#i really wanted to go into watching the film again with more context and try to enjoy it

[astriexxe]

Here is my very long post about what I think of Les Misérables (2012) after watching it again recently

Tldr: the music which should be great somehow just isn't, the camera angles are fucking weird, Russel Crowe isn't as bad as I expected, Hugh Jackman was worse than I remembered

When I watched Les Misérables (2012) the first time it was the first experience I'd had of Les mis other than the odd YouTube video of one day more (or occasionally do you hear the people sing). I didn't know what it was about I didn't know many of the songs.

I found it fairly boring, the music was ok, the middle section with the revolution was the highlight. My favourite character was Javert followed by Enjolras (but that's biased because I'm a moulin rouge and n2n fan and it was Aaron tveit).

When I watched it back I entirely expected to hate Russell Crowe as Javert but have more respect for the music and the rest of the film as I have since watched the staged concerts and been to see it live and it's fucking great I love it.

I was wrong the music still sucked and I still found it kind of boring despite absolutely loving the stage production.

The orchestra is too quiet I think which means the music loses a lot of it's grandeur and the bad singing is more obvious.

Russel Crowe has a weird tone when singing (this we already knew) and when compared to other Javert's he sucks but when compared to Hugh Jackman it's a relief whenever it's his part because holy fuck Hugh Jackman was bad. Russel Crowe honestly wasn't that bad, I quite like his Javert from an acting perspective and the singing was alright, I know when I first watched the film stars was my favourite song (just imagine how amazed I was when I heard Philip Quast's version). I wish Javert's suicide was better in the film.

Hugh Jackman was far worse than I remembered him being perhaps I have more to compare him to now, bring him home was awful that's not how that should be sung and he had me bored for like the entire bit at the start where it's basically just him (end of prologue/ VJ's soliloquy).

One day more was a bit messy but not as bad as I was expecting.

The scenery was pretty epic like they had some great cinematic shots (ship at the start, the Seine, the cliff during VJ's soliloquy) like a big musical like Les Mis deserves some cool shots like that.

The camera angles were fucking weird. I find how shows use different camera angles quite interesting but I can't figure Les Mis out, it doesn't enhance the story or characters or anything it's just distracting and adds to how boring it is. I thought the camera angles during VJ's soliloquy looked like he was vlogging. Some dramatic shots could have helped that scene a lot I think. The camera angles got a little more exciting but the weird close ups were a theme and I personally think they were poorly used and distracting.

The Thenardiers were pretty good the first time I watched it but like having seen the show since it just doesn't work they're nowhere near as funny.

When my friend watched Les Mis and said she didn't like how all the dialogue was sung and I was like ok maybe she just doesn't like sung through musicals fair enough. No the film is just weird. They like added bits of sung dialogue but they seem to have forgotten to give these bits any tune.

VJ got a new song which was a bit of a shock because honestly I don't remember it from the first time round, I think the concept of the song is pretty cool but poorly written (it was sort of boring and didn't feel like it fit with the musical).

Les Amis were once again a highlight, the pace picks up, the singing gets better, all in all it's a good chunk of the film.

Fantine was better than I remembered and Anne Hathaway went for acting over singing in I Dreamed a Dream which worked but only because it was a film.

Eddie Redmayne was good as was Sam Barks I enjoyed their bits.

Aaron Tveit was also good you can tell which of the actors are theatre actors because they can act and sing at the same time (/hj). And of course respect to George Blagden.

The child actors (I don't know their names) were also great!

Yeah I think that's it if anyone read this to the end congrats on making it

#les miserables #i really wanted to go into watching the film again with more context and try to enjoy it #but it was worse than i remembered

[general-cyno]

I watched film gold the other day and it's been making me think about luffy's relationship with food wrt zoro and how it's been presented in different OP media.

Aside from the importance the riceball incident holds for the animanga and OPLA, luffy's specific reaction to zoro's injuries after the mihawk duel in the latter is so good. although the LA won't touch luffy's full backstory for a while, it's obvious he loves food in both the usual goofy manner and as something he associates with kindness or a lack thereof. it's why zoro eating the riceballs and sanji feeding gin is important in both iterations of the story. and not only that, OPLA also directly links luffy's appetite to his mood/feelings - when kid!luffy gets sad about shanks's upcoming no-return departure, makino goes out of her way to point out something's really wrong after luffy says he's not hungry. as it is, OPLA used this character trait of luffy's again to highlight how affected he is by seeing zoro (who, at that point, luffy hadn't considered could lose) truly hurt for the first time.

From I'm not really hungry right now, Nami amidst his rising panic, refusing sanji's food, admitting he'd eat his arms and legs to save zoro's life (in the context of what happened to zeff and sanji) and my gut hasn't been so great lately, the message is clear: luffy is not only worried about zoro's wellbeing, he's also very, very upset and willing to go crazy lengths if it means saving zoro. plus, if you watch the LA knowing about sabo and ace, imo it emphasizes further why seeing zoro in such a state makes luffy feel/act the way he does and how much he cares for zoro to react like that to begin with. I love it. I also love that though he rejects the food for himself, luffy admits while rambling that he wants zoro to eat and asks sanji to prepare food he believes zoro would like, even if he quickly concludes letting him rest is probably the best option instead.

That last part brings me to thriller bark, in the manga. It's not food per se and it's portrayed less seriously, but he still tries to have zoro - unconscious and wounded after You Know What - drink an entire barrel of booze because luffy knows how much he loves it (as much as luffy loves meat) and believes it will make zoro wake up/feel better. comedic as it may be intended to be, it's also kinda sweet. luffy's shown more than a few times to recuperate ridiculously fast and in an equally ridiculous manner from injuries by eating meat, so this is luffy's own way to show how much he cares and that he wants zoro to be well again imo.

This also brings me to the start of thriller bark itself! luffy's offered to share his food before (with nami, for example), yet ig what stood out to me during this part is how he just... offers to share his lunch with zoro simply because luffy wants him to come along. luffy rarely makes that sort of offer for specifically mundane reasons, so. squints.

(the fact that zoro fell right for it is so. lmao.)

And as for film gold - albeit not canon as most of the OP movies are, it's still interesting. for once, it's zoro who ends up in need of rescue. after the whole ordeal with tesoro capturing zoro and pushing the straw hats to try and buy his freedom before the public execution, luffy seeks out food.

And when usopp remarks zoro is more important than that? luffy immediately agrees, but insists that's precisely why he needs to eat.

This is a fun contrast to OPLA luffy though I'd say not necessarily a contradicting one. whereas there's little OPLA luffy can do wrt zoro's injuries, film gold luffy can't afford not to eat because here he needs to be at peak strength to rescue him. I like that the movie showed luffy's frustration too,

and how far he'd go to save him: jumping into a duct that's filled with "vicious golden bats" no one's survived from and launching himself straight against a moving, giant sea prism stone ventilation fan (all related to rescue plan) that franky has to bodily drag him away from before he gets more seriously wounded.

(Quite a reminder luffy's pretty crazy about zoro too!)

All in all, food is a very important aspect of luffy's character whether it's for a comedic or serious effect. though it's made more relevant in the WCI arc, I still love how it's something you can see portrayed in his relationship with zoro throughout OP too, be it in the animanga, the LA or in movies as well.

#zolu #tp #long post #ish #sjdjd the way I was out of brain juice bc of work and the fact that I've been sick for over a week now #but the zolu brainworms once again prevailed #(it's 3am save me) #anyway daily I love zolu so much #forgot to say but the gif is mine btw #jay reads op

[antianakin]

what do you think are some of obi wan's character flaws

Throughout TPM and AOTC, his flaw is primarily a lack of faith. He questions Qui-Gon's just "belief" in the Force's will and the prophecy etc in the first film, it's one of the reasons Qui-Gon tells him he has "much to learn of the Living Force" or whatever. In AOTC, it's more specifically about faith in Anakin and that Obi-Wan has done as much as he can do to help Anakin be a good person and a good Jedi and at some point he has to just trust that Anakin will figure the rest out for himself and Obi-Wan has to let go of his worries and doubts.

The lack of faith tends to manifest as arrogance a little bit, as a belief that he knows better than other people like Qui-Gon and the Council and Anakin, and it's pointed out several times in AOTC as specifically that.

This is the character flaw that he actually has OVERCOME by ROTS and that's why a lot of people have apparently decided that Obi-Wan is "too soft" on Anakin or whatever as a character flaw. I don't really see that as true, especially given how much of a nag he is and how quickly he puts Anakin in his place throughout AOTC. In ROTS, he is CHOOSING to have more faith in Anakin and not be quite as harsh because he wants to believe that Anakin can and will always make the right decision in the end, even if he struggles. So yes, he doesn't put Anakin in his place as much when Anakin throws a temper tantrum about not being made a Master and he vouches for Anakin in the conversation with Mace and Yoda later (an obvious parallel scene to the AOTC one where those roles are swapped) and he desperately wants to believe he can change Anakin's mind and save him after Order 66. But he also isn't like Padme in his refusal to believe that Anakin did the things we know he's done and he doesn't try to let Anakin get away with it either.

Obi-Wan isn't soft on Anakin, he just learned to have faith and that faith happens to not be rewarded because Anakin is, well, a selfish turd.

And if we go into the Kenobi show, the lack of faith actually comes BACK as a character flaw, but this time it manifests not as arrogance but as defeatism. He's lost everything, his faith last time was horrifically proven wrong, and he doesn't have a single ounce of support anywhere from anyone anymore. So he pins his entire identity on looking after Luke, but he doesn't trust himself OR Luke much because the last little Force-sensitive Skywalker kid he tried to train ended up ruining everything and Owen presumably picks up on some of that desperation and that's why he's not super keen on letting Obi-Wan spend time with Luke, even without the context to understand it. By the end of the series, he has to let go of all of those worries and doubts again and just trust that he gave Luke to good people who will ultimately raise him into a good man and that Luke won't make the same mistakes Anakin did and that Obi-Wan won't make the same mistakes either.

The lack of faith is a really important and relevant character flaw because Obi-Wan by ANH is Luke (and the audience's) whole introduction to the Force and the Jedi and their faith. He IS faith personified, he has to get LUKE to trust and believe in the Force in the first place so that the audience can believe in it, too. He is calm, settled, confident, and sure, but in a way that we need to believe is completely earned. That faith is the CORE of his character and it's why watching Obi-Wan learn to KEEP faith, even in dark times, even in the face of loss, is so so important. It doesn't just help us understand how he came to be the character we know from ANH, but it obviously also helps him be a foil to Anakin who never has faith in anything, especially in dark times and in the face of loss.

(This is also why I really really hate the whole backstory with Satine and how he nearly left the Order for her because it just demonstrates such a lack of understanding of who Obi-Wan actually is as a character, his place in the narrative, and why he's a foil to Anakin at all, but that's a different post.)

He can also get cocky in his own abilities sometimes and he's obviously something of a sarcastic bastard who enjoys pointing out other people's mistakes as a form of teasing friendly banter. Neither of those things are quite as narratively relevant as his lack of faith, but they're fun to play with.

#star wars #obi-wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi series #sw obi-wan kenobi #sw owk #star wars prequels #kenobi series

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super Movie 1: Broly (2/3)

Well, enough of that flashback stuff. Let's move on to the present.

So after the destruction of Planet Vegeta, uh all of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball Super happened. This is kind of a weak point for this movie, because it's story is rooted in Goku's origin tale, but the climax takes place when Goku's a middle-aged man, so a lot of lore has happened in between. There's a similar thing going on when Raditz and Frieza show up in DBZ, and when Broly made his debut in the 1993 film, but Goku was 24-30 in those stories, so it wasn't quite as big a strain.

The thing is, the stuff we had to skip over was extremely important, and the movie simply can't go over all of it. If someone who knew nothing about Dragon Ball watched this thing, they would probably think that this is a story about Goku and Vegeta trying to avenge their people by defeating Frieza, except that already got dealt with in 1991. Goku, Vegeta, and Frieza have each been killed and resurrected... twice. This movie doesn't have time to explain all their baggage, much less how Goku and Vegeta became pals. So no one even tries to fill in the audience on who this big purple cat man is. You either saw Battle of Gods or you just have to roll with it.

And you know what? Good. No one was there to explain Ox King or Mr. Popo to me when I first got into this thing. I've been watching this stuff for a quarter century, and I still don't know what the fuck Tien's third eye is all about. Context is for the weak.

Anyway, this scene takes place on a private island Bulma bought some time ago. She had a resort built here so Goku and Vegeta could spar without damaging West City. And the food is good, so Beerus and Whis tagged along, although neither of them really have any impact on the plot at all. Whis asks Goku why he wants to get stronger, and Goku explains that he's feeling inspired after the recent Tournament of Power arc from the tail end of the DBS anime. Vegeta, on the other hand, is only concerned with Frieza, who was restored to life during that storyline. Frieza's more powerful than ever before, and Vegeta expects him to get even stronger and menace the Earth again.

Sure enough, Bulma gets a call from Trunks as Capsule Corp, who informs them that Bulma's collection of Dragon Balls and the Dragon Radar have been stolen by goons wearing Frieza Force uniforms. But the joke's on them, because Bulma only had six of the Dragon Balls collected. The seventh is on the Ice Continent, so they know exactly where to go to intercept the thieves. Beerus doesn't want to tag along for the trip, so Bulma leaves her infant daughter Bulla with Beerus.

So what was Bulma planning to wish for? She admits that she was going to ask Shenron to make her look five years younger. Why only five? Because if she got too young all at once, people would think she had work done.

So what does Frieza plan to wish for? Immortality was what he wanted on Namek, but not this time. No he only wants to grow about five centimeters taller. Why not just use his second or third forms to be tall? Because he wants to be taller in any of his forms. Why only five centimeters? Because he wants it to seem like he's still growing.

I've never been too happy about this gag. I mean, it's a good gag, but I liked it better the first time, when Commander Red planned to use the Dragon Balls to make himself taller. It does add some complexity to Frieza's character, though, since he's not just stubbornly trying the exact same routine that got him wrecked on Namek, and then killed on Earth, and then re-killed on Earth again.

This time, he's not trying to take the Dragon Balls by force, because he knows Goku and Vegeta are too powerful to challenge head-on. So he's using stealth instead. The minions he sent to Earth are weaker guys, which mean Goku and Vegeta wouldn't sense their ki. And it seems like Frieza's plan is to just sneak down to Earth, make the wish, and head out before anyone can stop them.

And he's not pursuing the same wish he had twenty-odd years ago. Really, Frieza was never that interested in immortality in the first place. He only decided to wish for that because it was the one thing he didn't already have. But now he's been dead twice over, and that's given him a new perspective on life and death, and he seems to think being unable to die would be similar to the unending torment he experienced in hell. Neither does he seek an invincible body. I'm not sure Shenron could give him greater strength, but Frieza feels that would take all the fun out of "the game". If nothing else, it's interesting to see Frieza consider this at all. Back in the Namek Saga, he never thought about wishing for greater power, because he believed he already was the strongest in the universe. Now that he knows otherwise, he seems fairly content with that.

Meanwhile, we meet the last two players in this drama, Leemo and Cheelai. They're operatives in the Frieza Force, but they're not warriors. Leemo's been with the Frieza Force from the beginning, and Cheelai's a recent recruit, having joined up to avoid the consequences of stealing a Galactic Patrol ship. Their orders are to find more warriors to join the Frieza Force, since their ranks are pretty threadbare. Remember, when Frieza destroyed the Saiyans, they made up half of his fighting force. The other half was still quite formidable, but all of his best troops ended up getting killed during Frieza's disastrous invasion of Namek. Then Frieza came back and tried to attach Earth in Resurrection F, and he brought like a thousand soldiers with him, and those guys all got killed as well.

As Cheelai observes, Frieza is down to women and old men like herself and Leemo. There just aren't many warriors available in the universe these days, because all the good talent got killed off a long time ago. As they discuss this, Leemo picks up a distress signal from Planet Vampa. Thinking their might be a reward for it, they head over to answer the call, and find...

Paragus! Also a bunch of alien monsters. Fortunately, Paragus isn't alone...

They also find Broly on Vampa, and he's all grown up and stronger than ever. Their scouters measure Paragus' power level at 4200, which isn't too impressive these days, but it's way better than anything the Frieza Force has at the moment. And Broly's power is too high for the scouters to measure, so they definitely want him to come along. On the way to Frieza's ship, Cheelai feeds Broly rations and takes a liking to the big guy.

When the four of them report to Frieza, Paragus explains that he had to cut off Broly's tail because of the frequent full moons on Vampa, which cause Broly to lose control of himself as a giant ape. Occasionally, Broly still loses control of himself anyway, but Paragus can rein him in using...

... a shock collar, which he can activate with a remote control. Leemo and Cheelai are horrified to learn of this, but not so horrified that they turn down the generous reward Frieza gives them for their discovery.

Now, one thing that always bugged me about this movie is that Frieza immediately starts making plans to use Broly against Goku and Vegeta. He wasn't planning to attack them this time around, but now that he has Broly on his team, it seems much more favorable. Later, when the fighting starts, Frieza is disappointed to find that Broly can't transform into a Super Saiyan, but why would he expect Broly to be able to do any of that? Sure he's a Saiyan, but Goku and Vegeta have mastered power levels far, far beyond what other Saiyans have ever dreamed possible.

But I keep forgetting that Frieza can sense ki these days, the same way Goku can. Back in the Namek Saga, Frieza had to rely on scouters like the rest of his goons, but when he trained to become Golden Frieza in Res F, he learned to sense energy. So when he sizes up Broly, he's not just guessing at how strong this guy is. He can actually perceive the untapped potential in Broly's body, and he seems to recognize that Broly would be capable of giving Goku and Vegeta a hard time. So it makes sense.

Anyway, Paragus is happy to cooperate, since he still despises King Vegeta for what happened, and he's down to attack Prince Vegeta to even the score. And Broly has to do whatever Paragus wants or he gets another shock.

Later, Cheelai tries to get to know Broly better, but Paragus forbids Broly from speaking. While they argue over this, another henchman tries to drunkenly hit on Cheelai. I really like how Leemo tries to defuse the situation here. He's not a fighter, so it suits his character that he'd try to employ a nonviolent solution, like offering to buy this guy a drink. Being a noncombatant in the Frieza Force, he's probably grown accustomed to swimming with the sharks like this. But it doesn't work, and then Broly steps up to use a non-nonviolent solution, which is violence.

But Paragus doesn't want to offend his host, so he gives Broly another shock. Cheelai confronts him over this, and while she chews him out, she swipes his remote control. Then Paragus gets summoned to talk with Frieza. While he's gone, Cheelai destroys the remote, and they listen to Broly tell the story of his green fur wrap.

It's a pretty simple story. The closest thing Broly had to a friend on Vampa was one of the large green creatures on the planet. Paragus used the creature to train Broly, goading it to attack, and then having Broly dodge it. But over time, the creature became accustomed to Broly, and they became pals. But Paragus wanted the creature to be hostile, so he shot its ear off with a laser pistol to piss it off. Ever since, Broly has kept the ear and wears it as a memento of their friendship.

I like how easily Cheelai and Leemo sympathize with Broly in this movie. They're not good guys at all. Cheelai's an opportunistic thief, and Leemo's a cog in Frieza's evil empire. But they're not heartless, and Broly's story is so tragic and innocent that you can't help but feel for the guy. Leemo compares Paragus to his own rotten father, so you can tell that he can relate to what Broly is going through. And Cheelai can tell when someone's being used. Paragus can dress it up all he likes, but he's just using Broly's power to serve his own selfish interests.

Moving on, Frieza's team on Earth have located the seventh Dragon Ball, and Frieza's fleet moves in to join them for the wish-making. But Bulma, Goku, and Vegeta get their first. They probably would have arrived sooner, but Bulma wanted to stop somewhere to buy cold-weather gear. Let's just take a moment to admire her safety-yellow snowsuit. She looks like a baby duck in this thing and it's great.

Frieza confronts Goku and Vegeta and introduces Paragus and Broly. I never really noticed these guardsmen who stand by while Frieza steps out of the ship. Paragus should have gotten one of those uniforms, since that pink shower curtain he's wearing looks dumb as hell.

I mean, look at Goku. Bulma got him a sweet blue coat and he looks like a million bucks. He tries to convince Paragus and Broly to get along as fellow Saiyans, but that doesn't get him anywhere. You'd think he'd know better by now.

So Broly's rarin' to go, and Frieza sees no reason to make him wait, and it's on. Broly attacks Vegeta, and that brings us to the final leg of this movie, which we'll cover next time.

#dragon ball #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #dragon ball super #dragon ball super: broly #broly #goku #vegeta #frieza #paragus #cheelai #leemo #bulma #whis #beerus #bulla

[maxwell-grant]

After watching I Will Save The Universe For Food and the last Like A Dragon games, I had an idea.

What happens in a superhero universe when superheros and supervillains become obsolete, like knights and cowboys before them?

When society outgrowns their neccesity and the system which they are part stops working how will they adapt to a world that no longer need, wants or supports them?

Which will fight back and which will try to give them a place in this new world?

(If this question is too complicated, just respond in the context of the Marvel universe)

I think that depends on what you mean by "like knights and cowboys before them", because that can mean different things. The simplest answer for these is that you don't have a superhero universe anymore, if your universe is one where superheroes can just vanish into irrelevancy and become historical curio figures that definitely 100% won't need to come back to stop the Anti-Monitor from exploding a world or two, as they always do everytime they have a "but what if we didn't need superheroes anymore?" story in a superhero universe.

Closest example I can think of within the Big Two is, probably the stretch of time between the disbanding of the Justice Society in the 1950s, and however long it takes in the continuity for Superman and the Justice League to be a thing and inaugurate the age of heroes proper, where in-between you have all those less-known almost-superheroes and your Task Force X / Challengers of the Unknown / fringe guys guys running around until the superheroes become the center of the universe again. Alfred's espionage career goes here until it's time for the Waynes to be shot, that kind of thing. And of course, that's not an ending, that's backstory, that's a gap in between proceedings. The DCU didn't stop being a superhero universe during those years and it doesn't really stop being one when all capes are gone in the Kamandi future either, where the lack of dominant superheroes is supposed to be an outlier state.

(And to address the proverbial elephant here: Watchmen is a world where superheroes are depicted as socially detrimental and warped, and yes there's only one guy with outright superpowers, but this is still 100% a superhero world where superhero things have and have happened, where superheroes and masked crimefighters were and still are an incredibly useful thing for the powers that be even in spite of being specifically outlawed. The best thing for the people who live in Watchmen would be for them to live in a world where the superhero was truly no longer supported and allowed to fade into irrelevant fantasy, but they don't, they live in the 35 minutes murder squid massacre world)

If we're comparing superheroes to knights and cowboys in the sense of the archetype, the storytelling tradition they socially occupy, the superhero as a character figure the way knights and cowboys are, then if they go, they go the way those did, and become historical characters and costumed personas within the realm of fantasy. In fact, if this is a thing that can happen or always could happen and the story chugs along just fine, it's possible you didn't even really have a superhero universe in the first place, you just had a universe with superheroes in it.

Which is a thing that can happen, and happens quite a bit in universes that want to take a crack at superheroes but don't want the proceedings to revolve around them. Like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or Redline with Lynchman and Johnny Boy, deranged pastiches of Batman and Robin who are very much real superheroes, fighting supervillains and outrunning cars while tanking gunfire and all, they're just not the thing the film revolves around nor are they even the weirdest thing in it, so they don't warp the universe and they're just one more freakish thing about it. The key word here is irrelevancy: Captain Universe is not the protagonist of LOEG, the universe of Redline and it's races do not revolve around Lynchman and Johnny Boy, the Crimson Chin doesn't show up to pull Timmy Turner out of trouble on most Fairly Odd Parents episodes, and etc. These guys are superheroes, they can even solve some big problems, but they are not needed, the universe spins just fine without them, which means they're not really much of superheroes to begin with. It's not for nothing you mostly see this play out with gag characters, or at least, characters whose superhero-ness makes them dissonant next to their surroundings (think Captain Falcon in Smash Bros).

Now, if we're talking about comparing superheroes to knights and cowboys in the real world practical sense of what they were and did, if we're talking about them as part of a system through which they operated and applying it to how superheroes operate, well, then we still have cowboys, and knights, and samurai and all that. Individuals or groups with enhanced weaponry or fighting skills who go around stopping crime and enacting vigilante justice with a mission to defend something / "society". It's just we generally call them cops or private military contractors now. Or mercenaries, if you wanna split hairs a bit and go with the "independent operator who sells his services and brutalizes people for money/political favors", which was what knights and cowboys did also, but they all work within and for the same system.

There's been a lot of commentary already on how the superheroes, as a western action genre, operates as an extension of cowboy stories, most visible when we get to the superhero-supervillain dynamic, the "eternal frontier of gangsters and super-scientific menaces who play the role that Indians take in frontier narratives" as I elaborated here. And it's easy to point out the similarities between cowboys and knights, who comparatively skew a little closer to the mercenary side of things than the "cops-and-robbers" paradigm, but historically tended to benefit from political privileges and whitewashed reputations as adventuring defenders and champions of the community in very similar ways. Works that explore superheroes as an institutional power, like The Ultimates or Worm, tend to touch on this, and how "lucky" these guys are that there's always a bigger villain or monster in the room to fight to justify the continued superhero project. The superheroes can have as many Civil Wars as they want provided there is a Norman Osborn at the end of the day to be the bigger bastard they can settle their differences by punching out.

A story about a society that "outgrowns their necessity and the system which they are part of stops working", a story that abolishes the need for superheroes entirely and doesn't provide them allowance anymore, is a story about a society that would have to, at minimum, either have cops and law enforcement so effective and powerful that there's no room for superheroes or any kind of alternative to even pretend to exist, in which case congratulations, you're writing Judge Dredd, or a society that has completely abolished a need for cops and law enforcement of any kind so thoroughly that superheroes are not needed or able to fill the vacuum either, which is a much taller order and it's the kind of stuff you find in speculative political fiction and utopian sci-fi. But, even that wouldn't even necessarily stop superheroes from being active figures.

Because for one, systems fail, in several ways by design, and superheroes tend to exist in the first place because of that, conceived and presented as a superior alternative to traditional law enforcement. And two, obviously the concept of independent policing exists, the concept of communal policing or unlawful vigilantism and so on, and it's typically the thing that gets brought up as a rebuttal whenever superheroes are criticized for being too much like cops, the fact that they don't answer to law enforcement or government and therefore cannot be exploitative or opressive or, god forbid, that dirty word that starts with f and ends with -ascist. But we already live in a world where vigilantes are not supposed to be needed, a world that doesn't support them, and still they exist. And we do have a name for unaccountable, community-based solutions to crime policing and what those look like, people got very angry at Alan Moore for bringing it up even.

Of course this is an extreme negative example (if no less of a foundational one because of it), there are many many different degrees and reasons and methods by which vigilantes operate, just as there's a difference to the degrees by which heroes associate with law enforcement, but that's part of the issue here. No matter how repugnant a precedent is set by the KKK and others, vigilantism is an extremely popular idea for many reasons and it accounts for so much of why knights and cowboys and superheroes become so popular.

Everyone has their own reasons as to why they would support or become vigilantes, everyone has things and causes they'd fight or kill or die or embrace violence for. So unless we're going the utopian sci-fi route again, there is no rendering vigilantism obsolete, and there is no rendering the superhero obsolete in a superhero universe, even if we completely strip away superpowers from the equation. Vigilantism is and will always be deeply popular no matter how wrong or horrible it is as a thing for people to embrace. There is no pretending otherwise in the aftermath of this

being the most globally beloved political development of the past 5 years at minimum.

Superhero universes trap themselves into the vicious cycle where superheroes are needed to stop super-menaces and even other superheroes, and they all justify each other's existences and they all recreate Cold War dynamics just by existing (and this is something that Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard are gonna be exploring in their upcoming mini The Power Fantasy, so be on the lookout for that), even if just those who become vigilantes to stop other vigilantes from going rampant. But if superheroes aren't on some level impossible to replace, whether it's because they are genuinely necessary or simply too enmeshed into the inner workings of society to be removed without issue or ending the story, then you don't really have a superhero universe.

The questions of what happens when they go, where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods and where is streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds, those I think tend to get explored a bit, but not too much, because generally speaking you write superhero universes to tell stories about superheroes, not to write about what happens to those universes when they're completely and utterly gone and never coming back.

Again, it is entirely possible to have fantastical universes with hero stories in them and not have superhero universes, superheroes are not synonymous with cowboys, knights, samurais, wuxia and other kinds of hero stories either. In fact, if you take a step back from America and away from European and Japanese works exploring said relationship with the US, the idea of a superhero, let alone a whole universe full of them where everything has to revolve around them, kinda shatters. Much as I may be trying to do just that, it is more than a fair bit ridiculous and self-defeating and even a little impossible to authentically put superheroes in the global south, although that is considerably less of an issue when thinking of supervillains. Those can and do crop up whenever and whatever.

And I'm ending on those because, the reason I'm not even really touching so much on the supervillain side of the question because supervillains don't actually need any kind of superhero context to exist, as I keep reiterating they predate superheroes by a significant margin and are far less defined and restricted in terms of how they exist and operate. By design, supervillains can and do exist in systems that don't allow for them and don't want them, it's kinda what they're supposed to be doing even, it's even kinda the main thing that separates a supervillain from a regular villain.

But you don't even need supervillains most of the time to be a superhero. The masked avenger pulp heroes tended to not have them, and the Golden Age superheroes took a while to get going there. You need supervillains only when you're strong and good and long-lived enough at it that you need, well,

#replies tag #superheroes #dc comics #worm #superhero comics #comic books

[minsungchronology]

My Personal Opinions on Minsung's Dynamic (2020)

Disclaimer: I am not trying to pass off my opinions as facts. This is my personal interpretation of what is laid out right in front of us. I could be completely off base because I don’t know these guys personally, so take this with a grain of salt and feel free to disagree!

I think it’s more than safe to say Lee Know and Han find each other attractive.

They don’t even try to hide it.

You really start to see it this year, especially from Han’s side (how the turn tables).

2020 was such a good year for them. You can tell that the guys are a lot more confident and vibrant, especially when you compare it to the latter half of 2019. I think Lee Know really starts to come into himself during Gods Menu era (like I mentioned previously), like his confidence here is another level. Compare him to his 2018 self and you'll really notice the difference.

But as I also mentioned before, Han’s attitude really changes this year.

First with the Osen Star Road video: Lee Know talks about working part-time at a restaurant flipping steak and Han blurts out “Flip me!” The members’ reactions to that are priceless if you replay that clip. His intrusive thoughts won that day.

Then there’s the Unlock concerts: the clip of him staring at LK through the giant monitor like he saw the galaxy and LK catching him in the process has me in stitches every time I watch it. (Almost foreshadowing to another instance where he does the same exact thing in 2023, but for a different reason ����)

The fancam from Music Core during Gods Menu Era where Han literally fans himself right after he stares at LK.

And then casually calling him “Hot” as he films him in one of the SKZ talkers.

Last but not least, the “All in” clip where he goes “You” (Dangshin) after Lee Know asks “What have you been all in?”. Intrusive thoughts win again!!

And the feeling is mutual too.

During the Weekly Idol episode when Han does yet ANOTHER sexy dance, Lee Know tries to create an exaggerated, taken aback reaction much like what the other members are doing. (Some of them are playfully grossed out) But he can’t hold it for that long at all lmfao. Like, his body language completely betrays him. (Man literally says ‘wow’ and bites his lip skjdhaksjhkjashd)

Lee Know also seems to really like Han’s look in the “Easy” MV. (this is one of his best looks imo so I don’t blame him) First, he draws it in one of his vlives and then makes it his mission to mention that was his favorite part (exact time stamp and everything!) before getting all teeheehee shy. Like bro??? How do you even remember that?

Much like last year, it’s not as obvious as it was in 2018. But the occasional "slip up" doesn't ever really go away. Though, they come back in full force around 2022 and 2023 (especially!!).

We get to see a little bit more of their little hangouts. Either that or they just casually mention them in passing. They really do take the time to hang out together outside of work schedules. As much as they’ve mentioned hanging out together, fans have also spotted them out together on many occasions throughout the years. Imagine living with someone, working with them 24/7, and then wanting to spend the very limited amount of spare time you have with them as well, when you…already see them every day.

Oh! and Butt-hunter LK makes his official debut this year. His unique way of showing affection towards the members. Han seems to be his number one victim though (ooooh wow how shocking 🤥).

My personal opinions:

Again, I’m preetty sure they are just friends this year. From what we are shown, I personally don't see anything more (outside of potential feelings) unless you purposefully take moments out of context and ignore how they perceive each other around this time.

Though, they don’t shy away from the mutual playful banter and flirting, as well as being appreciative of each others looks. They seem a lot more comfortable and confident with themselves than they were in previous years, so its not something they refrain from doing. It also seems to carry onto 2021 and future years. But it’s not something you saw as much prior to 2020.

However, I do think Han, for the first time, starts developing feelings that go beyond platonic this year. If I had to pinpoint a year for him, it would probably be 2020. Han’s "Han's Communication Show - Stay 2nd Bday" Vlive gave a lot of insight in such a brief time. He seems like someone who wants to put a distance between himself and any sort of feeling that crosses the platonic/non-platonic boundary with LK. He says he doesn’t want to spend too much time with him, but they always end up together. 🙃 He literally says "Lee Know is annoying" while giggling/laughing like that. (Is he attempting to convince himself or us? I don’t know.)

It kind of goes back to him saying stuff like: “I stared/glared at him b/c he was so handsome...cause i was jealous of his looks." "I ranked him as one of the lowest b/c I don’t like good looking men." "I don’t like when he winks at me it’s so annoying" etc etc.

I honestly don’t think he’s even aware of it. Like sometimes he’ll blurt something out that kind of….gives him away in a sense? Like a Freudian slip or an intrusive thought.

I’ve also noticed he tends to pay extra attention/laugh extra hard at Lee Know’s jokes or little quirks that might go undetected by the others. 

In 2021, the playful back and forth flirting really ramps up between them. I think that year (and onwards) is when they are the most secure with themselves, at least compared to 2020 and the years prior.

#minsung

[filmnoirsbian]

'her brother def killed her' PLEASE go on if you have the time bc i would LOVE to see you talk about this film

It's a wonderful little horror movie! If you haven't seen it but plan to, don't read this response!! This is a movie best watched blind and uninfluenced by outside opinion.

(🤚 Spoilers 🚩 Below ⬇️)

Regarding the brother specifically, I didn't initially find him suspicious until the series of video clips where we see him repeatedly filming Alice without her knowledge, which she clearly was uncomfortable with and upset about. I get that siblings squabble but it just struck me as odd that every interaction we see between the siblings shows one of them antagonizing the other--usually Matthew antagonizing Alice.

Matthew is the last one to see Alice. They're swimming together out in the lake, and then he decides to head back alone. He claims she wanted to stay out there. But then when he reaches the beach, he asks his parents "Where's Alice?" alerting them to the fact that she is missing. The dad mentions that the lake looked still, with no sign of her. If Alice could swim, isn't it unlikely that she would have just drowned in still water, without any external cause?

Then there's the dad's vision of Alice, in which she acts out the scene between her and Matthew, where she discovers him filming her and yells at him to get out of her room. Why would he see that moment specifically? What if Alice was trying to make him understand that Matthew was involved somehow?

Matthew's bruises were another oddity. At first I assumed it was just another symptom of the haunting, but Alice's ghost didn't otherwise seem capable of physicality. And the bruises developed very shortly after her death, before eventually healing. So I posit that Alice gave him those bruises during their struggle at the lake, when he drowned her.

Alice's corpse looks excessively damaged by the time it's found, though it's only been in the water a few hours (she was reported missing around 6pm, discovered sometime after 9pm). Obviously other things could have caused that, maybe she was fed on by fish, etc, but I think Matthew beating her/forcefully drowning her could have also caused the damage to her face especially.

Matthew manipulating footage to make it seem like Alice's ghost is haunting them is another thing which, divorced from all other context, wouldn't make me immediately suspicious of him. People grieve in different ways, and his reasoning that he wanted to give his mom some sort of comfort or closure would be good enough for me under other circumstances. But next to everything else, it's more disturbing, his manipulation of Alice's presence/image even after her death. And there's no understandable reason behind him donning her clothes and wandering around the site where she died. Again, people grieve in strange ways sometimes, but this behavior goes basically unaddressed.

Finally, the sex tape of Alice--a 16 year old--and her married adult neighbors the Tooheys. This one's a bit of a stretch I admit, but we already know Matthew has been video taping his sister without her knowledge or permission, and it's never really explained how Alice got the tape from the Tooheys if it was in fact taped by them. I don't remember any of them ever actually looking at the camera as though they knew it was there. What if it was actually Matthew's tape, and Alice found it? I think it'd be easier for her to get it from him, since they live together, and then tell the Tooheys about it.

If Matthew really did kill Alice, a lot of questions are answered, and Alice's story becomes even more tragic. In her dream, she feels drugged and scared and goes to her parents' bed, wanting to tell them. But she can't. She realizes they can't help her, so she just stands there crying. This could just be the heartwrenching experience of a girl who knows she is going to die and is struggling with that knowledge. But it could also be the experience of a child who is being abused by a family member and desperately wants to tell their parents, but can't.

In the end, we know that while the family moves on, assuming they've learned what Alice was trying to tell them, Alice's ghost is not at rest. She is stuck in that house, in the story of her pain, unseen when she was alive and unseen now in death. The images that capture Alice's ghost (excluding the lake mungo footage) are either taken by Matthew or feature him. The film is horrifying and depressing no matter what, but if this theory is correct, it means we, alongside Alice, have just watched her murderer get away with it.

#asks #lake mungo #an eye in the head of a poet

[pink-devolve]

Yo I haven’t really seen anyone talking about this, but there are certain parts of Hazbin Hotel that can be extremely triggering for survivors of RAMCOA and SA.

I just finished watching the show and I loved it. But episode four was extremely triggering for me.

I will be describing a couple scenes somewhat thoroughly, none of which are super important to the plot, but all of which may be triggering to read. I think it’s important to have a trauma informed description of these scenes out there.

This is NSFW, the episode is 18+ and I don’t recommend that people under 18 read this. However if you’re going to watch this episode anyways, you deserve to have trigger warnings as well.

(Spoilers for episode four and minor NSFW under the cut)

The episode starts off with a warning for depictions of sexual abuse. The warning lasts for about 10-20 seconds, and that was enough for me to read it fully. This warning is very brief and does not describe the extent of what is shown in the episode. After the warning, it jumps into a scene where Angel Dust is tied to a chair, and an interrogator comes out and starts to have s3x with him. This is shown to be a CNC ✨film✨ when it zooms out to show Angel Dust playing it for the residents of Hazbin Hotel. Even knowing it is just a ✨film✨, I found it a little odd that it was the first scene shown, especially without prior context.

The next scene I wanted to talk about is when Angel is about to start filming with his boss, Valentino. Again this is going to include spoilers, I’m going to try and keep them minimal but yk.

Charlie decides that she is going to go to Valentino’s studio and demand that Angel spends more time at the hotel. She trips and causes an accident. Valentino pulls Angel into his dressing room, and starts physically abusing him. He uses his smoke abilities to shackle Angel’s hands and neck, putting Angel on a leash. He then drags Angel forward and shows Angel the contract he signed at one point, letting Valentino own his soul. Afterwards he says a series of lines reminding Angel that he is unable to say no, one being “If I say you’re fvcking 20 guys before lunch, you say..”

As a tr4ffick1ng survivor myself, this scene kinda fucked me up. What is going on between Angel and Val is blatant tr4ffick1ng, and it doesn’t say anything about this in the warning at the beginning of the episode.

Soon after this, Angel has a musical number. The music video for this shows a lot of k1nk gear, “C”NC, Angel being clearly distressed and scared, etc. With the added context of Angel being unable to say no, all of this was again, pretty triggering for me. In one scene, Angel is blindfolded and has something out on to keep his mouth open, he is then thrown onto the floor, and pushed “onto” someone. This was the most upsetting scene for me.

The only notable scene after this, is when Angel goes to a bar and a guy spikes his drink. It’s pretty unrealistic and didn’t personally upset me, but I do think it’s important to mention.

Honestly??? Even with it being triggering, this was my favorite episode. I was able to use coping skills and watch it with a friend, and I took a break after the musical number to talk and eat food. This episode in general does a really great job at fleshing out Angel’s character, and gives him a lot of depth that we haven’t previously been that exposed to. After the scenes I described, it gets better and Angel is able to open up for the first time, which I think is nice.

With all of that being said, I do think this is a weird episode to have in a serious typically marketed as 16+. In the warning on this episode, it does say that it’s for people 18 and older. But idk how they expect a 16 year old to just not watch the one episode said to be 18+.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin spoilers #hazbin angel dust #Hazbin warning #Hazbin hotel warning #angel dust #hazbin hotel poison #hazbin alastor #hazbin charlie #hazbin art #hazbin vox #hazbin valentino

[cowgurrrl]

ok what am I supposed to do now the one for the money, two for the show is done!!!?! I would love more lord while I go back a reread everything from the beginning!

If you’re taking requests maybe quick snapshots of the year apart? Not to get too personal but I have a crush and I’ve been stalking their social media but like in a chill way (or I’m trying to) I imagine reader and Joel both seeing each others accomplishments or posts or being tagged in things and just being happy for each other but also….the longing

A Soulmate Who Wasn't Meant to Be

Pairing: rockstar!joel miller x actress!reader

Author's note: this is so angsty i'm sorry

Summary: This ask

Warnings: angst, yearning, oh it's so sad

Joel Miller's New Album Set to Break Records

Everything We Know About Joel Miller's New Album Glass House

Glass House Expected to Go Platinum Before Next Month

What Songs on Joel Miller's New Album Are About Famous Actress Ex?

You almost text Joel about the headlines and theories flooding your timeline. Almost. You actually started typing out a message before reading the last message you sent him almost four months ago and quickly deleting it. You're happy for him. You really are. In the pictures from his album release party, he looked insanely happy, posing with Ellie and Sarah and hugging his musician friends in celebration. He even played one of his newest songs, "Love-in-idleness," at the party with only his acoustic guitar and that deep voice of his. You think you would know it's about you even if he didn't tell you about it before you left. Love-in-idleness is the flower used in A Midsummer Night's Dream to make a love potion to unite the couples. It's common knowledge, but Joel might be one of the only people in the world who knows how much that play means to you. The song quickly becomes one of your favorites, but you don't tell him.

You scroll through his social media unashamedly. Dave Grohl and half the world congratulates him on his album release. He's making the music he's always wanted to make. Sarah told you she got into UCLA, and Ellie is drawing again. He's happy. They all are. So, why do you feel so shitty? Neither of you has deleted the pictures of each other from your profiles. It feels like a staring contest, seeing who will hold the torch of your relationship longer. It doesn't help that people are screenshotting the pictures of you together to "add context" to Joel's lyrics. The one that makes you break down is a quick snapshot someone took of you leaning on him in Central Park when you were watching the guitarist with lyrics from "The Yellow Subway." 

She knows more than me. You better believe

That city couldn't hold her right, but then

I couldn't either.

Despite the heartbreaking lyrics, you two look comfortable together— your head on his shoulder and his hand in yours. You cry in between scenes, ruining your makeup and having a mini-therapy session with your makeup artist, Saoirse, as a result. You don't post anything about his new album, but you put on a happy face and post snapshots from your time spent in Ireland thus far. Pitchers of Guinness, the Cliffs of Moher, stunningly green mornings, and a picture of you and the film crew hiding out in a tent while the rain comes down around you. Joel likes the photos but makes no other move to communicate with you.

You wonder if he's torturing himself in the same way you are. You wonder if he's waiting for a headline about you dating someone new like you are for him. You wonder if he's hurting the way you are. Selfishly, you hope he is because that means he still thinks of you. You also want him to hurt because he hurt you. You still love him, but you can't be the woman who crawls back to someone who can't trust her with things, like telling her the mother of his child is back in town. 

This is what's best. It's what needs to happen. You need to be here, working, and he needs to be there, being a dad and making music. It doesn't make it any easier or soothe the ache in your heart, but it's necessary. It's for your own good. Right? 

Right?

#one for the money two for the show #rockstar!joel x actress!reader #rockstar!joel miller #tlou au #the last of us au #joel miller fic #joel miller requests

[drewharrisonwriter]

I just watched Strange Way of Life

I think I get it now, when people who've seen it says that it's lacking, the acting weren't that good, and that it's too quick.

Well, not that my opinion matters, and I am CLEARLY NOT A FILM CRITIQUE nor am I trying to be lol but I just need to get this out lol

It IS too quick, considering it's only a SHORT FILM. Though it was never said it was a full length anyway.

But I'd have to argue that it didn't feel 'lacking', or that the acting was either exaggerated or the opposite. To be honest, it was easy for me to catch on to the depth of the background of each characters with what the film has provided. From snippets, you can tell so much about why they did the things they did.

There is so much we can see through context. It's art. It's not required to spoon feed us, and most certainly not tailored to suit our tastes the exact same way.

Jake alone poses this archaic (for the lack of a better term atm) ways of dealing with his emotions towards Silva and his principles. Also, can we talk about how well Ethan Hawke presented this character? I have always been in awe of him since I've first seen Before Sunrise 20smthng yrs ago. I thought he expresses his lines as naturally as possible, and he does it so well with Jake. Even the injured part was convincing and all the exasperation his character seem to have by default. And you see him trying to loosen up but quickly putting his guards back up. It's so well played.

What's not convincing is the way Silva cleaned him up but then again, we're not really pointing out medical errors here. LOL

Going back... (sorry, my ADHD brain is catching on)

In Silva, we see a duality in the man, and they happen in split seconds, too. Which Pedro is too good at, again, in my own opinion. You blink and you miss it, but Silva really grappled with his true agenda and his true feelings for Jake, and you seem him slipping between the two.

To me, this film is a perfect glimpse of how people in this particular timeline views same sex relationships. And boy, did Silva really played his cards with all the blackmailing.

Goes to show how well aware both men were of the consequences of their love affair, but one really knows how to use it well to their advantage.

(Sidetrack: Tell me it's not just me thinking that this is Joel Miller???)

Also, Silva's son is a dick. What more can I say?

OVERALL...

I liked it. Did I like it because Pedro starred in it? Sure. But, truly, even if Silva was played by someone else, I'd still like it. (Believe me, I've brain-stormed other possible Silva's with my bff)

It's a good film, all in all. The cinematography in particular is really good, with the wide angles and natural lightings and all. I'd also like to point out the carefully curated set and the artworks that hung on the walls, even the clutters and fabric textures. They add so much more depth and color into the lives of the characters.

The plot, at least in my opinion, is not hard to decipher nor is it too shallow. In fact, (again, it's just me lol) I believe that the lack of more flashbacks or more detailed context was alright. What was presented gave me enough understanding as to why these characters spoke and moved the way they did.

Well....(sighs) aaanywaaay...

I enjoyed it and just wanted to come on here to talk about it even if it doesn't make so much sense. LOL

#pedro pascal #pedropascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal cinematic universe #strange way of life #strange way of life film #pedro almodóvar #el deseo #Extraña forma de vida #ethan hawke #strange way of life spoilers #pedro almodovar #extrana forma de vida #silva #jake #Jake and Silva

[svtjinny]

JUYEON :: GAME CATERERS x SVT | 03

[editors captions] | speaking | english , but she only speaks it once and it's clarified there warning: none ! for context, during the filming of game caterers she was blonde. she dyed her hair again soon after. her look at the end !

ep 3-1

jinny's first part is just her raising her hand for love shot with hoshi

she started laughing really hard when joshua did his ..dance..

when kwan & hoshi get the answer she doesn't say anything but she does dance with them

jinny : i love doing this dance~

she's in the center

[ (B S and J dance,) ]

[ (S sings) ]

jinny : great job pd-nim~! that was funny!

when they sit down she rubs seungkwan's shoulder to try and calm him LMAO

during next level she gets up to dance too

she sang along tooo

[ (BSS and the two lemons) ]

[ (Jinny summons her ae-spirit) ]

jinny : dokyeomie... isn't that blackpink..?

she had no idea what the dynamicduo song was so when seungkwan shouted she flinched HARD

she just let the other two answer

jinny : you guys knew this? i had no idea..

kwan : maybe you're too young yeonie! with the most teasing smirk ever pls

jinny : yah! you're only two years older than me!

and when they got up to dance she did whatever kwan did

[ (If SeungKwan dances,) ]

[ (Hoshi and Jinny follow) ]

[ (In sync) ]

jinny : gotta get ... gotta get ... gotta get my grove back ..

[ (Jinny recognizes the dance immediately) ]

[ (Preformed it last year with J.Y. Park himself) ]

jinny remembered run bts right when pd said wrong too :sob:

she did go up to dance with hoshi though

and she devoured.. didn't audition as a dancer for nothing

jinny : lets go! [eng]

[ (Main vocal appears with him) ]

[ (Getting ready to run) ]

[ (Motorbikes) (Exercise bike) ]

[ (Vroom) (Vroom) ]

[ (These two are so amazing) ]

[ (That they're in sync with BTS) ]

[ (who's dancing sharp) ]

[ (Even their feet are in perfect sync) ]

[ (BTS' choregraphy is known for being hard) ]

[ (But they're in perfect sync) ]

[ (He becomes a tiger when he's dancing) ]

[ (And she dances with passion) ]

my fingers hurt from all that oml. it was all just captions and the rest cheering...

cheol : it's never bad to do a lot of challenges

woozi : right right, jinny probably knows a lot of dances from them

[ (Being an MC pays off) ]

jinny : ["how do you do the challenge for run bts"] self taught choreography! we learnt it on our own.

pd said he loved watching them dance and she got flustered // leant into seungkwan

na pd : by now, you should be exhausted...

jinny : dancing gives me energy!

seungkwan : when we were working on the quiz, we were worried about airtime

hoshi : i wondered if i answered too many

seungkwan : he got too many and we barely got any

jinny : i was satisfied with my prize already, that's why

seungkwan : i'm on a roll now

jinny : seungkwan's helping us get airtime~

in all seriousness she was a little tired so she just sat back for bittersweet and pink venom with hoshi

jinny did cheer for kyeom though!! there was a few scenes of her just yelling leaned back in her chair

and she got up to clown cheol LMAO // and did the actual choreo after.. jinny loves hyuna.

[ (Jinny knows the S.COUPS version and the original) ]

[ (I'm) (Not) (Cool) ]

jinny yelled at the others with seungkwan for luv...the apink disrespect.

[ (Two of the youngest scolding the older ones) ]

she totally cheered for chan when he did the dance!!!! that's bff

her face when they announced first place so cuteewjhi

kwan soony and yeonie dancing together we all sobbed

when it came to the wishes she let the others write whatever cuz she didn't want anything

and when kwan was explaining it she was just nodding along

jinny : we're trying to save you guys by not writing down all of seventeen..

when hoshi moved she did too, just closer to gyu though

seungkwan : yah, why are you moving? you didn't even want anything!

[ (Guilty of charge) ]

jinny : so? they're much more generous than you..

[ (Everyone, we promise this is just how they show love) ]

jinny got up to cheer for youth over flowers too!!

she sat down again rlly quickly though

jinny was really quiet the rest of the ep so there's not much to go off of LMAO

she drew the other super challenge wish though !!

that was her last scene in 3-1 !!

ep 3-2

i don't know anything about basketball and neither does jinny... so she just sat this one out

her only scenes in most of the video are her interacting with staff or cheering on the boys

the staff fell in love with jinny i swear she was so cute that day :(

jinny came out again at around 27:40

you can see her talking with myungho a little bit [ she stood between dino & myungho ]

jinny : our lucky deeeekayyyy~

they let her say a little message after dokyeom!

jinny : today was really fun, but i bet we'll have more fun on youth over flowers. please wait for us~ we all hope you enjoy F.M.L. while waiting for this to come out! see you soon!

precious :(

her last parts in 3-2 were her helping hoshi teach na pd the super dance !!

jinny's outfit

#svt ; jinny #svt oc #svt au #seventeen female addition #seventeen female member #seventeen addition #seventeen added member #seventeen 14th member #kpop extra member #kpop female oc #kpop added member #kpop addition #kpop oc #idol!oc #idol!au #idol oc #fake kpop idol

[qdbs-writes]

Don't know if you accept male readers ask, if not feel free to go gender neutral. Can I please ask for Takeda, Kung Jin and Erron with an s/o who's basically a supersoldier (like Captain America)?

nonny, here all readers and genders are welcome! anything for my boy kung jin

MK Lads x Male!Super-Soldier!Reader

Kung Jin

You've got to forgive Jin for the abhorrent amounts of sass that leaves his lips, it's a coping mechanism from when he wasn't comfortable with being gay and now he uses it to deal with everything else.

He will refer to you as his 'brick shithouse" but he means that in the most loving way possible.

He is concerned that you gave very little consent to the procedures carried out on you to turn you into a super soldier, and he promises that he'll never let anyone use you like that ever again.

Sometimes, he lets you give him a piggyback ride while out on your casual 30mph morning jog.

During Halloween, you always have the cutest costumes planned, one year he dressed up as Cupid (Greek myth version, not the baby version) while you dressed up as Adonis. Jin won't lie, you really filled out that toga.

Takeda Takahashi

He likes to test others by loudly inserting your relationship into the conversation, ie. "Me and my BOYFRIEND..." and gives a little pause to see their reaction. Homophobic responses will result in a fight, you cannot stop him: being a super soldier doesn't make you sword-proof.

Because you were made a super soldier to be used as a tool, he's very protective of you around his Security Forces buddies, he doesn't want them to encourage you into more conflict despite your usefulness in battle.

His dad isn't entirely sure how to feel about you dating his son, but Takeda gets back at him by pulling you into a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss whenever Kenshi is around. Watching a blind man try and avert his gaze is quite entertaining.

Insists on going on gym dates with you to try and impress you but you always outdo him effortlessly. The two of you have probably gone viral after being filmed in a gym with the caption 'what are these guys on?' and it's just the two of you annihilating the weights section.

Erron Black

If anyone expresses surprise that Erron is dating another man, his answer is always something along the lines of "Well, cowboys are pretty gay".

There is NOTHING heterosexual about assless chaps in any context, sorry I don't make the rules.

I can see Erron having a deep South, Republican background so he prefers to stick to traditionally masculine things, ie. guns, beer, etc.

Because of your sheer size and strength, you and Erron can blend in quite well in environments that might not be so LGBT+ positive, so from an outsider's perspective its 'just guys being dudes'.

But if you're chilling in Outworld he doesn't bother hiding anything because literally no one gives a fuck about sexuality there.

There's probably some internalised homophobia inside Erron somewhere, and it's not your job to fix that but maybe sign his email up for some therapists.

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat x reader #mortal kombat headcanons #mortal kombat imagines #mk x reader #kung jin #kung jin x reader #takeda takahashi #takeda takashi x reader #erron black #erron black x reader #male reader insert #qdbs writing

[nilboxes]

Nitimur in Vetitum Part 4 of Nemo Saltat Sobrius, Nisi Forte Insanit, an Aventio Series

Read at AO3

Rating info, tags and extensive notes ⬇ (mentions some leaks regarding planar orb)

I've always wanted, for the longest time, to be able to capture a film noir feel written fiction and while I don't necessarily feel like I did it here 100% I felt like I nailed down some of the atmosphere and the themes.

I fully went into writing this with the idea that Aventurine had a mini vacation while he's still preparing for the assignment, but he doesn't really strike me as the type to just truly lounge around when something as huge as the Penacony gig is looming over his head, so he actually had some kind of purpose there, not exactly minor but not major either.

The plot sort of got away from me and just wrote itself with Aventurine going through the motions of a date. This isn't their first sit-down together meal as I wrote in a 2nd part of the sickfic drabble in the drabble series (which I didn't cover because it'd just be sick Aven trying to eat and Ratio quietly watching over him) but this is a first proper one.

I always feel like Aven is a big eater when he does actually find time to eat, otherwise he's chowing down on some nutrient paste thing when he's on the go (an idea that always stuck with me ever since I read a tidbit of that Warhammer lore and it was kinda sad way to find sustenance honestly) I feel like Aven does try to eat good food as much as he can, obviously having grown up not being able to indulge in those things.

I REALLY love the scene where Aven is trying to protect Veritas from seeing the carnage. I feel like it'll only really appeal to me but whatever, but the idea of short king Aventurine being all domineering, cupping Veritas' face and leading him to face away and saying "look at me" is so AUGH I did well for myself here I come back and read this scene now and then

I also really like exploring Aventurine's conflicting ideas about whether or not he should keep Veritas close to him. I never once felt like he didn't feel as if he didn't deserve it, but he definitely felt like he was doing something wrong because he's inevitably going to hurt Veritas one way or another if he lets Veritas invest feelings in him when he throws his life around in gambles and doesn't really fully expect to come out of it. I suppose he feels irresponsible for that? But then Aventurine, for me, is nothing but greedy, I feel like that's the essence of his character, and it's more intriguing when there seems to be no real substance to that (no higher purpose, no true meaning) other than he is a hungry little thing and he will gamble for more because he wants more (probably a trauma response to be honest)

I think here I wrote Veritas in such a manner that he is always so clinically interested in Aventurine, but there's not a lot of emotional processing until he looks into Aventurine's sad, dull eyes and is somehow enchanted enough to wax poetics. I feel the awkwardness is a bit on brand for Ver, since he's so smooth and elegant when he's alone and not talking, but when he does the pomposity just doesn't mix too well, which I find cute.

On Aventurine's side, I could not resist adding in some early context about how he really, truly sees Veritas as his "savior" and I touched upon this again in another drabble, but the idea of the Scholar King was what got him through his early days in the IPC, and then serves as sort of an anchor and comfort during his personal trials when he became a Stoneheart was something I always liked to serve as the basis of why he approached Veritas as depicted in the light cone. I think he never really thought about where it would go though, hence when he got what he wanted he wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to keep it hence the attempt at driving Veritas away.

When I wrote this, the leaked description of the Sigonia planar ornament came, and I like to say the rain coming in to salvage Aventurine's attempts at self-sabotage is deliberate, but it was really a happy accident that I just quietly tied around his past.

The sex scene idek, that was really hard to write. I wrote like 1000 words on Veritas POV before I realized I was going about it the wrong way and switched to Aven's, did not make it any easier, but I at least thought the indescribable yearning was conveyed properly, so while it might not be the most coherent scene I think I'm pretty happy with it anyway.

Next up: a slightly less angsty fic, and a retrospection that probably deals with 2.1 events depending on how things go!

#voidmancer writes #hsr #hsr fanfic #aventio #aventurine x dr ratio #this is so late lmao

[theimaginatrix27]

My Personal Approach to Fantasy AUs

I have received a number of comments on my Deep Space 9 Fairy Tale AU, Seven for a Secret, to the effect of "I love how you've kept everyone so in-character!"

I also recently sent a friend part of the first chapter of a prequel fic in the same setting, and they said they're not usually interested in AUs of this nature, because too often, they've seen characters written in ways that make them less recognisably themselves. But they did like my writing.

So I'm going to try and explain my process in a way that hopefully makes sense to everyone reading it. I'm absolutely not making this post to gatekeep fanfic, or to tell someone how to write their story, I'm just explaining what I do when writing a Fantasy AU within a fandom context.

For clarity, this post is about AUs where the characters were born into a high/epic/secondary world fantasy setting (I have heard all these terms before). It is not about charas being isekaied into fantasy settings for crossover purposes (that genre encompasses portal fantasy, doesn't have to involve the charas dying), though tbh I love those, too. Excellent fun. But the characters in those cases are still the canon ones, just being put in a situation. I actually plan on writing a series of DND campaign fics with the casts of my three favourite classic Trek series that are basically this premise, but that's not what I want to talk about today.

In a lot of cases, when someone has written a fantasy AU, the characters are changed so much that you could, theoretically, file off the serial numbers, switch out canon references and turn it into an original novel. This is also not strictly a bad thing—I've done it myself, and although that story never got finished, it paved the way for those that followed, so it's helpful in the creative process to recognise when you have enough material for an original spin on something.

However, for me especially, it is more fun to see and recognise the fandom characters, and then watch them navigate a story that is both unique and would not be the same without them.

Presenting Exhibit A: The Princess and the Dragon, a fanfiction for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, written by my dear friend, @kohakuhime

This was one of the first fics of this nature that I came across in my wanderings through the blighted wastelands of FFN—Kohaku's fics were very much an oasis in the desert, so refreshing and vibrant were they, but this was her big fantasy baby, centred around a ship we both loved, and rich with lore and magic and mystery. It was also peppered with canon references, and all the characters were kept breathtakingly in-character—I won't get into spoiler territory, but let's just say I could hear the voice-actors saying so many of these lines, they were so good! My bar for this type of AU was set pretty high in large part because of this fic.

To be quite fair, Kohaku has said she could probably file off the serial numbers of TPATD, change some of the components of the magic system and release it as an original novel, as the concept itself (again, avoiding spoilers by going into details out of respect for this friend and her excellent story) is a fun twist on a particular trope. But although there are many original elements, it still feels like a Yu-Gi-Oh! fic, because of all the grounding points woven throughout, and how familiar the characters are.

This fic was not the only story I found that helped shape my approach back in 2012—there were a couple other fics in the Dragon Ball Z archive on FFN that also contributed, but they were both written a long time ago and I'm not sure they'd hold up nearly so well today. One of them was a fairy tale retelling (well, a Disney film retelling, but it was really good from my perspective as a fic newbie!), and this plus some other—shall we say, less interesting adaptations in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom inspired me to write the fic now known as Wild Swans of Domino, which I'm not linking here because I am in the process of editing it up to my current standards. Seven for a Secret is, in its way, a spiritual successor to WSoD, though I do intend to finish the latter (and the sequels I developed over the years). WSoD was my practice ground for developing the approach I wrote this post to explain, and it kinda shows in the current version, because I started out simple, and then my brain started generating lore and places for more canon references to go and the story got away from me. That—happens to me a lot.

My approach with this type of AU comes down to one major point: If I am writing a fairy tale adaptation (it's usually a fairy tale adaptation that starts this for me), or some other fantasy story in an alternate universe which these characters are, for the purposes of the fic, native to, then both they and the setting must have some familiar aspects tying them back to the source material. The characters, especially, must still feel like themselves, or you may lose readers' interest, because "Benjamin Sisko wouldn't do that!" or "Seto Kaiba wouldn't react that way in this situation! Stop making him quote the movie's dialogue, it sounds so contrived it is painful to read!"

... Ahem, moving on from bad memories of bad fics.

WSoD and Secret are both based on a fairy tale I already have an original story idea for (several, actually), so I don't need or want either of them to be unique enough to divorce them from their fandom origins. Therefore, while developing them, I have done/am doing my utmost to weave in as many threads from canon as possible within the boundaries of the setting, and have also done my best to preserve the characters' personalities. And according to those aforementioned comments, I'm doing pretty well!

To be absolutely fair, in both cases, the fandoms in question are either another form of Fantasy or as close to Fantasy as a Sci-fi setting can get (Sisko's an honest to the Prophets Chosen one, for goodness sake!). But I do believe you can do this with any character, from any setting, if you put enough thought into it.

And maybe that's part of why I don't see it around as much, because some (often younger but not always) fic authors can have a concept float into their head or sent to them by another fan, and bang out a fic in a week that hits all the points they wanted it to without too much brainstorming behind it. Whereas I, a perfectionist and possesser of an increasingly plot-tribble-infested brain, can't make a single plot decision without pondering it for several days, and fret over little logistical details until I'm purple in the face (probably. I don't have eyeballs and thence can't look in a mirror). But I still think it's doable for any character.

To do this well, you must consider what fundamentally makes this character who they are. What traits would you absolutely have to keep (aside from physical appearance in most cases) to ensure this character was familiar to the reader who clicked on the fandom tag and subsequently your fic. If you ran across Sherlock Holmes in, say, the Pokémon world, how would you know he was Sherlock Holmes? Why, he'd be solving mysteries, and doing so by analysing all sorts of details, noticing things others failed to, putting pieces together that formed a solution others wouldn't have even considered, because the majority of those puzzle pieces were overlooked! And he'd probably be skulling shuckle juice when he didn't have a mystery to solve. And obviously he'd be autistic.

Are you imagining it? I hope you are. Now imagine a character, or several, from one of your fandoms, that you love. Imagine what you love best about them, what makes them who they are, from your perspective. Now imagine a setting that's different from their source material—there are any number of AUs you could pick. Now, think carefully about how you would write them in this setting, while focusing on changing as little about them as possible.

In Secret, Ben and Julian are both princes (this is revealed in Chapter 1, I don't mind telling you). The Dax symbiont is a Fae being magically bound to Jadzia, who is a mage. Their personalities are still familiar to the reader. Miles O'Brien has barely changed at all, because he doesn't need to.

And there's the single golden rule: When writing an AU like this, only change as much or as little as you absolutely need to for your story to work. You can, of course, have fun with how you change things—just check out Innate Conditions and its companion fics by @tokidokifish for a DS9 example (Cardassians are shapeshifting dragons! How cool is that?)

I hope all this makes sense. And again, this is not an attempt to dictate how you, personally, write your stories. I do hope you at least give it a little thought, though, if you haven't already. Most importantly, have fun!

#Fanfiction #Fantasy AUs #Seven for a Secret #Family Defiant #Because it's most relevant to that AU

[terrainofheartfelt]

Ooh, since you’re a currently practicing bridesmaid, here’s a hypothetical: if Dan and Blair were to get married, who do you think would end up being in their wedding party, and what do you imagine the vibes would be like? It struck me how funny and strange it would be from the outside looking in that Blair’s best friend and likeliest maid of honor pick and Dan’s best guy friend and likeliest best man pick are each other’s first loves and publicly significant exes, and that just made me wonder what the rest of their wedding party would end up looking like and what sort of bizarro wedding events would be born out of that lol

lol practicing bridesmaid....i've no idea what i'm doing I just do what the bride or MOH or Wedding Doula* tell me to do.

*bride's bestie from grad school is a bridal shop manager for a wedding dress designer so she works in the wedding business and knows all.

but to answer your question..........i don't think dan and blair would really have attendants at their wedding?

i guess the dair wedding for me depends on the context and shape of how they get together/what they want their wedding to be. so like, if we're going with canon (up to s5 because I am who I am), where blair had the big blowout white wedding that became a total disaster, I don't see blair much wanting to repeat that pageantry, especially since to her, she really frames her relationship with dan as Different. ("done with fairytales...time to be real again etc") which is why I really just envision them eloping. because they are also very aware of the...ouroboros that is their family & friends & exes so I foresee them choosing just not to fuck with that at all and elope in private.

but, that does open up its own potentials for drama and/or hilarity. Maybe they do ask a couple people. Maybe the only person they feel cool having witness is Nate and/or Dorota. what happens when they have to tell everybody else? I bet Rufus and Eleanor go nuclear. Alison & Harold & Roman are happy/relieved they don't have to worry about a Wedding. Lily's bummed to miss out planning an Event. Serena is amused but also grateful to be spared the mixed feelings of that particular wedding. Jenny and Eric sit in a corner and watch it all go down with popcorn.

but if we're doing a canon divergence that happens prior to Blair's royal wedding.......I don't know. I still think they might avoid the attendants question --- or maybe dan's would be vanessa & jenny and blair's would be serena & nate. I've explored a little of these possibilities in the wedding fic of the miloverse

okay wait, that's actually hilarious. Serena & Nate plan Blair's bachelorette, and I see it going very similar to the one we see. dive bar, shots, blair getting arrested for drug possession & harassing an officer (vanessa, who's definitely also at that party, is like "waldorf, I've never liked you more.")

vanessa plans dan's and it's basically just a weed fueled weekend film festival, he gets really sappy and emotional like, "I just love her so much, and she's marrying me." and jenny and vanessa are falling over each other trying not to laugh. and nate has long since fallen asleep because he cannot do subtitles.

what else can I make up? dan and blair have a plurality of parents so they form cliques. eleanor & lily (plus rufus and cyrus just holding their purses and cracking jokes) and harold & roman & alison talking about art and film and hogging all the good red.

uhhhhhh blair can do whatever she wants but jenny claims sartorial control over dan. blair allows it, one less thing for her to worry about.

georgina is told nothing/sent nothing/no announcement, no invite, but she sends a gift anyway. it's sex toys.

they have the wedding at The Strand. they probably sneak off together before and after the ceremony.

#asks #anon #dair #gg hcs #dairriage #this was fun ty! #waited until i took my bridesmaid dress in to get hemmed bc of the guilt of letting it sit. anyway.

[waiitiridge]

✨️Don't mind me, just peptalking myself and spewing it into the void ✨️

Its really strange having a following on social media. I've made so many friends and gotten opportunities I wouldn't have without it. Overall I think I've found a little slice of heaven online. Its 90% kindness in my corner and the other 10% is inevitable. I think the hardest part has been seeing the numbers. It's ingrained in us to view these numbers as a currency. More = better, less = worse. They aren't really numbers though, they are (mostly🤖) people.

I would never expect the attention of hundreds of thousands of individuals. I wouldn't even expect a room full of a dozen to all pay attention to me so why does it feel like rejection when the numbers drop? I know it's just people's tastes changing, people growing, or expeting something different. Why does it feel like someone is saying "I don't like you"? Why does it feel like something in my life is actively leaving me when I don't even know the username, let alone the person, leaving? I hate that I have to see the stupid numbers when I go to my profile to find a video in my saved folder. I don't want to know "how many people left me" last night. There is always this voice in my head that it means I've done something wrong, that I've harmed someone to make them leave but I will meticulously crawl through my videos to see what could have been misinterpreted or left without explanation and I can't find anything that stands out. I start to wonder if maybe I'm just too stupid to see it. Too ignorant. Too cold hearted. If maybe I'm not meeting the expectations of kindness I set for myself. Maybe I'm not funny, just strange. Maybe it makes people feel uncomfortable. I should dial it back. I should think about dialing back personality to make sure I'm more palatable... but if people don't see the real me, who would they be following?

So I do it. I put myself out there. I make the silly videos with my authentic dopey self on display. I put together a little video, a slice of my day, like a diary. I love capturing all the bits. The lighting, the flowers, the bees and trees. The way my ducks waddle after me or the food I made. Marbles sleeping and her paws twitching. I love film and photography as an art form. Finding the angles and lighting to capture the feelings the moment is giving me in a way I can share with others. Part of it is so my daughter will have a way of knowing me and how I saw the world when I'm gone. I would give almost anything to have something like that from my own mother. To see how she saw the world and maybe have some clues for the unanswered questions she left me with. Outside of art and memories, film is just fun. I love finding music that's inspiring and seeing how each sound can change the entire energy of a clip. Like lining up words for laughs or tears. I would do it all again and again even if no one was watching. It's like a game where I'm trying to find the story in my day and pull out just 1 second from each moment to tell it in a way people who weren't there might enjoy watching with no context. Sometimes i win and people love it! Sometimes I think I've got something really great but no one sees it so I don't get to know whether it was watch worthy or just average. Sometimes people do see them and just dont like them, which I personally find better than not knowing.

Social media is a fickle beast. You have algorithms crawling captions for trending words - Heartfelt messages that use descriptive language beyond buzzwords wont do. You have filters looking at the videos themselves for clips that match what it's looking to push - Was every shot photo perfect? Was the lighting good enough for the filters to pick out my face or cute animals? The sound suits the video perfectly - but is it trending? What's the like to view ratio, what about comments and is that enough or are they weighing saves or shares more? Did I leave a comment somewhere or interact with a post that was too political? Am i off the fyp because of it?

I love data and being able to look for trends but statistics tells you not to play lotto, not how to win. As with gambling, it's about learning your limits and sticking with them. Knowing what you're willing to lose and never going beyond that point. If I win a bit, great! If I lose, I lost what I expected to lose and hopefully had some fun in the process ($10 on lord of the rings slot machines when in vegas was a $10 experience I was willing to pay for, plus they gave me a drink!). While I feel that sense of rejection when seeing the numbers, I know I have lost nothing. Making and sharing the art with the friends I've found is worth the sense of insecurity. Absolutely, everytime, YES. When I think about it objectively, outside of my profile page with my social currency on display, I don't care at all about the numbers. It's about the people. I love seeing what my friends have to say about the ducks this morning. I love chatting about what to grow next season or seeing all the ideas for crafts I'm thinking of. I love hearing other people's stories of their own similar experiences. I love the recipie ideas. I love finding people who want to sew and helping them find the right patterns or machine or troubleshoot. I love talking about tinyhomes and what works and what doesn't. The friendships I've made are invaluable. I get so much warmth, love and support. They don't wax and wane with the faceless numbers. This is why I continue. This is the part that matters. This is what the social mediabexperience is all about, actually socialising.

#social media #pep talk #spewing my thoughts into the void