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iron--spider · 4 years

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I woke up at 3am yesterday to watch The Devil All the Time and I’ve been thinking about it since. I’m gonna put my thoughts and feelings and a review of sorts behind the cut, because I am gonna talk about it freely, so there will be spoilers! So don’t click if you don’t wanna see. I’ll also be discussing the content of the film and I know that might bother people, so that stuff is in here, too! And it’ll be really long because you know I can’t shut up.

So, I loved it. I loved it loved it loved it. I read the book a long time ago when I first found out Tom was gonna be in it, and the only problem I had with the book was that the POVs would change in the middle of a paragraph lmao, but other than that I thought it was pretty perfect. I knew the movie was gonna be pretty brutal, because the book is brutal, so I was prepared.

-BUT I think the critics HIGHLY HIGHLY exaggerated how bad the content was. Like, seriously, they acted as if this was gonna be a Saw movie. I was preparing for blatant, horrific gore, but it didn’t live up to their dramatics at all. There’s blood and nasty situations, but every single episode of Game of Thrones is worse than this movie, as are most episodes of any crime drama on a paid network. I actually thought they were super, super tactful of all their horrific shit. The dog death was off screen and the shot of the body (described by the critics as literally traumatic) was so quick (enough to shut your eyes) and in the dark. I also argue that particular moment is extremely important for Arvin’s journey, because it’s the moment he truly turns on his father and turns on religion entirely, and he carries it with him his whole life (it’s what he flashes back to when he says “I know what my daddy did” because it’s the marker of all Willard’s mistakes) and it winds up being one of the last things he does before he leaves everything behind. Burying Jack’s bones. So, like, I despise dog death or any animal death in my entertainment, but it’s important here and handled well. And all the worst death scenes are either extremely fast (Helen’s and Gary Matthew’s) or shown in negative (all the photos). I think Bodecker’s headshot with Bobo is probably the worst and is also pretty quick. I don’t know if this means I’m a jaded bitch, but God the way they were all whining and crying, I thought it’d be a million times worse. It could have been, with the book’s descriptions, so it was actually pretty tame. Lenora’s death affected me the most and they cut away from that, too. I guess it’ll still bother some people, but there are many, many mainstream things that are far more violent and gory than this was.

-I thought it was a beautiful movie. I never mind films that are slightly slower but I love ones that use their time to lay things out and really show us what’s going on, build the ambiance and the relationships. I loved the narration (which I was worried about), and it really made me feel like we were visiting a moment in time that was important. Like something that was written and should be learned about. Rumors in a town you’re passing through. The ghosts of past trauma and transgressions looming over everyone that’s left.

-I liked the changes they made with Roy and Theodore because I thought that storyline kinda meandered in the book and I’m glad that Roy was actually gone the whole time and not just neglecting to come back to Lenora.

-The only real complaints I can make, I’ll get out of the way here: I wanted a little bit more time with Carl and Sandy. Carl was really creepy, but he could have been much creepier. In the book he was the one looking at the pictures constantly, Not Sandy, and that really showed that he was the one with the sickness, the one pushing them forward and orchestrating it all. I thought they did well with showing how Sandy deteriorated in her efforts with him through the years, but I would have liked to see a bit more of their personal lives together and her fear of him and her genuine feelings about what they’re doing, because the book goes into that a lot more. I also wasn’t a fan of Lee finding the picture early and knowing some about what they were doing, because I liked how it was a surprise to him in the book and yet he still did all he could to cover it up. And lastly, in the book there’s a scene with Arvin after he kills Sandy and Carl where he’s in a motel and he takes like 18 showers because he can’t get the grime of what he’s done off of him, and he looks at the picture and has a nightmare about killing Sandy, and I really would have loved if they’d kept it in. It would have been another ‘acting’ moment for Tom, and it would have been nice for us to see his direct trauma and reaction to everything that’s piling on top of him.

-BUT that’s it. I loved pretty much every single other thing and decision that they made. The cinematography was TOP NOTCH. You could tell they filmed on 35mm film, you could see the grain, and it really, really added to it. Antonio Campos is a very skilled director and I trusted him at the helm of this story. Everything looked so authentic, all the sets and the costumes. The soundtrack and score were AMAZING and enhanced the film. Technically it was just perfect in every regard to me.

-Acting! Acting! God this was like...a massive testament to the casting department and the talent of these people. Everyone was on their A game. Bill Skarsgård has been on my radar since Castle Rock (which I recommend to everybody, both seasons) and he was so natural and great in this role. Haley Bennet was absolutely adorable as Charlotte, I loved her cute face and her sweet relationship with little Arvin. Riley Keough was so great as Sandy with the limited amount of time she had, and Jason Clarke is one of my favorites but he was unrecognizable in this as creepy ass Carl. Harry Melling was a far cry from Dudley Dursley and he did a great job with his screen time, too. Same with Mia Wasikowska, who didn’t have much to do (same as poor Helen in the book) but she was able to garner our sympathy anyway. Seb Stan was slimy and gross but he pulled it off so well. Eliza Scanlen has been one of my favorites since Sharp Objects (another one that’s brutal as hell but I recommend it, she’s so scary) and she was so, so great here. Robert Pattinson was ALRIGHT, everybody talks him up over this but he felt a little hammy to me and a little too over the top, but there’s no denying his talent.

-Now, the reason we’re all here. Tom. My God. As soon as it was over I just didn’t know what the hell to do, I didn’t even know how to....go on, lmfao. We all know he’s talented, that’s why we’re here, that’s why we love him, but his performance in this is just BEYOND all that. Beyond comprehension. The man is only 24 years old and he’s out here outacting people who have been in the industry for longer than he’s been alive. He is SHOCKINGLY good. I knew he’d be perfect for Arvin as soon as I read the book, but he just completely embodied this role in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. He doesn’t show up in the movie until about 45 minutes in (which doesn’t hurt it because of the strength of the leadup, Bill’s performance and the performance of little Arvin’s actor) but God, as soon as he’s there the whole thing comes to life in a way that it hadn’t before. Tom is literally just a shining light, and he draws your eye in every single scene he’s in, and when he’s not there you’re wondering when he’s gonna come back. Arvin, to me, is a very complex character—he has been inherently changed by how his father twisted religion in his childhood, how deeply he betrayed him by his behavior, but he still has a kind heart and a protective streak and the need to be strong despite the pain nearly breaking him apart from moment to moment. Tom is just outrageously good at portraying all Arvin’s little nuances, how he clenches his jaw, how his voice breaks when he’s afraid or trying to convince someone of something or get his point across, how his hands tremble after he’s done something he wishes he didn’t have to do, how his whole body wilts when he realizes he’s emulating his father. And his eyes. Tom can do so, so much with his eyes that it’s unbelievable. He tells you so much with just a simple look, a glance, a wince, a long blink. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s just an absolute revelation in this, he cements his place in Hollywood with a firm hand and a tender look, and I will not be forgetting what he did here anytime soon. There’s a reason that everyone called him out for being so stunning in this. He is magnificent. He has a gift.

-I wanna say, in particular, how much I love Arvin’s relationship with Lenora. Their lives were both marked by such tragedy and pain and Arvin just took up the torch of protecting her from the moment he said hello as a child. He wants so badly to be tough, and he IS, but there’s just miles and miles of love in this boy’s heart, and it manifests itself for his family—for his uncle, for his grandma, but for Lenora in particular. I loved how he just showed up when she was being harassed and just ran in there without thinking, and it’s purely devastating that he was out taking care of her bullies while a worse predator was cornering her. The scene where she was sick wasn’t in the book but it was a beautiful addition. Tom sometimes wears this very open, unguarded, honest expression, and this is the only scene in which he shows it, and it really expresses the love between them and how much she means to him. Arvin didn’t find Lenora’s body in the book, but it was the right change for them to make. Tom was devastating here, and that pain and that moment truly fuel every second of his journey through the rest of the film. “My Lenora”. The saddest siblings. Both Eliza and Tom did so beautifully with this relationship and I hope they work together again.

-Favorite acting moments for Tom: when he’s in the car in the rain after beating up the bullies, when he’s in the church crowd and realizes Preston is insulting his Grandma (the way his face changes oh my GOD), when he finds Lenora, when the cop comes to tell him Lenora was pregnant (this is just....so damn good), when he was telling his uncle to look after his Grandma, THE ENTIRE CHURCH CONFRONTATION (the way he trembles when he’s trying to get his attention, how he speaks the whole time, how he slowly gathers his strength), when he thinks Sandy has shot him, the moment where he’s over Lee’s body and just....pleading with his eyes for him to listen and realize what he’s done. And the last scene, in the car, all the emphasis on his face....once again, he can do so, so much with a look, with his eyes. Someone called out the beautiful last shot in the film, and of course, it’s Arvin’s sleeping face. And it was so beautiful (and devastating, to think of him enlisting. Tom draws so much sympathy that you just want Arvin to have a normal life so badly. He deserves it, he does, but will he get it?)

-Last thing I’ll say, I really loved how, despite turning his back on religion, that God seems to be protecting Arvin the whole time. He’s terribly afraid confronting the preacher and that could have easily gone badly, especially when he tosses the book, but Arvin was somehow able to get a shot off and get the upper hand. And with Carl and Sandy, he senses something is off immediately once they pull off the road, and he would have absolutely been killed had Carl not switched out Sandy’s bullets for blanks. And in the confrontation with Lee, he once again shoots at the same time as him, shoots without looking, and manages to come out unscathed and on top. A few spoiler reviews pointed out that the last person that picks Arvin up is supposed to be a Jesus-like figure, almost like he’s finally been saved. It hurts that everyone around him that he loved is almost forsaken by God, but he himself is protected. It’s such a complicated commentary on religion throughout the entire piece, but it’s so interesting and engrossing.

So I’d recommend this movie to anyone that loves movies, loves Tom, can deal with a gritty story that takes its time laying out all the chess pieces. It is definitely heavy subject matter but it doesn’t go overboard with the horror as it easily could have. Yes, there are triggers to look for, but the critics hugely over exaggerated how awful it was. I can probably go get time stamps for certain things if people wanna ask me after reading this, but if you can get through a Tarantino film or any HBO drama, you can do this. And Tom’s performance is one for the ages and not one that deserves to be passed over or downplayed. It is beautiful and heart-wrenching—a magnificent turn that displays his monumental ability to reach out and guide you into any world he decides to make his own.

I loved The Devil All the Time.

#tom holland #arvin russell #the devil all the time #text post #LONG #I’M SORRY

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bpdanakins · 3 years

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i just infodumped to my friends about bpd anakin and i have No Regrets snakjdkajfsk

anyway, doth thee have any more bpd anakin (or just anakin in general) headcanons becuase i am living for this

I am So Sorry this took so long, but hopefully the length makes up for it. Thank you so much for sending this to me bc BPD!Anakin is my entire life. I could talk about it all day, every day.

I’d like to thank @apple-grass-and-smiles for helping me organize my Thoughts on all of this, prompting me to focus on certain things and giving me feedback in general too.

Okay, here goes:

Anakin fidgets!! I’m not even sure if this is a headcanon but if it is I will die on this hill. He can’t stay still for the life of him and doubly so when he’s anxious, nervous or Ready To Do Something Already.

We know Anakin can’t hold eye contact to save his life when he’s upset or insecure, but I can also see him having issues with touch when he’s upset, unless it’s from certain people only (Padmé always gets a pass, for example).

Anakin’s quick to let some small stuff go, but larger things people do that hurt him (whether intentionally or not) aren’t really ever forgotten, and he just kind of takes that in and suppresses it, until random moments when it pops up, he remembers, and it just hurts like it’s happening all over again. The people around him often have no idea what fully sets him off, bc to them, his reaction now seems out of nowhere while his mind’s still stuck on this other thing. - His reactions also seem sometimes like they’re Over The Top, but even just remembering past hurts can feel almost disabling at times. It’s worse when he ends up ruminating on it, because the hurt and feelings of betrayal just keep building up over and over until it almost blots everything else out.

When he’s happy or surrounded by those he loves, everyone kind of can feel it too, bc he’s just fuckoff powerful in the Force and esp other Force sensitives kind of gather around his space and just… his affection and excitement are literally infectious.

This probably runs closer to ADHD than BPD for sure, but get him talking about anything mechanical (robotics, engineering, racing, etc) and he will go from 0 to 100 so fast you’d get whiplash. No one minds though bc, as I said, his excitement is infectious and honestly those around him just adore listening to him go off even though half of it goes over their head. - Ahsoka may not ever get Gotta Go Fast, but she definitely loves it when he really talks her ear off about all this stuff, bc it makes her excited to learn and she picks up on all of it easily. (There’s a part of her that wants to emulate him and she does def look up to him obviously.) - We see it with Obi-Wan, but people love to use his love of all things mechanical as a way to distract him from things that upset him. It doesn’t always work but they try.

With Obi-Wan, he ends up on the side of Anakin’s splitting like, all the time. And unfortunately sometimes Obi-Wan can’t tell that Anakin’s lashing out not because of something Obi-Wan’s actually done, but bc Anakin’s young and Obi-Wan’s the figure he can project a lot of his frustrations on. - It can lead Obi-Wan to being confused and hurt sometimes, bc he doesn’t always understand Anakin’s thought processes when this happens, and it definitely sometimes cuts him to the core. On the reverse side, though Anakin might not always say it to his face, Obi-Wan definitely can overhear him at times when Anakin’s ready to 1v1 anyone who even so much as makes a frowny face about Obi-Wan, which helps Obi-Wan remember that Anakin does love him too, actually. - It ends up being one of the points of frisson between Anakin and Mace, bc Anakin can’t read body language perfectly, especially when it comes to feelings of abandonment or someone seemingly not loving who Anakin loves to the same degree. Mace has a drier sense of humor at times and defs has a more resting frowny face, and this rankles Anakin at times bc he can’t always tell when Mace is just chilling vs being disappointed, and while Anakin will take it all personally, he ALSO takes any perceived criticism to those he loves personally too. - Both Mace and Obi-Wan don’t get this bc they have a perfectly fine relationship. Anakin’s just Like That. - (And super overprotective of people’s perceptions of Obi-Wan. Anakin will go off about Obi-Wan being mean and all that, but fuck you and your entire family tree if you ever even think Obi-Wan’s anything short as the most amazing Jedi to ever Jedi.)

Everybody and their mother can see the pedestal Anakin puts Padmé on, and surprisingly she rarely is on the end of his splitting. When he does, he just internalizes it bc he can’t stand the idea that he’s somehow seen her in a wrong light, or he feels guilty for getting angry with her. - He also defines a huge chunk of his life around loving her, making her his center for a lot of his decisions and reactions, so when they’re off, his whole world seems backwards. It makes him Really uncomfortable and unsure. He gets panicky and upset and often people have no idea what the cause is so they just end up a lil panicky in return. - He tends to take it out on others, by doing an exercise or by disappearing to fiddle with something. - Pads has an easier time recognizing Anakin’s emotional needs, bc in some ways they’re the same as hers. She’s good at reaching out to him, comforting him and reassuring him of her love. And in turn, he like, never fucking shuts up about how much he loves her, and those moments are what make her feel so special around him. Being loved by Anakin makes someone feel important and even get tingly, bubbly happy feelings, because it’s hard to doubt it sometimes. - There’s a part of her that sometimes worries about how Intense he is, but, like I said, when his positive intense emotions are focused on you, it feels wonderful. And he’s genuinely super sweet and gentle, and she appreciates that, when she tells him to back off about something, he’ll listen to her wishes. (I’m using movie Anakin as my base here bc TCW!Anakin in this regard is just…. bad y’all lmao)

Anakin’s anxious about Ahsoka All The Time. He’s afraid he’s a bad teacher, he’s afraid he’ll mess her up somehow, he’s afraid he’ll hurt her or she’ll get hurt, and that’s why he can’t stand the idea sometimes of her being on her own. It’s not a lack of trust in her abilities, but because he feels responsible for her, and that’s why he’s always ready to put himself between her and literally anything that could potentially hurt her. (Even if it’s not a physical threat.) - There are times she finds this amusing and times this makes her angry, but mostly she is long suffering. There are times she appreciates it though, bc she’s still a kid and isn’t always sure which way is up, especially when in a war. Anakin is often a cornerstone for her, and though she’d literally NEVER admit it, his overprotectiveness can sometimes be a reassurance. She knows she can handle herself just fine, but when she has an inkling of doubt, she’ll remind herself that Anakin will be there, and then go and take care of the problem herself. - She doesn’t always get his moments where he’s not always falling over himself to talk Obi-Wan up or go out of his way to sass at him. To her, they have a wonderful relationship and she rarely notices when Obi-Wan might say something that pokes at Anakin wrong, so she often just winds up ???? when Anakin is huffy or annoyed with her grandmaster. - She sees Anakin’s anger issues a little more easily than others, and she worries about it but always brushes it off or downplays it, bc she always sees why he’s angry, and also always just assumes (like everyone else) that he can Handle It. - Anakin’s recklessness and impulsivity are some of her favourite things about being his padawan. He’s literally never boring to be around, and Ahsoka needs that sort of excitement to sometimes push aside the knowledge that she’s literally in a warzone. Anakin’s also really good at doing this intentionally; he’s literally always worrying after her, and all he wants to do is take care of those he loves and make them happy, so sometimes he’ll be Extra just to get under her skin or distract her and honestly this is the basis of where their playful competitions always come from.

If Ahsoka is long suffering, Rex is doubly so. Sometimes it’s all he can do to keep up with Anakin and Ahsoka, but he appreciates Anakin “thinking outside the box”. He also appreciates knowing that Anakin is just as loyal to him and his men as he himself is (well… Anakin is until he isn’t lmao) - Rex, like Pads, is really good at picking up Anakin’s moods and even trains of thought, so he’s always able to work around that, or even see where Anakin’s mind is going when coming up with a plan. They make a really good team bc while Anakin can jump from one idea to another without them seemingly correlated, Rex immediately follows Anakin’s leaps and they just end up in sync. - That being said, Anakin can be really confusing at times. His moods are often so all over the place, that Rex generally has no idea what tf is going on. He deals with it by learning to be calm when Anakin’s unable to, and just ride out Anakin’s worst moods until they pass by, learning not to let it all phase him. Anakin lowkey hates it when he’s upset, but once the worst of it passes, he really appreciates that Rex will just… not press like Obi-Wan, or balances out the moments Anakin’s mind is so cluttered by instead just keeping a good focus on things.

Probably everyone’s most baffling symptom of Anakin’s is his paranoia. Obi-Wan kind of sees it the most, because Anakin is always testy with the Council and often feels put on the spot, dismissed and looked down upon. To everyone else, they don’t get where Anakin’s ideas come from, bc everything seems chill on their end. His fretting about others’ well-being is straightforward enough, but his instant panic-turned-anger shift when he receives any criticism (especially the perceived type) always gives people whiplash. It’s hard to keep up with, hard to see what it was that got to him so much, and hard to know how to help (particularly when they’re worried that trying to help him will feel like “taking sides”). - Ahsoka takes Anakin’s POV of the Council pretty easily, at least when it comes to him. This is mostly bc she’s not there when there’s a meeting or tension around them, nor was she there when Anakin first arrived, so she just assumes they must genuinely often have issues with him too. She doesn’t see it to the extent Anakin does though, but she recognizes that sometimes he seems to blow things out of proportion when he’s upset, and figures it’ll just blow over once he’s calmed down. - Pads, on the other hand, is always kind of aware of Anakin’s fears of losing her. He often not-so-subtly looks for reassurances that she loves him and won’t leave him, that she’s feeling alright or not angry/annoyed with him. She chalks it up to his trauma with his mother (and she’s partially right), so even when sometimes it gets on her nerves that he seems to doubt her so much, she tries to remind herself of that and let it go.

Those closest to him can pick up that Anakin tends to see the negative in things, and is generally really hard on himself. They try to help out by giving praise where it’s due and just overall Being There, but it’s Rough to know they often don’t get through. (Palps, on the other hand, knows how to weaponize this.)

The saddest part is that I don’t think anyone once thought Anakin was Seriously Ill, partly out of ignorance, partly bc they assumed it had to do with his age/upbringing, and partly bc, eventually, everyone was dealing with trauma and even if someone wanted to send Anakin back to the Temple to have a nap or something, they legit couldn’t bc there was a war going on and he also would never have tolerated it at that point in time. - Obi-Wan’s the one who worries about all of this the most, because he’s always felt such a huge responsibility for Anakin and loves him a lot, he’s just never fully been able to understand how to get on the same wavelength as Anakin. - Anakin, too, actually never fully figures out that there is something Going On. Everything’s always overwhelming him and even though he prefers doing things at 100mph, sometimes it seems like there is Too Much going on, and even during peace times it just felt like he couldn’t keep up with everything. He hates internal reflection but also can’t stop overthinking about everything, and so he just ruminates and goes in circles and often just ends up going nowhere when it comes to dealing with things. He tries his hardest all the time, he is ALWAYS trying, but doing stupid stunts, fighting droids, making robots and speeding everywhere all the time is truthfully only a bandaid. - Being surrounded by those he adores and receiving affection from them/seeing them happy boosts his mood a lot but he doesn’t have enough self-awareness to guess at why his happier moods just won’t last. - Sometimes he can figure out when he’s being irrational and then just takes it out on himself, which only exacerbates his bad episodes.

Palpatine doesn’t help. He’s abusive, manipulates Anakin all the time and is the Worst and definitely makes everything Anakin is struggling with harder and I think we should all just punt him into a sun thank you this isn’t a headcanon I just want everyone to know how much I hate him

#this is like... super long im sorry lmao #and it's probably a bit all over the place anyways #long post #also idr much about mace's characterization so i'm Pretty sure he has a dry sense of humour but idr so lmao forgive that #borderline anakin skywalker #also a lil bit of #adhd anakin skywalker #i focused a bit on his bpd + his relationships here #but if there was something else you'd have preferred my ideas on please lmk #or even if this was remotely close to what you wanted in general #star wars #anakin headcanons #this is my first time doing a like... headcanon list or just some rambling list of ideas so skjlkjsd rip me #gray-does-stuff #ask

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Battle of the Worlds

Several times on this blog I've featured movies that have more than one title. In almost every case, the new titles were better than the original one, and this is not an exception. Battle of the Worlds is fairly bland, but it tells you that you're going to be seeing a movie about some kind of space-based conflict, without giving away the details. The Italian title was Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti, which is a fucking spoiler.

An earlier draft of this review contained a couple of jokes about the classically phallic 60's spacecraft in the movie, but I went back and took those out. Bezos has really set a whole new standard for Giant Dong Rockets and I can no longer accept anything less.

A group of astronomers have just discovered a rogue planet, which they have dubbed the Outsider, is entering our solar system. Everybody is worried about it hitting Earth except for nasty old misanthrope Professor Benson, who says it'll be a near miss. As it turns out, nobody's exactly right – the Outsider doesn't hit us, but it doesn't just pass by, either. Instead, it settles into orbit, and when humanity attempts to explore it, it responds by sending out squadrons of flying saucers to blow our rockets out of its sky! After one of these crashes on Earth, Benson is able to learn how to deactivate the Outsider’s defences and land on it, where humanity can finally confront its inhabitants... or can we?

Well, if you speak Italian, you already know the answer, because this is The Planet of Extinguished Men. The aliens are all long dead and their spaceship has been following its programming for millions of years without them, including the part telling it to destroy the Earth. Bummer.

I actually have quite a bit to say about this movie. It centres around some interesting musings about human emotion and curiosity, though it never comes to any solid conclusions. As a movie, unfortunately, it's not very well-made. This is a story in which the world as we know it nearly comes to an end more than once, and yet very little seems to happen in it.

The opening sequence is terribly clumsy and does very little to place you within this world. We start off with two characters kissing and being excited about starting a new life together, but we have no idea at this point who they are or why they want to leave this place. When the Outsider is discovered, the scientists beat around the bush and try to keep it a secret, even from the audience. Only Benson is willing to be upfront about it. This does establish him as a realist while making his colleagues seem spineless, which is what the movie wants, but it's also terribly frustrating for the viewer.

Later there's a sequence in which a craft attempting to land on Mars is nearly destroyed by the gravity of the Outsider, and some quick thinking saves the astronauts' lives, but this is directed like the battle sequences in Invasion of the Neptune Men. We have no idea where any of these craft or planets are in relation to one another, and have to rely on characters sitting at desks to tell us what's happening. Even worse, we never see the chaos the looming end of the world wreaks on society. Astronauts who have recently returned to Earth note that they've heard there have been suicides and riots as people fear the Outsider will impact our planet, but we never see any of this.

The movie does a little better later, when the Outsider's close approach causes disastrous tidal forces... these are represented by black and white footage of floods and volcanic eruptions tinted red to try to make it match the rest of the colour film. As always, this fails, but at least they tried. Other special effects are equally pathetic. There are the inevitable plastic model kit rockets with their flame exhaust that rises in what's supposed to be a zero-gravity vacuum. The 'flying saucers' the Outsider launches to defend itself look like nothing so much as giant fried eggs.

The Outsider itself is particularly sad to look at. They have a model they use for it in a few shots, but this is about on a par with the original MST3K spaghetti ball. In other shots, the Outsider is represented by a photograph of the Moon. Absolutely no attempt is made to disguise it, and so of course the effect is a dismal failure because everybody knows what the goddamn Moon looks like. They couldn't even, I don't know, turn it upside-down or something?

On the other hand, the inside of the Outsider is actually pretty cool. The sets aren't exactly believable, but you can see what they were going for. Upon entering the caverns, the explorers find themselves in a series of tunnels full of strange red tubes and textures that look more organic than geological. Entering the Outsider is like wandering around within a living organism. My favourite part of this is that absolutely nothing we see here is comprehensible. Professor Benson, the genius, claims to be able to figure out what's going on, but his declarations seem arbitrary and nothing we're looking at makes visual sense. Even the aliens don't look like anything in particular. Were it not for Benson, we would not recognize them as living (or dead) creatures.

Like First Spaceship on Venus, Battle of the Worlds is much more interested in its ideas than in anything else, including what is supposedly its plot. The characters are important mostly as the embodiment of those ideas, rather than as people in themselves, and the ideas the movie wants to study are about logic and emotion and how they affect human priorities.

The character of Dr. Fred Steele finds himself facing the potential end of the world, and decides that the most important thing to him in this situation is the love between him and his fiancee, Eve Barnett. Professor Benson, on the other hand, thinks the most important thing is to understand the threat they're facing. Partly this is so that humanity can save itself from destruction, but knowledge for its own sake is also important. In between these two men is Eve herself, who thinks love and science are both important and tries to find some middle ground between the two. This is difficult for her, because Benson wants her to stay at the observatory and assist him, while Fred wants her to leave with him so they can get married. When Eve tries to convince Fred to stay with her, both men see this as her having chosen Benson, and it poisons the relationships between all three parties. Only with Benson dead are Eve and Fred able to strike a balance again.

But the movie doesn't want us to think that there is no middle ground. The movie's other romantic couple are the two scientists from the Mars Base, Bob and Cathy. They got married because they were both lonely and a psychological evaluation suggested that they had compatible personalities. As the story progresses, however, they find that they have indeed fallen in love and want a future together that would include things like children – but this is ultimately denied to them, as Cathy is crushed by falling debris while exploring the Outsider.

Benson dies when insists on staying aboard the Outsider to try to decode its computers despite the fact that the military is about to destroy the entire object. As the others escape, Fred intones the movie's beauty killed the beast line: “poor Benson, if they opened his chest they'd find a formula where his heart should be.” And yet Benson died happy – as the Outsider explodes he is triumphant in his ability to understand its secrets, and laughing at the foolishness and cowardice of his fellow man. It is the survivors who are miserable, mourning the loss of Benson himself as well as of Cathy, whose death was entirely meaningless.

I'm not sure what the movie is trying to tell us about these different approaches to life. It seems to present them as ultimately incompatible, that attempts to give logic and emotion equal weight can only end in tears. Only Benson, who was unswerving in his devotion to science, is ultimately satisfied. Perhaps the take-home message is that whatever your principles are, happiness lies in following them to their conclusion.

There's a second message, too, in different approaches to science itself. Modern physicists will often describe themselves as either theoretical or experimental... the two fields do compliment each other, but they often take place in different rooms, and one will be seen as leading the way for the other. The search for the Higgs Boson was theory-led: people were pretty sure it existed, they just had to find it. A great deal of astrophysics, however, is result-led: what we see tells us that there are things going on, like dark matter and dark energy, that we know nothing about, and the theorists must do their best to figure it out.

For most of his life, Benson has been a theorist. He sits in his greenhouse chalking on the floors, spinning theories out of other people's results or out of pure mathematics. Until the arrival of the Outsider, he had no interest in going out and exploring or experimenting. But it quickly becomes clear to him that he cannot understand the Outsider through pure theory, as his calculations cannot account for the decisions of its makers. In order to know it, he must see it for himself, so he grandly announces his intention to leave his 'den'. Nobody ever asks him if it was worth it, but his maniacal smile at the moment of his death suggests that it was.

Battle of the Worlds had potential to be a really interesting movie, but ultimate the way its shot and edited make it mainly a very dull one. Like its own characters, it fails to find the balance it needed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #battle of the worlds #60s

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cabinofimagines · 3 years

Text

Piper Mclean ABC’s

a/n ; yet again i have forgotten to post. this is my last though so whoopie no more scheduled inspiration.

pairing ; piper x gn!reader

wc ; 1,613

request ; nah, but we’re getting to the other dw pls shits alphabetical

- day

Activities - What do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?

She loves loves loves going on hikes or walks with you. Finding old playgrounds or cool monuments makes her feel like she’s adventuring with you.

Beauty - What do the admirer s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?

You’re so considerate of everyone around you, even if you aren’t aware of it. She thinks it’s incredibly beautiful how kind you are to everyone, but knows that she’ll have to keep an eye out for people who try to take advantage of that.

Comfort - How would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?

Piper is the type to sit with you quietly when you’re having a down day. She might bring you some snacks and cuddle with you, but understands that some days are just like this. She’s similar with attacks, but usually tries to distract you with your surroundings like “Pick out 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can smell…” and so on.

Dreams - How do they picture their future with their s/o?

Piper wants to travel the world with you, trying new things and having new experiences with you. She fully plans to spend the rest of her life adventuring with you and if you have siblings that have kids, she plans on being the cool auntie that brings trinkets back.

Equal - Are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?

It’s fairly equal, but she likes to mess around a lot. If she walks in on you changing, she’ll tease the shit out of you for it and make the embarrassment last a whole day.

Fight - Would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?

Piper can be petty ngl, if she gets angry she might make it obvious. Kinda how kids do things to show their parents they’re angry like angrily sweeping while glaring or something. But she’ll get pouty if you laugh at her antics and the issue will be resolved soon after.

Gratitude - How grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?

She has this cute habit of saying thank you when you do the smallest things. You could give her a glass of water and she’ll go “:3 thank youuuu”. There is almost never a moment where you feel underappreciated for anything you do.

Honesty - Do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?

There isn’t a lot that she doesn’t share, but just like in The Lost Hero, if there is something huge bothering her or if there is a potential threat, she will struggle alone. It kills her to hide something from you, but when it comes to light, she nearly breaks down in tears as she gushes out everything she withheld.

Inspiration - Did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helping them overcome personal problems?

She’s still working on bits of herself, but it's not drastic changes. She may have a tendency to fall back on her bad habits, but when you scold her for it, she makes a mental note to do better.

Jealousy - Do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?

Piper hates to admit it, but she gets jealous just like everyone else. It was more prominent when you two weren’t dating, but it still happens even as you begin dating. It isn’t major, but you’ll know when she feels as if someone is catching your attention or vice versa.

Kiss - Are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?

it’s unfair, but being a daughter of Aphrodite makes her good at all forms of love and affection. Her kisses are absolutely intoxicating and you feel drunk after each one. Even a short peck has you in a daze.

Love Confession - How would they confess to their s/o?

You two were up late because Leo wanted to show Piper his new invention and you were already on your way to visit him to make sure he wasn’t forgetting to care for himself again. The late hour impaired your decision making abilities and you just… went for it. So you two ended up kissing in Bunker 9 as Leo dozed off on his work bench. Luckily he never found out.

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?)

You both got the chance to hide in the lot of a drive in theater that was playing the movie UP. The monster never found you, and you got to cuddle up with Piper as you both cried in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

Nicknames - What do they call their s/o?

Piper calls you by nickname usually, but will use cute pet names like lovey or baby when it’s the two of you and no one else is around.

On Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

Piper is constantly hitting on you, even after you started dating so when the lines get bolder… it can be embarrassing. Everyone tries to ignore you two now, but sometimes the free entertainment is funny as hell.

PDA - Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

Corny pick up lines are a regular occurrence, but Piper also really likes keeping you beside her. She’s not clingy enough to not let you do your own thing, but she enjoys keeping and hand or arm on your shoulder at all times. Even if it’s just throwing a leg over your lap as she sits down on the couch.

Quirk - Some random ability they have that’s beneficial in a relationship.

She brings a spark to the relationship, something that keeps it feeling like you never left the honeymoon phase. She often spoke about hating being Aphrodites daughter, but it was beneficial in her relationships. The spark would have been there without her godly parent, but it sure gives emphasis.

Romance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

Despite being the daughter of love itself, she is terrible at planning out romantic things. However, she seems to make the trashiest moments slightly romantic. You two could be on a quest together and sleeping in the back of a truck full of rotten veggies and she’ll make you feel like you’re in a truck full of… fresh veggies.

Support - Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

One of your biggest cheerleaders. She’ll drag Leo along as well just to be the loudest at your events, be it by voice or by holding up signs with your name in big glittery letters.

Thrill - Do they need to try out new things to spice up your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

She’s had quite enough of thrills at a young age, but she won’t mind traveling and trying new foods. She’ll find out she’s allergic to some obscure spice and the humorous panic she spouted on the way to the ER was enough for you to want to strangle her yourself.

Understanding - How well do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

Piper is very empathetic. It’s often scary how much she can understand your feelings even if you aren’t exactly open about them. She’ll pick up on your mood and somehow pick apart what caused it and if she can, she’ll fix it as best as she can.

Value - How important is the relationship to them? What is it worth in comparison to other things in their life?

Once Piper sees you as family, she’s ready to risk it all for you. If she has to walk the earth just to find you and ensure you’re safe, she would in a heartbeat.

Wild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon.

Her hair had gotten too long one summer and she had given you permission to grab a pair of scissors and go nuts. She never really cared about how her hair looked anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt for you to do it. Her only request was that you wouldn’t make it look nice. Her hair would look great anyway so you cut randomly, feeling like Piper was your personal Barbie doll and you were an odd child, cutting away the hair of the doll.

XOXO - Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

SHe likes touching you, be it an arm or holding your hand, maybe even kissing your temple when you’re around people. She’s not a cuddle bug entirely, but she does welcome those moments when you just flop down on her, groaning as she wraps her arms and legs around you tightly, “Hah! Now you’re trapped!”

Yearning - How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

Absolutely whines to you before you leave, but once you do she acts like she’s not all too affected. “Like yeah I miss them but I’m not gonna cry about it.” What a lie.

Zeal - are they willing to go to great lengths for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

She’s willing to start a war with every god if you were in question, now she wouldn’t want to come down to that, but she’s willing to fight for you.

- - -

taglist ; @smileitsisa , @hermionessimp , @beneaththeiceandsnow

#valentines 2021 #pjo imagine #pjo #piper mclean #piper mclean imagine #piperxreader #x reader #fluff #hoo fluff #hoo #Heroes of Olympus #heroes of olympus imagines #percy jackson and the heroes of olympus #Percy Jackson and the Olympians

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ivyglow · 4 years

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Thinking ‘bout you | Mat Barzal NYI

A/n: Hey, guys! This request was from the song prompt list that @with-the-words-all-wrong tagged me, you can check it on her profile <3. I’m sorry I took too long, but I decided to write a whole ass piece and here it is (and guess what? I hated it lmao).

- Btw if someone wants to proof read my pieces it would be great, just dm me if you’re interested!

Word count: 3.3k

Requested prompt: 10 “Can I see you again and not feel bad about it” & 13 “I liked when you cared about me too”

Summary: Y/n and Mat met through mutual friends and it’s not long before they start hooking up. She’s has a wild spirit, he’s looking for someone to settle down. Is it possible to meet the right person at the wrong time?

Flashbacks in Italic!

Things started slowly but surely people knew it was coming. Since the first time y/n was introduced to Mat’s circle of friends, everyone noticed the way his eyes sparkled with interest and the way she seemed to reciprocate it. They were both young, reckless and any slight chance of love or affection sounded good to Barzal at that time. He was living on his own, and sure most of his time was at practice or out with his friends, but the home-alone time made him think about some things such as settling or at least going for something more serious than the eventual hookups that he would have.

Y/n was funny and beautiful. God, was she beautiful.

The first thing he noticed about her was the eyes. On that low lighted bar, her eyes were glowing green in contrast with her skin. She was wearing jeans and sneakers, outstanding everyone. She was so simple, and maybe that was the thing that drew him towards her. The feeling of not caring about what people would think, not being open to doing everything as expected but doing it as you wanted to.

And maybe, just maybe, it was this exact feeling that made y/n choose Mathew.

Everyone in her family was expecting her to get into a serious relationship as soon as she landed in New York, but as her friend, Kayla would say “New York it’s not the place to find a lover”, and she was well aware of being on the age of glory. Her early twenties and the freedom of living on her own, paying her own bills something she dreamed of since she turned fourteen.

She wanted to have fun and Mathew Barzal was definitely a funny guy.

They went to many friends’ meetings before finally taking a step on the obvious sexual tension. That did not mean it was time enough to become best friends, it was time enough to become mutuals. He knew some things about her and she knew some about him. He knew, for example, that she hated when people tried to make decisions for her, she liked independence in every way and damn was y/n mad when their friends tried to pair her with Mat before she could make her mind about it.

The thing she knew about him was that he liked her and she knew it because he was an obvious guy or at least he was obvious when it came to her. Not in the sweet romantic way, but in a cute and affectionate way.

Or at least that’s what she tried to remember while things started to escalate quickly with movie nights and nights in, or morning sex. They were getting attached, but it wasn’t what y/n planned at all and she knew she had a short amount of time before she would get attached herself.

It was a Friday night, she had an average day at work and the guys were celebrating friendship, just the possibility of having their small and closed group whenever they needed. These kinds of celebrations started with Kayla, she was the one always wondering and getting the best of life, pulling her focus towards the small details of life that usually made it better. Her biggest fear was to die without enjoying life, y/n was always down for her ideas and shared a fear that looked a lot like Kayla’s.

They were chilling in Tito’s balcony, drinks in hand, enjoying the feeling of the cold New York air hitting their faces and the noises of the city that never sleeps being drowned by the many floors below. Kayla was telling one of her stories while Mat, Joe, Katy, and Isabela listened carefully. Tito was sitting by them but seemed lost on his own little world, the reason why y/n would sometimes call him ‘dreamy boy’. A random song was playing low on the speakers, but everyone heard when y/n finally arrived.

“Why you always late?” Joe asked before swinging the rest of his beer in a long sip.

“I’m never late…” she faked confusion before going for the wine bottle. “You guys just always early.”

Mat chuckled and Kayla rolled her eyes slightly, he liked her so much he even found her shitty jokes funny. Or maybe it was just Mathew, he usually was the first one to laugh, anything was fun to him, almost like he didn’t curse or lost his mind every 5 minutes on the ice.

“That one is old, y/n” Tito finally left his dreamy thoughts and provoked his friend. He loved to joke around with y/n, it was like she had an answer for everything and she also happened to be a great listener whenever he needed a sincere opinion that wasn’t from Barzal.

“You’re getting old too and I’m not saying that in your face...and Mathew laughed, I would say my jokes are aging well” y/n walked over greeting everyone properly. Barzal was the last one and kiss she left too close to his mouth wasn’t unnoticed by Anthony.

“Wanna sit with me?” He asked still holding her by the hand. All the available surfaces to sit already occupied.

“You mean to say ‘sit on you’?!”

Isabela that was sitting closer to Mat laughed out loud, “You guys are so obvious…”

“Are you drunk?” y/n replied back trying to sound nonchalant and sitting on Mat’s tights.

His hands found its way on her waist and she was a bit impressed at how comfortable it felt to be that close. He was wearing his cargo pants and a grey sweatshirt, hair an aesthetic mess at the top of his head and lips glowing from his beer.

It was short before Kayla went back to her story and y/n start sipping her wine.

Mat’s hand would travel up and down her waistline under the soft blouse she was wearing and eventually her left hand found his neck hair. It seemed natural, almost as if the exchange of physical affection were something they did every day, and considering their friends were not chirping or making a huge deal out of the situation it seemed even more common.

“Are you driving home?” y/n asked when Mat finished his second beer bottle and she was still on her first wine glass.

He turned to look at her, a slightly confused and curious frown on his face.

“You’re drinking...I know you handle your alcohol just fine, but drink and drive it’s no good” she explains being more detailed than usual.

Barzal chuckles before pressing a kiss in her cheekbone, “You look cute when you’re worried.”

“It’s not-” she starts but the look on his face says it all, he already knew. He had her figured out so easily sometimes it was scary. “I just wanna sleep in peace knowing all my friends are fine… I care about you.”

“You wouldn’t have this problem if you sleep with me tonight.”

And indeed, that was the first night they spent together and it was far to be the last.

Usually, she would be gonna by the sunrise, but this time y/n was exhausted with work and school and having to deal with her family constantly asking about plans they had for her, besides the physical weariness of a whole sex night with Mat. That morning she woke up not to a silent house, but to a shirtless Mat cooking breakfast while blasting her playlist of favorite songs.

“Normally I woke up without feeling like it, but Frank Ocean is playing and you’re doing pancakes...although I’m not really sure about how the food is going to turn out” y/n walked in the kitchen catching Mathew’s attention.

“Good morning to you too” he mocked her, glancing at his oversized shirt that hung her body in a baggy way but still so beautiful.

“You need help there?” she asked going to the water bottle sitting on the counter.

“This is the last pancake, everything’s ready” he walked away from the stove just to wrap one arm around y/n’s middle.

She thought to herself that Mat was the whole package, he knew her so well, he even put effort into cooking in the mornings they spent together -which were few, but still- and he was a great listener, although he liked to talk just as much. He was funny and hot, and he could do both so easily it was painful sometimes. But instead of voicing her thoughts, she kept to herself and left their silence to hug their bodies together. His face resting on the crook of her neck and her hands brushing his long locks.

As soon as the song switched to Lost, y/n’s lips left a loud gasp. Mat would be surprised or confused, but it wasn’t his first time seeing her enjoy her favorites Frank Ocean songs, some he knew the entire lyrics. It was funny to see her wildly dancing and singing as if the world would end anytime soon. And it was those same eyes that made him leave breakfast for good and join her private show. They spent almost thirty minutes stuck on the dance-sing-perform-y/n’s-favorites.

These were the moments where they would be more friends than ever. Sharing the intimacy of the voice of each other and the awkward dance moves, getting to know the songs’ preference, and almost getting a noisy complaint by the neighbors.

And so when Mat started to miss her in the mornings and wish her by his side at night he realized that the intimacy of the moments they spent together could fit as a relationship intimacy as well. Y/n was so easy to be around and she would always have her own way of seeing random everyday things. She liked to go straight to the point too, she hated to lie and hated to left people read one thing when she was trying to say another. That’s why when they started to hookup she told Mathew she wasn’t looking for a lover, she liked him for sure, but being in the years of glory and living in New York wasn’t something she wanted to leave for a relationship.

After almost four months going on like they used to, Mat thought maybe y/n changed her mind. Maybe she liked him as much as he liked her.

And she was point-blank when Barzal brought the subject, “I like you a lot, but I love my freedom.” She didn’t try to put much into it, telling him about her problems would only make him built hope, and she knew that maybe by the time she was fine with the idea of a serious relationship she could be in love with someone else or even he could be. Y/n liked Mathew indeed and that’s why she left him.

Keep it up would only hurt him.

And so they said their goodbyes without a huge fight, but the silence still hurt just as much.

Mat shifted his focus to the season that was about to start, the travel around and games non-stop would take his mind away from how complicated feelings could be sometimes. Y/n, on the other hand, dived into work and school, however, still gets herself wondering about Barzal and how things would turn out if she said yes to his proposition. She missed him in the simple tasks of the day and had to constantly remind that they were not texting each other anymore and no, he definitely did not want to know about the funny dog that ran to her at the park.

Nevertheless, they had the same group of friends and when the season ended and so did midterms, it was crystal clear that they would need to face each other again.

It was a Friday night, just like the first time they spent the night together, and she had an awful day at work, still, Kayle was able to drag her to Tito’s apartment where the small group where reunited. This time it was not one of her best friend random celebrations, it was actually because they spent too long without meeting.

When they finally reached Anthony’s floor y/n still had no idea how she would talk with Mat. She was nervous. They went from 2 a.m calls to zero communication and the lack of it was the reason why she had no idea how he was feeling, if he was doing fine, if he hated her, if he was ok with keeping the friendship etc.

Everyone was in the living room surrounded by bottles and snacks while a random pop song was playing on the tv. He was the first face she searched for but was nowhere to be found, and so y/n settled for greeting each of her friends with a warm and tight hug.

Except for Tito, he was the last one on the sofa line, “where’s my wine, Beau?”

“Kitchen counter” he rolled his eyes playfully.

“Alright, now I can give you a hug” y/n joked before lowering herself and draping her arms around Anthony’s shoulders.

“Bring me another water bottle too, please” Joe requested when she was making her way towards the other room.

The hardwood floor felt cold against her feet and she enjoyed the feeling, trying to switch her thoughts to something other than why Mathew wasn’t there. But before she was able to, she reached the kitchen and there he was sitting on the stool while working in one of his drinks.

It was like the cold from her feet reached her whole body suddenly and she was nervous again.

Mathew made y/n nervous.

It was new to her and she was torn between trying to figure out more about the unknown feeling or ignoring it by shoving it down her pocket.

“Hey!” she tried to sound cheerful, but only got a nod as the response.

Y/n couldn’t read him with his eyes away from her, but he seemed a little out of tune. His hair the usual aesthetic mess at the top of his head and his so friendly white sweatshirt.

She walked over to the freezer reaching the water bottle Joe asked for and then going for the glasses and pouring her so loved wine.

“For a moment when I walked in and didn’t saw my wine at the coffee table, I thought Tito had forgotten about me” her remark did not bother Mathew that kept working with the lemon and vodka in front of him. The pang on her heart now so much vivid. Maybe he hated her indeed, maybe he was heartbroken after everything they went through. And she couldn’t help but finally let some kind of guilty sink at the top of her stomach. “Can I see you again and not feel bad about it?”

The thirty seconds of silence were filled with Mat’s breath since y/n was holding hers.

“What do you mean?” Mat sounded genuinely confused.

“I mean you ignoring me...I never intended to hurt you, you know?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not ignoring you, I’m just out of the area today, my sleep schedule is all fucked up and I’ve been a little grumpy lately, there’s nothing to do with you.”

She wanted to ask how he was doing, if he were hurt when things didn’t go as planned, she even wished to ask about hockey so he would smile bright and big and keep talking for the next two hours. But instead, she took the wine glass and water bottle, making her away to the living room while holding her heart in her hands too.

Joe started a conversation about vacation and so it was the main topic for two hours straight, and even though Mat knew a lot about the subject he kept his mouth shut, mainly just listening to everyone while sipping his drink. It was unusual considering Barzal was usually the one who couldn’t shut up, you would always hear him on the friends’ get-together either his loud voice or his laugh.

Y/n found herself looking at Mat right across her, but she was still able to miss him, cause it didn’t felt like he was there. He was far away in all meanings.

“There’s something I can do to help?” y/n asked while walking to sit beside Mat in the bed they were, certainly, going to share that night, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to make you feel better, I guess you know by now that it wasn’t your fault.”

Mat was moping since he got home, the islanders had lost and the cherry to the cake was the fact that they lost a home game, and y/n was by his side time enough to know that he absolutely hated to lose this way, but she wasn’t time enough to know how she was supposed to deal with it. She wasn’t in the mood for sex and he sure wasn’t too, however she couldn’t stand the pouty lips and the moody Mat, it gave her heart a little pain.

“You don’t need to say anything” he mumbled underneath the covers.

“But I want to. I care about you, Mathew.” she insisted. “What can I do?”

Mat had this soft smile in the corner of his lips watching y/n sitting by his side and looking at him as if he was the most important thing to her at that moment. ‘I care about you’ wasn’t an ‘I love you’, but it meant something deep and they both knew it.

“You can just lay with me.” He gave up scooting to the side and opening his arms for her to lay on top of him. “And stay the night.”

“I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” y/n’s lips found Mat’s in a slow and sweet kiss that last only some seconds before her face was on the crook of his neck.

Everyone was too caught up on the conversation to notice y/n walk to the balcony and sit in one of the big cold chairs, everyone except Mat and it didn’t take long for him to grab a blanket and follow. He knew she was barefoot and she usually was cold at night. Mat knew a lot of things he never thought he would when they first started going out. Yes, he was looking for a lover, and yes he wished with all his willpower to be y/n, but she left him dazed, living each day by its time - as it’s supposed to be -. Maybe that was the reason why in the middle of it all he didn’t stop too much to think about how things were turning in an unknown road...and when he did, it took them to the mess they were living.

Barzal said nothing as he dropped the blanket around y/n’s body and lowered himself to sit by her side.

“Thank you,” she mumbled a bit dizzy.

“No need to thank me, I just still care about you, that’s all.” His voice was low but firm. He didn’t sound spiteful, it was as if he was letting himself to be soft after every solid thing that hit both of them.

And y/n took the time to process that information.

Mat still care!!!, her insides screaming in pure joy and confusion, and she felt as unsteady as ever. All the ‘what if’s’ making room inside her thoughts. But ‘What if he still cares, but don’t want anything?' ‘What if things don’t work out?’

“I liked when you cared about me too…” Mat voiced taking y/n’s silence as an answer itself. .

“Mat, I’m just…” she thought for some seconds more, her head still bubbling with doubts. “I still care about you.”

His head was still low, fingers playing with a random bracelet, he was deep in his thoughts just as y/n.

“I wasn’t ready to commit, I have so much shit going on and it’s a whole package. A relationship is different from how we were working before. It demands a lot more…I also needed these months to think again and again about it.” She ranted while staring at the building in front of them. “But I still do. I still care about you.”

“I wanna give it a try, the whole package, and everything. I like you, y/n.” He whispered, his voice drowned by the noise of the city, but she was still able to hear him, the soft tone, the truth underneath each word. “Just text me and let me know when you’re ready.”

She nodded while they exchanged a meaningful look. Truth dripping from each other’s eyes along with affection and a new kind of feeling.

They sat there in silence for some minutes, just listening to the city’s noise and feeling the cold air hit their faces before y/n took her phone typing a simple message and sending it to Mat. He looked at her, a hint of amusement and happiness, and she shook her head yes.

#mat barzal #mat barzal imagine #ny isles #nhl imagine #fic request #nhl fanfic #anthony beauvillier #tito beauvillier #hockey imagine #latina!reader #black!reader #new york islanders #i lowkey hate this #but i just did it anyway #there are some good parts tho #so yes #bye #night post #mels writing

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doingthingsthewriteway · 3 years

Text

I’ll Be Home for Christmas iii

Summary: It’s date night.

A/N: cross posted from ao3

Taglist: @charmed-asylum

Friday rolled along at a snail's pace. Y/N worried Lee would boast about their evening and news would spread like wildfire. However, much to her surprise, he kept his mouth shut (or everyone was too afraid to cross him and kept their knowledge private). The privacy helped her nerves, though she knew what would happen once the first person saw them together. She wondered what her friends would think or say when she wasn't around.

She wore a simple dress which concealed her figure in an effort to establish boundaries, though something told her he wouldn't abide by any. Her hair was down in loose curls and her lips were painted red. Y/N forgot to put on her pearls as her mother lectured her on the expected behavior of the evening.

Bodecker arrived at the end of his shift. Y/N thought, or rather hadn't considered the possibility of anything else, that he would arrive in uniform. Yet, he stood in their living room without any sign of his sheriff regalia.

"You look beautiful darlin'." ("That sheriff is a no good liar, Y/N. You listen to me!")

"Thank ya kindly, Sheriff."

"I'm off the clock." He took her by the hand, pulling him closer to his side. "I'll have her some safe when we're done."

"No later than-" her mother was cut off by Lee's sharp eyes. Her father waved them off, perhaps knowing that any trouble she might get into with the sheriff would be better than the trouble at home.

Lee opened the door to her side, leaning over and buckling her seatbelt for her. His hands brushing over breast. The scent of peppermint catching her by surprise. "Now," he settled into the drivers seat, "we're gonna go catch a movie, grab something to eat, and then have a nice long talk in private."

Y/N couldn't focus on the film. She knew from friends what boys would do during movies; consequentially, she sat on edge the entire time. Lee anticipated this, if anything it would work in his favor. He was all about surprise.

Dinner was a different affair. The diner was hopping with families dining together and teenagers trying their absolute best to make something happen. Gossip was sure to follow. Y/N and Lee couldn't be seen to distinctly in the dark of the movie house, the diner was different.

"Wanna share a milkshake?"

Y/N was tempted to shrug but remembered the stern look in his eyes when she did that before. She didn't like his bad side and definitely did not want to tempt it. "Up to you."

His tongue clicked, hands grasping hers. "C'mon darlin', I want you to make some decisions in this."

"This?"

"You had a nice education, surely you've caught on." Lee took one of her hands, bringing it up to his grizzly cheek. "I'm sweet on ya, hell I might be addicted."

"Sheriff, that's awfully kind of you but-" he squeezed her hand tightly as the waitress arrived at the table. Y/N half hoped his eyes would slowly graze over the waitress instead staring at her instead.

"What can I get y'all?" Shit, they were a y'all now.

"I'll take a burger and fries, a coke, and whatever the lady wants."

"A Diet Coke and some chili cheese fries and a strawberry milkshake."

"Two straws?" The waitress smacked her bubble gum as she spoke.

"Two straws."

It was hot, too hot in the diner or at least sitting across from Lee. His stupid smirk showing his amusement at the whole damn thing. She wondered what damage a fork to his hand would cause but that wasn't going to end well.

"Strawberry,huh?"

"The chocolate tastes chalky."

He laughed, another one of his stupid belly shaking laughs. "You're awfully cute."

"Lee, I really don't know think I want to do this."

He nodded, a pensive look on his face. His hand absentmindedly rubbing his tummy as he held her gaze. "Your ma tell you that? Your pa just let her fill your head like that?"

"Stop. This isn't about that."

"You like staying in that house? Like getting yelled at? Don't you want a place of your own?" She couldn't answer, not with the waitress returning with their order. "Now, be a good little girl and eat your dinner."

She hated how blindly she followed that order. How was a response like that going to help her case any? Nevertheless, she ate her dinner and sipped the milkshake ignoring how her stomach tightened at the way his eyes looked as the bored into her chest.

Lee paid and ushered her back to his cruiser. He licked his lips, his tongue thick and his lips red. "I reckon your ma's done told you about my reputation."

"Said you were into whorin' and I'm no better than any of your other girls."

Y/N dared at glimpse at him from the corner of her eye as she picked at the seatbelt. His knuckles were tightened in anger, jaw tense, tongue pushed into his cheek. "Your ma really don't hold back does she?"

Before Y/N couldn't answer, not that she really wanted to, he started the engine. A hand stretched over the seat to rest on her thigh. "Here's the deal, little lady." His fingers rubbed the fabric of her skirt between his fingers. "I can be a patient man. I'll treat you like a goddamn queen. People in this town like me, I'm up for reelection next year and a pretty life wife by my side would sure help me out."

"Wife?" Y/N smacked his hand away, whipping over to glare at him. "No, Lee Bodecker, I'm not some pathetic little thing you can seduce into being your wife after just one day. My house might not be great but I will never-" She was cut off by the sudden sensation of his hand on her jaw squeezing tightly.

"You don't want to test me. I'm going to take you home, we'll tell your folks we had a great time, and the next time I see you we're doing something about that attitude."

It took two days before Lee showed up. Two days of paranoia from what an attitude adjustment at his hands would mean. Two days of fending off her ma's questions and ignoring the way her pa couldn't seem to be able to talk to her like he used to. Home alone, she wasn't surprised this was when he would strike.

Y/N answered the knock at the door, only opening it enough for her to see him. "Morning."

He pushed his way inside, hands on his hips as he surveyed the house. "Why don't you fetch me a cup of coffee, maybe something sweet, and we'll chat."

Scurrying to fulfill his wishes, she found herself seated beside him on the couch, legs titled towards him. "What, um, what was it you wanted to talk about Lee?"

"You need to let me love ya like I want to. I ain't forced myself on have I? Hit ya? Screamed at ya?" No. No. And no. "I know I've let myself go a bit, ain't all lean like those boys you must've gone to school with but I can give ya a lot. So why won't you take it?"

The sincerity in his blue eyes was alarming. He was genuine in his affections, in his feelings. To him, marriage must have been a logical next step. How many of her friends were already hitched? Hell, Sue got married on Prom Night and Rosemary married a guy after a month. Knockemstiff didn't understand the world was changing as it never would.

"I've been thinking about running for mayor after next election cycle. Money won't be a problem. We'll get a big ol house and you can decorate it however you want. I'll buy ya the prettiest dresses and shiniest things you've ever seen." Lee held his tongue about the babies, he didn't want to push her too far yet.

"So unless you think you can stop me" he made it a point to brush over his gun, "I'm going upstairs to check your ring size. Anything you'd like me to take to my place, you're welcome to let me know."

He vanished upstairs, leaving Y/N to realize this was it. She wondered how far she could get if she ran but the image of the cold hard steel of his gun was enough to squash any rebellion that rolled inside her.

#lee bodecker x reader #lee bodecker imagine #lee bodecker imagines

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lonelyghosts-stuff · 3 years

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(MCU) Loki Laufeyson/Odinson Character History and Analysis

(WARNING: Contains spoilers from Thor, The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and The Avengers: Infinity War. Additionally, this is SUPER LONG.

Word Count: 3,795

Some people may view Loki as simply a black and white character in terms of morality. Some may say he's "selfish" or "power hungry" or "evil" or even "uncaring". Some directors may even falsely attribute ideas of being "a spoiled rich kid" or "over dramatic" or having been "trying to kill his brother his whole life" to Loki. But these couldn't be further from the truth. Throughout the Thor franchise (much more diluted in the 3rd Thor thanks to the bias and lack of care or sensitivity from one particular director) and within his appearances in the Avengers films, we see Loki display a wide range of emotion and multi-layered complexity. He struggles with depression, PTSD, extreme fear of failure, being an outcast, and utter brokenness of one's self. Loki is a multifaceted character who has had an immense growth over his years on the screen and allusions to experiences in the past. Loki is not just an "evil", "two-dimensional", "boring", "selfish", "Draco Malfoy-esque" (no offense Draco, I love you too, but this ain't about you), character. He is so much more.

He’s a broken and desperate man who only wanted recognition from his father. This drove him to sabotaging Thor’s coronation to give him more time to prove himself. But when he found out his true parentage, he was broken. Suddenly, in his mind, everything made sense as to why Odin favored Thor over him; not only was he not truly the son of Odin, but he was a “monster”.

Suddenly, the stakes are raised as he feels like he know has to try even harder than before. He goes from making calm and calculated decisions to some desperate and reckless decisions. Thor is out of the way, so he believes he already has a slight advantage. Unfortunately, Thor starts to cause a ruckus on earth. Loki is panicking. He sends the destroyer after him, to destroy him; something he has never done before. He has never gone this far before. He’s not himself anymore; the cumulation of years and years of being in his shadow, untrusted, not knowing why he can’t be equal with his brother (why caused him to do pranks and other mischievous things as, in his eyes, negative attention was better than no attention), all of this building up until it finally overflowed with the events of the first Thor movie finally putting him over the edge. And even then, when Thor is right there to quickly kill with a beam from the destroyer, Loki goes for the backhand. It could still kill him, yes, but emphasis on ‘could’. He is still angry and wanting Thor out of his way, but he can’t bring himself to just so easily get rid of him. Especially not after Thor’s speech to him.

When Thor manages to defeat the destroyer, Loki is thrust into his plan even quicker than before. Trick the frost giants, the Jötunns, the biggest enemy of Asgard at the time, into coming into the palace under the guise of being led to kill Odin. Of course it was never Loki’s intention to have them kill Odin. Even when Odin’s death could solidify his position on the throne; it Odin was killed, no one would be in Loki’s way to claim the throne forever, but the truth is, he didn’t want the throne. He only wanted to be Thor’s equal. So, within the presence of the All-Father in his All-Sleep, Loki killed Laufey. This not only proves that Loki could do what Thor could not, but it also is Loki’s way of showing Odin that he is nothing like the other Jötunns. Unfortunately for Loki’s plan, Thor manages to arrive just in time. Loki’s life is constantly breaking before him; now in front of his own mother, Frigga, the only one who Loki felt truly loved him and held him in the same standing as Thor, saw his plan fall apart.

Loki’s suddenly finding himself desperately fighting with Thor. Something not too new to him, he’s fought him and fought alongside him throughout their childhood and time growing up, but it’s never been like this. Loki needs to prove himself. He can’t let anything stop him no matter what. If he destroys Jötunnheim, Odin will finally accept him, right? But Thor is refusing to truly fight Loki. He doesn’t want to fight his brother. He wants things to go back to normal aside from Thor’s newfound perspective on life. Loki knows this about Thor and know that the only way to bring back the reckless Thor from before is to bring up the woman whom he sees as responsible for his brother going soft. Getting under Thor’s skin, their fight ensues. In the end, Loki gets pinned down by Mjølnir but sees he’s plan to destroy Jötunnheim unfolding. There’s nothing that can stop it.

But then... Thor does the unthinkable. He starts destroying the bifrost. Loki is shocked and immensely confused. Why would his brother be doing this? Why is he trying so hard to stop him and save Jötunnheim, even at the expense of never seeing Jane Foster again? Thor manages to succeed in destroying the bifrost, saving Jötunnheim from destruction. The brothers find themselves in a precarious situation as Loki is clinging onto All-Father’s spear, held by Thor, trying desperately not to fall into the collapsing bifrost. When it seems all is lost, none other than Odin shows up to save them. In a final, desperate act to prove himself to Odin, he proclaims “I could have done it, Father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us!” But what response does he get from Odin? Simply “No, Loki.” Suddenly, Loki feels empty. Defeated. Pointless. He lets go. He falls into the collapsing bifrost expecting and accepting his certain fate of demise. But that wasn’t the last he’s heard of.

To Loki’s unfortunate luck, he falls into the grasp of the Mad Titan, Thanos. Promised power and a planet to rule, Loki is equipped with the scepter containing the mind stone. Not much is known about what exactly occurs during Loki’s time with Thanos, but needless to say, it leaves him gaunt, weakened, exhausted, and appearing to have been burned. Loki is instructed to locate and obtain the Tesseract on earth and return it to Thanos. The Other reminds Loki of the consequences should he fail, “If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can not find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.” Loki arrives on earth. More desperate than he’s ever been in his entire life. Furthermore, warped and twisted in the head. This scepter grants him dominion over the minds of others, just through slight contact on the chest.

Unbeknownst to Loki, the effects of the scepter are not limited to touch. It’s affecting him too. Amplifying Loki’s own desires to rise up and prove himself capable of ruling, capable of what his brother is supposed to be entrusted to do. This, combined with the threats and looming consequences that weigh on his mind drive him beyond himself. He’s no longer Loki Odinson. He’s Loki, and he his burdened with glorious purpose.

As the events of The Avengers (2012) unfold, we see glimpses into Loki’s mindset. We see him determined and twist looking. He’s enjoying it. He’s enjoying the attention and the recognition. He is feared. He is a force to be reckoned with. Everything is going to plan. There’s a group trying to come after him? Well that’s no biggie, he knows of the beast inside of Bruce banner. He’s confident he can take them down. Captured in Stuttgart, everything seems to be fixed in the eyes of the Avengers, but Loki knows otherwise. Of course his brother Thor has to pop by and pull him from the situation. We see Thor desperately pleading with Loki to come back home. But Asgard isn’t Loki’s home; not anymore. Thor manages to get under Loki’s skin a bit when he mentions that someone else must be controlling him. “Who showed you this power? Who controls the would-be-king?” Even Thor knows that this is beyond his brother, beyond what he would ever do in a normal headspace. What Thor saw of Loki in the first Thor shocked him as well. This is not the Loki he knows. When things seem to be escalating and Thor appears to be ready to start a lecture, Thor is sent flying form a tackle from Iron Man. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America have a brief fight in the woods below Loki, all the while Loki waits. He waits; he doesn’t try to run, he’s waiting because he needs to follow through with his plan.

When the three avengers stop their fighting and come to a resolve, Loki finds himself being brought on board a massive helicarrier and locked into a secure cell. All according to plan. What he’s not aware of is the scepter having effects on the avengers while their conversation devolves into arguing; they too are affected by the scepter’s proximity based effects. Soon enough, he is visited by one Natasha Romanoff, surprisingly to him as she manages to approach without his knowing. But he knows all about her thanks to Clint Barton. He knows how to attack her weak points, he knows her past and her dark secrets. He’s reveling in the power he feels even within a cell. But when he thinks he’s fully gotten to her, she pauses. She knows his plan to use the Hulk... but how? Now he’s confused but also intrigued. He’s not too worried though as things are still going to plan. The Hulk is unleashed and Hawkeye follows through with the plan. Loki is able to send his brother Thor down from the sky after tricking him into the cell. This Loki does so without hesitation; he laughs at the prospect of his brother’s potential demise. This is not the Loki we knew. Loki makes his escape, losing Hawkeye in the process, and gets to Stark Tower to initiate the final phase of his plan.

Fast forward and the portal is opening. Of course, Thor stops by and crashes his moment. But not the way you might expect. Despite what Loki has done, Thor still approaches him with compassion and love and the desire for him to return home with him. He wants Loki to see what he’s done, he still has hope that this isn’t truly Loki or his desires.

Thor angrily chastises Loki, “Look at this! Look around you! You think this madness will end with your rule?”

Loki looks around, fear and shock within his eyes as if he can’t believe what he’s doing. He simply responds, “It’s too late. It’s too late to stop it.”

Thor hopes this is his chance to bring Loki back. “No. We can, together.”

For a moment, it seems like Loki might come back, but he doesn’t. Any hope for himself he has in his eyes is squandered. He really believes he’s “come to far for anything else.” He’s still twisted from the scepter. His thoughts are only of his twisted desire for power and the overwhelming, looming threats of what would come if he fails. He stabs Thor, but not anywhere that could be fatal. He states one thing with an uncertain and wicked smile “sentiment.” He doesn’t stick around to try and kill him either. When Thor gets back up and tries to fight, Loki simply rolls off the edge of Stark tower to be caught by one of the Chituari vehicles. He’s got his eyes elsewhere, he’s not going to waste his time on Thor. He can’t risk the chance of Thor snapping him out of his plans.

Fast forward more, and he is eventually defeated. The raw, physical might of the Hulk is too much even for him. He’s failed. He’s been defeated. He could not deliver on his order from Thanos. Chained and muted by a muffle, Loki follows Thor to be brought back to Asgard for judgement. Something he can only assume to be his death.

Arriving in Asgard, Loki is marched to the All-Father’s throne. His mother Frigga watches from the side. Loki, pretty much numb at this point takes things less than seriously. He is lacking some sanity from before but not so much where he can’t comprehend what’s happening. Just so much to the point that he doesn’t care what happens, or so he thinks. Frigga begs Loki to not make things worse to which Loki retorts “Define worse.” Loki feels like he doesn’t really care since he expects death. He even asks Odin if that is what he will be sentenced to; Loki does so without seeming scared or sad but rather uncaring at his fate.

Odin states, “All this because Loki desires a throne.”

Loki defends himself, calling back to what Odin told him and Thor back when they were children. “It is my birthright!”

And Odin, showing his true colors and a fit of rage responds, “Your birthright was to die as a child! Cast out on a frozen rock. If I had not taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me.”

Loki is understandably taken aback by this. “If I am for the axe, then, for mercy's sake, just... swing it!”

But when Odin replies with what Loki truly will be sentenced to, Loki’s face changes. Not death, but eternal imprisonment. Eternal imprisonment away from everyone and Loki’s mother who he loves, Frigga. Loki is taken aback. He was content with dying. If he was dead, he would neither have to fear Thanos hunting him down nor feeling of emptiness and worthlessness. But instead of that sweet release, he is sentenced to living out the rest of his life, secluded from his mother but isolated with his own thoughts. This is a fate worse than death in his eyes, especially when you consider how long Asgardians live.

Over a year passes with Loki still in prison. A prison break occurs around him which piques his interest and mischievous nature. He clings to any idea that could provide him with a feeling of life outside of books. Seeing the apparent leader of the group, Loki informs him of the path to take that would lead him to Asgard’s shield generator. It’s uncertain what exactly Loki’s motives are for doing this, but it can be assumed it’s because of his desire to have any impact, to do something that will have an effect, to rile things up. He doesn’t know how truly dangerous these people are. He could easily think that they would be no match for the Asgardians and that he is simply causing a little trouble. Unbeknownst to Loki, these are powerful and dangerous Dark Elves... and his dear mother Frigga was in the path of the Kursed. Frigga dies protecting the location of Jane Foster.

After the matter, after the dark elves had been expelled, Loki, still in his cell, is approached by a guard. A guard; that’s who tells Loki of his mother’s death. No visit from Thor or Odin or even Sif and/or the Warriors Three... While Thor and Odin and the rest of Asgard gets to attend Frigga’s funeral and mourn her, Loki is left all alone in his cell to mourn alone. Distraught, broken again, angry at the Kursed and the Dark Elves, but especially angry with himself. Undoubtedly he feels guilt having been the one to, unintentionally, lead the Kursed directly to Frigga. Loki destroys his cell. He is shattered. The one person he felt true love from. Loki is utterly empty. The last thing he had left is gone, and he didn’t even get to say goodbye. Overwhelmed, he uses his magic to lash out, destroying the entire room. In an absolute rage, he rampaged throughout his little cell, not caring much in the process, even stepping on broken glass and cutting himself. Eventually, he collapsed onto the floor, exhausted, disheveled, and utterly broken.

When Thor comes for Loki’s aide, he finds Loki looking his usual self. Loki inquires if Thor is there to gloat, to which Thor, knowing his brother, tells Loki “no more illusions.” Loki drops the illusion, revealing the trashed state of his cell and himself. “Now you see me brother.” Loki asks if Frigga suffered, but Thor isn’t there to comfort Loki or share their grief. He instead implores Loki to assist him in going against Odin’s wishes to go to the dark world and stop Malekith. Of course this prompts Loki to ask Thor what makes him think he can trust him, to which Thor replies, “I don't. Mother did. You should know that when we fought each other in the past, I did so with a glimmer of hope that my brother was still in there somewhere. That hope no longer exists to protect you. You betray me, and I will kill you.” Thor is desperate. He’s angry. He’s scared. He’s lost his mom, Jane is in danger, and as far as he’s aware or concerned, he’s lost Loki to the darkness. But he can’t let that stop him now. He needs Loki. He needs someone who has tricks and knowledge of Asgard to help him escape.

Loki ventures with Thor to the dark world, showing him the way (with brotherly banter in between). Loki muses Thors attachment to Jane, a mere mortal. Loki can’t understand why a powerful godlike being such as Thor could grow enamored with someone who will die long before he will. “This day, the next, a hundred years, it's nothing! It's a heartbeat. You'll never be ready. The only woman whose love you prized will be snatched from you.”

Thor is of course angry with this response as (at least at the time... thanks Taika...) he loves Jane, “And will that satisfy you?”

Loki only has to say, “Satisfaction's not in my nature!” This line alone gives us so much insight to Loki, much more than it may seem from surface value. Loki isn’t doing this for self satisfaction. He’s never satisfied, because he’s never been allowed to be. Until he can be equal with Thor, he doesn’t care. Loki appears selfish here, he embodies a persona of self confidence and defiance; as someone who only cares for himself. But this is far from the truth.

We see Loki appear to betray Thor as he cuts off his hand and stabs him before kicking him and sending him down a hill. He then roughly grabs Jane and throws her to the ground in front of Malekith. To the surprise of the audience and Jane, this was all part of Loki and Thor’s plan. Having Malekith off guard, Loki allows Thor to attack. Loki, against what appeared to be his nature a bit ago based on what he said, he immediately rushes to Jane to protect her. Twice. Once to cover her, the second to push her out of the way of one of the Kursed’s attacks that would have killed him if Thor hadn’t managed to get him out of the way last minute. The fight continues and Thor is beaten down and about to be finished off before Loki jumps to his rescue, stabbing the attacking Kursed. Unfortunately for Loki, he was too confident in this attack and the Kursed had enough energy left in him to impale him onto the other end of the blade Loki used to stab him. Loki appears to be dying. He fully expected to. Loki genuinely apologizes to Thor for what he’s done, calling himself a fool.Thor mourns and cries out, promising Loki “I'll tell Father what you did here today.” Loki’s apparent final words are “I didn’t do it for him.” This could be interpreted as Loki doing it for Frigga, Thor, or even himself. This time, Loki didn’t do it for Odin’s approval or recognition. He’s fine dying here. He’s done his part. I personally believe he did it for a mixture of all three of them.

Thor believes Loki to be dead and leaves, heartbroken and mournful, losing his mom and then his brother. Loki, however, did not die. His wound, will appearing to be fatal, did not kill him. It was not enough for a being such as him. He recovers in time and makes his way back to Asgard. Having survived, he has a newfound resolve. He’s done doing things for Odin. He’s going to do something for himself. To prove to himself and the others. Using powerful magic, Loki banishes Odin, the All-Father, guardian of the nine realms, to earth. He clouds Odins memories and leaves him (either in a care home or as a homeless man depending on which you accept as canon in Ragnarök). Loki assumes Odin’s identity as king of Asgard, the All-Father. Eventually, Thor comes to him, believing him to be Odin. He hears Thor honor Loki, giving Loki the praise he always wanted to hear. Loki, as Odin, encourages Thor to keep mjølnir as it belongs to him, and to go on as he wishes as Thor does not desire the throne. Thor thanks Odin and leaves. Loki, returning to his true form, thanks the absent Thor.

Loki rules over Asgard for four years. He avoids any issues, no conflict with other realms, no damage or anything. He enjoys his time in the light, even if others believe him to be Odin.

Then one day, Thor returns. Ragnarok unfolds. Loki finds himself torn between helping Thor or not and keeping himself safe, but ultimately decides to join Thor and fighting to protect the people of Asgard, risking his own life in the process, nabbing the tesseract on his way (c’mon... what’d you expect?). Loki seems content with himself and Thor as king of Asgard. Loki no longer worries about meeting Odin’s expectations, he just needs to meet his own.

Unfortunately, good things don’t last forever. Thanos has finally found Loki. Loki can decide to join Thanos, granting him safety, or to stand by Thor and his people. He chooses the latter. He stands up for Thor. He accepts himself as a Jötunn, but also as an Odinson. He promises Thor, “I assure you, brother, the sun will shine on us again.” He makes a desperate attempt at Thanos, one that fails. Loki dies, choked out by Thanos. His final words, an insult to Thanos but also a self aware reflection for Loki himself, “You will never be a god.” Loki saves Thor’s life by giving his own. Loki died a hero.

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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Ask Explo--

...you know what, you’re right. Name change effective immediately.

Askplosion #10:

(unrelated to everything by the way but I DEMAND THE ANON WHO MENTIONED “REMARRIED EMPRESS” A WHILE BACK COME FORTH AND ANSWER FOR THEIR CRIMES. IT’S SO GOOD BUT IT’S UNFINISHED AND I’M HOOKED, HOW DARE YOU)

Asks responding to previous posts:

It’s okay! I figured that was what it was but it’s been so loooong.

Ah, wow.

Um, that’s definitely not a part 2; I think that’s more like a four-parter/five-parter or something.

Sorry! No can do!

That’s totally fair!

I think the reason I so quickly agreed with it is like--

I’ve been watching the Inuyasha sequel and it’s not like I don’t think the narrative’s apparent punching bag Moroha (who is fourteen years old) shouldn’t be punished when she does something wrong/sneaky/manipulative, but they punish her as if she’s Miroku (who was eighteen years old).

Basically, I want the punishment to take the age into account, or at least only affect Marinette on a more personal level and not be “Heart Hunter” where they take totally understandable feelings of heartache (remember, it wouldn’t have mattered which miraculous she took because Hawk Moth got the Miracle Box and Fu regardless; even beyond her emotions, I feel like she chose the best option available to her considering which temps she knew the location of) and then punish her for them by memory wiping Fu and taking away all of her temps and giving Hawk Moth the grimoire translation.

Yes!! I really wanted to respond to this one, thank you! (It’s this one and then there was another one talking about Luka and Adrien, then talked to me about how I refer to Luka as “soft” but not in a bad way; I unfortunately don’t remember the whole thing.)

Ahaha, and yeah, I feel you. Anti-salters are a very strange conundrum I still haven’t figured out; like, I get not liking salt, but...

I mean, when I don’t like certain content, I just blacklist it. If I end up seeing it anyway due to cross-tagging or a lack of tagging, then I just blacklist the person themself. You won’t see me going after people for that very reason; I only see what people send/ask me if it’s content I don’t like.

I’m glad you’ve found some peace in this blog! Hopefully it continues to be that way for you in the future!

(and yay, a fellow INTJ!!)

New Asks:

There are female writers? ;P I just assumed they were all locked in a closet until the male ones were like, “okay, pretend to help us here, we need one female writer to claim girl power.”

As for Ladybug all like, “Cute, isn’t she?” I think it was rhetorical (she could also be messing with him but “Glaciator” tells us that she didn’t know he crushed on her so who knows). The writers do this thing where Marinette is all panic-y and occasionally self-conscious as herself, but then as Ladybug, she suddenly gets a bit of an ego. I think it’s meant to be there in order to make Chat Noir look less... idk, “obnoxious” when he starts boosting his own ego; trying to balance the two by giving them both big heads, so to speak.

Honestly, I feel like Adrien needs less screen time. :|

Even when he’s not on-screen, characters are usually talking about him, or you see his face in Marinette’s room/somewhere in Paris. I’m become so jaded by the guy that I don’t even think it’d matter if they remade the series and gave it a “totally good and interesting Adrien.” That’s how badly the show has made him out for me; “Adrien Agreste” the character is just... sigh, I’m so done with him.

And yeah, this whole idea about, “Marinette is [x], we need more AAAAAADRIEN!” comes off really bad, lol, especially when Adrien has very little going for him.

(this ask ends off like there should be a part 2 but there isn’t one in my inbox, so sorry if there’s meant to be something else!)

The exact lyrics according to the wiki:

My wish for a cat who's in love, with our own Ladybug. Is that he'll get what he's always wanted! She doesn't know she loves him, only sees Adrien, But Christmas miracles always happen!

Yeah, especially nowadays, those lines bothers me. Not only does it imply “true selves,” but that it’s Chat who should be getting what he always wanted and Ladybug is the one with a problem.

Like, excuse me?

Probably Stormy Weather, even in the first episode. Ladybug and Chat Noir couldn’t even touch her until they arrived on top of the TV station.

+ With all those effects and shots, it made it feel more action-y than typical episodes.

Marinette, Aurore, Luka, Anarka, Jagged...

basically any name that I haven’t really heard before (”Luka” makes me think of Vocaloid but the Luka there was female), or a name that relates a lot to the character (like “Aurore” for “aurora” since she loves weather things).

dfjbghfkdgfdgnjfdg this anon really like, “I NEED ANSWERS!!!”

It’s as if these characters hit 18 or something and just grow overnight, I swear. I’m hypothetically fine with some more variety in character height (it’s not like the show tries to be realistic, after all), but maybe don’t give us official heights if they’re gonna be this weird/inaccurate.

Especially when they change it just for the sake of a shot anyway. If you watch “Simon Says” when Ladybug and Adrien stand next to each other while looking at the picture of Adrien’s mother, the very next close-up has an obvious difference in their heights from what you just saw.

They’re 3D models!!! This shouldn’t happen!

I... honestly never thought of the “less threatening” thing! Dang!

And yeah, Marinette isn’t helpless or incompetent, but because of the Adrien crush, it makes her that way at times since she’s always falling on him and--

...ugh, actually, yeah, don’t wanna think about those implications. Hard pass.

Gross.

I’m not familiar with that one, though Astruc deletes his tweets all the time (there was one tweet where he confirmed that Luka was poor and it only exists in screenshots now because it didn’t get archived and he deleted it almost like he realized that he was pointing out the blatant classism in the show, oops).

Yeah though, I haven’t seen anything like what you’re describing. Sorry!

It’s okay! Sorry for having you clarify but him choosing and Marinette deciding to never give it back are very different things.

I don’t recall Chat Noir having much purpose in the final fight (in terms of both contributing and actual fighting; I know Cataclysm broke the object to release the akuma but was it needed?) so Marinette might either go cat-less or get a temp. Plagg could also be helpful in his own right because he’s small and blends in with the night, so he could hypothetically sneak up on the bad guy.

Afterwards, there’d need to be a new cat, but Adrien would also have to reconsider his actions and really think about what happened. I could also see Plagg going to Adrien’s house, half to apologize for giving the idea to Adrien that Adrien leave without telling Ladybug, but also half to call him out for giving up without consulting anyone. Adrien is a lot of conflicting things (see Adrien’s passivity compared to Chat Noir’s recklessness) so he’d have to find a middle ground within himself.

Marinette might carry Plagg around in her purse for a while and let Plagg have a say in who he goes to. Plagg might grieve for a bit over not having Adrien around (even if Adrien was flawed, Plagg didn’t ask for any of this so Marinette is doing her best here).

O-oh.

That’s always the rough patch with “endgame ships.” Once it’s obvious to the audience that they’re endgame, no more effort needs to be put into them.

The other thing too is how Kagami, for example, is friends with Marinette. Even once Adrimi sinks, she’ll presumably stay friends with her. Luka, meanwhile, is Juleka’s brother.

They have lives outside of their love interests. Adrien is so into Ladybug that he doesn’t have that; I mean, Nino is Adrien’s best friend like once in a blue moon.

The entire class is just watching an episode and then calling on raised hands to answer what was wrong with what they just watched.

“Everything?”

“I mean, yes, but I’m sorry, you have to be more specific to get credit.”

I think Aeon herself is fine. It’s mostly just her transformed and that transformed name that I have a problem with (she doesn’t even look uncanny so I don’t get it). I heard there was something wrong with the name “Aeon” but searching the name doesn’t give me anything I would qualify as such so I have no idea. I just wish she was given a little less “I’m programmed to--” (makes her seem less sentient) and more “[anything that doesn’t have to do with pushing the love square]” because I feel like they might’ve done the latter to make her more “likable”? I think fans of anything usually like the “matchmaker” character provided it’s for a ship they like. Also strange that they make her a robot but Max and Markov don’t extensively interact with her, but that’s a nitpick and not a criticism of her character.

...I’m rambling, my bad lol.

(Ohhh, she was supposed to be a mummy? Like, foreshadowing her “dying”?? That went right over my head but I guess that’d be where the name Uncanny Valley came from? No clue.)

Best case scenario is probably the middle or the end of Season 4.

And yeah, it really doesn’t matter to me what they do with the love square. Marinette had gone through too much suffering and the show goes out of its way to show how much stress Marinette is being put under (and also keeping Luka away during episodes like “Gamer 2.0″ even when it makes sense for them to be there, as if trying to make sure Marinette doesn’t have enough moments with him to forget Adrien).

Like, ah, yes, I totally believe that Marinette is in a position where she can make reasonable decisions about her love life while all circles of her life are on fire.

If the Sonic movie of all things can have an interracial couple, there’s no reason why this show can’t, just saying.

And, even with Marinette, she’s white-passing (according to what basically everyone says, I’m really awful about recognizing race so this isn’t my field; I wasn’t aware that Ondine was Asian, for example).

Does Nadja count? Manon’s dark-skinned (I’m still not over the fact that all the kids in this show are dark-skinned; it’s not like it’s a problem from a representation standpoint - though all the kids are also all generically bratty/whiny so there’s that - but the percentages in this show are weird) while Nadja is really light-skinned, meaning either a dark-skinned husband or Manon is adopted.

Though I guess the problem then is that we don’t know, so there’s no established couple there.

Non-Miraculous Asks:

w-who gave you the right to say such things????

Uhhhh, that might be too broad of a question, I’m sorry!

I know this isn’t satisfactory, but I will say that my favorite genre is Fantasy/Romance (it’s why I adore Red Shoes so much; by the way, an anon asked for my opinion on that a while back and I will get to it! I’d need to watch it again to get screenshots) and my least favorite is probably Tragedy/Horror.

I don’t think I’ve watched enough to really be able to say? I’ve kind of been all over but I’ve never fully gone through any of them outside of Miraculous. I’ve seen bits of Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Star VS the Forces of Evil (don’t know if that counts), and I meant to watch Yuki Yuna is a Hero but never got around to it. I saw the entirety of Puella Magi Madoka Magica but you guys know how I feel about that one.

Maybe Cardcaptor Sakura by default then? It was definitely not perfect but I liked some of the character dynamics (I also have a clipcut of it - basically where I go through a series/movie and cut out parts I don’t like so it’s only good stuff - so I’m cheating a little) and the male love interest was a tsundere type that I actually ended up liking, which is really rare.

!!! That sounds sweet~ I know Sailor Moon is popular so I’ll definitely take your word for it on that one.

I would also accept a “reincarnated”/”destined lovers” trope if maybe the ship themselves are the one who set it up in the first place. I have a Lukanette AU, for example, where they basically got together and then prayed to the shrine of the renewal god that they’d “always be together,” which ended up allowing them to reincarnate over and over (as if they set up their own soulmate AU ;P) and continuously find each other.

Though I guess that’s not technically a “meant to be trope,” but still, it’s a form of it but where it was totally consensual on both sides.

Also, I finally thought of a show that ended with the ship I wanted: Gargoyles. I didn’t see the entire series, mind you, but I saw most of it and Goliath and Elisa were just... quality, I adored them.

+ With Beauty and the Beast being my favorite Disney movie, they fit right in with my tastes.

I forget that AangToph (I think the “official” name for the ship is Taang, but don’t quote me on that) exists sometimes, maybe because I’ve never shipped Aang with anyone; I’ve got no problems with the ship though.

Ugh, and this is what I mean when I talk about people who set up these reasons behind people shipping something based on what they saw a few people do. It’s like, “you only ship Adrimi/Lukanette to spite Adrienette!!”

Meanwhile, me having shipped all three at one point and then dropped off the love square.

Also, me shipping Zutara has nothing to do with it being dark/edgy because I’ve never seen it that way (intriguing, sure but dark and edgy? lol) and also avoid dark/edgy ships like the plague.

I still laugh at people who are like, “you can’t ship it because it’s not endgaaaaame!” as if shows can dictate how and why I enjoy something. Like sure, if you want to let a show/movie spoonfeed you how you’re supposed to feel, then by all means, go ahead.

I suppose people may be theoretically happier that way, but it doesn’t make for an analytic mind.

I legitimately thought that “AssClass” must’ve been the actual name for something until it registered with me what it actually meant.

And eh, I guess it depends on the comparison and how accurate the comparison actually is? Like, comparing Puella Magic Madoka Magica to Miraculous... they’re not really close at all, but comparing... idk, Bunnyx to Homura or the concept behind “backfiring wishes”... maybe?

(note that the rest of this post is more Puella Magi Madoka Magica salt so you can stop reading here if you’re not interested in that; I’m not sure if this is all the same anon but I don’t mind letting people vent so I let them go off~)

why can’t we just have nice things

I agree, and I give a little eyeroll every time it’s like, “oh, this person had [miraculous]”

+ even just in general, I feel weird about any show that mentions/implies that real world famous people are [x] or [y] in their show. It breaks my immersion; real world locations are one thing but when it’s specific people (unless they’re made up characters like Santa Claus) or games just--break me.

I also don’t know what to think when there aren’t magical boys but you have these magical girls in this frilly outfits/skirts. The demographic is girls so I presume the reason must be like, “you can look pretty and still beat people up” (;P) but having so many magical girl shows without a hint of a magical boy makes me suspicious that it’s for fanservice. Sailor Moon has Tuxedo Mask but I also don’t know what that guy did outside of the meme of him doing nothing so I’ve got no clue.

(edit: I should correct myself that I’m not talking about Sailor Moon specifically; I don’t know magical girls that well, though I do know there are ones clearly intended for fanservice (you could say that for anything, to be fair, but still). It’s just that I see things like super short skirts or very “questionable” shots and I’m just like, “hm”)

Hmmm, good question. I feel like there has to be a lot but I’m also the type who doesn’t watch a lot of TV lol. I’m just familiar with cliches and tropes and such.

The reason I try not to use “ism”s of any kind is mostly because it’s too broad. Like, you know how the English language only has one way of saying, “I love you,” but other languages like Spanish have multiple?

It’s like that, and sometimes I think it’s too easy to throw those words out there. A “small” (possibly completely unintentional/misunderstood) offense is sexism, and then a “large” offense is called the exact same thing. I’d rather go into why something is sexist than just call it that, y’know? The only exception I make is “classism” because I feel like that’s not as... I dunno, divisive?

Anyway, for that same reason, I can’t answer firmly that, “Madoka Magica is sexist.” I will however say that it makes me uncomfortable with how the show makes out the girls being emotional because they’re young and female and then proceeds to make their life a living hell before they’re old enough to properly answer to it (I know that’s the point but that kind of makes it worse?). It doesn’t help with how all the girls have different personalities, so it’s not like you have only “crybaby girls” who are being taken advantage of; it’s basically like... all girls.

Not helped is the fact that their soul gem not only deteriorates naturally, but it can also do so faster if the girl falls into despair, which then turns them into a monster (and I know it’s kind of like an akuma thing, but the fact that it’s only girls is... I dunno, it comes off wrong?). It seems cheap that the soul gem deteriorates no matter what so it constantly needs fed even if the girl is consistently happy.

I would probably opt for the show being centered more around Kyubey being new to this or something - like, magical girls are a new thing - and then have Kyubey being surprised because they presumed that the soul gem would deteriorate naturally since “emotions are powerful but destructive to the person having them,” but then all the girls team up and help each other work out their problems. Maybe the reason magical girls are usually alone isn’t even because of the grief seed (I think that’s what it’s called?) thing not being able to be shared, but because Kyubey intentionally separates magical girls so they can’t do what the main group is doing, but Madoka is so into the idea that, “We shouldn’t have to be alone,” and so she’s constantly pulling all the girls together, which keeps them healthy.

Maybe Homura’s backstory could be that Madoka originally was more sheepish and more afraid to put herself out there, especially since she was a magical girl (who are encouraged to go it alone), which is why their soul gems were both deteriorating; they were friends but kept more of a distance, or maybe they were a team but that’s all they were. Then Madoka gives Homura the last grief seed to save her and that’s what inspires Homura and makes her see Madoka as something more than a teammate, which is why Homura actively tries to save Madoka specifically (which then encourages Madoka to want to keep everyone together as friends).

In the case that Kyubey doesn’t separate them out of concern of fRiEnDsHiP, but for another reason altogether, and then it’s ultimately their own downfall when they allow the girls to hang out and realize that it’s doing a lot of good for them.

“cute and innocent”

That was exactly it. It’s on Kyubey’s trivia section on the Puella Magi Madoka Magica Wiki.

Before the anime's first dark plot twist aired, head writer Gen Urobuchi said on his Twitter account that the "Kyu" in Kyubey's name comes from the English word "cute". This was a lie meant to further mislead fans into thinking that Madoka Magica is an innocent happy show. In a later episode, it was revealed that "Kyubey" is, in fact, short for "incubator".

In my personal opinion, a spoiled plot can’t be “ruined” if it’s a good plot. If you told me that Kagome was trapped in the Modern era for three years and then decided to stay with Inuyasha at the end of Inuyasha, it wouldn’t/shouldn’t decrease the value when I finally see it for myself because it’s good. That’s not to say that everything should just be spoiled right out of the gate, but it’s saying that maybe your plot isn’t good if you have to rely on shock value to make it work??

I FEEL THAT “ASSIGNING IT TO THE WHOLE GENDER” THING SO BAD. It just adds to my “the girls all have varying personalities so it’s not like Kyubey’s only after emotional crybabies or anything” salt.

I have no idea about any of the stuff about the writers so I can’t confirm or deny them. I will very much agree on the target audience thing though, especially with the whole “keeping the dark plot a secret” because really? Who is this for then? Like, the first two and a half episodes are for one demographic and then the others are--???

I dunno. Me personally, I just like feel good stories. I do like some good conflict and drama (for context, Remarried Empress is basically a webtoon that gives you things to feel salty about and then makes its own salt fic as its plot, allowing for endless streams of feels and catharsis, so I’m definitely not against drama), but there are other times where I just want to feel good watching something.

I feel like the show expects the characters to be selfless/perfect and then punishes them even though it’s their writing that’s causing them to act out. I can’t really talking about “out-of-character” but sometimes it’s just obvious where “we did this because we needed a plot/conflict.”

Like, hello? We don’t need the main characters screwing up; why can’t we just have some feel good thing where they take the day for themselves (seriously, imagine a Miraculous episode where Chat Noir actually tells Ladybug to take a couple days for herself, like maybe someone else gets the earrings for a few days as a temp while Marinette gets to breathe; IMAGINE IT). Not everything needs to be high-stakes to be interesting and you need those calmer moments so that the action-packed ones feel more intense.

SAYAKA DESERVES BETTER.

I feel like the magical girl genre as a whole can be way more complex than it’s made out to be. I think people hear the word “magical girl” and think “cute girls in short skirts talk about girl problems and fight evil with the power of friendship and accessories.”

Ugh, just the mention of Rebellion makes me sigh internally.

Congrats on working on your own magical girl story! I hope it goes well for you!

I know it’s not technically a magical girl show, but there was also Totally Spies that Astruc worked on to some degree (I think there was some characters who were based on/a loose reference to the mains from that show but I don’t remember exactly).

The thing about the female characters suffering is that they could make for good lessons on positively directing one’s emotions (like Usagi from Sailor Moon, for example, maybe having a problem with taking her anger out on her friends, but learns that she can save that rage for the bad guys; “Gamer 2.0″ from Miraculous could’ve done that, honestly, by having Ladybug absolutely WRECK all of her gaming opponents in “violent” (cartoon violence obviously) fashion). It’s just a shame that it’s not taken advantage of.

Sayaka??? Selfish???????

*does not compute*

(Also, I wasn’t tired of them, don’t worry! It was a little overwhelming in my inbox but it’s me who’s allowing all the asks to flow in so the blame isn’t on you lol.)

I’m not sure where this obsession came from with, “you have to be selfless and you’re not allowed to use your powers for yourself.” It’s like the world’s going to end if a character leaves to go Self-Care or something. I think what happened is that shows got this idea that promoting only the giving of others is great and it’s not important to take time for yourself (even with “Gamer 2.0,” it was still Marinette playing games with everyone else, and they treated her dedication and seriousness like a bad thing when she literally did not have time to waste and they didn’t give a reason why it was good for her to take a break, only that she should).

This usually leads to the “demonization” of characters who sport a lot of self-confidence or any sort of ego. It works on both sides; Marinette is a punching bag because of her anxiety and occasional lack of confidence, but if she had an ego as Ladybug, there are parts of the fandom who deem her “obnoxious” (i.e: “Reflekdoll”). There’s a delicate balance between “be confident” and “be humble” and it’s a tightrope act.

#((Yes! This strategy works for not losing asks.))#((In other news--))#((I gotta test out this new microphone so I wanna do a ''Voiced Askplosion'' where I record my answers instead of writing them))#((Anyone who sends me a 🎤 alongside their asks will get a voiced response next time!))#((I probably can't answer everything but you know how it is~))#(((i swear that someone is going to do it just to see if they can get me to swear when I read out their asks)))#((or... like--))#((''ok i don't actually have a question''))#((''but plz say the words 'adrien and marinette are meant to be' because i want to hear how much u struggle to say it''))#category: salt #other: non ml talk #category: ramble #character: Marinette Dupain Cheng #category: fandom #episode: Evillustrator #character: Chat Noir #character: Ladybug #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Stormy Weather #category: me myself and i #category: staff #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Marinette Dupain Cheng #character: Aeon #character: Uncanny Valley #relationship: love square #MC's Renders #render: persona

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thetypedwriter · 3 years

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A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review by Brigid Kemmerer

My gosh, I feel like I have enormous feelings about this book.

So, I had seen this book for awhile bestow the shelves at Barnes & Noble and while it drew the eye, it also didn’t entice me right away. I must have read snippets of the backside summary a dozen times before I finally succumbed and purchased it when the store was having a buy one, get one 50% off deal.

Lame, I know.

That being said, A Curse So Dark and Lonely surprised me in a lot of pleasant ways and at the end of the experience it was a book I genuinely enjoyed reading, despite the flaws throughout.

First off, somehow, in ways that I don’t even fully understand, I did not realize that this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

You might ask, seeing the title, the reviews on the back literally calling it a retelling of a classic fairytale, the summary itself, and the basic premise, how did I not realize what the true nature of this book was?

I genuinely have no idea.

I really don’t.

It’s so flabbergasting that I don’t even have a proper answer for you other than Beauty and the Beast was not my favorite Disney movie growing up and that I probably should have spent more time checking out what bargain books to buy before I laid down the cash.

Oh well.

That being said, retellings of classic fairy tales has been a fairly popular phenomenon in the YA literature scene (and popular culture as a whole, really) for the last couple of years and while I can see the appeal, it was never something that beckoned me.

I’m not a huge fairytale fan to begin with so a retelling of the original doesn’t hold much sway in terms of intrigue and buy-in.

If I had known what A Curse So Dark and Lonely truly was, I never would have bought it. Frankly, it’s a little sad because I genuinely would have missed out on a very fun and engaging read. Fortunately enough, however, my dumb actions actually paid off in good luck this time around.

The whole premise is exactly what you’ve probably surmised up to this point: an enumeration of Beauty and the Beast with some modern fanfare and twists and turns along the way.

Rhen is the current Crown Prince of Emberall, a country in some parallel world to the one that you and I currently exist in. With a series of twists, the main protagonist, Harper, is unwillingly hoisted from her homeland of Washington D.C. to the magical world of Emberfall, which unfortunately is not all that magical with a looming war on the horizon involving a neighboring nation, rumors of a savage beast that has wreaked havoc on the country, and a wicked witch that delights in torment and carnage to sadistic glee.

Soon enough, a high school dropout with cerebral palsy soon finds herself in the imaginary role as the Princess of Disi, an allying nation that has promised aid and troops to Emberfall and potentially betrothed to the Crown Prince, Rhen.

To make matters more complicated, Harper finds herself often in the company of Grey, the lone soldier of the Royal Guard and Rhen’s constant shadow, a figure she soon begins to trust despite herself.

With a war on the horizon, the ever-present threat of the witch Lillith, the haunting promise of the beast’s return, and evolving feelings, A Curse So Dark and Lonely is a lovely concoction of both fast-paced action, romance, humor, and fantasy. This whole book gave me a pleasant buzz from start to finish.

The plot itself, while recycled at its core, is fresh enough with the modern flare of Harper being from D.C. (Disi-this still makes me laugh), representation in the form of a character with a disability like cerebral palsy, interesting and complex relationships, and opposing enough with the threat of Lillith and future battles that it never seemed pithy or banal.

While the world building is...mediocre, I don’t think it was amazing nor do I think it’s awful, it’s a useful enough background for the characters and their emotions to take place, which honestly is the real focus throughout the entire novel (although the author did take some liberties by inputting in things like the castle automatically regenerating food-how much more deus ex machina can you get?).

Kemmerer’s writing style is also fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but also not writing I find abhorrent or even unlikeable. She comes across as a typical YA author to me in terms of her vocabulary, her figurative language, and her writing style.

The real focus, if you haven’t caught on by now, are the characters.

I genuinely like all three main characters quite a bit, which, if you regularly read my reviews, is quite the anomaly.

Rhen I find to be strangely complex. While he fits the mold of the brooding, arrogant prince that actually cares deeply for his people and his country quite well, I also found him more interesting than just the archetype of the royal son.

He’s surly, dark, and quite temperamental. While he does care deeply about his people, he’s often selfish and petty. Honestly, he shouldn’t be very likable at all, but it’s for that reason alone that I do like him.

I like that while he might be a good ruler he’s not necessarily a good person and I like the dichotomy and the conflict that implicitly comes with that struggle, a struggle often shown to the readers and the two other characters he’s closest with: Harper and Grey.

In addition, often in YA I feel like authors constantly feel pressured to make romantic love interests “perfect” which to me, translates to being stereotypical and boring. Very often my favorite characters are the ones who are flawed and complicated-just like Rhen.

Grey is also a character that I thought would be more simple than he actually turned out to be. I originally thought Grey was going to be the stoic, soldier type and while he is, I also really enjoyed seeing his lighter side, his sense of humor, his love for children, and the deadly loyalty that binds him not because of a curse or a spell, but because of his own stubbornness and dedication to the decision that he made and the refusal to break it.

I found this honor code fascinating and his adherence to it almost obsessive. His loyalty to Rhen is both baffling and intriguing and often it was the best part of the novel for me.

Which brings me to my next point: Rhen and Grey’s relationship is hand’s down the best part of this book. It’s a complicated relationship and, therefore, really fascinating to read about it. They have a serpentine history involving Grey being the one to let Lillith into Rhen’s chambers which sets off the whole curse business in the first place.

However, as Rhen says later on in the book, it was his choice to keep Lillith overnight and to pursue romance, not Grey’s.

There is guilt, blame, affection, loyalty, ownership, friendship, frustration, anger, sacrifice and more to their relationship. Their history stops them from being true friends, as do their roles as prince and guard, yet they are the only companion the other has for seasons upon seasons.

At the end of the day, Grey is all Rhen had for a very long time and it shows.

Their relationship was always so engrossing to read about due to its complications and its nuances. Very few YA relationships, especially that of platonic male friendship, gets even near the level of depth and grey (I couldn’t help this pun) area shown between Grey and Rhen. Their relationship alone is a huge draw for why I found this novel so captivating.

I did wonder for a while if perhaps there were more than platonic feelings involved, but I could never quite put my finger on the true nature of their relationship or their feelings towards each other, which I find absolutely amazing. Their relationship is messy and complicated, just like real life relationships are.

That leaves the third piece of the puzzle: Harper.

Out of the three main characters, I like Harper the least, but I do still like her. I like that she’s strong and tenacious, not in spite of her cerebral palsy, but in addition to her already present bravery and ferocity. She’s headstrong, stubborn, kind, merciful, and compassionate.

My dislike from Harper stems from the fact that she’s a little too perfect, especially compared to Rhen and Grey, who I found to be much more convoluted characters.

Again, harping (hahah) back to stereotypical YA, other than her cerebral palsy, I don’t think there’s anything in particular about Harper that makes her complicated, flawed, or especially interesting.

She’s a good girl willing to give it all up for a country she’s only known for a few weeks even though her mother’s dying at home and her brother is most likely involved in some kind of gang violence.

The best scenes with Harper are the scenes were she is struggling to choose between the two worlds and weighing her options, as at some points it does depict her as selfish and wanting to go home, even though she knows it would doom thousands of people.

But of course, this is all taken care of later when she realizes D.C. isn’t her true home any more and that Emberfall has become where her heart lies.

Lame.

Kemmerer made Harper just a little too pristine for my liking, which is why she ranks lower than both Rhen and Grey when on paper she is by far the best in terms of personality and character traits.

This especially grates on me when Kemmerer tells us that Harper is fantastic instead of letting us glean that for ourselves. I really dislike when an author tells me instead of shows me that someone is brave or kind or amazing or whatnot and I feel like there were enough instances of Harper being all of those things without having needed Rhen or Grey to point it out all of the time.

I also do feel like there is some weird shaming regarding things typically seen as “feminine” in relation to Harper and why that makes her “better.” For example, Rhen talks often about how no girl ever has ever done what Harper has done, like attacking him.

I’m sorry? You’re telling me that Grey has kidnapped hundreds of girls and not one of them before Harper tried to attack them? In any form? Really?

I find that preposterous.

Other instances of Harper being unique in this fashion is also sprinkled in, like how most girls apparently only care about the dresses and the jewels in the castle, but not Harper. Or how most girls would be crying from a scar on their cheek, but Harper is just upset that she misses her target.

I get what Kemmerer is going for, but these force-fed characterizations really bothered me and were the most irritating thing about the book.

Being feminine or caring about stereotypically feminine things like jewelry or dresses does not mean that someone can’t also be strong and brave and fierce. I dislike a lot of the subliminal messages in the novel in regards to that.

In terms of romance, again I have to ask myself when the trope of the love triangle will die. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps it will live on for eternity, forever immortal and present in nearly 90% of YA literature.

The love triangle between Grey, Rhen, and Harper doesn’t bother me so much in this novel as I feel like it isn’t truly focused on very much, which I appreciate. I understand that Harper has feelings for both Grey and Rhen, but her feelings make sense. I don’t feel like Kemmerer is just foisting a love triangle onto the readers for the sake of having a love triangle.

It felt somehow...natural.

In addition, most love triangles suck as they’re very one sided, usually in terms of the female’s POV.

In this case however, the love triangle is influenced by Grey and Rhen’s relationship, where the lines are very blurry and for a good portion of the book I thought perhaps they were in love with each other and Harper.

Frankly, I would have been ecstatic if this was the route Kemmerer had taken. Not many YA authors go down this route, but examples like Mark/Cristina/Keiran from The Infernal Devices and Niall/Irial/Leslie from Ink Exchange are actually the only examples I know from YA literature so this would have been so welcome and anticipated.

If Kemmerer had gone down the route of looking into a polyamorous relationship I would have been over the moon. I don’t think she is sadly, but polyamrous relationships are still so few and far between in YA that it would have been utterly captivating, especially as she has all the ingredients to do so.

Or, I thought she did.

Until it’s revealed at the very end that Rhen and Grey are brothers. Or, at least half-brothers.

Yeah.

It’s super unfortunate.

I’m genuinely disappointed that this is the route Kemmerer decided to take it as it seems so grossly safe. It’s almost like an intense male/male relationship can’t exist unless it’s romantic or they’re brothers and I despise that.

Hence, why I have also decided that I won’t be reading A Heart so Fierce and Broken. I want to keep the memory and the interesting relationships between the three characters as it is: interesting.

I have a very strong feeling that if I read the sequel that will all be shattered.

When all is said and done, I really enjoyed this book. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to reading it and I wasn’t expecting very much, but it met all of my expectations and more.

I am sad that I won’t be finishing the series as a whole, but I know that the direction it's going will only make me frustrated and annoyed and I would rather preserve the positive emotions attached to A Curse So Dark and Lonely than ruin it with a sequel that I know won’t meet the expectations I have.

Perhaps that’s unfair to say, and rightly so, but I know myself and I can see where the sequel is going and I’m almost certain that I won’t like it.

So in this case, I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and savor the moments I had reading this novel in all its fairy-telling glory.

Recommendation: If you love Beauty and the Beast, fairytales with a modern twist, interesting characters and interesting relationships set in a fantasy world where the music never stops playing and a savage beast runs rampant, than this book is calling for you.

I didn’t know that I needed this novel in my life and now I’m so glad that it is. Captivating from beginning to end, if you’re anything like me and a sucker for interesting romance and strong, nuanced characters you won’t be able to put this down either.

Score: 7/10

#a curse so dark and lonely #a heart so fierce and broken #brigid kemmerer #popular fiction #Popular Books #teen books #Teen Romance #teen fiction #book review #book blog #Book Recommendations #book rec #ya fiction #YA Book Review #ya book rec #book blogger

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stars-are-just-ghosts · 3 years

Text

Supernatural Isn’t Just A Show

I started watching Supernatural fifteen years ago, just like many of you. I followed the paths of two young men who hunted the evils in the world that the rest of us couldn’t have imagined on a good day. Vampires and demons and monsters. Greek gods, angels, Lucifer himself. The stories were heartfelt and humorous and dark and tender. They challenged us to see that monsters could be good, and being evil was a choice. They brought us into a reality of hope and fighting the whole world if it meant that your family was safe.

That’s what the show was really about, you see. The hunting and the laughter and the dark and everything in between was just the icing on the cake. The real story? That was family. Two brothers who came together and saved the world, again and again. Two brothers who fought side by side, and sometimes with each other, and always for what was right, even if the drawn line was hard to see. Two brothers whose devotion bled into the world around them and brought other amazing people into the fold. Two brothers who grew to have a circle of people who were the epitome of family, because ‘family don’t end with blood.’ Castiel and Charlie and Bobby and Kevin and Crowley and Jack and the list goes on. A list that extended beyond the characters, beyond the actors, beyond the show itself. One that includes you, me... JoAnn and Steven and Jeffrey.

Let me tell you about JoAnn.

Her daughter and I went to school together, a beautiful young woman named Sarah. Over the years I spent so much time at their house and with JoAnn that it was beyond easy to see them as family. And JoAnn became incredibly special to me. My mother and I have always had a strained, tumultuous relationship with very little in the way of affection. JoAnn, however, became the emotional mother I’d never had. We would laugh together (she had a killer sense of humor,) I would call her just to share something or vent (there was never a moment she wasn’t willing to listen,) she was able to hold all four of my babies after they were born (and they lovingly called her Auntie JoAnn.) And I even managed to get her addicted to Supernatural.

She loved Dean, especially Dean’s rear end. (-wiggles brows-)

Shortly before her first and only grandson was born, JoAnn became terminally ill and passed away. She never got to see her grandson, or hold him, or watch him grow up. I think about that all the time, especially when I see a picture of him that Sarah has posted. When I’m watching Supernatural, and Dean says something familiar or I remember a moment in the show that JoAnn particularly loved, I think about JoAnn and how much I wish she could have seen her grandbaby. And how much I wish her daughter, the lovely Sarah, could have experienced that, too. I wonder if JoAnn would have shared this show with her adorable little grandson. I miss that woman every day.

Now, let me tell you about Steven.

His father, Steve, is one of my best friends. I’ve known him for over twenty years. And when his three children were little, I used to babysit them. His son, Steven, was born with severe Cerebral Palsy. He was nonverbal, wheelchair bound, and was tube fed. But he was also the funniest, brightest, most happy boy I’d ever met. He had the most brilliant smile, and the greatest laugh. And whenever someone he loved or really liked walked into a room, his eyes would light up like stars.

When Steven hit adulthood, I would help his Dad out when Steven was at his house. We liked to watch movies and tv shows together. And I offered up the suggestion of Supernatural. It became like tradition after that. We would all be there in the living room, Steven on the floor with his Dad, and we’d watch the episodes in order. It always made me happy, to be able to share that with them.

About four years ago, Steven became ill, landing in the hospital. While there, his heart gave out. He passed away without ever having finished the show he had grown to love. Since then, his Dad hasn’t been able to watch anymore. It’s too painful. Too hard to think that Steven isn’t there to watch it with him. I understand completely. Because I’ll watch an old episode and remember Steven’s unabashed laughter. And I wish he was still here to watch it with us. I talked with Steve about giving it another try. He heard the show is ending soon, and I think he is finally ready to see it through, to finish it for both himself and his son. Let me tell you about Jeffrey.

Jeffrey has lived in NYC for over 20 years now. He is my big brother, and was diagnosed with different mental illnesses, including Borderline Personality Disorder. He’s still made a life for himself that makes him happy in a place I know for sure I would never survive in. (I’m a small town girl, through and through.) And it was because of my brother that I found out about GISHWHES.

You have to understand, my brother doesn’t open up to people easily or step out of his comfort zone for just anyone or anything. But in doing this scavenger hunt? My brother walked around NYC in a robot costume, including taking the subway and walking crowded streets. He also wore a bikini made of lettuce, and not once was shy about it. He dove right in and gave it his all in order to help other people, and to this day I am still insanely proud of him for it.

After everything he went through, from living on the subway for nearly two years (and never telling us) to going from corporate work (which he hated) to doing something he really loved (comic books, baby) to being hospitalized for suicidal tendencies to finally being diagnosed with things he had struggled with all his life but never had taken care of, and finally having a sense of mental health in a new job as a live-in dog nanny, this amazing man is finally happy. And when I think of that, I think of the video of him wandering around dressed as a robot because of GISHWHES. Now, if you’ll bare with me... let me tell you about myself.

I am a pansexual woman married to my best friend with four amazing children.

I have depression and anger issues that I have struggled most of life with.

I have spent a good chunk of my adult life being a stay-at-home-mom and only now am going back to school to learn a new career. I have rescued and taken care of animals since I was 17, something my children have grown to love as well. And I am happier now than I have ever been. But it wasn’t always that way.

I had my best friend die in my arms when I was 12, that being my first experience with death and grief and unchecked anger. And I grew up a lonely kid who spent most of my time hiding how depressed I was, doing everything I could to take care of everyone else in my life, the majority of them never knowing how much I actually struggled with just living. The first love of my life was killed in a car accident when I was 16. My parents divorced when I was 17 and I dropped out of high school, working three jobs just so I wouldn’t be home with my mother.

I was married to a selfish and controlling man at 18, had my first child at 19, second at 20, third at 23, and divorced at 23 with three small children and no job. I was terrified and didn’t know what I was going to do. Everything was up and down and inside out.

But I have a very clear memory of sitting down one night, after the kids had gone to sleep and the apartment was quiet and I was alone with nothing but my thoughts and the television… and a repeat episode of Supernatural (Season 2, Episode 16 – Roadkill) was on. (Spoilers ahead if you, by chance, have not seen this episode.)

In that moment, I was barely paying attention to it. I was a wreck, filled with guilt and fear. My face was covered in tears, and I was sobbing as I sat there and rocked with a pillow held in my grip (I oddly remember that pillow vividly because it had rough edges.) But as the episode progressed, I began to quiet. I remember listening intently to Sam and Molly as they sat on an old bed in Greeley’s home, looking at the letters he’d written to his wife.

“It’s a love letter he wrote her… my God, it’s beautiful… I don’t understand how a guy like this can turn into a monster.” Molly said to Sam. I mirrored that sentiment, in my own way. (I know my situation wasn’t the same.) I’d married a man I’d thought I’d loved. A man I thought loved me. But his actions and selfishness lead to the downfall of our marriage, our family, and my (then) situation. But I had been the one to make the decision to end things, right? After everything he’d done, I couldn’t be with someone I couldn’t trust. And it wasn’t just about me… it was about our children. They needed a mother who was happy…

At the end of the episode, Molly is faced with the reality that she has been dead the entire time and that her husband David had already said his goodbyes, moving on without her.

“What am I supposed to do?” Molly asked, in tears.

“Just… let go. Of David. Of everything. You do that… we think you’ll move on.” Sam responded gently.

Isn’t that what I should be doing? I thought. Because by that point, I’d been stuck in grief and fear for months. I don’t think I knew it until that point, but I’d been holding onto it like a security blanket because it made sense, it seemed like I deserved it.

“But you don’t know where…” Molly responded, her voice still soft with tears.

“No... Molly, you don’t belong here. Haven’t you suffered long enough?” Sam asked. “It’s time… it’s time to go.”

I sat there in stunned silence.

As odd as it sounds, it felt like he was talking to me. Because for years I’d tried to keep our marriage together because I thought I had to for our children. For years, I’d practically raised those three children alone. For months, I had sat in a holding pattern, waiting for my shoulders to finally break under all the weight from the failure I felt and the misery I was drowning in, doing everything I could to be a good mother with nothing to fall back on. But then I watched Molly walk into the light, tears streaming down her face, a smile ghosting across her lips, and I realized… I really had suffered long enough.

“You really think she’s going to a better place?” Dean asked after Molly moved on.

“I hope so.” Sam replied.

“I guess we’ll never know, not until we take the plunge ourselves, huh?” Dean said with half a smirk.

“Doesn’t really matter, Dean. Hope’s kind of the whole point.” Sam said.

And there it was. What I’d been missing. Hope.

This show, these two actors, those two brothers opened my eyes to something that had been right in front of me the whole time. I didn’t know what the future would bring, I didn’t know what I was going to do next. But I was certain I had suffered enough. I was certain I needed to move on, for my children, for myself. And as the episode ended, I wiped my tears off my face, shut off the tv and kissed every one of my sleeping children a few dozen times. And I went to bed thinking about the depiction of that light, that hope.

Two years later, I married my best friend – the love of my life, a good man who never lies, never hurts me or my kids, lifts me up when I feel down, makes me laugh every day, treats me far better than I will ever think I deserve. We had a baby boy together, bringing our family to a total of four amazing kids who all call him Dad. We have our own home which we work so hard for, we have a plethora of animals who make every day adventurous, and I am finally on a career track I feel excited about. All because I decided to stop living in my suffering, and move on.

That is why this show is not ‘just a show.’ For me, anyway. Because of JoAnn and Steven and Jeffrey. Because of the hope I found with the show itself. And I know I am not alone in at least this sentiment.

Every season since, I have watched the episodes. I have followed the stories and witnessed the amazing things this fandom has done for each other and complete strangers. I have seen people’s lives changed by the show and the actors, I have been able to connect with other people I never would have known, and get closer to those I already did. I have shared this series with my children, who all love it and the main characters as much as I do.

And right now, as we get near the end of the series, I am not ashamed to admit that I am hurting. I feel a genuine heartache. A genuine loss. I feel like a part of my history is coming to a close. But like at that moment when my world was inside out and I was trapped in my own little hell, I have hope.

I don’t know what waits for me. I never have. I don’t know what awaits any of us. But this show will never really die. The connections we’ve made, the way the stories and people have touched us… that never really goes away.

Whether we watch Supernatural on repeat on a bad day, or follow the actors as they move on to new adventures, or get someone in our life to start watching it, this show will always be around. Just like hope. And… isn’t it like Sam said? “Hope’s kind of the whole point.”

So, hold on to hope. And message me if you’re grieving, if you need an ear from a fellow fan, or just someone to shoot Supernatural memes back and forth with. We’re a family. You, me, all of us. And I’ll always be here for you.

(P.S. I will ship Destiel till the bitter end.)

Love,

QuietDarkness (stars-are-just-ghosts)

#Supernatural #SPN #forever a fan #season 15 #this isn't the end #hope is the whole point #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Castiel #GISHWHES #misha collins #jared padalecki #Jensen Ackles #some spn spoilers

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sochilll · 3 years

Note

Thoughts about the deh movie? What did you like, what did you not like?

I have SO many thoughts and I’m sure other people are gonna explain them much better so I’ll give you a top 5 on each side. (Also I did make a long ass story highlight of all my thoughts on my insta @ be_more_sochill always be plugging). Under the read more cause it’s long and for spoilers!

Likes

Jared Kalwani does is gay! I think they handled it pretty well. They just switched an existing line bragging about a girl to make it about a guy and gay him a pride patch! The “honey” moment was…….. a choice. But I didn’t think it was a big deal considering the tone of that scene. All around it was fun n good and makes sense that it wasn’t a major plot point given that Jared’s love life isn’t relevant to the story

Alana gets feelings! There was a lot of Alana changes I didn’t love tbh. But I really liked the scene of her talking to Evan in the park. It was a good connection moment and showed that while Alana feels the same as Evan, she actually sees that feeling in others too whereas Evan thinks he’s the only one.

Maybe cheating to make these two points but: Anonymous Ones! I really liked this song. It was good as a song, miss Amandla Stenberg has a beautiful voice, and it was good character development. I am disappointed they missed the fucking PERFECT opportunity to show a clip of Jared during the school shots god that would’ve been so good. But anyway, I really liked the addition

They gave us a few little kleinsen treats such as: Jared randomly telling Evan he put on 13 pounds of muscle and hooked up with some guy, and of course, Jared looking at a video of Evan and Zoe and being visibly upset literally in the middle of Only Us. Chefs kiss thank you

I did like the new ending of Evan actually trying to learn about Connor. Reading his favorite books, reaching out to old friends, finding the video. I felt like that showed how everything hit him and how he actually did care about what they were doing. I really liked that he sent the flash drives to Alana and Jared too.

Dislikes

Evan (and everyone else) isn’t responsible for anything. Other people have already talked about this but they removed everyone’s agency pretty much until the only people making bad decisions were people (like Alana) who didn’t *know* they were making them. Almost every single choice Evan makes in the stage version is taken from him. Cynthia literally just comes up with the idea of emails so Evan just has to agree. Alana comes up with the Connor Project and Evan says *no* at first before being pressured into it. Evan doesn’t even kiss Zoe or make the first (or any) move at all with her. There’s no mention of Cynthia and Larry making mistakes in regards to helping Connor except like one line before words fail. Plus, making Larry a step dad completely changes his role into like a hero for raising this difficult kid who “wasn’t his” or whatever. Jared is no longer the driving force behind Evan lying. He softly suggests that it would upset the Murphy’s to know the truth one time. He doesn’t freak Evan out and tell him he needs Jared’s help to pull it off. Everything is perfectly set up for Evan to just quietly nod along without doing anything himself. It undermines the message of the original show. It’s ABOUT people doing bad things. It’s about guilt and regret and GROWING from your mistakes. That can’t happen if no one is to blame.

Alana is very different. She’s quiet and you can sort of tell she has some stuff going on. Which is ???? The opposite of how she’s supposed to be. The whole point of her character was to show that even the loud, confident, outgoing, always good attitude girl feels alone and scared and sad. That doesn’t come across when her self doubt is prominent right away. It’s not as big of a shock when she gets her “I know what it’s like to feel invisible!” Moment. Maybe that’s why they didn’t even let her have it. She literally had to *whisper* her confrontation with Evan. Like they were so afraid to let her raise her voice they made her confront Evan for lying to her about this horrible thing in the library. Let her fucking yell!

Zoe and Evan’s getting together was so fucking weird. Without Evan kissing Zoe first, she doesn’t even know he likes her before launching into her love song for him. But more importantly, Only Us is not a “let’s start dating” song??? The lyrics are clearly about people who have been together. “What we’ve got going is good”??? What have you got going? A weird friendship where he’s trying to steal your parents???? It didn’t make sense. Also I don’t like how Zoe is the one to say “I wish we could’ve met now” at the end. I feel like it doesn’t make sense/feel right for her to say it.

Heidi. I’m sorry Julianne Moore but I can’t stand movie Heidi. She has zero emotion. The good for you fight was just SO boring and bland. She sounded vaguely annoyed. That scene is supposed to be SAD. Yeah she’s angry with Evan but she’s also SO heartbroken that he’s found this other family he loves so much. She’s hurt that he’s apparently been telling them how bad his home life is. She feels like she’s not doing enough for him and that makes her both sad and angry. In the stage version she’s on the verge of tears and she’s yelling and RBJ kills it. I got none of that from the movie. It was just a tense conversation. And because of that, Evan’s final “it’s not my fault other people can” had absolutely none of the punch it usually does. That’s a *gasp* moment in the show. It fell so flat. (I also didn’t like her version of so big/so small for similar reasons. She didn’t seem all that affected by Evan’s reveal :/)

And of course the biggest offense to me personally. Jared got fucked over so bad. They removed anything that gave him any development. Not just didn’t expand on it, fully removed it. He’s basically gone for the second act. He’s way less involved with the lying and the emails and TCP. And once the initial “I can do emails” plot is out of the way he’s just gone. He gets a few reaction shots looking at his phone and that’s it. And the worst part to me is the fact that they added those shots anyway. They put them in there to SHOW that Jared was upset. And then they just DIDNT RESOLVE IT HE DIDNT GET TO CONFRONT EVAN AT ALL. THEY DIDNT EVEN SPEAK IT JUST HARD CUTS TO “oh it’s graduation and we’re friends again”. It completely erases Jared’s entire character. He also feels alone and desperately wants to connect (specifically with Evan). We know that through the bits of him we see in the show ESPECIALLY during good for you. And they trashed all of that so he could be the funny side character.

Bonus dislike: they showed the scene of Evan falling so many fucking times and it was just so tasteless. Like… why was that necessary.

All in all I did enjoy it as a separate entity but comparing it to the stage version which I love so much, it was so, so disappointing for me. However I will be watching it 17 more times. Long live Nik Dodani Jared.

#this is so long and I’m sure all these points have been reiterated in other posts that probably explained them better but!#those are my thoughts!#if anyone wants to send me their opinions on the movie I would love 2 hear them #thank you for asking! I love yelling !#ask #anon #🦝

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Planet of Dinosaurs

This movie is blessed with some pretty cool stop-motion dinosaurs and absolutely nothing else, and it’s got a Rifftrack. That’s… that’s it, really. Press play.

The spaceship Odyssey suffers a reactor meltdown and blows up with only just enough warning for the crew to launch a single lifeboat shuttle. Luckily, there’s a life-bearing planet nearby where the spandex-suited survivors can land, but unluckily, it turns out to be inhabited by giant reptiles, not unlike the prehistoric fauna of Earth! There’s also a spider the size of a Yorkshire terrier, for no particular reason.

There’s not really any plot from there, it’s just bad actors shooting toy laser guns at plastic dinosaurs, interspersed with Rock Climbing. At last the characters manage to kill the inevitable T-rex that’s been threatening them, whereupon they declare themselves to have conquered this planet.

There are a few attempts at human conflict but they’re pretty watery. The first possible b-plot has to do with the vice president of the space-shipping company, Mr. Baylor, who was along on this trip for some reason and is among the survivors. So they’re not just stranded on Dinosaur Planet, they’re stranded on Dinosaur Planet with their boss. He’s a jackass and his secretary quickly gets fed up with him and quits, which doesn’t do her a whole lot of good since they are, as I mentioned, stranded on Dinosaur Planet. The writers run out of things to do with Baylor about halfway through the movie and kill him off, to everybody’s relief.

The second involves the bearded guy, Jim, who’s starting to take issue with Captain Lee’s command style. Lee is trying to keep them all alive and uninjured until help can arrive. Jim doesn’t think help is coming and wants to go full caveman and start slaughtering things. It starts to look like he’s gonna foment a mutiny, but eventually he and Lee overcome their differences and come up with a plan to kill the T-rex.

Finally, of course, the survivors inevitably pair off in heterosexual couples. Sure is lucky there weren’t more men than women or vice-versa. Very fortunate nobody’s left with no-one to bone but someone they’ve never gotten along with. Quite improbable that nobody on the entire command crew was gay. When one member of one of these couples becomes a dinosaur victim, the other thoughtfully dies a few scenes later, not because he commits suicide out of guilt or something, but just by coincidence.

One thing the movie actually does pretty well is day-for-night. It’s not great, in that you can still tell it was shot in the daytime through a filter, but they chose the right filter to cool down the warm tones of the sunlight, and had the sense to keep the sky out of shot. It never looks like somebody just turned the brightness on your screen way down and called it ‘night’, and I’ve seen so much worse that I want to at least acknowledge their competence.

The other thing Planet of Dinosaurs does well is the actual dinosaurs, which are a lot of fun. They’re lumpy and out of date, but some real care seems to have gone into building the detailed puppets and their movements are fluid and sometimes very lifelike. There’s a nice variety of them, too. As well as the T-rex there’s a smaller therapod that might be intended to be an Allosaurus, a couple of little Ornithomimus-like animals, a Brontosaurus complete with the wrong head, a Stegosaurus, a Centrosaurus, and some kind of ankylosaur. In real life these are a jumble of Hell Creek and Morrison dinosaurs who never met each other, but eh, it’s supposed to be another planet, it’s cool.

Unfortunately, there are several points where the effects people try to show us something they probably should have implied instead. I commend their ambition, but knowing your limits is a big part of making special effects work. In the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, the Postosuchus attacks a Placerias… but we don’t see as much of this as we think we do because our view is blocked by the body of the prey animal. They knew their CGI wasn’t up to making the attack look good, so they tricked us into thinking we saw more than we did. In Planet of Dinosaurs, a character stabs an injured Ornithomimus with a spear, and it’s painfully obvious that the stop-motion creature was just superimposed on top. They could easily have set up the shot so we didn’t have to actually see it go in, but they didn’t.

The dinosaurs are clearly what they spent their budget on, which was wise – as I said in my review of Twelve to the Moon, if you can only afford to show us one cool thing, best make it the one in the title. Sadly, when I say spent the budget I mean the entire budget. The rest of Planet of Dinosaurs looks like it was made in somebody’s backyard using stuff from the garden shed. The spaceship that briefly appears in the opening had a previous career as a vacuum cleaner. When it ‘explodes’ it just flickers red and vanishes with no further attempt at an effect.

The costumes look kind of like if they made the original Star Trek series ten years later but on the same budget, with producers who didn’t think they wanted this to be a porno but preferred to keep the option open. The designated Himbo, Chuck, doffs his shirt within the first few minutes of the film and never gets it back. The blonde who goes for a swim and is eaten by some water monster was wearing a bikini under her uniform for some reason. By the end, they’re all dressed in cartoon caveman garb and Chuck is still shirtless.

Besides the dinosaurs, the main effect we see is the laser guns, which are among the most ineffective sci-fi weapons ever committed to screen. They fire a beam of very slow red light which does absolutely nothing to any of the dinosaurs, even when the characters observe that one has been injured. I think this is supposed to show us that the animals are tougher than the technology, but for that to work we would have needed to see a laser used effectively, perhaps to destroy something blocking the path. Without that, we have no basis for comparison.

If this were all Planet of Dinosaurs did wrong, it would be a bad movie classic. Even the abysmally bad acting has its funny moments. What ruins the enjoyment is the movie’s lack of a proper story.

Planet of Dinosaurs is supposed to be a Cast Away or Robinson Crusoe sort of a film, about unprepared people thrust into the wilderness and forced to survive as best they can. Such a narrative doesn’t need an overarching conflict per se. It can be a series of smaller survival stories strung together, but Planet of Dinosaurs doesn’t manage to do that. The ‘plot’ with Baylor depends on him being a petulant fool, and the characters are not sufficiently well-developed for us to have any interest in the ‘love stories’ that don’t affect the overall course of events.

The rivalry between Captain Lee and Bearded Guy Jim turns on how to keep the rest of the survivors safe from the large predators in the area, particularly the T-rex. Lee wants everybody to hole up on a rocky plateau behind a ridiculously flimsy stockade to keep the animals out, while Jim wants to hunt down and kill the dinosaurs, to teach them to fear humans as wolves do on Earth. The main problem with this is that we just don’t see enough of the predatory dinosaurs to justify this treatment of them.

We see the T-rex fairly early in the film, and it fuels the humans’ decision to see high ground where they hope such a large animal will not go. The much smaller Allosaurus shows up at one point to make a woman scream, is ‘injured’ with a laser, and the T-rex then eats it. And just before the climax, the T-rex breaks through the stockade to chow down on Baylor’s secretary. In between these incidents, we do not see and rarely even hear about these animals. If we’re supposed to imagine them constantly lurking around outside, the movie makes no effort to reinforce that impression. The T-rex is treated as the Final Boss, but the movie just hasn’t earned that.

At the end we see the survivors a few years later. They’re building a farm, making their own clothes, living off the land, and raising their children. One of the women asks the other if she thinks they’re ever going to be rescued, and the other replies that she doesn’t think it matters anymore. The implication is that they’re now happy here. This is really not a bad little denouement, and ends the movie on a warm, optimistic note.

If you want to see some ridiculous 70s mustaches and ugly 70s dinosaurs, you’ll probably have fun with Planet of Dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the movie was a little too ambitious in some places and not ambitious enough in others. If I’d seen it at the age of six I probably would have become immediately obsessed with it for the dinosaurs alone, but as an adult I’m afraid my standards are just a little too high. Unable to afford to be good, and unable to commit to being bad, it’s just another meh.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #planet of dinosaurs #rock climbing #70s #dinosaurs make everything better

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normal-thoughts-official · 3 years

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Fandom racism anon here and yeah absolutely (I didn't realise I had anon on lol)

Because while LOTR has problems within its themes (ie the orcs can be seen as to be coded as people of colour, especially since they ride elephants) the explicit message of the book is evil bad

Because the only people who work for sauron are evil. There are no morally grey people, they aren't misguided or tricked they just are evil and want to take over the world

And yeah I totally agree that this is more of a literal take on like empirical war (is that the word) and that makes total sense considering Tolkiens history

Whereas I would say that the allegories in shaowhunters is way more based on racial conflict within a country itself especially slavery, I can't remember if this is show Canon but is it that they have the warlock tropheys? I remember that in the books magnus talks about shadowhunters hanging warlock marks on their walls? (sorry to bring the books up)

Idk it's very hollow to me, unlike with LOTR though it's a different allegory it's totally irritating to show many of these supremecists as morally misled. LOTR says bad guys are bad guys, shadowhunters says well yeah they did follow a guy which thinks that downworlders are subhuman and should be eradicated but they just made a mistake

I want to compare this to tfatws which while it isn't really fantasy I just feel like it shows how the priorities of the writer can impact the message of the show so powerfully (I know u aren't up to date so I'm gonna be pretty vague)

There's a scene in tfatws where the new white perfect captain America does something bad and doesn't pay for the consequences - done to comment on white privelege and how America condones white supremacy and how Sam is in comparison to that

Mayrse and Robert revealed to be part of the circle! And paid no consequences Shock horror my parents were the bad guys (even rho they were either implicitly or explicitly extremely racist the entire time) also I haven't finished the seires but do the lightwoods ever try to get their parents to face the consequences?)

Only one actual really critiques the situation and the reality behind it whereas the other one is just to centre the white characters once again and present them in a further sympathetic light

AND ANOTHER THING! I was mostly talking about show Canon here and I'm sorry to bring up the books but I literally can't believe I hadn't picked up in this before.

So like downworlders = people of colour, Simon is a vampire so is coded as a person of colour. However in the books in the last one he stops being a vampire and becomes a shadowhunters instead, coincidentally that's also when he starts dating Izzy HOW IS THIS ABLE TO HAPPEN!!????

I mean I know cassandra clare is lazy right? The original seires is by far the worst of all her writings but come ON!!!!! By the allegory has he become the white man!????? These books made no fuckin sense when I read them at 15 and they make no sense now I'm digressing anyways

I don't know man I wrote this ask because I was trying to find some fantasy book recommendations on booktube and SO MANY of them were about slavery or general ly extrême préjudice with à White protagonist to save this 'poor souls'.

Also I was watching guardians of the galexy the other day and realised nearly every movie set in space is just bigger stakes imperialism - planets instead of countries. Literally star wars, star trek, guardians of the galexy 2, avengers infinity war - all are facing genocidal imperialistic villains without actually paying much, if any attention to those effected

Just writing this ask made me exhausted I'm so tired of lazy writing and exploiting other people's struggle. I'm white and I'm trying to be more critical about the movies, shows and books I watch and read but let me know if I said something off here❤️❤️ you gotta get up to date with tfatws man, Sambucky nation is THRIVING!!!!

i'm not sure i agree that the whole "the evil people are evil" thing is a good thing, because i feel like more often than not making the bad characters just like... unidimensionally evil just means that the reader will be like "lol i could NEVER be that guy" and when it comes to racism that is a dangerous road to take because white people already believe that racism is something that Only The Most Evil People, Ergo, Not Me, Can Do, which makes discussions of stuff like subconscious racial bias and active antiracist work become more difficult because people don't believe they CAN be racist unless they're like, Lord Voldemort

which is not to say that racism should be treated as morally ambiguous, just that the workings of racism should be represented as something that is not done only by the Most Hardcore And Evil, but rather as a part of a system of oppression that affects the way everyone sees the world and interacts with it and lives in it

yes the warlock trophies are mentioned in the show, albeit very quickly (there is a circle member who tells magnus that his cat eyes will make "a nice addition to his collection" and then it's never mentioned again because this is sh and we love using racism for shock value but then not actually treating it as a serious plot point or something that affects oppressed ppl). and you are absolutely right, shadowhunters (and hp, and most fantasy books) has genocide as its core conflict and treats it, like you said, in a very hollow way, treating racism as both not a big deal and not something that is part of a system of oppression, but really the actions of a few Very Bad People. it's almost impressive how they manage to do both at the same time tbh

i think you hit the nail right on the head with this comment, actually. for most of these works, racism is SHOCK VALUE. it's just like "lol isn't it bad that this bad guy wants to kill a gazillion people just because they are muggles? now that is fucked up" but it's not actually an issue. in fact, when this guy is defeated, the whole problem is over! racism is not something that is embedded into that world, it's not a systemic issue, it's not even actually part of what drives the plot. the things that led to this person not only existing but rising to power and gathering enough followers to be a real threat to the whole world are never mentioned. it's like racists are born out of thin air, which is dangerously close to implying that racism is just a natural part of life, tbh

anyway my point is, it is never supposed to be questioned, it is never part of a deeper plot or story, its implications are barely addressed except for a few fleeting comments them and there; so, it's not a critique, it's shock value, even though it is frequently disguised as a critique (which is always empty and shallow anyway. like what is the REAL critique in works like hp or sh/tsc other than "genocide is bad"? wow such a groundbreaking take evelyn)

about simon and the book thing: i actually knew about this and the weird thing about this is that, like... simon is jewish, and he's implied to be ashkenazi (calls his grandma bubbe which is yiddish, which is a language spoken by the ashkenazi ppl), and it seems like cc is always toeing the line between him being accepted by shadowhunters and then not accepted by them, which sounds a lot like antisemitic tropes and history of swinging between (ashkenazi) jewish ppl being seen as the model minority myth and thus used as an example by white christians, and being hated and persecuted. i'm not super qualified to talk about this since i'm not jewish and i'm still learning about/unlearning antisemitism and its tropes, and i don't really have a fully formed thought on that, tbh; it just reminds me of the whole "model minority" swinging, where one second simon is part of the majority, the other he's not, but always he is supposed to give up a part of himself and his identity in other to be "assimilated" by shadowhunter culture. this article (link) covers a book on jewish people and assimilationism into USan culture, this article (link) covers british jews' relationship with being considered an ethnic group, and this article (link) talks a bit about the model minority myth from the perspective of an asian jewish woman

it just really calls to my attention that cc chose to make her ashkenazi jewish character start off as a downworlder and then become a shadowhunter. i don't think she made that decision as a conscious nod to this history, because it would require being informed on antisemitism lol but it's incredible how you can always see bigoted stereotypes shining through her narrative choices completely by accident. it just really shows how ingrained it is in our collective minds and culture

and anyway, making a character go from the oppressed group to just suddenly become the oppressor is just. wtf. not how oppression works, but most of all, really disrespectful, especially because she clearly treats it as an "upgrade"/"glowup" that earns him the Love Of His Life

also, out of curiosity, are you french? it seems like your autocorrect changed a few words and i'm pretty sure extrême and préjudice are the french versions of these words, and since u said ur white, that's where my money would be lol

#anti cc #anti tsc #anti tmi #anti sh #racism tw #antisemitism tw #reference #ask #residenthottiesamwilson

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twilightofthe · 4 years

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So...about that Obitine Anidala rant. Also, you said something about how Sidious and Obi-Wan are foils. I would love it if you elaborate. (Also, I love your blog.)

Awwwww thank you anon! I just be yelling on here!

*wheezes* okie doke! Tho I stress that this won’t exactly be a rant because I adore Obitine and Anidala and rant kinda implies aggression towards them, this is more of just a long-ass ramble because while I love them, I don’t always love the way canon portrays them in the narrative, particularly in relationship to each other, because I often do not feel that what the show is trying to push us to think about them is accurate to how they actually act and come across. Notably, the show attempts to draw comparisons to the two relationships that really don’t exist below surface level similarities. Again, these are my own personal opinions, and in fact, I welcome discussion! I truly do! Please politely debate me on this if you disagree!

(god dammit it got long again, so long I’ll actually put ur Sidious and Obi Wan as foils part in a separate post)

I’ll get to why exactly the show compares the relationships very strangely in a moment, but first we gotta explore the reason why it does this in the first place, which is that the Clone Wars show has decided to make Obi Wan and Anakin narrative foils to one another. Narrative foils, by the literary definition, are two characters that contrast one another. They don’t have to be the protagonist and the antagonist, these characters can be on the same side, basically the thing is that they have “opposite” personalities where if one character is hot, the other is cold, if one character chooses to go right, the other will go left. It’s usually used to show one character’s qualities as more favorable for the situation as opposed to anyone else’s.

TCW does this whenever they possibly can with Anakin and Obi Wan. I get its reasoning behind it. I do. The reasoning is that while Anakin is supposed to be a main character, he makes questionable decisions quite often and for the kiddies watching, those decisions must be seen as Bad even if the hero does it, so they have Obi Wan, the unquestionable good guy, encounter the exact same scenarios Anakin makes his questionable decisions in, and then has Obi Wan make the Right(TM) decision to teach the kids a valuable lesson. They turn Obi Wan into the voice of reason for the entire show, which turns basically almost everything Obi Wan and Anakin do into a constant competition in the narrative in a way the movies do not do (and I’ll get to the movies later). I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, making them foils, but it’s definitely more of a show-only thing and it does it quite, quite often.

So yeah, TCW likes to compare Obi Wan and Anakin to the point that sometimes they try and use Obi Wan to diminish Anakin’s genuine trauma and struggles by going “well why didn’t you do it like THIS?” and I think that writing parallel plotlines for the purpose of shaming/criticism is kinda ://////, but that’s another rant for another day that again, if y’all wanna hear about, lmk

Anyway, the need to compare them absolutely made its way into their romantic relationships as well, as they acknowledge the similarities in the show, and Filoni and the crew explicitly compare the two relationships in interviews.

Basically my problem with how they try and draw said parallels can be boiled down to one quote by Filoni that a cursory Google search could not find but I know exists so y’all can take my word or not, that went along the lines of “Obi Wan and Satine are like Anakin and Padmé but better because they know how to stay unattached and let each other go. They’re a success story.” I disagreed with this quote so much it inspired me to write a whole-ass fic about it (Mutuals update: yes, it is coming soon, Darth Maul is just himself and therefore an utter pain in the ass to do a POV on and is fighting me like the bitchass he is)

My thesis that I will be arguing today is that while TCW tried to create Obitine as an Anidala parallel, they’re really not similar in the way the writers think they are. Obitine is not a success story to Anidala, they’re a goddamn tragedy too; the real parallel to Anidala is that Obitine also ended in death and tears despite making all the “right” decisions instead of all the “wrong” ones, and that is what is sad about them.

Like, on the surface level? Yeah, the crew-intended parallels are there. A fancy politician and a Jedi get together after the Jedi is assigned as the politician’s bodyguard. The first time they see each other in over a decade the guy’s first words are basically “damn girl you’re still hot”, there is Conflict(TM) and the choice to try and be together or stay yearningly apart because they are Forbidden(TM) to be together, and ultimately a Sith Lord fucks them both over because he’s obsessed with the Jedi and uses Politician Lady to his advantage, finds and exploits a vulnerability of hers, destroys her life’s work, and then lets her die to make Jedi Man sad. The difference is all that one pair said “yeah we aren’t gonna break the rules to be together” and the other said “fuck it yeah we are, let’s do this”

But beneath all of that, they real similarities are different and not at all focused on by the narrative. Obi Wan and Anakin are extremely different people, as are Padmé and Satine, so their relationship dynamics together will not be the same. You want to try and compare Obi Wan and Anakin and then compare Satine and Padmé like the crew attempts to, and you can’t, they have the same job but not nearly the same life. Namely, the funny coincidence is that Obi Wan and Padmé are much more similar in personality, while Anakin and Satine are also much more similar in personality, so the first time they meet again, it’s both Anakin and Satine as the one who’s been pining for over a decade and the one more actively pursuing the relationship, while Obi Wan and Padmé who are more like “uh, hi, wow, you’re hot and this is a Problem because I have a job to do pls don’t look at me like that but also I will Cause Problems On Purpose and flirt with you anyway because I can’t help it”. I get the Corruption TCW ep with Sati and Pads was mostly intended just to help Satine pass the Bechdel test and also show how similar the two leading lady love interests are, but it was a genuinely creative episode that actually ended up showing how much Satine and Padmé compliment each other instead of mirroring each other, much like Obi Wan and Anakin do.

And, onto my next point, despite the character parallels being wrong, the parallels in the relationship are different too. Like I said, the parallel isn’t that Obi Wan and Satine aren’t attached like Anakin and Padmé are. The parallel is that Obitine is actively running from what that attachment means instead of embracing it like Anidala is. The show would argue that since they try to avoid it, that they are able to live without one another, means they aren’t attached like the Jedi define it, but I argue that they definitely still are attached to a degree because they cannot give each other up. They held torches for each other from a timerange of 15 YEARS. Yes I know they spent an entire year together at a young and emotionally volatile point in their lives, but I stand that NO ONE is that hung up on their ex for that long unless there is some serious emotions involved. Anakin was hung up on Padmé for ten years, and that was because Palpatine was constantly bolstering those affections and reminding him of Padmé. Obes and Sati both-- or at least Satine, the show always makes Obi Wan’s feelings for Satine in return much more vague --held on to their feelings for five years longer without the influence of a Sith Lord.

And the thing is, they know it. Obi Wan and Satine are both fully aware that they haven’t been able to shake each other off like they should and that that is a Problem, that’s why they’re both a mite venomous with each other beneath the flirting at first, they’re both extremely frustrated with themselves for not being able to get over this thing they have, and frustrated with the other for being there as an active temptation.

And yet, they still are attached to each other. They try to avoid it, they definitely try, and that’s what makes them different from Anidala, but they are definitely still attached. You can see it in Obi Wan’s actions in Voyage of Temptation when Merrik is threatening to blow the ship, the way he hesitates in attacking him because that would be “striking an unarmed man”. Obi Wan Kenobi does not prefer violence, no, but he has never hesitated to cut a bitch before if it’s for the good of the many. This is the man who stabbed someone with a fork and threatened to eat him just to maintain his cover as a dangerous criminal. This is the guy who had no problem killing Zam Wessel for information to protect Padmé. This is a pragmatist who prefers peaceful solutions, but he does not hesitate if he feels it is a justified offense. But this time, when an entire shipful of people is at risk, Obi Wan hesitates. Because he doesn’t want to upset Satine. Because he’s probably thinking on how she told him that if he had killed the last terrorist they encountered, she wouldn’t speak to him, how she had criticized every time he used violence to escape Death Watch before. He hesitates because he’s putting her happiness, just for a second, over the sake of duty. Do I think that if Anakin hadn’t shown up to save their moral compasses, Obi Wan would have eventually taken out Merrik? Absolutely; hell, I honestly think Satine might have done it.

But the matter was, Merrik could have pressed the kill switch any second of Obi Wan’s hesitation, and Obi Wan knew that, and was hesitating anyway.

I am calling this attachment solely because if the situation was reversed, if this was Anakin and Padmé in this situation, with Anakin not taking out a dangerous criminal because he doesn’t want to upset Padmé (lol ignoring the fact that Pads 1000% would have shot that bitch, and even if she didn’t, Anakin would because he is perfectly fine with hurting his loved ones’ feelings if he feels it’ll keep them safe), god, the narrative would have eaten Anakin alive.

No, I won’t take criticism. I know how the show handles the Anidala dynamic. It would have shown Obi Wan popping up to take out the baddie as him doing the right thing and saving the day, and then Anakin would have been shamed for letting his feelings for his wife get in the way of protecting a shipful of people. THAT would be the Vader foreshadowing, none of this “only a cold-blooded killer” shit, no way would they ever stick that label on Obi Wan.

So yeah, I’m going off of the fact that if that would have been classified as attachment for Anidala-- which, it would, then. it counts for Obitine.

And then Obi Wan and Satine continue to be hung up on each other for the rest of the eps they’re in, Satine saying in words multiple times how much she loves and cares about him and wishes things could be different, and Obi Wan performing it in actions, risking his own neck and political standing to help her even when she’s a fugitive, probably personally putting in to send his own grandpadawan to help her later. Right up to the time when Satine decides that she is going to call Obi Wan when she is deposed. Not the Senate. Not any powerful politician friends. Not even the Jedi Order or the Council as a whole. She calls and addresses her distress call to Obi Wan alone. And Obi Wan, as now revealed to us by TCW S7, defies Council orders and breaks a century old neutrality treaty to try and bust her, a convicted murderer in the eyes of the Republic and Mandalore, out. He didn’t even know Maul had her. Just knew she was in danger and came running to her aid. He risks starting a potential war to come save her. They acted so in love that Vizsla was able to guess from being around them for like five seconds, and was able to tell Maul exactly who he would need to bait Obi Wan.

That is where the attachment comes from. It’s the fact that Obi Wan and Satine tried so, so hard to give each other up and do the right thing, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t lose the other one so they put them first when logically they shouldn’t. And thus, Satine ended up dead.

Now I know most people will argue with me that actually Filoni means that since they didn’t stay together after the year on the run, THAT is what makes them able to give each other up, and also the fact that Obi Wan didn’t go dark side and murder everyone when Satine died.

But I still think that at least the murder front is a fairly low bar to cross, and anyway, that just because they could live without each other didn’t mean they weren’t still attached. Anakin and Padmé were apart for 10 years and then even after that, they were apart almost constantly during the war. Just because they could live apart or even past the other’s death didn’t mean they weren’t attached, as they both still had not let the other go mentally and also broke rules to try and ensure the other would not die, even if the rules said they should let it happen.

So yeah, that’s my big theory. We can’t compare Obitine with Anidala by saying Obitine was a success story, we compare them by acknowledging that both struggled with attachments and letting the other go, but Obitine at least tried to the bitter end to do the right thing while Anidala didn’t really bother, and both ended up with dead women and broken men regardless, and that is the true sad parallel to me.

#ohhhhh my god i really gotta learn how to shut up lol #thanks anon! told ya it was long!#ask #asks #when we were young #star-crossed lovers #our only ho #peace out #one (1) hot mess #queen of my heart #anon

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