#goddamn this is starting to turn into a One Piece liveblog

[zhukzubast]

my One True Ship

#i'm reading Water 7 and i'm NOT OK #Usopp #Going Merry #Merry Go #goddamn this is starting to turn into a One Piece liveblog #One Piece

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 3/7/2023

soooooo there's another classic Dad Movie character ive adopted bc ive decided he's bisexual

listening

Black Hole Baby by Superorganism. i would put a marker down and say this is the sound of the summer but this came out last summer :/ the very flat (slightly chiptune?) delivery of the lyrics combined with the hyper bouncy...squelchy??? lasers? is extremely fun. this song is neither creepy nor wet but it is viscous bc u are on a spaceship partying as a black hole is Getting You

listen. anything that starts off with subway chimes and the following lyrics is going to be good. these are good song choices in my mind.

I've been eating fruit I've been sleeping well when I can

the bridge in the middle with bits and pieces of radio hosts shouting them out-- i could take it or leave it. i do like how this band namedrops themselves constantly. it's like an oil painting at an estate sale with a huge legible signature at the bottom.

-

reading

i have read about three-quarters of raymond chandler's oeuvre (hardboiled detective/film noir author and screenwriter of note) this week. i cannot in good faith recommend these books because they contain some of the worst excesses of their time, which is good bc this is not a review series.

sometimes, i'm watching or reading something and i decide it would be a good tuesdaypost candidate. i hate the term consume but it's the quickest descriptor here, so bear with me. if i am consuming a work based on the recommendation of a friend, it changes how i consume the work-- i'm on the lookout for the elements they used in their pitch. if i'm consuming a work to write an article or paper (rare these days) i'm stopping halfway through to take notes, i'm rewinding to catch details, i'm delving into interviews, i often fully rewatch or reread. if i'm liveblogging something i am mostly on the lookout for humorous and/or gay bits. if in the middle of something i catch myself thinking "ooh this would be good to talk about for the tuesdaypost" that introduces another like, film or lit crit level to the rest of my time with the work. it's very difficult to turn that part of my brain off.

when i am reading things just for me, none of that is there. i am fully immersed, my disbelief is suspended. i am not thinking about anything else but the story that is being told to me. ive spent a great deal of time with these books this week and it feels weird not to talk about them, but they are something i really enjoyed that was just for me.

i honestly don't know how to unpack my enjoyment of works that (at times) reflect the quite extreme racism of their author-- the one that grabbed me the most, Farewell My Lovely, contained some of the most callous and exceptionally cruel shit i've ever read. it also contained some of the most fascinatingly complex inner workings of an extremely closeted bisexual guy with ptsd i've ever read. i don't know how to talk about these books in an interesting or balanced way.

even if i did know how to unpack these things, the brief and light weekly roundup post on goddamn tumblr dot com (home to no nuance whatsoever) would not be the venue. this is an anti-review, in a way.

-

watching

a fuck of a lot actually bc i'm really trying to crank out this baby blanket and podcasts aren't really doing it. same username on letterboxd if u want to see early drafts of this tuesdaypost section.

i watched many films that came on two vhs tapes when i was little, bc charlton heston was one of my mom's favorite actors. i did not see spartacus when i was little but i did see the entirety of ben hur AND the ten commandments before i was eight. i can't make that make sense either.

anyway i have a soft spot for epics but only when i am actively doing things with my hands. this one has a more interesting making-of story than the actual movie, imo. this one also had oddly christian overtones, for being set in a time where christ and christianity did not yet exist. like many critics of the time, i have no strong feelings about mr douglas' acting. i really, really liked the soundtrack-- a delight to hear the love theme in context after hearing it in a thousand different soundtrack theme compilations!

-

playing

nothing that wasn't a phone game i've already talked about

-

making

five and a half repeats!!! i am aiming for ten repeats plus some sort of i-cord border so this is roughly halfwayish

i took this in broad daylight after a meeting like "if i knit more tonight i'll take another photo" and then i didn't knit any more tonight i read a bad western and halfheartedly liveblogged it

#what the fuck IS IT about march/april that makes me go bonkers in yonkers #tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

[ftpverse]

the DI Edits Changelog masterpost...?

ffn might be dying etc figured i’d rescue the all-in-one-place changelog from the final chapter and repost it somewhere else. also includes the 2022 edits and cleaned up some things that were vague for some reason

abbreviated, if you want more indepth changelog check out the “di edits” tag on my personal tumblr

---

OVERALL EDITS

KAIRI

- tweaking so that she is a character instead of a flat love interest, mostly in the form of having lingering bitterness about her friends seemingly abandoning her for part 1

SHADKAI

- their friendship is SO juicy... Kairi who keeps talking to him because she’s lonely... Shad who has found someone who can know him without having preconceived notions of him and wanting to relish in it... A friendship that hinges on Kairi never finding out who he is, but a friendship they both desperately are relying on in trying times... I think they are the juiciest relationship in the series and so I have gone thru DI several times to really do it justice

RIKU ADJACENT THINGS

- if physical touch borderline triggers him, then it should do that thru... the whole fic, and not just in the second half when I realized it would be a thing

SHIP THINGS

- I was so heavy handed on heteronormative nonsense for Namiku Sokai and Shadkai and so I’ve toned it down where I could, which was only so many places for Namiku since the story revolves around their fumbling romance, but I’m satisfied that Sokai came out more like best friends who love each other and that Shadkai is, well, not just “Shad has the hots for Kairi” because their relationship is SO juicy when you actually dig into it etc

OTHER??

- I wrote this when I was 13-14, so there was a lot of stuff that’s cringe in the unfun way, and I did my best to mitigate it whenever I could

- also, pacing, but I was under the constraint of I could not delete any chapters (I liveblogged my writing on tumblr after ch100!! That’s over 100 chapters with specific liveblog tags for each!!!! That’d be a nightmare to redo if the numbers got moved!!!!) so it’s not perfect but it’s better than the first draft

- continuity errors, fixing up char voice, etc

 SPECIFIC EDITS PER CHAPTER BELOW (ABBREVIATED)

(a more in depth changelog is on the di edits tag on my personal tumblr – tried to keep this a sentence or so per edit, so minor details got left out if a lot of things were going on in the chapter)

 Part 1

- Ch1 - made it a better first chapter, so anyone who skipped the Truth Hurts and Falling to Pieces wouldn't be totally lost. Also it's just, in general, a better First Chapter of anything.

- Ch2 - redid the Namine/Kairi scene so it made more sense (why would they ask each other if they missed the boys when they knew?). Added a Sora scene for more introduction to story vibes.

- Ch3 - shifted the Sora scene that was previously in ch2 here.

It happened over the course of a couple chapters, but I also removed the "Kairi forgot the events of Falling to Pieces, the book" because it seemed so dumb? So, she remembers that now. It's cool.

- Ch6 - tweaked the conversation about Deactivating Replicas because it was a little insensitive at first. This turned into talking a more about Replica lore (and Rewriting being a thing).

- Ch8 - the Kairi/Namine scene was edited, now ft a nightmare scene. Better framing of Kairi having mixed feelings about Sora etc and also probably some of that “I removed the Kairi forgetting things plotline, something ELSE has to go here”

- Ch10 - I wanted to pretend like Sora wasn't actually close friends with Namine in early FtPverse days for some reason and Heck To That, so now Sora telling Joseph about Namine actually reads like he knows her, because he does.

- Ch11 - made it clearer who Vexen was (i.e., from a goddamn parallel universe, Riku’s literal real creator) from the start, lol.

- Ch15 - the Kairi/Namine scene (about letters) was edited so it sounded more like it was actually Kairi speaking? The letter was also edited for this reason.

- Ch20 - edited the scene where 17 tries to kidnap Namine so that Kairi was there. Added Kairi's POV of the scene. Shifted the Namine arriving in C.O. scene from here to ch21.

- Ch21 - Sora spent a lot of this chapter thinking about how he was ~in the way~ of Riku and Namine and that? sucks? So I cut it and tweaked the chapter accordingly. Oh yeah, and now he's actually worried to receive the news that Namine collapsed.

- Ch22 - Namine now goes "WAIT A MINUTE I LEFT KAIRI BEHIND"; I cannot actually edit things so that Kairi makes it to C.O. in part 1, but I can at least edit it so that Namine doesn’t forget about her entirely, you know

- Ch24 - another discussion about Namine wanting to bring Kairi to C.O. Edited the Sora/Namine scene so it actually reads like they're friends, cut more of the ~in the way~ junk.

- Ch28 - edited the Xigbar scenes because what was originally there didn't make a lot of sense. / added yet another "okay I should get Kairi" "okay but please don't?" convo

- Ch30 - Brand new take on the Kairi/Selphie scene to cover Kairi being Really Mad she got left behind. I really really really love it. / The Riku/Namine scene at the end was edited as well to remove an unnecessary part of the conversation, and also start hinting at Alpha being, well, who he is (kind of a jerk).

- Ch31 - tweaked HB gang dynamics so they'd be more in line with how these characters actually act. Finally described Aerith's house from the get-go. It only took me five years.

- Ch34 - and again with the "I should get Kairi" convo. Now Riku provides the most legit excuse he's got (doesn’t want to drag her unnecessarily into things that “aren’t her problem” etc)

- Ch41 - a small tweak, but Leon is now dodgier than he was before when answering Sora's questions about Zack. The goal here is to show Aerith's not the only one coping with his loss.

- Ch45-47 - shuffled chapters around in here becuase the pacing was awkward, and it made more sense to me to put the two Shad chapters (Lurking Darkness, 44, and A Meeting, now 45) right next to each other instead of interrupt them with 900 words about Sora (What Darkness Can Do, now 46) which lead right into Running from a Memory, ch47, ANYWAY. makes mores sense if What Darkness Can Do goes straight into Running from a Memory rather than be interrupted by the ShadKai meeting, so.

- Ch45 - redid the scene where Shad and Kairi first meet for a lot of reasons, the main two being 1) to tone down Shad's crush so it wouldn't make me want to barf, 2) so that Kairi reacts like a normal person to meeting someone she can't see. Shad can have a crush on Kairi if he wants but it was such heteronormative nonsense in the 1.0 ver... I wanted to focus on their friendship without Shad’s feelings for Kairi boiling down to “he has the hots for her” because, well, that’s no fun. Him liking her because she’s the only person who sees him for himself instead of tied to Sora, however....

- Ch47 - edited the convo about Zack. Rewrote it entirely, to be honest, but all the content is Still There the dialogue was just fussed with so it'd be truer to the HB gang I'm familiar w/ now

- Ch48 - had to tweak Kairi's letter so she was Angry, and also so it fit more in line with her character. Because the letter was tweaked, Shad pondering on it also had to be tweaked.

- Ch50/51 - Minor edits to 50, tweaking the memory scene. 51, like 47, was rewritten to be truer to the HB gang I'm familiar with now. Main difference is Leon is a little more protective of Aerith because Siblings and also Shad takes a dig at Leon.

- Ch55 - the scene from ch56 where Riku and Namine talk about the Repair Program was moved to the end of this chapter to make room in 56 for another Shad/Kairi scene

- Ch56 - another rewritten Shad/Kairi scene, this time because the original talked about a lot of things that were unnecessary, also I wanted it from Kairi's POV. I just wanted to better dig into how juicy their relationship can be, is, etc. Was moved from 57 to 56 for pacing reasons.

- Ch57 - scenes from ch56 were moved here for pacing reasons. no other edits made.

- Ch63 - really just edits clarifying timeline things for HB gang and explaining why Yuffie doesn't know about Sephiroth.

- Ch66/67 - Edited the Cloud and Aerith thing so Cloud's A Little Mean, now. Mainly I just wanted to hint more explicitly at Zack. Also, Aerith actually heals Riku because I don't know why she didn't the first time around.

- Ch70/71 - rewrote these scenes almost completely. The basics of the original content are there still there, but... The memory in chapter 70 was changed, SoKai and Shadkai hints removed. Now we talk about Zack more, because why not. (Also, Tifa can see Shad now, and punches him in the gut. It's fun.)

- Ch73 - Tweaked the Riku and L scene so it's got bigger / more accurate hints at Riku's deal re: Larxene.

- Ch77 - I was convinced initially that even though 7 was a medic he wouldn't know how to use cure magic? By Nothing's Fair's rewrite I'd retconned this, but yanno, I might as well clean up my continuity. He has a better reason for not being able to do anything for Riku's hand now. And we bring up R because I love her.

- Ch79/81 - Continuity tweaks to healing Riku's hand in 79. In 81 Aerith actually heals the gash on Riku's side now because there's no reason she wouldn't. Riku gets a little twitchy, which plays into 117.

- Ch87 - rewrote the Kairi + her dad scene again, completely from scratch. Mostly it’s cleaning up their dynamic and adjusting Kairi from being oh sad depressed her friends are gone so sad poor Kairi but she’s fine really to FUCKING FURIOUS THAT THEY LEFT HER BEHIND. This is another one of the rewritten chapters that I think absolutely RULES.

- Ch90 - originally Amaryllis was frustrated and Alpha calmed him, but we all know it should have been the way around. So now it is.

- SWAPPED 96 AND 97, SO THAT 96 IS THE KAIRI SCENE, AND 97 IS START OF BEAST’S CASTLE. Seemed silly to start a Sora plot, interrupt it for Kairi fuckor, then get back to Sora plot...

- Ch96 - changed the Shad scene because Kairi actually doesn't have THAT much faith in Sora, so we had to account for that; now it's "I'll crush her tiny faith" vs "I'll completely make her lose faith". Put the rewritten Kairi scene here right after the Shad scene instead of cutting to Sora. Kairi scene edited for same reasons, also wanted it in Kairi's POV. Now features a really cool dream sequence.

- Ch97 - Sora stuff starts here now instead of starting in ch96 and getting interrupted

- Ch100 - another one of those "I technically rewrote the entire thing but all the content is still there". Mainly just needed to adjust for the fact that oops, Kairi actually is mad at Sora now, why is Shad acting like she's not. (This should have happened with Kairi batch 1 edits tbh but, it slipped under my radar.)

xxx

Part 2

- Ch104 - Kairi now shows up in this chapter instead of waiting until 107. Also, she's mad.

- Ch107 - Now Namine offers to take Kairi with her and they get on the road immediately instead of taking five chapters. Kairi leaves Shad a note so he knows she’s gone! Also there's a new scene with Kairi's dad!

- Ch108 - Changed the pacing / reasoning for why Sora stabs Riku (mainly just made it for ? reasons instead of "about Namine" because it being about Namine rankled of heteronormativity and its more fun imo if darkness is just a bitch...?)

- Ch109 - Namine still feels Riku get stabbed, but now they leave for HB literally immediately since they were already almost ready to go.

- Ch110 - a now-unnecessary Kairi scene got cut. Shad scene tweaked a bit so that he actually reacted to Sora vanishing because he barely reacted the first time around.

- Ch111-119 - all of these were completely rewritten. Everything is new. Everything was changed. (Except, uh, the Shad scene in 115 that one's basically the same). Mostly just wanted to clean up Kairi’s friendships with Riku and Namine and got myself the space to do that by deleting four chapters where the whole HB gang was yelling at each other for – I think Shad reasons, but come on, Shad’s a little distracted right now, he’s not going to be manipulating anybody. So with those gone I had real estate to cover Kairi friendships, Kairi char development, and also the consequences of Riku, you know, nearly dying. (And also Riku char beats.)

- Ch120 - Since as of 115 Sora has been on the run from Maleficent for a few chapters, this Agrabah chapter had to be edited to reflect that. The Shad scene also got edits for continuity reasons.

- Ch121 - Continuity edits on Sora's side. The Kairi scenes are brand new, followup on the 111-119 edits.

- Ch123 - Relatively minor edits to Kairi's inner monologue, generally cleaning up her voice and also adding a few other smaller touches (including: her being a lil nervous because there's A Lot going on between her and Sora that the initial narrative didn't allow room for.)

- Ch124 - Some continuity edits on Sora's side. Kairi scene edited to reflect the changes in her relationship with Shad. They’re friends, your honor.

- Ch125 - 124 got edited, so of course 125 did too. (Changes in the ShadKai dynamic, etc.)

- Ch127 - Continuity edits to reflect the fact Riku's been gone a few days and not just overnight.

- Ch128 - Continuity edits for the same reasons as 127, as well as toning down Riku's darkness... things a little bit. It might not seem like it, but trust me when I say I toned it down. / Changed the ending for largely self-indulgent reasons. Riku reacts differently to getting hit by lightning now.

- Ch129 - completely rewritten. All the content is still there, it's just a new take on the scene, ft knowledge about the subject that I have amassed over the past 5 years, and, yanno, written a little more sensitively.

- Ch130 - Riku was in a Bad Mood the first time around, but since he wasn't in a bad mood at the end of 129, there's no reason to put him back in a bad mood! Lot of continuity edits to make it so he's not in a bad mood, cut some things, rearranged some things, moved into the meltdown from a new direction.

- Ch132 - because Riku only talked about Larxene in 129 (as it should be) and didn't really mention the rest of the Organization, Namine couldn't vaguely think about how the Organization had affected Riku in this chapter! So we cut like five paragraphs of that, and lead into the Important Vexen Thoughts from another angle.

- Ch134 - small continuity edits and cleaning up Kairi's voice.

- Ch135-138 - edits to the R sequence in general, rewrote basically every chapter. Mainly just wanted to redo R's dialogue because I love her, and so this more true to her character, and her and 7's relationship is a little clearer. (They were major characters in NF rewrite, so continuity, etc.) Also now R explains what she did to herself and how it directly relates to Xion, which pisses 7 off. We also get hints at Riku's darkness Maybe Being A Problem as well as Riku's desire for revenge against Larxene. Most importantly, I swapped ch137 and ch138 so that there wasn't an awkward Namiku break before we finished resolving everything with R, which makes ch137 "tRying" instead of ch138. Whew, this is a lot.

- Ch139 - Rewrote to give Kairi a different nightmare, as well as change up her thoughts on Sora so they feel more accurate after other edits I'd done. So like, continuity largely that involved rewriting the entire chapter.

chapter rearranging crimes: moved 139 (art break 3) to 155, making hymn for the missing now chapter 139 and lining up the next sequence to be one on chapter 141 and two on chapter 142 etc etc and so on. (a discrepency that had bugged me for ten years now fixed).

- Ch159 - Namine whacked Riku over the head here and instead of just removing it I had them talk about why this is a bad thing,

- Ch173 - rewrote the ShadKai scene because I wanted them to actually talk to each other. The other scene was fine, but... it wasn’t them talking to each other.

- Ch175 - the original was good but I decided to add a couple hundred words where Riku reacts mmm more realistically to being offered a family, taking a while to be sure Aerith means this and also giving me the chance to really get into the nitty gritty of how much this means to him vs only spending like, a sentence on it.

- Ch188 - edits to Kairi's dialogue so she sounded more like her, as well as edits to her opinion / feelings towards Sora so that they were in line with previous edits.

- Ch189 - editing ch173 messed up the continuity of this chapter, and the whole “bound” thing was just there as a fallback if I chickened out of ch228. Now is Shad getting existential about his existence as he knows he sits in the twilight of it.

- Ch192 - same as previous. Near completely rewrote Kairi's message. Made her less terrified/upset/crying and more just "I miss you, and we're being dumb". Also had to edit Sora's reaction to it.

- Ch193 - minor edit that's just "Yuffie was complaining about Riku and no, please, she actually likes him."

- Ch196 - more edits of Kairi's thoughts to line up with 188/192, so, Continuity.

xxx

Part 3

- Ch215 - deleted a lot of unnecessary setup for Pacing reasons. Tweaked Kairi and Riku scene so it felt more like they're actually friends. Edited it so Sora found out about Namine sooner and also, so Sora and Namine felt more like friends.

- Ch216 - more pacing things. redid the starting conversation, so Kairi feels more worried about Namine. (As much as I loved her teasing Riku, it had to go. She should be taking this seriously.)

- Ch218 - I changed it in 216 so Riku actually knew where Namine was so, Roxas couldn't use that info to bribe Kairi in this chapter anymore. Tweaked the ending Roxas and Kairi convo a lot to accommodate that, as well as add in a few hints towards Nothing's Fair.

- Ch221 - it was silly to me that Joseph would insist Sora help them with rescuing Vexen, so now it's just "let's go to the surveillance room so I can tell you where Riku and Kairi are".

- Ch227 - edits to ShadKai dynamic that are largely just, continuity

- Ch229 - Sora brings up the fact Kairi and Shad were friends, now. May be clunky but I really wanted it there, thanks.

- Ch235 - tweaked convo to once again bring up the fact Kairi was friends with Shad

- Ch237 - ditto

- Ch240 - brought up some new ideas re: Memories, since I reread this and went "wait why didn't they talk about this thing." Also edited Kairi's reactions some.

- Ch241/242 - the original idea for fixing Namine was dumb. the binder plot was dumb. so instead NamiKai dances, which is, a thing they do.

- Ch243 - listen I just wanted to make Riku jump when Kairi grabbed him in the middle of this chapter

- Ch244 - Kairi didn't say anything to Namine initially? Idk how that happened but I fixed it.

- Ch245 - whack to me that I didn’t imply the kids took a nap after the hell of a “day” they just had, so I fixed it so they did. They deserve to crash in a cuddle puddle!!

- Ch246 - minor dialogue tweaks that were bugging me

#di edits

[robotslenderman]

Eternal Hearts Liveblog, pt 1

Special thanks to @missn11​, who is probably mortified their name is associated with this travesty of a post, for letting me get my filthy little hands on this piece of embarrassing VTM history.

Okay guys, time to do the thing that’s gonna get me cancelled by fifteen-year-olds in the year 2032:

I’m gonna liveblog Eternal Hearts.

I once promised myself I would never make a rape joke, but today I break that vow because even the rape scenes are (sometimes) just that fucking ridiculous that I had to make fun of them.

This book is just.

Guys.

It’s GLORIOUS.

In the first twenty-four pages alone we have:

A guy is confronted by a locked door, so he whips his dick out. Everyone else acts like this is completely normal.

A guy meeting Final Death because a politician sat on his face. RIP in pieces Noah.

A mortal setting herself on fire, waving her arms around and running at a bunch of vampires yelling “DIE, YOU BASTARDS!”

A guy using his dick as a key ring. (Yeah, it’s the locked door guy.)

Lucita given the Hallowe’en treatment, in that she’s covered with sewage -- but sexy!

Daddy kink on top of the Washington monument.

Only some of the above makes sense in context. Some of it is as baffling in context as it is out of context.

This is the funniest shit I’ve ever read. Nobody told me about this when I went in holy shit.

Time to open this sucker up!

Liveblog under the cut!

DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT ETERNAL HEARTS IS, DO NOT READ THIS LIVEBLOG, HOLY SHIT.

You’re in for a ride, and it’s the edgiest, unsexiest ride ever.

First thing I notice: Eternal Hearts is, in fact, written by a woman. Which may mean that if she wanted to scare the shit out of her female readers, she'd know exactly how to do it.

gulp.

(^ I wrote that back when I thought I was gonna traumatise myself by reading this. OH BOY)

Next bit, the rape book is opened by the following foreword:

What follows is an essay that basically boils down to "no! :D but we wrote it anyway!”

Partway through that is this quote:

We’ll come back to that quote later. Several times, I predict.

Aaaand we open straight into a gang rape scene! Oh joy. And there’s church spires, to make it extra edgy.

Oh but then they give her the Kiss so she enjoys it! Yay!

Oh.

She's a shovelhead.

They never mentioned THIS part of the Sabbat recruitment process.

and now she's underground and buried and being raped again? Somehow. Like somebody’s got their entire goddamn fist in there. While under six feet of dirt. I know someone’s got their entire damn fist in there because the Shovelhead’s thinking about how somebody got their entire goddamn fist in there.

(Yeah this is the bit I had to make jokes about because it was that fucking ridiculous. I started this out trying to be respectful. I failed. Miserably. I just can’t fucking do it this is too -- too -- Eternal Hearts-y.)

Like the author just turned to the other people in the credits page and pitched this idea: “guys. Hear me out. What do you think is scarier than being raped or being buried alive?”

“idk what?”

“being raped after being buried alive!”

“That’s a GREAT idea!”

(”Lucy didn’t even break the rules as much as I was willing to let her” Remember that quote? Thank god for that.)

Jean - for that is our poor Shovelhead's name, RIP - seems only mildly concerned about the rape. and the fact it’s still happening.

Like yeah, serious talk, putting my respectful hat on: to be fair, everyone responds to trauma differently. You know how I respond to trauma? I make jokes about it. Like I’m the kind of person to say “what are you gonna do, STAB ME?” for the lols when a guy is pointing a knife at me.

Okay, respectful hat back off, back to edgy humour.

Anyway she’s being fisted by somebody while also six feet underground, somehow, and daydreaming about the guy she’s stalking and about how she’s in love with him, hmm, maybe he had something to do with it? She’s not entirely sure.

(ETA: So an anonymous Discord friend was reading my liveblog and said this:

and I laughed so hard my dog actually pawed at me because she was worried.

Yeah, I’m going to hell, but at least I know I’m taking you guys with me.)

Anyway she starts digging her way out, and I guess she’s still being fisted while she’s digging her way out???? IDK they didn’t say it stopped??? Like that’s gotta make digging your way out difficult.

And then cut to Lucita!

Walking past a protest outside a sex shop. There’s a bunch of Christian protestors outside because they’re bored or something. We get straight back into rapiness with a Dominate:

Damn Lucita, if jizzing your own brains isn't the hottest image you can give a guy, I don't know how what is.

Lucita decides to snack instead of raping him, but does sexually assault him by taking his dick from his pants and leaving it in his hand when he’s unconscious.

Lucita walks into a meeting at a brothel. There are “slaves”. I’m not sure if they’re sex slaves or if they’re actually ghouls, but then again, this is Eternal Hearts so probably both.

She expects Pieterzoon to be there, but he's not. When the others start talking like he's missing, she is completely unconcerned and immediately starts talking as if she knows he's missing.

They move on. Pieterzoon has paid Lucita to assassinate Marcus Vitel. Good fucking luck with that one. Everyone at the meeting is trying to stop her from doing it. Lucita’s like “tough shit he’s already paid me bitch is gonna die”.

Also the Brujah woman present is apparently this scene’s titillation or something because the author loves to remind us about how tight her clothes are and how she's "seductively cuddling" people.

no fucking kidding

I like how the VTM universe goes out of its way to avoid using the terms “son” and “daughter” to avoid the Unfortunate Implications when people inevitably start fucking their Sires

and the author’s like "nah fuck that let’s daddy kink it up.”

Oh and he does it ON TOP OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT!! Like gang rape in a churchyard wasn’t edgy enough I guess.

the author can't go a paragraph without reminding us that sex exists and everyone is utterly sex crazed. The bit I blacked out above? That was Lucita daydreaming about hiring a prostitute. Like that’s not erotica, erotica is arousing, this is just voyeurism.

Lucita apparently hasn't yet noticed she's in a porno.

Somebody makes a joke about the Christian protestors gang raping the prostitutes outside. It’s a Ventrue. Of course it is.

Apparently the slave (I guess the word “ghoul” isn’t sexy enough) in the above screenshot is a fucking senator. Pun not intended. She soothes the cranky Brujah by suggesting they get somebody called Torres deported? I have no idea what that has to do with Lucita assassinating Marcus Vitel, but there's almost certainly going to be fucking involved.

(ETA 23/1/21 -- I regret to inform you all that there wasn’t “fucking” involved so much as gang rape. Never mind.)

Lucita and the Brujah guy almost start stabbing each other (so much for that soothing), but somebody has just set the brothel on fire so they have to GTFO.

The mortal senator can't quite fit inside the escape tunnel because her skirt is huge and keeping it on is apparently more important than not dying of smoke inhalation. But it’s okay, she manages it.

The skirt will be important later, unfortunately.

They come to a locked door in the passage. Oh no, whatever will they do?

Will they take a key out of their pocket and unlock it?

Nah, that’s too fucking sensible.

The Brujah that tried to punch Lucita whips out his dick.

Yes.

He actually fucking does that.

Weird flex, but okay.

(ETA 21/1/21 -- I just realised... what if it’s somebody ELSE’S penis he just whipped out? Like the thing was actually just chilling out and he pulls it out the way somebody else pulls out a cucumber. It’s not attached to his body, it’s just THERE?)

Everyone is completely unfazed by this. Both by the fact he whipped his dick out, and the fact he uses it as a fucking key ring.

Like. Is this a habit of his????? APPARENTLY IT IS.

(ETA: Anonymous Discord friend says:

SDFADLFJASDLFJASDF)

They end up in a sewer.

Garinson keeps a key to a sewer on his dick key ring.

(”Lucy didn’t even break the rules as much as I was willing to let her” yeah I just remembered another place more fitting for a sewer key)

THEN!!!

PLOT TWIST!!

The senator suddenly threatens everyone with a lighter!!

After the kindred are done laughing their ass off, she covers herself in whiskey, sets herself on fire and charges them.

I'm sorry but the way it's worded - pin wheeling, cringing - just makes this the funniest shit. It gets even funnier when you remember they’re knee-deep in water. Ever tried to run in water? It’s. not exactly easy. So presumably she’s tripping and stumbling the entire time and somehow still on fire as she does so.

A kindred tries to escape by clawing his way up the wall. He falls. The senator assassinates him by flinging her skirt over his head and sitting on his face. That part of her is also on fire. The skirt and her thighs are on fire.

And I guess they’re obviously not thigh-deep in water any more ‘cause the poor fuck doesn’t survive this.

what a way to fucking go: death by fire pussy.

Everyone panics, except Lucita, who's like "fuck this", cuts off her head, puts out the corpse, then, uh. uses it as a shield against the remaining flames. as you do.

(Between that and the above screenshot, there’s graphic descriptions of what, exactly, the fire is doing to the senator, and how said senator doesn’t give a flying fuck that fire is kinda hurty because she hates vampires that fucking much.)

Lucita meets a Nosferatu who offers to guide her from the sewers. On the next page, we have an illustration of Lucita, in sewage, looking up at the Nosferatu.

You couldn’t possibly make that picture sexy, could you?

Welp the artist went “Challenge accepted!”

So I wanted to show you guys the picture but I didn’t want to get too banned from Tumblr for an Eternal Hearts liveblog, so I went to my friends for help. One of them, @intimidatethevoid​, answered the call to arms:

Well.

This is awkward.

And so she bestowed upon me this glorious, but also cursed, image:

Yeah.

Her shirt’s somehow come off. And she isn’t wearing any knickers. Hence the Filthy Frank sticker.

And that’s gonna wrap up part 1 of my Eternal Hearts liveblog!

For more, like this post in secret shame so that none of your followers have to see it. To cancel me, send angry anon messages and death threats to my inbox.

#Dusty liveblogs #Eternal Hearts #VTM #rape CW #Eternal Hearts CW #DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT oh my god I can't even #I'm going to regret posting this I just know it but I HAD to #eternal hearts liveblog

[choco-myth]

okay so i did the stupid thing and stayed up till 2am to watch the entire abema stream

it is now 5 am and my eyes want to die

my liveblogging under the cut (its really long lol) please keep in mind that all the info might not be accurate as it is extremely late for me and i am prone to error

beginning was mostly cutesy scenario interview questions

hanae natsuki (riddle va) likes trey, says their relationship feels very real and tender

azuls va likes the tweels more than azul lol

the stage actors are more nervous abt recording lol

treys va thinks riddle is very cute

jamil and ace va both pulled and got their birthday boys

HALLOWEEN PARTY BATTLE??

with p r i z e s

red (hearts/scarab) vs blue (octa/igni + special helper grim LOL)

winner gets cake in the shape of grims face omggg

OH THEYRE PLAYING CHARADES

deuce is up :V

odamn theyre getting a lot right (hanae natsuki so speedy shdksjjsdk)

they got i think 12 points

aoi shouta up for blue team

BLUE TEAM NOT GETTING ANYTHING LOLLL

they're so behind omg

futaba next!! jamil in da mirror what will he do

OH.... WORD CHARADES INSTEAD IG

azul next!!

"multiple people working together" "TWISTED WONDERLAND" omggg

they got 90 points damn

red team still in the lead, but theyre getting an extra 30 seconds so we shall see owo

THEY GOT 40 POINTS NICE TAMARA

red team wins 160 - 140 AMAZING

HALLOWEEN CM HALLOWEEN CM FHCKING HALLOWEENNCM JAIDJSJDJSJDJDJS

okay so i think i saw jiangshi malleus?? definitely saw wolf kalim. think i saw pirate savanaclaw too, and really pretty pomefiore. actually i think the cm was voiced by vils va

NEW CARD ILLUSTRATIONS

FANCYTIER PLAGUE DOCTOR DEUCE RARE

WOLF KALIM RARE

JACK O LANTERN IDIA RARE

PRETTY GHOST AZUL SR

CATER SSR IM GOINGTO LOSE MY SHIT

ANOTHER SSR, MUMMY JADE

I AM LOSING MY SHIT CAY KUN CAY KUN ALL MY DIAS

AAAAAAAA

goodbye first cast :(((

the tweels keep making stupid hand symbols behind azuls head ahdjsjsjjs

kalims va: i found out whenever im in trouble i can just go "ne???" [turns to futaba], and things will be okay

i opened up social media to send distress posts and my whole computer started lagging i am booboo the fool

2nd cast came in!! and zakki is wearing an ugly tie shdjsjsj

also ruggies va has a tie... (i think its supposed to be hyena or cheetah themed??? we stan)

jacks va oshi is epel, jackpel fackin confirmed folks

ruggies va also likes idia and sebek

SEBEKS VAS OSHI IS MALMAL

all the pomes were nervous when recording 🥺

kaito kazuki being an experienced va but was still nervous abt nailing malmals character omg 🥺

epels va has a dog named epel whadda fack......

grim cake... 2!

its 4am im dozing off a bit idk how the teams are separated atm

think its savanaclaw and pomefiore vs diasomnia + grim

wild and beauty team to describe them... omg tsunotaro and nakama team...

gooo epel!!

EPELS VA IS SO PRECIOUS OMG

damn ruggie va doing the guesswork!!

somebody won. i think it was tsunotaro and nakama team, its 4:20 i am dead in da water sorry

NEVER MIND PIECE OF MY WORLD SOON

TO BE CONTINUED???? WHY

omg?? someone said that epels va is related to one of the night ravens??

epel rare!! what a cutie

actuag tbh

SR JACK

SR LILIMAL AAAAAAAAA

SSR VIL FUCK GODDAMN THOSE BOOTS

it 5am now im gonna clear my ap and then pass out

mkay if u made it here thbaks for reading ok goodnight

#twisted wonderland #rambling #twst

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

BFCD Reviews by Nesha: The Descendants Trilogy

First Things First... I had every intention of watching this and enjoying it to some extent. I know plenty of younger folk who have really liked the series and really spoke up for the f****** person who made the series who I do not know, but do not like - if we're going to judge by this b******* that I watched here today.

I feel like y'all f****** bamboozled me with this s*** y'all didn't say "it's some complete and utter b******* and you will f****** hate it," which is what y'all should have told me because it was some complete and utter b******* and I f****** hate it and I watched the whole trilogy JUST so I could come here to say how much it was some complete f****** b******* and I f****** hated it.

And there you have my one disclaimer. EVERYTHING else is just me talking about how descendants is some complete and utter b******* and I f****** hate it.

Anyways, lemme start with my little GC liveblogs screenshots, as it touched on my journey from "Meh" to disgusted grumbles.

This was the first movie. Nothing EXTREMELY upsetting, as much as underwhelming. It was off-putting that the two Black ladies we saw in the kingdom were the most angry and mean about things. Also didn't care for how comfortable everybody was with this Isle of the Lost just being out there full of kids, but I said to myself, "Oh, but it's some kid that you've seen in gifs and stuff that aren't there yet, so probably in part 2, they'll have other kids come through too...

BITCH.

The second movie was one of the most disrespectful pieces of s*** I have ever watched in my f****** life. The most disrespectful part was that the s*** that was disrespectful wasn't even meant to be. So early on until this movie we find out that these kids been livingit up at the f****** in this bougie ass Kingdom, and all of the other people from home just been there living the same b******* life that they've been living since those Kingdom folk pushed them all out of their homes.

Now... You might think "but Nesha the people who got pushed over there was villains and s***..."

As many of y'all know I work in child care services. Whenever people be f****** up the state be taking they kids and they put them in a safe environment while the parents either try to get their s*** together or never get their s*** together. But these pompous f****** assholes exiled these villains AND their kids putting these kids in communities where there were no f****** adults to validate them, love them, care for them, or nurture them, and then they had the audacity to judge those kids for turning out like a child would turn out without love, care, and nurture...

And in that Universe through that whole second f****** movie that was valid lore. That was treated as a normal way of life. They didn't even f****** think about it until after Uma kidnapped a m***********. (I'm doing this on audio because I cannot even think about this stupid f****** franchise without cussing my m************ ass off, it pissed me off so goddamn much. And I just have to go back and edit the s*** that that don't turn out right.) So after they "realized," (loosely) or more accurately, after Ben thought about it for the first time since they salvaged FOUR kids from that wasteland... Is that what the whole movie focused around? No.

It focused on centering on Uma as this villain who was threatening the kingdom. Ben was the only person with any kind of f****** clarity after they spoke. And when Uma rightfully tried to use what she could use to her advantage... They acted like she was the problem!!!

Not the f***** up ass society that have condemned all these f****** kids to this horrible place of trauma and loss with abusive ass parents. You knew those evil m************ wanted to destroy everything and you pushed them out with kids in their f****** care? Or to be fair I don't think any of the kids were born at that time at least not these kids, but they couldn't have a liaison or some s*** for those purposes? They couldn't send a magical b**** to go glance around that mother f***** and make sure that at least the children were safe? And it took years for somebody to be like man this is f***** up?

Dumbass b******.

(Yes, I did straight up slide in more salt on Chad UGLASS for being ugly, Because he is both ugly and deserves nothing good with his sexist, user, narc ass)

So much like America, I wish that that f****** Kingdom had got burned down to the m************ ground. Because they f****** deserve it f*** they family, f*** they castles, f*** they kids, f*** they s*** because they didn't give a f*** about those other kids so I don't give a f*** about theirs f*** them n*****. I wish that s*** would have got destroyed by Uma.

Uma did NOT get her due. And the fact that they were so concerned with going back home getting into full battle with kids who they know what it's like to be them and they know what it's like to be in that situation for this Kingdom that only pluck them out after they had already lived through years of that s*** all four of them kids are some mother f****** traitors.

Whatever the f****** Disney Descendants equivalent is of coons is what the f*** they are. Class traitors. Race traitors. SOMETHING. "I choose good" You were ALLOWED to choose good! They don't even deserve them opportunities if they not going to try to lend a hand and help out the people from where they come from they going to try to instead fight the m************ over a God damn Prince that got his ass kidnapped because he shouldn't have been going there in the first place because he should have left that girl f****** go home when she f****** went home they was a f***** up couple anyway b**** she f****** spelled your ass to get you to fall for her in the first place and then she kept putting spells on your ass and kept doing spells to fake being a fake ass b****.

You could have let her ass go, but no you went out there, her friends went out there, and you got your ass kidnapped for looking like a undercover cop. That was on you. And the whole situation of "well now we got to save The Prince and now we got to save the kingdom," mother f*** you wouldn't have to save the prince nor the kingdom if y'all would have just let that girl go where the f*** she wanted to go, which was back home, and she probably would have ran her ass back to the kingdom because she was a weak ass fake b**** anyway.

Save the Kingdom? F*** y'all.

Then this third movie suddenly now people care about bringing other kids in again, something I'm going to credit specifically to Ben because he is the only person in that God damn f****** Kingdom with any kind of f****** humanity the rest of you m************ are fancy dressed f****** vultures. Which really just felt like somebody probably told these m************ y'all tone deaf is f*** and the premise of those movies is so f****** b******* some white foolery some absolute classist absurdity, and with no resolution to become better people and create better content they try to just fix it with a magic wand.

And then also suddenly we look back at this black girl who we ain't seen or heard a f****** peep from since the first God damn movie but now she coming back in full effect to be the baddest b**** in the land and tear everything down 😒 #misogynoir and you know what good for her for attacking that kingdom. I wish that Audrey would have burned that mother f***** down as well. Her reasons seemed childish. A dude? Girl, tell Granny to kiss your ass and get a cat. Despite the once again shitty writing and characterization of a Black girl (which I'm assuming for the rest of my life the Descendants creators hate), GOOD ON HER for being an overdue reckoning.

Honestly I don't give a f*** who burns the kingdom down but the kingdom deserve to f****** crumble for being a piece of s*** Kingdom with piece of s*** rulers who do piece of s*** things to kids who are not like them.

And I will be forever flabbergasted that nobody told me that that's what this movie was the f*** about. That nobody mentioned how horrific it is that all of the protagonists in the movie are people who pushed these kids out of their homes with their families push a hole group of people from their land instead of I don't know put a b**** in prison for some s*** or something if the villain is that bad, lock they ass away specifically, but you condemn a whole f****** generation who ain't had s*** to do with it to the same fate as their parents? and the fact that y'all didn't see a problem with that s*** say some of y'all shittier than y'all thought. 🤷🏾‍♀️ Because these characters certainly were s***** and whoever made this and acted like this s*** was normal they was s***** too no matter how you feel about them.

Then after we go through all that s***... And we get the most seemingly conscious statement from a character in all three of these goddamn movies when Cheyenne fine ass told them that whenever stay home people they don't give a f*** how bad it is it's just a small problem but when it's one of the others lock them up and throw away the key y'all know what the f*** he said. Y'all know the exact line y'all watched this s*** A bunch of times like some f****** idiots... Excuse me that was f****** rude. Y'all watched that s*** A bunch of times like y'all ain't had no taste. But after he says this one line and then all of a sudden all of the s*** that Uma had fought over and for suddenly became a reality...

But not a reasonable reality like y'all bring those kids back into town give them reparations, do what you need to do with the villains who are still a threat, and make sure that these kids have a future in a kingdom that belongs to them as well as your people...

Y'all sing us some kumbaya m************ b******* about seeing each other eye and working together BITCH THE PROBLEM WASN'T EVER SEEING EYE TO EYE AND WORKING TOGETHER! The problem was the mother f****** Kingdom exiled a bunch of Innocents along with those villains! Auderon DID something TO them kids and seeing them as people suddenly does not rectify that they need some compensation for the hardships that were forced upon them when they were driven into oppression on that island. They need to know that they are safe from the villains who will not change and probably will come into the kingdom with the same f****** that they left with and in addition to that rage from being exiled.

This m************ really painted this narrative like the villain kids had done something wrong and now everybody was working together and that's not what the f*** happened in those God damn movies. What the f*** is wrong with the people that put this s*** together??? They can choke honestly.

20+ years of oppression and exile for at the end the resolution should be the same b**** that was going to sell them up the f****** river, lock them out forever, not let another f****** innocent child come back into their Homeland... is now going to be queen of all of them??? That b**** can't be trusted. And opening up the barrier ain't s*** in comparison to what y'all done put them kids through as far as f****** trauma, as far as the food desert, s*** the m************ didn't even have fresh fruit ever anywhere on the God damn Island! That's some b******* man this is some f****** b******* that they have those kids grow up in, and also side note aside from the s*** that happened in story why the f*** every time y'all trying to find a new village y'all find the first black girl y'all can find?

Yeah really dug Audrey ass out of Oblivion where she had been completely f****** forgot about and had her and her granny coming through here acting like some whole b****** and for what? What was the reason? So everybody could give each other a little musty apology? And nobody whatsoever would actually do something productive to help build up those kids who have been deprived for all these years?

F*** you Disney Descendants. F*** you creators of Disney Descendants. F*** you whoever had decisions that resulted in the final product of Disney Descendants. F*** y'all Mamas too and y'all mother f****** kids. Your Disney Descendants was complete and utter b******* and I hope you never know peace from creating that goddamn garbage and giving it to f****** kids.

#BFCD Reviews by Nesha #Nesha Watches #Nesha Watches Descendants #Nesha Hatewatches Descendants #Descendants Trilogy #Uma #Audrey Rose #Queen Leah #Cruela De Vil #Nesha Rants #Nesha Rages #long post #And every line of it is furious #Princess Aurora #Sarah Jeffery #Judith Maxie #Wendy Raquel Robinson #child characters #China Anne McClain

[ks-caster]

The 100 Season 7 Episode 4 - Post-Liveblog Recap

Okay, so I liveblogged an episode for the first time - and it turned out to be a nice way to stay focused through the commercial breaks. Might continue to do that for the rest of the season.

But TBH I started doing it just so I could bitch about the CLEAR AND BLATANT LACK OF A SCENE WHERE SANCTUM!KRU REALIZE THAT BELLAMY AND ANOMOLY!KRU ARE MISSING. That was an important scene that the whole fandom, more or less, has been waiting for the entire time for various reasons. 

How do the characters react? Who figures out that something’s wrong first? Does Clarke sense Bellamy’s absence because they have a bond? Does Emori go looking for her space sister to comfort her other space sister only to find her missing? 

(Actually, she does. That’s my headcanon and I’m sticking to it. Might fic later. Accounts for Emori’s complete absence while her bestie Raven is falling apart.)

Edit: here's the fic!

Anyway, back to the episode - whoever was in charge of editing really really dropped the ball. Missing realization scene, poorly ordered Raven and Clarke scenes. The music during the Dev-and-Hope montage was a nice touch but just too loud enough that I really had trouble telling what they were saying - and the pacing would have felt better with just one show of teenage!Hope before we got 20-year-old her. The cut from Orlando agreeing to train Anomaly!Kru to 5 years later was WAY too abrupt for me to get a feel for the character and relationship development that they were trying to shoehorn in in order to create conflict at the end. I got where they were going with everything, but in a I’m-reading-a-newbie-writer’s-fanfic-because-I-love-the-story-concept-and-want-to-support-them kind of way and not in a I’m-watching-a-show-made-by-experienced-professionals-and-paying-for-the-privilege-in-ad-revenue kind of way. Disappointing.

Jumping around here for a bit: I gotta say I’m loving the makeovers this season! Hair and makeup did a great job on bringing back the old Raven without losing the maturity they gave her, giving Murphy and Emori their Gucci Royalty Vibes without losing the feel of their individual styles, and making Hope look like she can’t find quite the balance between feral forest girl and innocent shut-in who can’t bear to take a life (which is accurate to her character, of course). 

And Echo! So I really, really didn’t like her makeovers in seasons 5 and especially 6, because it felt like they were trying too hard to make her look pretty in a 21st Century kind of way. She looked softer, more vulnerable, which really contradicted her character traits - but I thought that might’ve been on purpose, to show a change in her (that she did indeed allow herself to become softer and more vulnerable for her family). And her post-time-skip (not that one. Or that one. The other one. There’s a lot of those. Bah.) look feels like a return to herself; she’s beautiful but in a no-nonsense, don’t-forget-I-can-cut-your-throat kind of way. (Is this because I just really love the butch look on woman and am myself a butch woman? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.)

Side note: Where the hell did they get clippers on Penance? Those haircuts were entirely too even to have been done with scissors. I’ll buy that Gabriel and Orlando shaved their heads and their perfect round cuts were growout, but Hope and Echo? Electric clippers. Like I said I like the looks, but guys, there’s no way.

I liked that I got a better feel for Hope’s character this episode - she’s trying so hard to be like her mom and Aunty O and all the heroes they told her about when she was a child, but the truth is she’s been in one real battle, she froze, and her best and only friend died. And since her only role models were these incredibly strong people who didn’t give up, back down, hesitate, that wouldn’t be an easy thing for her to get over. (Given that Diyoza was pregnant with her for two entire seasons, I’d really like to have more time developing Hope’s character - or even the same amount of screen time but go easier on the timeskips, lol. She keeps having growth/maturity/life experience spurts so it’s hard to keep up with the development that we’re shown.

So, 5 (7? Wasn’t she 22? There’s still 2 years we missed right?) years after watching her friend die, and 5 (7?) years of blaming herself for freezing, she’s put into the same position, and she stabs some lady in the neck. Kid didn’t steal her coping mechanisms! All joking aside thought, the kid basically relived her trauma in real life - honestly her reaction was 100% valid.

I’m sure I’m supposed to be upset by Echo’s choice to kill the remaining gold-head people. But I think the only reason that’s supposed to bother me is that she promised (ish - she was real explicitly clear that she’d do what was necessary to rescue Bellamy and them were the breaks) Orlando that she wouldn’t. I think I’m supposed to care about the fractured relationship between AnomalyKru and Orlando.

I don’t. I don’t know if it’s the super-fast timeskip (it was weird enough to see the changed dynamics in SpaceKru when I deeply knew all of the characters AND we got time to see the changes play out) or the fact that I didn’t really get to know Orlando in a way that made me super sympathetic to him (I’ll get to that in a minute) or if it’s just that he was smart enough to know he was being played from the start (see Navy SEAL mom didn’t teach you how to swim and Echo again being 100% clear that killing people might still happen) and walked right in anyway. Either way, his betrayal wasn’t enough of a motivator for me as an audience member to be bothered about how things ended between him and AnomalyKru. I kind of shrugged and moved on.

More on Orlando... So The 100 has had several plotlines that center around people doing dangerous, terrible and downright ridiculous things because of their religions; see the kidnapping and conclave of freaking children killing each other to become commander, Gaia’s whole character arc + starting a new religion around Octavia/WonKru betraying that religion to go back to their old one centering on Madi, WHO IS GODDAMN TWELVE, all of Sanctum and season 6, the Sanctum conflict here in season 7, and now this goddamn Bardo Disciple shite.

Now I’m not dishing on real life religion or religious people - I happen to have one of those myself - but the plot of some-people-take-their-religion-way-too-far-drink-the-koolaid-and-hurt-people-around-them has been done and done and done on this show. And now here we have Orlando, who was a high-ranking member of his religion, drank the koolaid, cast out, still a true believer and therefore dangerous because his perspective is fundamentally skewed. I don’t know anything about this religion but that it’s militarized (they can arrest people) and think that sentencing people to 10 years of madness-inducing Geneva Convention violations and then bringing them back to their families two days later is okay. I don’t really want to know anything else, because I’m worried that the show is going to work hard on making this religion scarier than the Sanctum one (needing to one-up themselves with the big bad, of course) which just keeps making the commander religion look humane in comparison. 

Which it wasn’t. But I digress.

So Orlando was kinda’ cool, but getting in too deep with a fundamentalist who was complicit in his own abuse by said religion (and so who knows what he thought was okay to do to other people) and then it ended badly.

Cue shocked Pikachu.

Moving on. Clarke. Baby. After the harrowing experience of the radiation destroying the radio so you couldn’t say goodbye to your mom when you were supposed to go to space, then missing your time window and getting left behind on Earth, and the radio broke them too so you couldn’t even be sure your friends would leave in time until they blasted off, and then calling Bellamy every day when you knew he couldn’t hear you, and ALL OF THE FREAKING LAST SEASON WHERE YOU WERE POSSESSED AND WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING TO LET YOUR FRIENDS AND DAUGHTER KNOW BOTH THAT THAT WASN’T YOU AND THEN LATER THAT YOU WERE ALIVE and THEN your MOTHER getting possessed and you had to check to see if it was really her and it WASN’T. Clarke. 

After all that terrifying inability to communicate.

You leave Gaia behind to warn everyone of the danger. INSTEAD OF CALLING THEM ON A PIECE OF HANDY TECHNOLOGY OR TAKING A QUICK TRIP BACK YOURSELF. TO TELL YOUR DAUGHTER WHERE YOU WERE GOING. YOU DON’T THINK THAT MAYBE MAKING EXTRA SURE THAT EVERYTHING GETS COMMUNICATED CLEARLY AND IMMEDIATELY MIGHT BE A PRIORITY.

And then Gaia gets kidnapped. Honestly, cool! Not ‘cause I’m rooting for Gaia to be hurt (I don’t care all that much about her tbh) but I LOVE Indra and I want her to have more screen time and development this season - and or the chance to cut people up with her sword - and kidnapping her daughter seems like a great way to facilitate that.

*Looks at list* Oh, right, Jordan. I forgot you were here. Honestly I can’t figure out what the fuck is going on with you, and since I’ve had a whole season of not connecting with you because the story was too busy focusing on external plot... I don’t see that changing any time soon buddy. Sorry.

Oh and that FrEaKiNg PrOmO! 

My garbage boy! My chaos gremlin! My excellent-at-impersonating-a-deity-even-if-it-goes-against-his-programming! What are they doing?! 

I’m torn between NO DON’T HURT HIM and YES HURT HIM BECAUSE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND BRAVERY BWAHAHAHA. At least I know there’ll be Murphy and hopefully Memori content in the next episode. That’s the good shit. It’s the only thing left about this show that still feels “pure,” not that I didn’t know what sort of darkness I was signing up for when I started but just because he and Emori are sort of the last light in the darkness, and it’s nice to get a break periodically.

#The 100 #The 100 season 7 spoilers #the 100 7x04 #saltblogging #kind of #I enjoyed each individual set of scenes in the way that I would enjoy loosely connected oneshots #but all together... #damn #that was a li'l bit of a mess #Bellarke kind of #echo kom spacekru #emori kom spacekru #Orlando the 100 #gabriel santiago #clarke griffin #gaia the 100 #indra the 100 #long post #i wrote this on my laptop #and then looked at it on my phone #and damn

[atamascolily]

lily liveblogs “terminator: dark fate”, part 2

“It’s raining men (and women)”.... hallelujah? Or not, as the case may be.

(For those just joining us, part one is here)

I was kinda hoping they would run the credits  after the title, but I guess filmmakers... don't do that anymore, because we all have short attention spans these days?? Some of that is George Lucas's fault, I know, but tbh I kinda enjoy the creative ways in which filmmakers USED that space occupied by the opening credits... like how The Karate Kid uses it for Daniel and Lucille's road trip between Jersey and California, how it establishes how many friends Daniel had, the importance of his bike, and the whole "putting the car in neutral" and rolling it to get the engine going AND the motif/promise of the pool... all in a minute or two. Magical.  I kinda miss that compared to earlier films.

Anyway, highway at night in what the screen tells me is Mexico City 22 years later. Okay, then. There's ice... and then lightning crackling on the road edge, which can only mean one thing -- a visitor from the future!!

There's a woman making out with her boyfriend underneath the highway, and she says "Oh, my god," and the boyfriend thinks it's all his doing, LOL. Sorry, dude, not today.

THE SPHERE IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY OVERPASS, HOLY FUCK, WHO SET THOSE COORDINATES?? It's a good thing the spheres destroy everything around them, or else this movie would be very, very short.

As it is, Grace falls naked from a great height, banging on supports as she goes down. Ow. Great way of showing she's not quite human.

Of course the watching girl goes over to help while her boyfriend sits there slack-jawed until she shames him into going along. They pick her up and carry her towards their car, only for the police to show up and demand to know what's going on. They think that they're drug dealers (?) and don't believe that she fell from a bridge.

"I love it when it rains naked ladies," says the cop, which is movie-speak for, "I'm an asshole about to get my ass kicked and the audience is going to cheer while it happens".

He grabs her, and Grace sees his gun, and goes for it. Yup, he's down. She's got some sort of augmented vision like the Terminator though anyone who's seen the trailer knows already she's on the side of good.

Grace takes out all the cops completely naked, and I love how this scene is filmed because it's so not focused on anything sexual and it's not sexualized at all, at least for the male gaze that I can tell. It's just... a naked woman kicking ass without obsessing over the fact that she's naked, and it's so goddamn refreshing.

The boyfriend thinks she's amazing. His girlfriend walks over and hugs him. Grace strides up to him and compares her bare foot to his boot. "Don't thank me yet," she says in a deadpan.

Cut to Grace wearing his clothes driving away in his car as the boyfriend stands around in his boxers and yells for her to go to hell. And I like this because it's so much more effective  this way to leave the details in the reader's head and show us the results. The girlfriend steers him away, and he starts blaming her, for getting them involved in the first place. Fuck you, dude. I hope she dumps him that night, too.

Cut to Dani in the street somewhere, carrying flowers and chatting with a tamale vendor. We learn from this that she always has flowers -- an association with life and spirit, and not letting the grind get you down. I approve.  

Dani has a brother, Diego, who wants to be a pop star, and a father whom she reminds to go to the doctor. Caretaker of the family! Of course they have a dog, named Taco. I'm sure this will be relevant later. I hope Taco survives. Diego tries to chat up a neighbor named Julia, and I'm sure this will all end tragically. I hope she survives.

Dani and Diego leave just in time... for another naked person to drop from the sky in a glowing electric sphere! What are the odd??!

Okay, I don't remember the spheres forming ice in previous films, but it's a cool detail that it makes all the laundry on the lines freeze and shatter... so it's gotta be SUPER COLD. Like, liquid-nitrogen levels of cold.

Like Grace's sphere, this one drops its inhabitant off in mid-air, but the Terminator is able to do a beautiful leap and land on his feet like a cat. He looks like a marble sculpture here - beautiful, smooth, polished, muscled grace. Hot damn. There is absolutely no emotion on his face as he stands up, and even without the music cues, you know right away something is wrong.

There's a woman staring at him when he turns around. And now he looks friendly... earnest, helpful. "Good morning," he says in Spanish as he reaches out to touch the jacket she has in her hand, and it spills up out of his skin HOLY FUCK THAT IS CREEPY AND AMAZING at the same time.

The woman FREAKS OUT and he SMILES at her ever so slightly, and--

Cut to a busy city street. Unlike the highway where Grace appeared, this in the middle of the city, with lots of apartment buildings and traffic. Dani and Diego are on a bus.

Cut to Dani's father answering a knock on the door while Taco the dog barks hysterically. I know, I know, I'm so sorry, Taco. There's the Terminator, and he's so charming and earnest in his plaid jacket, looking for Dani. He claims to be a friend. Her father is shocked. "That's strange. Her friends call her Dani..."

"Dani?" repeats the Terminator. "Yes, of course." AND HE SMILES... fuck. A TERMINATOR THAT CAN MIMIC HUMAN FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND SHOW EMOTIONS I AM NOT PREPARED FOR THIS.

(but it actually makes PERFECT SENSE for reasons that will be explained later [kinda] in the film!!!!)

Cut to a factory. Arius Motors. Dani and Diego going in to work as cars swing by on the line. There are robot arms and it's all very timely and metaphorical. Somebody goes by on a bicycle INSIDE THE FACTORY and I have no idea how that works, but okay.

Diego's station has been replaced by "a new guy,"--an orange robot arm. Dani asks the supervisor what's going on and he says, "The future," and the manager wants to see Diego in his office. Dani goes in his place, the supervisor says no, Dani pulls out her hair tie, and goes anyway. THIS IS WHY SHE'S THE LEADER OF THE MOTHERFUCKING RESISTANCE, Y'ALL, she’s ALREADY taking no shit from robots. 

Dani's father shows up at the factory claiming his kids forgot their lunch and can he come in? Poor dad is definitely dead. I hope Taco at least survived, but I doubt it. Meanwhile Grace is approaching and just leaps over the turnstile like it's no big deal and I LOVE IT. Then she follows a security guard into a corner and mugs him for his uniform and it's all so goddamn quick.

The security guard tells "Dad" that he can't come in without a helmet and vest, which is bullshit, because most of the employees don't wear them, but whatever. Grace keeps walking. How the fuck did she dress so fast, but she looks great. She's got a jacket awkwardly covering her gun, and it's not subtle, but no one seems to notice.

Dani is arguing with the boss, who is... American? At least he's speaking English. She's trying to keep her brother's job, but he's all "well, he's not as good as you are," and Dani is Not Having It. She threatens to tell them that machines are coming for ALL the jobs, and god, I love her so much because EVEN WITHOUT TERMINATORS MESSING UP HER LIFE, SHE WAS GONNA GO PLACES.

"Dad" goes to Dani's station and she isn't there, but he talks to Diego. (I don't know how he knows so much, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty.) The Terminator makes that lame excuse about bringing lunches, and Diego is confused, because Dani already took care of that--

Then Dani shows up and the lunch morphs into a gun, and I'm not sure how they did that, because wasn't the morphing stuff not supposed to MAKE GUNS--ok, maybe he took the security guard's gun and morphed the lunch OVER it as a cover with his polyalloy bits--but FUCK this dude is SCARY--and points the gun at Dani as she and Diego stare--only to have his head blown open as Grace fires.

Grace keeps shooting as Dani screams, and grabs Dani before she can get to "Dad". Grace is way better at explaining things than Kyle Reese: "That is NOT your father. That was a machine that sent here to kill you. " It helps that the Terminator has lots of metal bits exposed at this point, and rapidly shifting back to normal. Come with me or you're dead in the next thirty seconds!"

Dani doesn't buy this, but she runs as Grace shepherds both her and Diego away.

And that back arch as the Terminator sits up and regenerates back to his "original" persona--which, I'll note, he DIDN't steal from anyone in our present; it was the one he came with UNLIKE the T-1000 in T2--and it's scary as hell. And even watching him run, and leap--it's not human. It's a predator disguised in human form. Well done, filmmakers.

I like how they show Grace's augmented senses here, and how she has the extra warning to shove Dani and Diego out of the way when the Terminator goes flying for her. He slices her cap off with arms that are suddenly sword-knives, and she swings a mallet at him, knocking him flat--and flinging him into a wall when she hits him again. She is really fucking strong, and I've never seen a woman be this strong before and it's AMAZING.

She hits him on the head over and over again, and then he starts crawling up the mallet towards her and it's so creepy HOLY FUCK and then he sends her sprawling and pops the mallet back out of his head OH MY GOD.

Grace starts using a piece of car siding as shield because she lost her weapon, keeping herself between the Terminator and Dani at all times.

Diego crushes him with a machine--I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, FILMMAKERS, NICE CALLBACK. Unfortunately, it doesn't take, but it does give them some breathing room. Meanwhile, Grace is tired and out of breath, and visibly overheating. The perfect time to introduce herself to Dani!

Grace explains the situation on the run, and throws Diego into the truck they steal outside when he hesitates. I gotta hand it to her, she's doing this whole thing pretty well.

Diego sees her arm. "Are you a machine too?" "No I'm human, like you!" They don't believe her. "No, I'm augmented." THIS IS GOING TO BE A THEME, OH MY GOD. More on this later. Grace can argue with them AND hotwire the truck at the same time. #goals.

They bust out of the factory. The police immediately go after them, not sure how that worked, and Grace says "Oh, shit," seconds before the Terminator (now revealed as the Rev-9) busts through the wall with a truck and a... snowplow? I guess it's for moving stone and metal bits around the factory? Whatever. It's a lot. The police cars go flying.

Somehow Grace manages to drive AND explain backstory at the same time, which I admire, because I can barely talk and drive at the same time.

There's a lot of civilian casualties, mostly due to the Rev-9 snowplowing everything. They end up going backwards up the highway off-ramp and onto the highway. The Rev-9 busts through more things and loses the snowplow. It's a bad day to be driving in Mexico City, let's just say that much.

Grace gets the first "FUCK!" of the movie, as the check engine light of the truck comes on, so Dani gets to drive while Grace makes improvised weapons out of rebar. Oh, wait, Dani can't drive, so Diego gets to do it. (Hahaha, I guess Dani's going to learn how to drive soon because METAPHOR)

Graces eases off her jacket so she can blow off steam and leaps into the back of the truck, yelling for Dani to put her seatbelt on OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE. I love it.

She targets the Rev-9 and throws. He doesn't even flinch at the first one and catches the second one. She stabs him several times through and then he grabs the rebar and moves the polymetallic alloy portion of himself onto the front of the truck while the metallic Terminator skeleton drives.

[COMBINING THOSE TWO PARTS IS REALLY CREEPY AND ALSO THE BEST DECISION THEY COULD HAVE MADE 10/10 APPROVED]

It looks like the skeleton is laughing at Grace, but I think that's just his resting bitch face, lol.

Grace changes tactics and shoots for the tires. The Rev-9 jumps and throws a rebar back at her and Grace deflects it so it misses Dani. Then the truck is dragging the Rev-9's protoplasm while the other half crashes and Grace has to fend him off. Rev-9 takes this opportunity and slashes at the tires with his sword-hands. Grace kicks him off and he gets run over, but it won't take. Diego crashes the truck as the tire blows and Grace rolls and takes a bad fall onto the pavement. The Rev-9's skeleton crawls out of the flames.

DANI WORE HER SEATBELT SO SHE'S FINE WHILE DIEGO DIDN'T AND IS INJURED OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE THE DETAILS FUUUUUUCCCKKKK. Like, Grace knew Dani had to wear her seatbelt BECAUSE SHE'S FROM THE FUTURE AND OLDER!DANI TOLD HER TO DO IT! And younger!Dani DID IT! OH my GOD! (either that or they really are just that drift compatible)

Oh, no, Diego has rebar through him, he's not going to survive AAAAAAAAH no whhhhhhyyyyy

Meanwhile, some poor motorist tries to help the Rev-9 and is murdered for his troubles. sigh.

Grace has to pull Dani over the body of her dying brother seconds before the Rev-9 smashes into the car and everything explodes in fire. Dani tries to run to Diego and Grace holds her back. Grace makes Dani run.

All of the Rev-9's protoplasm is oozing back towards the skeleton in liquid dark smears on the ground and it's so creepy FUUUUCCKKKK

Oh god HE WALKS THROUGH THE METAL HIGHWAY GUARD LIKE IT'S NO BIG DEAL HOW CREEPY CAN YOU GET FUUUUCCKKK

And then the skeleton starts throwing rebar at them from the other SIDE fuuuuckk. this movie so isn't subtle, because there's the machine part and the human-looking part, and they're both working together as one, and this is a METAPHOR, we're meant to see the Rev-9 and Grace as FOILS to each other AAHHHHHH and the Rev-9 is also a SYMBOL OF WHAT HUMANITY CAN BECOME IF IT MELDS WITH AI, AHHHHHHH

Can I just note here that the skeleton part DOES NOT HAVE A ROUND HEAD THERE IS IN FACT A GAP WHERE ITS BRAIN SHOULD BE AAAAAAA

"When they start to kill me, run," Grace says to Dani. But... AN SUV pulls up, knocks the skeleton flat on its ass as the human part of the REV-9 just stares in dull, placid confusion.

next up: my fave returns!

#terminator #terminator: dark fate

[tearlessrain]

so this turned into Scorpion King: Book of Souls Liveblog Part 1, because I got started late. witness a bunch of people trying to make one man’s considerable hotness singlehandedly carry an entire hour and a half long movie with very limited success under the cut.

I do want to state right up front that there’s only one reason I’m watching this and that reason is that for some reason zach mcgowan is the protagonist, so I’m not really up to date on the whole mummy/scorpion king franchise, the last one I saw was the one with all the jackal dudes and that was a while ago. so I have no idea what’s going on.

oh good they’re just going to town with the exposition, very thoughtful

so if the sword was forged in the fires of hell by anubis then who the heck did they fight when they were taking on the jackal headed dudes because I kinda assumed

are these two series actually related or

holy shit this is so Extra already look at this shit

y’all this is my jam I am living right now

also as people following my art blog may note, I am a huge fan of black and gold aesthetics. this movie is really just ticking off all my boxes right off the bat, it’s terrible, but five stars.

they’re REALLY going to town with the exposition

sword forged in the fires of hell that condemns souls to “the neverending darkness” and must be somehow destroyed... are we talking about anubis or sauron here.

this is just lord of the rings, but bad and with a sword. lord of the sword.

okay prologue is over and some dudes have smashed their way into a tomb. if the last however many mummy movies have taught me anything it’s that this might potentially be a bad idea

I love how they’re just not even setting up any of the characters we’re just diving right in I’m getting strong “yeah you all know the drill by now” vibes here

#squadgoals

really though the gal on the left is pretty badass, she hasn’t done or said a single thing but I respect her and her bootleg Xena vibe

and like shoutout for putting at least one actual black guy in egypt I guess

so I guess the one in the middle is... psychic or something? not that “hey if you plunder this blatantly cursed tomb it might be bad” requires psychic powers to know but

I mean that giant black sarcophagus they found recently in real life turned out fine I’m sure this will be great go nuts dude

uh oh it’s the fang of sauron anubis

oh that doesn’t seem good, but it’s actually the better option since for a second there I thought there were pulling a “black guy dies first” in ancient goddamn egypt

wait we’re still doing exposition okay the narrator is back. hi narrator I missed you.

look  I know it’s campy and all but can we take a sec to unironically appreciate how wicked COOL this guy looks with his glowing eyes and crap. this movie is just so satisfying to look at, every single shot has been peak aesthetic

“SEND THE BIRD” and then it’s actually just a regular bird that was anticlimactic

HOLY GREENSCREEN BATMAN

holy FUCK WE’RE ONLY JUST NOW AT THE TITLE SEQUENCE WHAT

okay I guess now we’re going to ACTUALLY start the movie, third time’s a charm

and we’re off to a fantastic start my friends

and judging by the choices of the cameraman in this scene I can tell they’re trying desperately to distract me from the fact that the dialogue sounds like it was generated by a neural network that was fed several dozen mediocre fantasy novels.

it’s working.

I am being personally attacked. god.

oh no some people on horses are coming I assume from the background music that this is a bad thing

OH it’s bootleg Xena and her merry band of deeply mediocre extras okay

I understand the adorable small child’s father must die but must it be at the hands of the worst mediocre extra. seriously he’s been on screen for five seconds and I already hate him.

I guess the protagonist’s name is Matthias, other writers might have let us know that when he was introduced, but these guys know damn well that it literally does not matter what his name is. they could have had her ride up and be like “we’re looking for a man named Jebediah Switchboard McDougal” and anyone who’s voluntarily watching this movie in the first place would just be like “that’s fair”

yeah just in case you weren’t sold after the blacksmithing or the hunting scenes, let’s have him just singlehandedly take down half a dozen ninjas in less than a minute. just fuck me up

oh shit they shot him

oh shit they shot him again

they’re just boromir-ing the hell out of this dude

and yet he’s still going to town on those ninjas

NO NOT THE ADORABLE CHILD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS

I’ve decided I don’t like bootleg Xena after all

it’s a good thing he’s got three arrows embedded in his torso because that is the worst cage ever. it’s made of like. bamboo and string. have you seen this man’s arms how did they expect that to effectively contain him.

whoa it’s... BOOTLEG XENA 2.0: GOOD GUY EDITION

or not. she didn’t free him or anything she just killed his original captors and then took off with the cage with him in it

no I think she is good she’s... healing him? by... getting scorpions to sting the hell out of him? has the FDA approved this.

I’m sorry I can’t take this scene seriously the background music is way too close to the “ooga chakas” from hooked on a feeling. also the sheer degree to which they’re pulling a reverse male gaze here is kinda overshooting sexy straight into unintentionally funny. I mean I know this is the entire reason I’m watching this insanity but like even I think this is excessive.

“the scorpion king escaped” that is giving him way too much credit he was stolen by the superior bootleg Xena.

and in case NONE of the previous things drew your attention away from the lack of a plot, here’s just straight up nudity because why not.

I thought I had a thing for zach mcgowan but I’ve got nothing on this cameraman.

also there’s some kind of “reluctant chosen one king” thing going on I guess but like they literally couldn’t have put less effort into it

I haven’t heard people this concerned about what the moon is doing since I left evergreen state college

aaand apparently he can see and speak to... ghosts now? ghosts that spit thousands of arrows from the sky? know what why not I’ll accept literally anything at this point.

oh they aren’t ghosts they’re just really sneaky dudes

it’s a shame jebediah switchboard’s one and only weakness is extremely shitty cages because he sure ends up in them a lot

hmmmm we’re getting some uncomfortable racist undertones and misogyny in one go okay. not worse than I would expect from a movie of this.... caliber, but I’m not thrilled, especially since this whole situation has yet to have a single actual point to it.

actually okay it’s veered quickly away from “rudyard kipling-esque Vague Native Tribe Encounter” and into... some kind of weird mad max thing mixed with a D&D campaign that’s gone wildly off the rails. but they’re on thin fucking ice.

I really appreciate that matthias is approaching this situation with exactly the same strategy with which I play skyrim, which is “sneak up on everybody one at a time even though there are a ton of them and that shouldn’t be possible, shoot them all with a bow you looted off one of them”

and now they’re just... suddenly free and back on their horses, then matthias had a vague fake deep exchange with the leader and they rode away. there literally was no reason for that entire interlude. nothing happened, there wasn’t character development or anything. this godforsaken movie could have been ten minutes shorter.

“the plot is down there, just past that greenscreen” is what I heard there.

I’m sorry I’m dying for some reason all I’m getting from this visual is “wait are you saying the panel is all the way on the other side of the convention center” like the costumes are just mediocre enough that in bright light they don’t look like they’re actually actors in a movie.

the moon’s rising. but I can’t for the life of me remember why that’s important. she’s got some kinda egyptian steampunk millennium rod though.

okay the lenses must align with the cipher. did anyone mention a cipher before who knows.

good job matthias you solved the moon puzzle and your prize is a metric ton of blue jello.

all right through the jello portal they go. to find the book of souls, probably.

in this case I actually do need more exposition. are we just not gonna explain ancient egyptian jello narnia. no. okay.

stop forcing zach mcgowan to be quippy I know all the cool movies are doing it but this is neither the time nor the place nor the actor for it.

oh my god they’re being attacked by a rock golem thing and I don’t think a screenshot can fully capture how bad the cgi is. not of the rock monster itself, but trying to integrate it with the real actors and set pieces was... oof.

okay a mostly naked woman has risen out of some nearby water and called off the rock golem with no explanation. why not.

neither of them looks into this so much as confused as hell

honestly, same.

oh god no they’re trying to make the rock golem be the comic relief this movie never needed. please don’t. you can barely handle writing the plot relevant dialogue now’s not the time to get fancy. I take it back, trying to make zach mcgowan be quippy was actually somehow not the worst option.

she IS the book of souls!

okay that’s a pretty cool visual I’ll give them that. digging the iridescent moon tattoo.

and that seems like a reasonable stopping point because I started this kind of late and have to get up for class in the morning. tune in tomorrow for, I assume, more of zach mcgowan running around in various states of undress while absolutely nothing coherent happens around him.

#tearless liveblogs #to be completely honest I'm not even sure what it is about this guy #like as you are all painfully aware I tend to lean way more toward androgyny but like #apparently I'll also take 'the concept of a panther but applied to a human being' #seriously though he cannot do the quippy marvel thing just accept that and don't try to force it

[adobe-outdesign]

BATIM Chapter 3 Liveblog

I’ll be watching Ertyez’s playthrough for this!

Keep in mind these are loose and unorganized thoughts, and some things I say won’t make sense.

I will check out the updated chapter 1 and 2 afterward. Want to get spoilers out of the way first.

Under the cut for length.

hey alice

WOAH ALICE

BORIS HAS A FLOPPY NOSE

rise an fall = steam description mentions something coming to surface, so you’re probably moving between upper/lower levels of buildings

BENDY FELIX CLOCK

hey, the Fan made it in despite it not even being a FNAF game

aww, there’s a nice hammock for naps. be great if a demon wasn’t trying to kill you

Bendy clock says it’s about 7:35

ooh, so that’s where Boris has been living

cartoons have underwear, good to know

henry is vampire confirmed

is there... ink in that toilet? that’s just unsanitary

ooh, those are some nice sexy ink textures

Boris is... adorable

and he has tea!

one of those cards has Bendy’s face on it

boris and henry are evenly matched

has henry like... been down here a while hiding out or

uh hey what the fuck

does joey want to like amalgamate these guys or something?? there’s pieces from all three of them in the college

aww, he has a little TV. does it get reception?

wait did Boris kidnap you

oh yeah, alice confirmed for speaking earlier

boris seems to be mute? alice was probs made from susie, her VA, so that probably means boris wasn’t

awwwwwwwww

cartoons confirmed to need to eat? unless they just do that for pleasure/fun

I wouldn’t sleep on a pillow with Bendy’s face on it

why the fuck is there a stove in here anyway?

warm soup’s gotta be nice. cold soup is just gross

this is so wholesome

you think Boris laps up soup like a dog

why... why can’t we go back exactly

wait are those bacon soup dispensers because holy shit

who the fuck would want cold bacon soup why is there an option for that

oh, so the flashlight has the “Gent“ on it. company name maybe?

don’t point the flashlight down the hallway of N. Bonnie will jumpscare you

denial is the best way to die down here henry

were those the things from the trailer making those noises?

boris... boris that’s the wall buddy

Boris I’m sorry for doubting you. you’re a Good Boy

giant sammy-mask style bendy head... I Don’t Like It

HOLY DICK THAT IS A BIG ROOM

ooh, this must be where they make the plushies!

joey stop expanding the damn studio the thing’s gonna collapse at this rate

singing. Alice must hang out here. maybe Susie donated the bendy plushie?

joey get your passive-aggressive ass posters outta here like half your employees are literally in hell

“I better get overtime for this“ if you can’t joke about the little things

only alice, boris, and bendy plushies. they must’ve been the only main characters, or at least the most popular ones

“why is there always something blocking the door“ he’s becoming too self aware

the new item glimmer is very nice, much more noticeable than the old one

ooh, they had a whole assembly line down here for mass production

by the way, the visuals are fucking gorgeous so far

ooh, new person! and he’s Irish!

that’s like the 4th person in this studio with some type of accent

how do you melt... a plushie...

oh no, alice angel didn’t become as popular as bendy. poor susie

Joey is A) very possessive of bendy and B) quick to temper (the steam description points out that Bendy is pissed). suspicious

joey has like a 1% employee approval rating, and that was pre satan

the ink is thick enough to sculpt apparently. Henry’s pretty darn good at it too (and he actually makes an on-model Bendy, joey)

is it just me or are the camera movements much more interesting?

I like how henry’s solution to open the door is to... start the conveyor belt again. whatever works I guess

is boris still in the vent thing

aww, alice has striped sockings. that’s adorable

no wait I change my mind this is not adorable

such a tiny little voice!

why is that poster upside down

this is Bad

that door has a start with a name on it. was alice already alive and given a room before the studio shut down?

NOPE BYE ALICE HAVE A NICE EXISTENCE

she has five goddamn fingers again

“I see you there“ mmm nope you don’t

oh cool she didn’t murder us up-front. take what you can get

too bad it was hinted out so heavily before the chapter came out that she was gonna turn, but oh well

switching over to this let’s play

oh hey, the candles are repurposed bacon soup cans, that’s a nice touch

are the plushies made of ink? the ink forms into the plushies, and that would explain the “melt them down“ line

her horns are bigger like Bendy’s as well, because, you know, demon

ooh, this is the path of the demon/angel achievement

mm, dreams come true, first wall message this chapter

dressing rooms for each character maybe?

oh no no no please don’t cry susie I love you

oh, so maybe susie isn’t alice and pendle is instead? unless joey still used her, her voice is so distorted I can’t tell

either alice turned to keep the part or she helped turn pendle to get her outta the picture

doesn’t sound like alice has the southern accent..

I thought it didn’t sound like her on the recording playing, that would explain why

there’s gotta be a way to fix this... the creator lied to us... dreams come true on her wall written by sammy... oh no

bendy you ass

something’s gonna murder us as soon as we go down that hall isn’t it

wait, did boris move the cutout or did he just happen to be there when it moved? I mean he was dead when the one moved in chapter 1

hooray, violence!

oh my god, the punch cards are save points. I love it

ooh, new characters! maybe the butcher gang were the ones chasing each other down the halls?

FUCK

oh thank god it’s dead

why the fuck was it behind a poster exactly

ha, I knew there was gonna be a lift

HOW MANY FUCKING FLOORS DOES THIS HELLHOLE HAVE

over here now

come to think it, the butcher boy died when you hit it, but Boris still left a corpse. maybe there’s a difference between making things out of pure ink and human corpses?

ooh new person

I feel like these new people might be the butcher gang folks? there’s at least two so far

take an elevator down to hell for your lunch break, it’s fun

shit how many goddamn boris are there?? this isn’t the one from upstairs, it’s on a completely different level

OH OH FUCK OH FUCK OH

oh, so there were like multiple attempts at making the cartoons, but the ones that didn’t work were torn apart, maybe used for other things

oh my god, Joey and Susie were a thing. because alice and bendy were a thing

YOU SHOULD NOT LIKE HIM CALLING YOU ALICE

okay yeah susie is totes alice, the near voice replacement is what joey lied about

oh shit she’s been murdering all these toons (or... rekilling them whatever)

her face is fucked. does being a demon fuck up the process?

ooh, so toons can kill other toons then? boris I need you to get near bendy pronto

the first vs the second time... ink machine mark 1 and 2 respectively? the mk2 did have a “stability improvement“

‘a few favors’ look I’m just not interested in dating sorry

okay so I was right, she’s more of an anti-hero than straight up villain

so even she’s scared of Bendy. can’t blame her, he kind of fucked her up bad

aaand over here

ooh drill

oh shit bigger searchers

maybe the searchers are looking for more toons to kill and take things from like Alice seems to be doing?

hey I mentioned in an ask earlier than an object-head norman would be pretty damn cool right?? ahahahahaaa

oh man the ink’s spreading through the walls? that is fucking awesome and terrifying

oh no boris

Bendy doesn’t seem to see you. no cutouts either hmmm

“I have you to pick up the pieces“ do I look like wally

which one of these characters had a tommy gun

oh okay, so most weapons are made of raw ink as well

uh hey quick question what the fuck

uuuh no I don’t need to meet norman. I think he’s got his problems right now

ah, I think she’s prying out the hearts of the others and absorbing them to fix herself

maybe that’s why sammy isn’t a searcher? it’s implied he’s the one who killed that boris upstairs

ooh, the cartoons playing on the wall is a nice touch

oh god, the lift’s gonna break like that one tape said isn’t it

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get to see it‘ sweetie...

oh, I think that susie creeping in there before she slipped back into Alice’s personality

called it, stealing things insides to fix herself

this is boris numero uno in terms of being correctly made apparently, so it might be that an emotional connection leads to the best results but isn’t inherently necessary for the process to work to some degree

GIVE ME BACK MY GOOD BOY

aaanaand going back for the path of the demon:

hey how come boris doesn’t get a room

oh look, animation supplies

JOEY YOU SON OF A BITCH I WASN’T EXPECTING YOUR VOICE

“you can even cheat death itself” aaah yep there’s his motivation for turning himself into bendy all right, especially if he was literally dying o polio at the time

“positively silly thought“ like sillyvision

okay, I think I’m missing a few small things like recordings but that’s at least most of the story. in conclusion:

holy fuck

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #ink machine #bendy #outdesign posts things #oh my god i have... so much more evidence for my theories now it's incredible

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Imagine Tony having language kink - namely he gets turned on when Bucky speaks different languages and think he doesn't know. But Bucky is very aware and so he purposely speaks different languages (he knows many of them) and adds weird accents to english to woo Tony. May get smutty

Je Ne Sais Quoi

Bucky couldn’t draw his eyes away from thefrenetic genius. Tony was dancing around the workshop, running three differentscenarios in the 3D light projections, the music cranked up so loud that Buckycould feel the bass in his metal arm, throbbing like a second heartbeat. Tonyalso had a grape popsicle in his mouth that he was doing unintentionallyobscene things with as he talked nonsense with Friday and occasionally directedcommentary at his bots.

Bucky had come down to the ‘shop to have Tony dosome scans of the arm, but they’d been waiting almost an hour for Tony tonotice them. Friday had cautioned the Winter Soldier a few times not tointerrupt sir when he was working… At least Tash had come with him. Bucky had ahard time with coherency whenever Tony Stark was around and Tash helpedtranslate his gibberish into actual English.

It wasn’t, as most of the team thought, that theWinter Soldier was coming out whenever Tony was around, but that Bucky had areal problem with a massive -- and annoying -- crush. He was pretty sure Tashknew that.

“” Somehow, Bucky managed to talk just as the music died down and Tonystared at him for a long moment. Bucky squirmed, but Natasha’s dossier on thegenius had been very clear about what languages Tony spoke, and Russian wasn’ton the list.

“”Tash said. “”

“

“

Bucky said. “”

[mobile users, ‘ware the read more]

Tony rolled his eyes. “Keep talking about melike I’m not here, I’ll just wait.”

“No, that’s okay,” Tash said, hopping down fromthe counter where she’d been sitting. “You asked to see Yasha about his arm,so, let’s get to it.” She dragged Bucky over to Tony’s workstation. “Oh, andTony?”

“Hmmm?” Tony was already setting up thehard-light spectral analyser.

“You have something, on your mouth, just, there.”And Tash poked her finger in the direction of Tony’s lower lip. Tony’s tongueflicked out to taste the smut of grape popsicle and something in Bucky’sstomach turned over and clenched. Great. Now he was going to spend the wholetime Tony was poking at his arm watching the genius’s mouth.

“” Tash said, patting Bucky’sshoulder.

“”

“What are you to talking about?” Tony asked,prodding the wire-frame into place, making a schematic copy.

“Cheeseburgers,” Bucky said.

“My favorite,” Tony said, easily, exploding theschematic to look at all the little pieces and servos and wires.

“Boss, you should stop there,” Friday said, justbefore Tony walked into the common room.

“What?” Tony stared at the room. “What the hellhappened? Did I suddenly invest in a bicycle company?”

The entire common area was covered in… cardhouses. The furniture had been pushed to the far sides of the room and anenormous castle dominated the room. Diamonds and squares, layer upon layer ofthem, nearly eight feet high.

“” Clintsaid in perfectly fluent French. The archer was perched on Barnes’s shoulder,like the Winter Soldier was a goddamn shooting perch. Barnes handed Clint twocards from the pack in his hand and spread his feet just a little, to giveClint a better angle.

“” Barnes’s deep,rumbling voice was even worse, when he was speaking French, all dark seductivetones and soft, provocative sounds. Tony leaned in the doorframe, casuallytucking his hands in his pockets to conceal the fact that his knees had gone alittle weak.

“ Clint said. He set the next layer of the house up, taking cards asfast as Barnes could hand them to him. Barnes stepped, moving as if Clintweighed nothing at all, so they could keep building.

“” Tony asked. HisFrench was a little rusty, but perfectly understandable, even if his accent wasa little tainted from Peggy Carter having been his tutor, so he spoke French asif he was from England.

“” Barnes answered andthe sound, God. Tony slumped harder against the door. He wasn’t sure what itwas, Barnes spoke English, and when he did, it was with a sweet, Brooklyn drawlthat could get a man hard with a few well-chosen words, but he didn’t seem towant to.

“” Clint added, like this meant anything to Tony.

Tony shook his head. He could watch this allday; the soft, easy way Barnes moved without stirring the air around him,Clint’s graceful, sure fingers, listening to the lilt of French on both sets oflips. They looked so damn good together. After a while, Tony felt he waswatching something private, like he was an intruder. He faded back into thehall and hit the button for the elevator.

“Penthouse, Friday.”

Playing chess with Steve was hilarious underideal conditions. The walking American Flag treated each game like a battle(and also like the pawns were actual people who’d be hurt and leave widowsbehind, which Bucky was not above taking advantage of) and concentrated with adeep furrow in his brow.

It was even better when Bucky was taunting himin German.

“” Bucky rumbled as Steve picked up his knight and promptly forkedBucky’s bishop and rook in the same move. It was a fucking good move, but Buckywasn’t about to admit it.

“Nice try, Fritz,” Steve said, not botheringwith German, even though he spoke it fluently. “You gonna move or what?”

Tony, who was watching the game, brightenedsuddenly. He gave Bucky a very deliberate look, then said in fucking Romanian-- that certainly wasn’t on the dossier! -- “”

Bucky blinked. God damn, he was fucking blind.  

“Hey, no hinting, Tony,” Steve said, throwing apillow off the couch at the chair where Tony was sitting. The pillow took Tonyin head with a dull whump and knocked his blue sunglasses right off his face.

“That’s not what I said,” Tony said, reachingfor his glasses at the same time Bucky recovered them. Their fingertips brushedlightly as Bucky dropped the shades in his palm. It was like getting anelectric jolt as their skin touched.

Bucky drew his hand back, almost reluctantly.

“So what did you say?”

Bucky made the move that Tony suggested, thenglanced at Tony over Steve’s shoulder. “” Bucky answered in German.

Steve swore, colored a deep, brilliant pink, andchoked on air. Tony only looked puzzled, which was good.

“Stark!”

“What? I admit everything, I regret nothing,”Tony responded, spreading his hands.

It wasn’t hard to get Steve into checkmate afterthat. Three moves, just as Tony predicted.

The Winter Soldier was… not good for delicateoperations. Tony knew that. Captain America knew it (although Steve made verysure that everyone knew exactly how disappointed Cap was with people for theirjudging-books-by-their-covers attitudes.) But that was okay, because Tonydidn’t really want Barnes along for this one.

After the huge travel ban, too many foreignnationals had ended up stuck in airports, families separated. And then therewas the bombing; too many people afraid and no one thinking straight. Theentire customs area of the airport had been hit, the injuries were horrific.Tony brought the Avengers out in force, for the face-time. To visit the injuredkids in the hospital, to start the repairs, to generally scowl disapprovinglyat presidential politics.

The usual. Barnes was good at scowling. Tony puthim on talk-to-Fox-news duty, while Tony went to the hospital to visit, chat,make people happy, pay their hospital bills.

And it was good that Barnes wasn’t there,because there were four families there who didn’t speak English, and findingout that Tony spoke Russian and German (and Italian and Chinese, too, butBarnes hadn’t used those yet) was probably going to cost him a lot of fun. Alittle heartbreak, but mostly fun. He still hadn’t figured out if Barnes wasserious, or just being an asshole. Could be both. Steve was often an asshole,and they were best friends, so, anything was possible.

No sense showing his hand, though, if Tony andBarnes were still bluffing each other in lingo-poker.

So Tony went, hobnobbed, signed photos, did theschtick. He was good at it, and a lot of times, even enjoyed it. Talking toreal people was a lot better than talking to socialites at high end parties. Itwas one of the better parts about being an Avenger, and he’d come to expect it.

What he didn’t expect -- although in hindsight,he probably should have -- was that someone was filming him. Cell phone cameraswere popular, everyone was doing it for the Vine (or whatever had replacedVine, because that was so 2016) and posting to their liveblogs.

Which meant when Tony got back to the Tower,Barnes was scowling. At him.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“You speak Russian,” Barnes said, glaring. Hischeeks were flushed red, but Tony couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or angry.

“Aaaand, you speak English,” Tony pointed out,backing up a little and finding himself suddenly up against a wall, which…well, okay, so it was hot, and he might have liked the way Barnes’s body wasnudging up against his, but at the same time, he wasn’t entirely certain thathe wasn’t about to get strangled. So, little bit nerve-wracking.

“You knew what I was saying.”

“” Tony said, in German,because he might as well be hanged for a chicken as an egg.

“You didn’t say anything,” Barnes said. “Whynot?”

“Kinda waiting for you to say it to me.”

Bucky licked his lips, leaned in, and verysoftly whispered, “Wo xiang zho ai.”

Oh. Well, in that case.

Tony tilted his head just before Barnes’s mouthcame down on his. Nice what a polyglot could do with their lips.

Note: wo xiang zho ai - chinese for “wanna havesex?”

as always, @tisfan and check me out on A03

#winteriron #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #prompts #tisfan #amazinghellawfulheaven