TLJ and Kylo wasn’t on any of it (nevermind that only his mask was on the TFA packaging, but when you’re grasping at straws for reasons why the “Skywalker of the trilogy” isn’t important... I guess you’ll take what you can get).The Reylo fandom guessed (correctly) that he was basically a walking spoiler (which other sections of the fandom guessed, incorrectly, that he was irrelevant to the story and that’s why he wasn’t showing up much N O P E). 

SW Celebration happened in April 2016, and that trailer, combined with the super, SUPER amazing poster dropped:

Oh and Eric Maell’s super Reylo-tastic, officially licensed SWC poster that was available for sale at SWC (yeah, we all lost it here too). The whole thread is funny and read through to where Eric’s signature pops up on the poster.

And then we collectively lost our damn minds when the trailer dropped in October. If you’d like a trip, head into my archive and look for like October 2017 and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what that looked like lol.

It’s so damn good, I just watched it again and it STILL brings tears to my eyes. Avoid the comment section LOL. 

And then came the: “It’S NOT KYLO’S HAND, IT’S HU//X’S FI//NN’S LU//KE’S ANYONE BUT KYLO REACHING OUT TO HER.” SNOKE ISn’T TALKING ABOUT KYLO. (handgate)

As if we, a collective group of Adam stans, WOULD EVER mistake his hand for another. GET GOOD, Anne.

HE’S NOT LOOKING AT REY. HE’S LOOKING AT.... fill in the blank. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA No. We know what he looks like when he looks at Rey. 

Like, I didn’t spend 2 fucking years staring at screen shots like a maniac to NOT be able to see things for what they really are. I mean, the look he gives her when she pulls that saber from the ground on Starkiller? I WISH I could find a gif because it’s classic, “Holy shit, I think I’m in love, but I’m pretty sure she wants to murder me.” HAH Oh Enemies to Lovers, you’re such a riot.

But up until that point there was NOTHING. I’m pretty sure box gate happened somewhere in there, but then the marketing really started getting going and we got fed so fucking well it was almost too much because we’d had so little to go on up until that point that it was just like, “Is this real life? Am I making too much of this? Or are they really playing up the Kylo Ren/Rey angle in this marketing?”

October 31, 2017, we got this GREAT article from V where Adam interviewed Daisy.

AD Is there an aspect of working on Star Wars—it could be anything from the light saber battles, the travel, the catering, to getting to see me every day and do my hair—that was your favorite part?

DR I don’t know if I’ve ever properly thought about it. I love coming into the makeup trailer—everyone is there, you say good morning, and you get a little cuddle from people...I just really liked being part of something where you’re one of a whole. When filming, you’re always part of a thing. Becoming besties with you was the best thing.

AD That’s a lie, but we will make sure that’s printed.

DR [laughs]

The whole interview is really sweet and a really lovely read. Also, got some really adorable fanart of Rey doing Kylo’s hair around that time, which was super awesome.

There was some drama about Rian saying there’s “no romance in EPIX” which obviously wasn’t the case and he was misquoted anyways. Which is a good reminder not to freak the fuck out over everything, just because it seems like it’s going one way (or someone’s pushing their own thoughts and opinions onto paper in an interview). At any rate, Rian’s a big ole Romantic, so we know how it all goes in TLJ. (Romancegate)

This article talking about “the fallen son” and whether Kylo could be redeemed came out in Nov 2017 (which was LOL considering how much of the general fandom had convinced themselves this movie would be about Rey hunting down and murdering Kylo), which had this super quote from Rian:

“But I don’t think it’s very interesting if the whole story is just ‘Will Kylo get his comeuppance?’ He’s a more complicated character than that and I think he deserves a more complicated story than that. I don’t see the point of trying to get behind his mask and learn more about him if all we’re going to learn is ‘Yeah, he’s just an evil bad guy that needs to be killed.’” -Rian Johnson  

This amazing character flowchart that was marketed in Korea to show the relationships in Star Wars (it’s official, and if you’re at all familiar with kdrama’s, you’ll probably understand why half of the fandom lost their shit lol).

This post/podcast from the starwarsconnection also has a pretty great breakdown of what was going on at the time and also shows some of the kid’s toys (specifically, the Reylo dolls that were sold as a set, though there are a FEW sets of Reylo figures, this one was specifically marketed to girls as a part of the Forces of Destiny series, which I really miss).

I’m sure there’s more, but basically the movie came out and the rest is history haha. This article talking about how horny TLJ is still makes me laugh.

1. Kylo Ren takes his shirt offLike I wasn’t going to start with this? Adam Driver as Kylo Ren gamely serves up the most Star Wars beefcake since Luke went sleeveless on Dagobah, and even Rey is rattled. She forgot to force-knock before barging in on the dude, and here’s Kylo Ren alone in his room, stripped to the waist, boasting sweaty pecs that look like he sliced Alderaan in half and glued the remainders to his chest. It’s a lot! Finally, even people who don’t subscribe to HBO can wonder, “Shit, am I attracted to Adam Driver?”

2. Kylo and Rey’s whole thingMany weirdos shipped these two characters after The Force Awakens, and now I kinda get it. Kylo and Rey never make out, but they still share The Last Jedi’s sexiest scenes as well as a telepathic connection fostered by sinister voyeur Snoke, the galaxy’s mightiest cuck. And how about that moment where Kylo kills his mentor — it’s always hot when a space goth murders a lazy magician — and then flips sides with Rey to kill off a straggling crew of ruby-red stormtroopers? If watching seven seasons of Buffy has taught me anything, it’s that there is no sex sign more unequivocal than teaming up with your sworn enemy to throw stage punches.

LOL. So yeah, have fun, don’t stress, and it’ll all be fine. Cheers!

#reylo #tlj marketing #reylo fandom history #long post #text #asks and answers #anonymous asks #ask pacificwanderer #this is kind of snarky lol #I don't mean that if you didn't see it and just came around to it during TLJ #that you're wrong #basically any snark is directed towards the people who thought #it was okay to be a dick to the fandom for no good reason #changing and growing is a part of life #targetting people online with hate over a kid's move #and working to not include them in greater fandom discussions #is gatekeeping and makes me very angry #man I gotta go get some work done lol #Anonymous

[go-diane-winchester]

How did J2 feel about Misha misbehaving with Jared on stage?

One of my awesome doll faces sent me this interesting question about the above gif:

Thought you might find this interesting. This is probably the first thing that gave me a very bad vibe about Misha. The first part is what I’m talking about, how Misha behaved and then Jensen. Misha is just so gross and completely violates Jared and makes both of J2 uncomfortable and Jensen especially just looks upset. I thought he was actually going to walk off stage. Watch the video, it’s very cringy and made me actually upset. Let me know what you think.

Thank you to doll face, for that ever-so-awesome question which I had to crop slightly.  Apologies for that.  Now, remember, I am not a shipper.  I am a slash fiction fan [there is a difference] so I will not let me sexual fantasies govern how I interpret this. 

For those five sad creatures in fandom who still haven't seen the footage, what have you been doing, hunny?  I am helpfully providing a link here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IqeQ8vSiDQ

So they were all signing shirts to be auctioned off for charity.  Misha chose to sign Jared, doggy-style.  SMH.  Jared takes the time to do a spot of cleaning because he had thrown candy wrappers all over the floor.  He blushes and laughs when he stands up to his full height.  If you look at the footage, Jensen looks away, very scandalized.  He even shoots out of his chair and goes to the farthest part of the stage, the minute Jared approached him.  When Jensen gets back, he still keeps his distance from both Jared and Misha and says [although the audio is not totally clear] ''I don't want to be a part of this''.  Even as the auctioning starts, Jensen hovers around the stage uncomfortably, before giving up and perching himself on the seat farthest away from the other two.  Now for the analysis.

Misha

Misha is attracted to none of the men on that stage.  He is not gay.  He is a straight, sexual deviant.  He likes females, young and stupid being his preference, hence his wacky fan base.  However, what ever he does on stage is communication for his fans.  Misha calculates his moves with his fans.  He wants to arouse a bunch of them simultaneously without doing it manually, if you understand what I mean.  So throwing inappropriate shipping nonsense like this, out there [kid friendly audience or not] is one way he does it.  He also wants to communicate that he is the Alpha.  If he is on stage with someone, he wants sexual power over them.  That is why usually he doesn't prefer people like Jared and Sebastian, because they are not fazed by his antics and are also sexually outspoken.  He doesnt even want Robbie, because when he kissed Rob once, on the mouth, Rob just kissed him back.  Even at this moment, Jared blushed but didn't scurry away from Misha's grasp.  That is why he plopped himself back into his seat afterwards.  He didn't expect Jared to just laugh about it.  Jensen's reaction is probably why he chooses Jensen.  Jensen gets uncomfortable and that gives him power.  That is why his fans consider him to be the Alpha is the Jensen/Misha pairing.  He puts himself in that position. 

There is a scene where Casifer is speaking to all the fledgling angels who are petrified of their demonic older brother.  That is the closest Misha came to playing a character similar to his own because he really went all out for it.  At one point, he very nonchalantly straddles one of the kids.  And that poor kid is so uncomfortable that he almost never raises his eyes to make eye contact with Misha.  That was not scripted.  Misha told nobody he was going to do that.  That includes the kid he was straddling.  And the discomfort shows on the poor kid's face.  Then Misha gets up and ruffles the lapel on a blond kid's coat.  And for a split second, you see dread in the kid's eyes, the minute Misha touches him.  When another actor says ''evil incarnate'', and Misha approaches him, the kid flinches backwards as if petrified that Misha is going to straddle him or something similar.  Misha was in his element.  He loves that.  Notice how there is no gag reel for this scene.  Nobody was having fun.  Nobody laughed.  The straddling was done once and the cast didn't react.  So the scene when on. 

There's the link for anyone who hasn't seen it, or who had blocked it out of their memory.  The hellers were gushing over it.  Misha is so ''gay and funny''.  SMH.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zIgwK28E5k

In his TSA short movie, Just Relax [which he co-penned], he put himself in a position of sexual power over the actor who was supposed to be Jensen's stand-in.  In the gas station scene where Cas went to buy pie for Dean, grabbing the kid at the counter was not in the script.  The kid was not notified of Misha's plans, so his reaction is authentic.  Misha really likes doing that a lot.  See, what I mean by sexual power. 

Jared

Jared is also straight, but unlike Jensen, he is less shy about his body, touching and being touched.  I hate when people use the words ''sexually comfortable'', because it automatically gives foolish people the impression that anyone who is opposite to that is prejudiced.  No, they are not.  They just don't want anyone to touch them unless there is some familiarity, thank you very much.  Jared also engages his fans, from a slash point of view.  But there is a difference between him and Misha.  Look at the gif.  Jared stumbled ever so slightly while Misha was bending him over.  That means that Jared was not made aware of what Misha was going to do.  This goes back to Misha and his need for sexual power.  He wanted to take Jared by surprise, so he was controlling the situation. 

Notice, that Misha hasn't really done that again since.  Because no matter what, Misha is a straight man, and he is afraid Jared will take that as a cue to ''make the next move''.  Never dare Jared Padalecki.  Misha doesn't want that.  Remember, the gag reel in a previous season, where Jared grabbed Misha and pretended to kiss him.  And Misha screamed his annoying signature high-pitched voice.  I cant stand that sound.  That is what Misha doesn't want.  He doesn't want a tall, broad guy like Jared having that kind of power over him.  He wants to be the Alpha.  Remember Honocon, when Jared was speaking like Mark S and caressing Misha.  Go watch it again.  Misha got uncomfortable.  He doesn't have sexual power over Jared and he knows it.  

Another difference between Jared and Misha is that Misha takes liberties with other people's bodies whether he is familiar with them or not.  Jared has common sense.  He plays pranks on his co-workers, sure.  But he doesn't make them uncomfortable to the point where they don't make eye contact.  Take the tattoo scene with Alex.  In the gag reel, he is seductively caressing a grinning Alex's chest before Jensen gigglesnorts and triggers a laugh attack from the younger actor.  Alex, until that point, has known Jared for about two weeks [unless you count promo work during hiatus] and is comfortable with him.  He is not flinching during the whole scene.  He is just laughing and blushing.  Side note:  Alex has an adorable laugh.  Before using a gag reel, SPN editors ask an actor's permission to use a gag clip.  Alex said yes.  Jared made him laugh.  He didn't make Alex feel uncomfortable. 

Unlike Misha, Jared doesn't force people to think he has sexual power.  He sort of just does.  The only thing that bothers him, is that pesky depression.  I find it insulting when people think Jared is physically and sexually weak because of depression.  Shame on you.  But other than that, sexually Jared is not a man you want to dare.  He shares his body generously, especially if he knows you.  One thing to note here, is that Jared doesn't sexually cross boundaries with Jensen, whom he loves the most from all his co-stars.  Well, not in public anyway.  According to BuddyTV, whilst rehearsing an argument scene between Dean and Sam, during Season 2, both Js suddenly stopped and started leaning in, very seductively, to kiss each other.  The director yelled cut and told the giggling scoundrels to ''do it properly this time''.  So why did Jensen get so angry when Misha bent Jared over on stage? 

Jensen

If I guess correctly, Jensen is exactly like me.  Remember, the Vancon where Richard was not available to MC the event and the Wayward whatevers took over?  Remember their sexual display in front of Jared, Jensen and Rob?  I hated that sequence.  That is one of my favorite cons, because of Jared and that cardboard cutout, amongst other things.  So I always re-watch it and I always skip that bit.  I don't want to see that.  Two reason why.  First, Kim and Brianna overdid it.  The joke carried on for too long especially with children in the audience.  Second, I am a straight woman.  Their display neither aroused me or interested him.  I watch porn.  I watch gay and straight porn but the men have to be beautiful.  I am not going to sin with ugly men, thank you very much.  I don't watch girl on girl.  I don't like it.  And to have an exhibitionist do that right in front of my face, will tick me right off. 

Jensen got irritated because he doesn't need to see that expletive right in front of his face, and in a public setting no less.  When he realized that Jared was not at fault, he signed his autograph over Jared's chest with a smile.  After all, Misha took the choice out of Jared's hands.  But Misha didn't get that courtesy.  Jensen constantly reminds Misha [and his hellers in fact] that ''this is a family show''.  Even Jared respects that rule and keeps his humor playful and without swearwords.  I noticed that with the Wayward whatevers Jensen just acknowledged that they were ''different'', he involuntarily enjoyed it [he is a straight man after all] but he didn't appreciate the display in that type of setting, because they were in public.  Jared seemed a little more uncomfortable with their display, ducking his head and turning away from them.  I think Jensen was able to school his facial features more than Jared, but both disapproved to a certain extent.  They are married men after all.  If Misha was there, he would have joined it. 

Jensen is just like me sexually.  He is not a prude, he appreciates slash fiction for exactly what it is, but he doesn't like vulgarity and exhibitionism.  He does make dirty penis jokes with Jared, but they are not so over-the-top that you regret attending the con with a younger person.  Jensen is more shy that Jared is, especially around strangers.  Jensen is known for keeping his private life private [well he used to], which is why he cringed when Danneel said ''this is where the magic happens.'' when referring to their bedroom.  That is not a part of his life he wants to share with fans because unlike Misha, Jensen is actually a gentleman.  Jensen is not trying to be an Alpha.  His body language and baritone voice betrays him.  I think Jensen actually tries to be a big brother or nurturer to other people.  The Alpha thing is sort of accidental, just like with Jared. 

Like me, Jensen doesn't like to strip down in front of cameras.  Jensen, just like me, can be very provocative with the right person.  He once took a ripped shirt photo with Jared and Sebastian.  They was trying to make deep cleavage shirts.  The deep cleavage idea belongs to Jensen.  He will never do that on stage though because he doesn't want the cons to go from family shows to something vulgar.  Jensen, like me, doesn't want to be crass and use cuss words during conversations.  If he is asked to speak about sex, I think he will speak about it very intelligently, without making it childish [like Jared would] or filthy [like Misha would].  Jensen was extremely succinct and accurate whilst discussing wincest.  It shows that he not only understands sex but also women and how the mind of a woman works.   

I hope this answered your question sweetie.  If anyone disagrees, kindly let me know.  After all, it is just an opinion.  Sincere apologies for this long post.

#misha #jensen ackles #destiel #cockles #jenmish #jensen and misha #deancas #casdean #dean x castiel #castiel #cas #bi dean #dean is bi #dean and cas #jenmisheel #dean winchester #destiel headcanon #jdvm #misha collins #sam winchester #sam and dean #jensen and jared #wincest #supernatural #jared padalecki #padackles #performing dean #sammy winchester #sabriel #j2

[captainwhogotthecanary]

ClexaCon: Day 2

Same deal as day 1: this is probably too long and detailed, and if you want the facts, you can probably get them from the official videos. This is more about my reactions and vibes and the like.

I dressed as Wonder Woman this day. It’s my only store bought costume, but I look great in it, and I finished off the look with tall (not not heeled!) boots and rainbow socks and brighter makeup than I usually wear. I looked good enough that the barista when I grabbed coffee asked for my employee discount; she assumed I was a performer at the hotel. I got great comments all day, a little overwhelmingly so, but it felt pretty awesome until I left the convention. CW for brief mention of assholes at the end of this post.

Nyssara

I met some cool people in line waiting for the “doors” to open for the standard attendees. We ended up sitting together while my Friday friends sat behind, since we had trouble finding six seats together, not too surprisingly.

I needed the intro video because as I’ve mentioned, I like my faves to be happy, and while I never ever doubted Sara loves Nyssa and vice versa, they didn’t exactly get happy times together on screen, and I wasn’t yet into Arrowverse fic when they were on screen. It was a good video. They’re both great actresses and can seriously crank up the intensity when the scene requires it. Any Nyssara fic recs are appreciated, btw.

The panel was good. It was fun, different kind of energy, something like nostalgic and speculative and silly. And Jes came through! Again, there are videos and gifs, so go do yourself a favor and look if you haven’t.

Of note to people following my blog, when asked her favorite one night stand of Sara’s, Caity’s first thought was of Snart, though she said she couldn’t count him since they hadn’t slept together. I think that’s just so awesome that the characters had that connection, and the actors according to what I’ve read, that even after years have passed, there’s still some sort of nostalgia or whatever because they were genuinely close. The actors and characters in different ways, but still.

More is More: Polyamory in Media

I’ve got some ot3s (ahem, Rogue Canary), but as far as real life, I don’t know much about polyamory. It’s something I’ve long thought works with the RIGHT people and the RIGHT communication, which makes it rare and challenging, and it has to be so hard for some people, like some of the ones in the panel who explained that being poly is, for them, the same as their sexuality; it’s a need, a wiring, not a choice or a lifestyle. It’s rare (or rarely talked about/seen) and so there’s not a big demand for more of it in media, but then the lack of representation means fewer people know it can be a healthy option, so it becomes a cycle, like so many things.

Most of the panel ended up the panelists sharing what it means and what it means to them to be poly or practice a poly lifestyle. There’s a big no-no/disparaging negative in the community regarding “unicorn hunters,” which I’d like to have someone properly explain to me but google says it’s usually couples looking for a third person who fits their needs without considering the needs of that third. It’s objectifying and not setting up for a healthy relationship and I get why that angle is negative, but I’m not sure why multiple people in that panel and then in a later panel seemed to use it to apply to anyone looking for the trio presentation rather than the open relationship presentation. Not complaint so much as genuine confusion there. So anyway, there wasn’t much discussion of the trio+ aspect I was most interested in, because I’m not planning to write or practice a relationship where the people in it date other people but I adore stable (usually potential) trios in media.

I still enjoyed it very much and learned a lot in the “I didn’t know I didn’t know this” category. My favorite part (though it also made me sad) was how excited and relieved the panel was about being in a room where they could discuss all this without judgement.

Bi+ Representation in Media

I adored all the panelists here. I didn’t learn much; the basic gist was “there’s not enough representation.” Still, it was cool listening to and watching a bunch of bi+ folks talk about their faves and what they’d like to see. I bought a book by one of the panelists and will do a rec post later if it’s any good, ya and lgbt and superheroes. I’m excited.

Romance Between the (Book) Covers

Sigh.

Okay, so…

I don’t think of myself as an amazing or particularly experienced professional writer, but I do feel like I could contribute more than a lot of the writing panelists, and I found that very frustrating. It wasn’t that they were all lacking experience or talent, to be clear, but it was that for most of them, their experiences or input were almost entirely unhelpful for new or aspiring novelists.

For example, there was a writer whose story was, “I’d never written anything before in my life but I decided to write a book and they published it so that was cool.” Another said she’s unique because she writes in first person, which she does because “it’s a lot easier to tell instead of show. And I know they say you’re not supposed to do that, but I think it works.”

I get that the expectations are different in the smaller market that is LGBTQ+ romance, but…

I don’t know. I feel like standards are important. That’s why I all but stopped writing while I’m struggling with words and with tying things together; I don’t care whether it’s original fiction or fanfiction, free or paid, I have standards for my work.

I also had my feathers ruffled slightly when the moderator asked the panelists, “Did you write heterosexual relationships to start out in order to get a foot in the door or earn money?” with a clear implication that there was no reason to write a m/f relationship other than for mainstream success. The one bisexual panelist low-key called her out but I don’t think she noticed, with an, “I’m bisexual so writing a male/female relationship is a perfectly valid choice for me.”

For one, yeah, there was a bisexual panelist and there was a huge bi population amongst the attendees, so that wording could have been more sensitive, and for two, I know plenty straight people who like to write m/m or f/f romance, so why wouldn’t that be a valid choice in reverse, for something other than a cash grab?

Personally, I mostly write m/f relationships because I started writing while still closeted, because that’s where my actual experience is, and because my go-to is still to write canon or canon-adjacent pairings and tv still likes to fuck up most of the few canon lgbt ones. That doesn’t make me less valid as a writer who is lgbt.

Mazikeen: The Devil in the Details

This was enjoyable. The actress says Maze is her spirit animal, which is awesome. I was pretty frazzled and distracted (people were saving me seats even though I SAID I’d be late and it was equally appreciated and discomfiting) and also trying to liveblog the panel to a friend, so I didn’t get as much emotional impact from this as the rest. It sounds like we probably get to see Maze with a real relationship this next season, so that’s exciting. It seems like a decent next step for her after the growth over the last seasons. I’m also suuuuper excited she and Trixie will be okay; they have one of my favorite relationship of the whole show.

Amber Benson: Tara Maclay and the Legacy of Buffy

Teeeeearrrrsss. Do me a favor; if you watch the video for this one, watch the behind the scenes one first. The intro video they played left very few dry eyes, and then Amber came out all teary and emotional.

The singalong was a lot of fun, despite “Under Your Spell” being notes most humans can’t hit.

There was one answer she handled with some unfortunate wording, but it was so clear she meant well and she’s such an icon, so she didn’t get boo’d like I was almost afraid of. There wasn’t much applause, but then we moved on. She was the only panel I went to that earned a standing ovation. I cried a lotttttttt.

And then I left the con to go change before having dinner with Friday friend. And people were gross and staring in creepy ways and there were homophobic comments made “accidentally” too loud and just bleh. It was a small thing in an otherwise fantastic weekend, but it made me feel like I needed to take a shower.

#clexacon diaries

[ladykakata]

I go off on GOT

[NOTE: I keep trying to add the Jon-Sansa hug GIFS but Tumblr REFUSES to let me save or post with them. It’s fucking annoying]

*Rubs face*

Auntie LK is annoyed and she is going to take it out on y’all. I’m gunna go ahead and go off on Sansa hate, Jonsa, Dark Sansa and all that shit so hang onto your assholes.

SO. The new promos. There’s been the idea for a long time, since S6 really, of the idea of Sansa plain murdering Jon or Jonsa becoming canon since, well, Jon and Sansa are now maternal cousins rather than agnate siblings (as in, siblings with the same father but different mother).

S6 had Sansa and Jon reunite for the first time since S1. A lot of heavy shit has happened, some of it they share (like losing their father and brother Robb, Winterfell getting a bad squid infection via Theon being a little bitch) but also stuff they didn’t share (an absolute battering and rape for Sansa, literally being stabbed to literal death for Jon). For Jon, who just came back from the motherfuckin’ dead 10 minutes ago and decided he had enough of this shit he’s out, this is pure shock.

For Sansa? This is pure RELIEF. Remember, Jon is the FIRST family member she has seen since the death of Ned. She hasn’t seen her mother (who is dead GOOD LAWL god I hate her), her eldest brother, her brat little sister, or her two littlest brothers since either leaving Winterfell or since Ned’s beheading. Not only that, he’s the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch as far as she knows, so he’s in a position of power that is untouched by machinations of the South. Who is in power? Who cares. The Night’s Watch doesn’t deal with that shit and Cersei can’t follow her up here. And if Ramsey decides to give chase, it’s more than Jon to fight back.

Look at the hug. She almost cries, listen to the shuddery inhale of breath as she fights that back, she practically falls into him, and once they hug she looks for comfort and support. For Sansa, this is absolute relief. Her ordeal, for the moment, is over. She escaped Ramsey, the rape, the torture. She survived the snow, the river, the chase and being hunted. And now she is safe in the arms of her older brother.

For Jon, he is absolutely stunned to see her. For as much as they didn’t really get along, she’s still his sister, and he said goodbye to his family in Winterfell years ago. Only Benjen went to the Wall, and he disappeared, so Sansa is the first he’s seen in a long time. Hell, Jon almost ran to join Robb in his rebellion, and only just resisted and came back.

Family came for Jon after his resurrection.

After this comes a really important talk. Sansa and Jon’s relationship was never really touched on; Jon and Robb hugged and treated each other as peer-brothers (and it’s fucking CUTE I would CUT SOMEONE to see more bro Jon and Robb!!), Jon and Arya were cute-as-buttons older brother/pint-sized sister, and Jon cared so much about Bran that he bore Catlyn’s cunty comments in order to say goodbye. The only two not explored were Sansa and Rickon. It’s really important to note that Sansa took after Cat. And that meant absorbing her loathing of Jon, something that is talked about. Sansa gets to brass tacks about it:

Sansa : I spent a lot of time thinking about what an ass I was to you. I wish I could change everything. Jon: We were children. Sansa : I was awful, just admit it. Jon : ( chuckles ) You were occasionally awful. I'm sure I can't have been great fun. Always sulking in the corner while the rest of you played. Sansa : Can you forgive me? Jon : There's nothing to forgive. Sansa : Forgive me. Jon : All right. All right, I forgive you.

Sansa knows she was wrong, wants to make it right, and does not allow Jon to sweep it away. She is determined to make sure he knows she knows she was wrong. It can be interpreted that she wants to secure his forgiveness and is in fact ordering it out of him, but I don’t see it that way. She knows she fucked up, and she wants to make it right. The following conversation re-enforces the fact they’re family. Jon even says ‘ If I don't watch over you, Father's ghost will come back and murder me’ (I’d pay good money to see Ned come back and give Jon a bollocking actually). Sansa brings up Winterfell, enforces it’s THEIR home and it’s for their family. She wants the Boltons out, but Jon came back from the dead 10 minutes ago and has Had Enough Of This Shit And Is Very Tired. Sansa lets it go temporarily.

Throughout the ep, and into the next, the idea is enforced that Jon and Sansa are brother and sister, and that Jon is Ned's son. Sure, currently that's kinda funny considering he isn't by blood, but the sentiment is true; Jon is every inch Ned's boy, and Sansa clearly feels safe with him, she even says so to Brienne:

Sansa : Jon isn't Davos, the Red Woman or Stannis for that matter.Jon is Jon.He's my brother.He'll keep me safe. I trust him.

Here is a thing I think a lot of people are missing. Yes, Sansa trusts Jon. She says it herself. But why, as Brienne countered, did she not tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale? Why did she outright counter Jon publicly? Why not wait?

The thing is, Jon is Ned's son. AND NED STARK IS FUCKING SHIT AT KEEPING SECRETS. Ned Stark is honourable to a FAULT, it's what got him Mcfreakin' killed. Jon is the Starkiest Stark that ever Starked, and Sansa KNOWS that letting him in on critical plans is a bad fucking idea. She's already learned from Pety 'I would honestly tongue a cat's asshole for fun' Baelish that one never shows all one's cards. But sharing a card with someone as upright and see-through as Jon? Might as well cut your own throat and be done with it.

Why publicly confront him? I never believed for a second that Sansa was displeased at Jon's sudden elevation to King in the North. When it was announced, he was stunned, and to me it looked like he was looking to Sansa to see if a) it was real, and b) wtf Sansa what do I do.

He's been suddenly promoted before, but the Night's Watch was different, and perhaps he's having flashbacks as to how THAT went. Hell, everyone was pissed before Lyanna Mormont straightened her big girl knickers and said 'Listen up you lil shits Jon is good King Jon 303AC 4lyf'. This is all good for Sansa. She has Winterfell back, Ramsey Bolton is more than dead, Jon has the support of the Northern lords firmly when they told them to eat a dick not too long ago. Everything feels great. Plus, in the North, she doesn’t have to deal with backstabbing political shit.

And then she remembers Littlefinger is there.

Oh fuckbastards.

What to do? While it looks like Littlefinger is getting to her, it’s VERY important to note that, despite being King In Da Norf, Jon is still as humble as ever. Before that, when Winterfell was first reclaimed, Jon noted that Ned and Cat’s room was prepared for Sansa.

Jon : I’m having the lord’s chamber prepared for you. Sansa : Mother and Father’s room? You should take it. Jon : I’m not a Stark. Sansa : You are to me.

Damn right he is, Sansa. Jon mentions they need to trust each other more and kisses her forehead. I think this, after the conversation about Littlefinger, really planted it in Sansa’s mind she’s got to protect Jon from this bastard. Jon can fight the physical and commend men no problem, but psychological shit he has issues with. Hell, Sansa told him outright not to fall for Ramsey’s shit in BOTB and he did anyway. There’s a gulf in Sansa’s Southern-trained psychological way of things and Jon’s straightforward hit-it-until-it-stops Northern mind. Both have had their ways beaten into them, so they can’t unlearn, but also can’t see the other’s view.

Okay okay okay. where is Auntie LK going with this? From what I see, Sansa was publicly denouncing Jon’s plans BUT doing so to keep him safe. The plan to give the Last Hearth and Karhold to loyal Lords? That’s a Southern tactic AND good sense. HOWEVER ... in this instance, Jon was right. The important think to note that both holds HAVE a new Lord and Lady waiting for them. And they are children.

These babs!

If anyone knows about a child having to bear the supposed sins of their parents, it’s Jon. He felt the weight of Ned’s supposed infidelity, even if it was absolutely no fault of their own. These children are terrified, Alys visibly swallows and tries to breathe properly. Hell, it’s scary when Sansa was all for taking their homes and Jon mentioned executing people, they probably worried they were next. However, Jon simply asks for allegiance. And that was a wise call; the idea of redistributing at first got a high then got a mixed to low response, given the chatter in the room and Davos looking down.

Don't for a second think I'm shitting on Sansa. From her point of view, this absolutely makes sense; if people stab you in the back, GITFO bitch. But that Southern way of thinking just will not work as well in the more traditional North. In this instance, Jon was in the right, and it's understandable how he is frustrated with Sansa openly challenging him. I think Sansa was trying to shore up any potential future betrayal, and simply didn't make the right calculation. She looks at Littlefinger in this scene, who likes the argument.

In this instance, Jon is right. These are children, and he rules like a good King; with a firm but gentle hand. He makes these kids feel like important grown-ups, spares them, and gives them this sense of awe and majesty. If Daenerys rules with terror and awe with her dragons, and a kind heart for the underdog, Jon wants to rule with practical kindness. They thought they were going to lose their homes, or even their heads, given that Sansa mentioned taking away their Holds and Jon mentioned executing people. Instead, King Jon asked for their word, and they gave it.

Look at what happens after; Jon tells Sansa to stop openly undermining him, Sansa points out that she should give advice and compliments his leadership skills. She tries to get him to see she has advice worth listening to, and he is clearly frustrated and tries to walk away, but she will not let him. To the point of GRABBING him.

She will not let Jon walk away from this. He tries to walk, but she physically makes him stop, and emphasises what she is trying to get through to him:

Sansa : You have to be smarter than Father. You need to be smarter than Robb. I loved them, I miss them, but they made stupid mistakes, and they both lost their heads for it.

To me, this clearly says one thing; Jon, for the love of fucking Old Gods and New Improved Ones, I am trying to keep you safe. She can’t outright say ‘Littlefinger wants to park his thirsty asshole on the Iron Throne and wants me on his lap because I remind him of my mother and he is willing to slaughter you like a sheep to get it’, Jon can’t be trusted with that sort of info. She wants to publicly make it look like she’s plotting against Jon in Littlefinger’s eyes ... but at the same time, make sure that her public outbursts aren’t ACTUALLY damaging her relationship with him. He is too precious. She needs him, and his abilities, but also needs to string Littlefinger along to ensure he doesn’t do something without sharing it with her first. She was dead set against Jon going South. That’s where Cersei can get her mitts on him, that’s walking into the mouth of the dragon and hoping it doesn’t eat him. The only positive for this was suddenly getting Bran and Arya back; she outright hugs Bran, her little brother who was in a coma when she left Winterfell, and even Arya gets a hug despite the pair being the most antagonistic towards each other.

Now. Arya and Sansa had issues. They had issues before Littlefinger littlefingered all over the place. Arya, despite her Southern training, is pretty much a hardcore Northerner, and seeing Sansa’s betrayal letters would have set her off and Littlefinger was banking on that. But when you have a family that TALKS, that has a legit psychic on staff to divine the truth (and Arya literally heard Bran recite the truth), that plan falls up the asshole. Did Sansa truly plan to ever murder Arya, and vice-versa? Honestly, who hasn’t entertained thoughts of murdering their annoying sibling, especially if one thinks the other has fallen to the Dark Side. However, Sansa and in a way Arya’s arcs have been about family. Only family can be trusted. Family will be there when you need them. Family will keep their word and protect you. For Sansa, this is in Stark (heh) contrast to the Lannisters and Baratheons, whom she was so eager to join as true Lords and Ladies. The Lannisters are at each other’s throats when not fucking each other, and the Baratheons tore themselves apart with infighting and backstabbing (and vagina shadowmonsters). The Starks bicker, but they have each other.

If Sansa wanted Jon dead or out of the picture, she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of making him a cloak that is very similar to Ned Starks’ own. The man she literally saw beheaded in front of her.

Sansa : I made it like the one Father used to wear. As near as I can remember.

Sansa near panics when Jon decides to ride for Dragonstone, she keeps glancing to her right, either in Littlefinger’s direction or directly at him. All the Lords don’t want Jon to go, even his most hardcore supporter Lady Mormont, and Sansa is dead against it. Even when Jon names her Wardeness of the North in his absence, she is still wearing a face of panic.

Me? In charge? Oh. Uh.

Does Sansa enjoy being in power? Who doesn’t. Do I anticipate trouble when Jon returns? If he returned himself, I think the transition would have been smooth. Jon will be impressed by how well Sansa is preparing the north, and she will pretty much still be Wardeness while he is King; think of Sansa as the Prime Minister that gets shit done while Jon is the figurehead and commands the armies and does power deals. The addition of Daenerys is a biiiiiiig complication, especially with Jon boatsexin’ her all the way.

Which brings us to the hug. While I do believe Sansa is relieved to see him back alive, the arrival of Dany is a complication and now she has someone she needs to suss out and see if this person is a threat to her or the newly reunited Starks.

Do I think a Starkbowl is coming? Hell to the fucking no. The ENTIRE POINT of Sansa’s arc is that FAMILY CAN BE TRUSTED, FAMILY IS THERE TO PROTECT YOU. The biggest point for her is that Daenerys is not family. She’s Jon’s girlfriend for the moment, sure, but not family. She’s Essosi-minded, she’s not a Northerner for fucking sure. At this point, the issue will be the outing of Jon’s heritage.

But what does that really mean? Sure, Ned isn’t his blood father. But Ned raised him, he was raised with all the Starks as a sibling. Cunty Cat made him feel lesser, but everyone still treated him like a brother. Even Sansa. Everyone is zero’ing in on the father aspect, but A STARK IS HIS MOTHER. HE STILL HAS STARK HERITAGE. As Lady Mormont rightfully pointed out, ‘He has Ned Stark’s blood in his veins’. And he does; Ned and Lyanna are full-blooded siblings, and share the same wolf blood.

I hoep to hope, and I think it will happen, that Sansa will silently recalculate what the news will mean when others react, but as far as she and most certainly Bran and Arya are concerned, Jon is still their big brother. The big brother that said goodbye before Winterfell despite the coma, the brother that came to take back Winterfell despite the Bolton’s vile threats, the brother that choke-slammed a snake for wanting to bang them because they reminded them of their mother, the brother that rode out to save his little Rickon despite the odds, the brother that gifted them Needle, the brother that was willing to overlook past nastiness.

Jon Snow, the King in the North, the blood of Ned, the White Wolf ... he is their brother, and always will be. The gold/silver of Targaryen yielded to the coal of Stark, and Jon is the fucking Starkiest Stark that ever Starked.

Sansa is not going to backstab her brother. Fuck outta here with that shit.

LK out.

#Sansa #Game of thrones #GOT #Jonsa #Jonaerys #Dark Sansa #Starkbowl

[spiralledcupid]

Spoon Views: My Hero Academia Season 3

Episode 6: Roaring Upheaval

And here we are again after another great episode ! I have to admit, I had trouble with this one, just because I had to fit in my hour+ watching time into the 45 minutes I had before Eurovision started. I did it though !! But this isn’t a Eurovision recap, so let’s get started with what we’re actually here for.

Okay, first here’s something personal I noticed. Those of you who keep up with these review things will know I hate the intro they have going on with a passion, but today I realised I’ve been so busy hating it I don’t actually know what happens in it. So well done me for that.

Into the actually episode, is it just me who’s getting damn stressed about Midoriya’s injuries like ??

Is there not like a first aid kit somewhere, or can someone not call an ambulance or ?? He’s just badly stressin me out, like I’ve read the manga so I know what happens but even that doesn’t make it less stressful.

Onto Dark Shadow,,, Like I said before, I’ve read the manga, but the small panels cannot get across how scary this is.

Like, it’s the first time you properly realise just how powerful and scary Dark Shadow actually is. It makes me wonder whether Tokoyami was scared of his quirk when he was younger, because Dark Shadow really does look like the monsters children often see in the shadows. Juts some food for thought. Also, the soundtrack behind this scene really did emphasis the fear factor this part had, it was really well used imo.

This isn’t really analysis but-

Can u get a truer hero than Shoji honestly he’s just too good.

Honestly though, I have to pity Todoroki and Bakugou when they try to work together.

They are such bad allies. Honestly, this could be because they’re both used to being the most powerful one in the partnership, but whatever the reason, it was still a little bizarre to watch them try and work together- very badly.

Honestly though, neither of them are as bad as Moonfish

He grosses me out so much, and the fact I have to save pictures of him on my laptop for these reviews makes it so much worse lmao, I hate him and everything he stands for.

The plan they came up with to trap him was good and all but seriously

These kids need to stop taking risks! It’s just very very worrying even though I already know everything works out fine. But, y’know kudos where they’re warranted, it was a very clever plan, and did work very well.

Again, just an observation rather than analysis but-

This was such a lit shot. I love the way these scenes are being shown in the anime, they do make them a lot more hype with the way it’s stylised and honestly it just increases my enjoyment of the episodes.

So my first thought for this one was that it’s such a classic Bakugou thing to say

But on further thought, I was thinking, maybe in a roundabout way Bakugou’s trying to be kind. Like, he’s expressing it in his usual vain way, but at the same time he’s also reminding Tokoyami that his murderous quirk is still controllable. Idk, take it as you will, but to me, it seemed to be expressed in a different way than his gloats usually are.

This just made me giggle, especially after the intensity of that fight but

Midoriya looks so confused here, my poor boy. Please can someone not just force him into safety or something?

Speaking of confusion, I love how confused Bakugou is when everyone sets out to protect him.

Basically everyone and their mum has made a gif of this, and for good reason too because he just looks so silly. I would feel bad, but it’s for his own good. Even though that doesn’t make him any less moody.

I love this moody little bitch so much.

Moving onwards, I’m so excited that we’ve finally seen Toga!!

At first, I really did not like Toga. She still sorta gets on my nerves, just because I think she’s a stereotypical female villain, but there is some complexity to her that I can appreciate. It doesn’t stop her being mad creepy though.

But it did make me really happy to see Uraraka using the moves that she learnt at Gunhead’s agency to take her down.

I do have this fear that when the final showdown actually happens, Uraraka and Toga will have a fight in the ‘love interest fights female villain’ trope, but I’m hoping that the ease with which Uraraka took down Toga in his episode will stop that happening.

Also, with Toga I’m really happy with the voice they gave her. I was fully expecting the usual five year old mixed with candyfloss voice, like very childish and sweet enough to give me toothache, so I was v surprised when Toga slipped into a more creepy voice. It was quite similar to Shigaraki in tone, and idk it was just pleasant to here, because female villains are usually fit into either seductress or cute and unexpected, so for me Toga kinda broke out of the box with her non-typical voice and stalkerish tendencies- even though she still very much leans towards the latter archetype.

Sticking with the villains-

There he is !! aaaaaa I’m just so happy we’ve got Mr Compress this episode ! Although what he’s saying really is a horrific misconception of Bakugou’s personality.

Also, oh my god.

This shot really hits you with Midoriya’s distress. He’s very hurt, he’s probably tired and stressed and, at this point, he believes he’s failed to save someone. It’s so upsetting to see and I can 100% feel his distress through that single line. Nice use of language.

But, in contrast to Midoriya-

It’s very easy to look down on Aoyama for not moving Jirou and Tooru back to camp like he was told to. On one hand, it is pretty cowardly and he IS training to be a hero, but at the same time I have to think…What would I do? Aoyama’s quirk is still pretty hard for him to use, and it hurts him quite a bit, and against two villains while carrying two people he would almost definitely be defeated. Idk I can’t really disrespect him for this tbh because it would be hypocritical- I know I would be hiding too if I were in that situation so. I’m not gonna look down on him.

Okay, but moving back to personal preference.

Dabi is hot n I’m not just talking about his quirk lmaoo.

Moving very very swiftly onwards, I love how they show Yaoyorozu’s development here.

She’s very much starting to show faith in herself and it’s really nice to see that change, especially after her lack of self-confidence in the last arc. I have to feel bad for Awase though.

I would very much like to write a fic about these two, just because I think they could get on well and work together really well. Maybe soon.

Okay, final little point:

That looks like an absolute back breaker, honestly someone should get Mr Compress some ice or something.

So that concludes my episode talk through ! I cannot believe they’re still baiting THAT interaction (you all know what I mean), but they are somehow. It has to be next episode, and I cannot wait for it. Also, the full versions of the op and ed are out, so if anyone would like a lyric talkthrough- if I can find accurate translations- I am 100% down. Analysis counts as English Lit revision, right?

Anyway, as always thank you so much for reading !

#boku no hero academia #Boku no hero season 3 #bnha #bnha season 3 #my hero academia #my hero academia season 3 #mha #mha season 3 #todoroki shouto #shoji mezo #Dabi #twice #toga himiko #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #fumikage tokoyami #uraraka ochako #mr compress #awase yousetsu #Yaoyorozu Momo #anime spoilers #jirou kyouka #Hagakure Tooru #aoyama yuuga #asui tsuyu #moonfish #anyway good ep #spoon speaks #spoon views

[sunwukong-stoaway-blog]

Oh shit, 3AM, time for a hot take on the FNDM from the perspective of someone who’s drifted in and out of it for years now. And yeah, spoilers, it involves Sun, the Bees, and experience therein.

We do need a few things set for the record before I dive further in. First, there is indeed a difference between normal Bee fans and flat out Wasps. Y’know, the psychopathic harassing jerks. There is also a segment of the Blacksun fndm that is more than happy to be as harassment heavy and take things too damn far. The problem in judging which is bigger is that you’ll only ever see the size of whatever groups you happen to be in contact with, which means if you’re a normal fan of one side, you’re likely to only see the hate-filled opposite side. And if you’re removed, then it’s a roll of the dice whether you see Wasps or... whatever the BlackSun equivalent is. And whichever side is bigger, they both still exist, which is the main problem. Now let’s take a stroll down memory lane and acknowledge a few things.

First and foremost. The Bees as a ship only exists as it does because people were throwing the first characters on screen at each other and held to them. This was true of Ruby and Weiss after the Red and White trailers, then true of Blake and Yang after the Black and Yellow trailers. We didn’t know anything about any of these characters, (in fact it completely flipped Ruby and Weiss’ personality traits, making Ruby a cool and aloof sniper chick and Weiss a soft melting princess) but the ships were already cemented and beloved by the community.

This kept going into the first season proper. Sure, we had alternate blends of ships, like Ladybug, Freezerburn, and Monochrome. Even Enabler, Ruby/Yang if anyone remembers that incestuous ship, before it was burnt to the ground by canon. But Whiterose/The Bees were the biggest game in town. Seemed to be backed by the canon too, to an extent. All the characters introduced were paired off and sent on their way, including JNPR, but this didn’t stop FNDM from laughing and enjoying themselves. (One particularly popular joke during the Jaune Arc was snickering that Yang and Blake were doing the do offscreen instead of running for help, for instance.) It didn’t matter Yang and Blake didn’t have a single conversation that didn’t end in Blake snubbing Yang and Yang writing Blake off as a “lost cause,” they were the pairing and nobody else was around, so, that was canon. And then episode 15 rolled around.

Everything broke down with episode 15, though not all at once. It introduced Sun and Penny, and FNDM wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. Some, like myself, found the new characters and their dynamics fun and interesting. Some, on the other hand, declared immediately that Sun was a rapist/stalker/murderer/assassin of the White Fang, sometimes all at once. Some people had been a little bored of Jaune by this point but Sun was the first morally good character the FNDM declared a monster, and to this day, has received the roughest ‘welcome.’ And, among the accusations, the declaration that Sun was nothing but a genderbend of Yang for a hetero ship. And so the tensions began to mount.

Bear in mind, up until this point the Bees had grown to be the de facto biggest ship in the FNDM. Nothing against Ruby, Weiss, or Whiterose, but Blake and Yang were the most mature/adult of the team, and consequently, got the most attention, desire, fanart, et cetra. Now here comes the first character to make contact with Blake in a definitively different fashion and connect with her. Without question, they saw Sun as a threat and an excuse to attack the show for not giving them the Bees. Hell, it’s no surprise they even shipped him with Penny (Optimal Primates) for a time, just because they debuted the same episode, to try and get him ‘away’ from Blake in the fandom’s eyes. The response to Sun by these proto-Wasps, otherwise known as ‘the entirety of the Bees at the time’ was swift, overwhelming, and nothing short of cruel. Especially when they started harassing Sun RPers, those who defended him, liked him, and so on. People who drew those first few pieces of Blacksun art were flat out attacked and screamed at to shut down their channels. (Similar attacks started appearing at this time too at artists for other pairings, noticeably Ladybug.) And for a time, that oppressive and painful atmosphere was reality.

Then, I put up a post pointing out how little canon the Bees actually had, and compared it to Blacksun. In V1? This was an overwhelming difference. I outright called the Bees a “Ghost ship,” a ship that had absolutely no basis in canon yet sailed anyway... And attacked others. Needless to say, this was not taken well by the proto-wasps.

It didn’t matter that I actively shipped Whiterose, passively Ladybug, and eventually Nuts & Dolts. It didn’t matter if what I said was true, that the emperor had no clothes (or canon.) All that mattered to these people was slamming me down and declaring me to the world a homophobic monster for not shipping their ship. To do everything in their power to break my spirit, break my connections with people, and break any place I had in this fledgling FNDM of comfort. All for their blatantly bullshit moral highground arguments. 

This went on for a good three weeks after that first post. Round the clock attacks, harassment, and vile displays of power. It really did break me, all things considered. That much negativity drove me into a deep depression, to the point I could barely leave my dorm room in university for food, let alone class. I’m still hesitant to use the term for fear of it’s overused impression, but this made the Bees ship into a full on trigger for me. Triggering every emotion of fear, depression, and anxiety that constant bombardment thrust upon me around the clock. To an extent, it still is such a trigger, and so I can admit without issue I’m biased.

Thankfully, it did all have a silver lining. I became a lightning rod of hate, but the heavy atmosphere was broken. Bees no longer were unchallenged rulers of the FNDM, and people legit began to call out the behavior of these proto-wasps as full on bullying, or at least stopped acting like the Bees were canon. There was room to move forward now. But... of course, it didn’t stop there.

V2 rolled around. On the one hand we got Yang and Blake having the first dance, as well as actually having a real conversation on screen and developing some kind of unique bond, flimsy as it may be to some. (Seriously, Blake’s having severe overwrought depression and anxiety over Adam and the White Fang, Yang makes it about her. Yeah, that can show solidarity for the cause, but it does little to assuage Blake’s issues. I do see it as a good scene, but it’s still not a great relationship.) On the other hand, we were confirmed halfway through the year, and thanks to Sun/Neptune being cut from that last part of the Paladin fight, Blake had to be the one to ask what Yang’s Semblance was. ...Yeah. Half a year of being partners. And she doesn’t canonically know yet what Yang’s Semblance is. Hell of a partnership, yeah?

And on the other side of the coin. Sun and Blake had their full on dance, came to it as a date, and it included Yang stepping aside to give Blake to Sun. This on top of meeting Sun’s team for the first time and solidifying his place as being right there with RWBY and JNPR. ...And to counterbalance, we got Neptune. Seriously. Wasps had Neptune pegged as Sun’s “actual girlfriend” from the second his name was dropped. Then the design came in, they declared Neptune FtM trans, and that Sun was dating him. I mean, clearly, right? Then Neptune actually showed up, he turned out to be the most aggressively straight-showing guy on the show yet, and the FNDM HATED him for it. Pitched him into the same bin as Sun right then and there, while shouting they’d be a better couple than the alternatives. (This also ended up, for the first time, generating enmity from Monochrome shippers for Sun. Before, Blacksun and MC shippers were effectively “ship and let ship” considering both had suffered under the Bees, but since that stranglehold had been broken after V1. Now Neptune came to town and fucked that peace up too.) Seriously. Just like the Bees, Seamonkeys only exists as a ship because the FNDM slammed the characters together without a clue what they were even like. Same as with Optimal Primates, remember?

Overall, V2 ended up being more or less like the aftermath of V1 the whole way through. Salty and bitter Wasps bickering and yelling about Sun even being in the same frame as Blake, trying to reaffirm their position, while everyone else just relaxed, some bitched about Jaune existing, and others enjoying the moment. ...Then V3 happened.

V3 was a powderkeg of moments for both Blacksun and the Bees. From the fingerguns/blushing/”dork” scene, to Blake tearfully holding Yang’s... one remaining hand, to the questions of where Blake was going after the ending. And consequently, the ship-to-ship combat had grown once again. Things like editing the fingerguns scene into a gif of Weiss proposing to Blake, or conspiracy theories that Sun was a mole for the WF hiding in plain sight, or just generally arguing back and forth over how important Blake holding Yang’s hand and Sun’s poppy love song were. The thing was, by V3, enough new fans of the series drawn in to all the Bee fanart that didn’t have the Wasp mentality existed to properly differentiate between the two groups. And consequently, some would-be Bee fans were surprised when their open appreciation for the pair was met with negativity and disdain by those who were used to liking the Bees being associated with far worse. The Wasps still existed, without question, but their presence muddied the waters and turned what was once a straight-forward fandom war into messy, vile person-to-person conflict, with bystanders dragged into the fighting. This, to my knowledge, is where the wasp-equivalent of Blacksun fans ended up coming to be, unable to differentiate between the Wasps that they hated and the Bee fans that they shouldn’t. In short, V3 was the most divisive and painful of the seasons for this warfare.

As we approach the modern day it should be noted that the longer the show runs, the less and less these ship-to-ship combats make an impact on the FNDM as a whole. This is a good thing, realistically, but it comes from an unfortunate division in the FNDM in general, with camps splitting off into effective echo chambers, and generally only interacting to spit hatred at each other.

V4 was easily the single lowest point for all of the Bees. With Blake and Yang canonically split apart, and Sun hanging around Blake full time as her only traveling partner, the Bees had effectively nothing to do but sigh and hope for a reunion soon. The Wasps, on the other hand, eagerly took to instead tearing into Sun’s character again, this time jumping on the questionable decision to shadow Blake and keep her safe, and characterizing it as flat out stalking... even without full knowledge of the situation. The Wasps just painted the scene as “Sun has spent months following Blake in a coat,” and a large part of the fandom picked it up in turn. Then, as a follow-up act, decided to screw with Sun a different way and ship him with, of all people, Kali, or Blake’s mom. Yeah, it was creepy and fetishism, and had no purpose other than to break Kali’s implicit acceptance of Sun as a partner for Blake into bizarre OOC lust. It’s telling that there was far and away more porn and pure shipping for Sun/Kali than Ghira/Kali for a while, despite the Bees laughing to themselves that “of course YANG would be accepted by Ghira, unlike Sun~.” Legit, Sun/Kali was just another attempt at slamming Sun together with the nearest character that wasn’t Blake. Just like Penny. Just like Neptune. But, V4 was the volume of personal growth and discovery for each of the main cast... And consequently, this journey down each of their four paths was panned by many “rwde” fans for not having the inter-team connections they wanted. Funny how the volume most about each member of RWBY and their personal stories gets panned as the one least about them. Whatever. All of this led to V5, however, and where we are now.

And where we are now is... Right back to how we were in V3. With giddy Bees squealing over Yang and Blake exchanging eye contact and words, while Wasps re-characterize Sun’s connection to Blake (including pushing her back to the team that she ran away from because it was time to reconnect and he knew that) as “pushing Blake to be with Yang.” It’s kind of absurd, right? Well... That’s what this FNDM war has been to me. Just absurd.

I’ve watched wasps shout down Micheal Jones because they don’t like Sun being close to Blake. I’ve seen wasps countless times call out RT as queerbaiting for not giving them the Bees right fucking then. I’ve heard directly from Wasps that it doesn’t matter to (the ones I talked to) whether any other LGBTQA+ people/ships/focuses appear or are naturally featured in the show, unless the Bees are made canon, they believe RT lied to them.

And that astounds me. RT did not lie to you. Either you were lied to by fans from that Trailer era, the original proto-wasps, or you lied to yourself. You were told the lie that the Bees were canon, had to be canon, needed to be canon or something was wrong. That Sun is a monster. That you are owed anything. Hard fucking stop.

So where does all this leave us? ...Hopefully, understanding that this fighting has been going on for far too long, and is over far too little. I want anyone in the FNDM who has ever been affected by the ship wars to read this, to share this with others with similar experiences, on either side of it. Because ultimately, I’m only on one side, and I’d love for Bees to give their take on all this. To get both sides to come to an agreement to ship-and-let-ship, to put to rest the anger and frustration and fear of the other side that fueled Wasps and, perhaps, myself for so long.

This shit’s gone on long enough.

#ooc #rwby #fndm #shipping #I truly hope this goes over well.