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#these templates never come with a separator and it BOTHERS ME
kingkatsuki · 1 year
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okay, but i recently saw a stat that john cena holds the world record for most make a wish granted at like 650, and he just keeps topping himself.
like imagine that’s dynamight? and he’s so full of himself about it, bragging to shitty deku that 650 kids don’t even want to see his nerd ass. or that the other heros could never balance hero work and the wishes like he can.
and idk, maybe you’re the make a wish coordinator. and at first katsuki was really doing it because he didn’t want to let down any single kid, but now he doesn’t want to let you down either.
like, he’s skipping galas and other dumb sponsored shit for a make a wish visit. having to fire his assistant for canceling a visit without even consulting him first. and now you’ve got his personal number, because you can call him directly whenever you need a hero visit (he’ll drag whoever’s ass down to the hospital that he needs to) and maybe you can use the number for other things.. if you want or don’t! he totally doesn’t care, ignore the blush on his cheeks
That is exactly what made me think of the last post! Lol. I think at first he’s not even interested in doing it at all, his hero ranking is great, he’s doing great and he’s a busy Pro-Hero. Just send the kids some of his merch, if you drop it by the office in time he’ll sign it and game over.
But one morning there’s a letter sitting on his desk waiting for him, and usually he doesn’t get fan mail to his office, some of his staff are assigned to sorting through it and drafting responses with template paper printed with his signature. So he’s confused why he’s received this one— he doesn’t bother opening it at work, too preoccupied with the mission reports on his desk as he shoves it into his pants pocket.
It’s later that week when he’s doing laundry at home and you find that letter in his pocket, he’d almost forgotten about it too. Tearing it open as he looks inside the envelope— the main letterhead is from you, the make a wish foundation explaining what this is and why it was sent to him. A separate handwritten letter included which looks a little scruffy but it has colourful drawings all over the lines on paper as he begins to read it, noticing it’s a request to meet him from a young fan.
Bakugou doesn’t know what it is, whether it’s the letter from you that explains the kids illness along with how much he loves Dynamight, asking if there’s anything you can do to make him drop by or how basic the kids request is. Bakugou’s seen other Pro’s doing the same philanthropy, taking kids on extravagant day trips, holidays and other experiences but all this kid wants is to meet him? But he ends up agreeing to go.
Bakugou enjoys it way more than he thought he would, taking the time to visit a few more kids in the hospital as he swings by (in true Dynamight fashion he doesn’t tell his PR team he’s going so the next day when there’s only fan photos on social media they’re up in arms at the loss of a perfect PR opportunity), but more than anything he enjoys meeting you.
Finds himself dropping by the hospital more often when he’s out on patrol, or coming home late from work. “You know the kids are asleep right now, Dynamight?” You tease as you lean against the counter, stuck on the night shift— and of course he knows, he’s not stupid. But is it really such a crime to want to see you too???
And kinda like the other drabble I did? Where he finds out about other kids from you, what heroes they like/what they enjoy doing and he makes things happen. He gets their favourite heroes to come and visit, or he brings them the toys they want.
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cups-cakes · 2 years
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Kind of person that always succeeded to attract me
There are a few types of people that never failed to attract me. Here are they:
A person who knows what they like and what important to them.
It’s always a good time to spend with this kind of people. Sitting and hearing them telling things they like with their bright sparkling eyes and passionate expression, is wonderful. It will be even more fun when they tell about the things they love in so much detail that when they realize they lost track of time, they close the story by apologizing to the listeners. Hahaha, what a template I like. Surrounded by these people make me realize how unique each of us is. It doesn’t matter how weird and different our things are, as long as we find what we do as something that brings us joy and serenity, we can do it over and over again. A person who already knows what they like is the least to mind people. They are busy doing things that raise them up and don’t bother to give any comments. The most likely comment they will utter is either congratulation or some other nice words with truthful pleasure in their eyes.
People who are emotionally mature and live by their basic principles.
Making friends with these people ‘helped’ me in many ways. I somehow feel more comfortable and actually free to be myself in front of them. Sounds anomaly but that is what happened. These people don’t get carried away easily. They won’t let other people tell them what to do and rather try to control what happens themselves. Their heads are preoccupied with things that have long-term benefits to their lives. Talking to them will definitely broaden and deepens insight, especially about life. These people are generally good listeners. They are not easy to justify someone by just seeing some side of other people. What comes out of them can often be used as a life-lessons.
‘Smart’ People.
By saying smart, I definitely don’t take it to a degree where someone has to be highly ranked in the class or got into the top uni. It is always more than that. To me, smart people are those who actively use their minds to give meaning to many things in life. All the things that are faced, be it a success, failure, trials, problems with friends, parental advice, time spent, self-evaluation, or even the smallest things such as evening talks with friends can be invaluable lessons that enrich them in some way.
Family oriented-people.
Be girls or boy, I love to spend time with any kind of human who have wide visions of how family works and impacted their life. Those who talk a lot about family are people who have a very big chance to be friends with me. I often bring up the topic of ‘family ‘with my friends. The components that make up the family are complex and full of dynamics, making the discussion of the family an endless one. Understanding that every family is unique and has a story to tell gives me a kind of emotional storm whenever I hear it.
I once have a nice conversation with a friend whose parents were just divorced. I thought I can feel sorry for her, but even her energy refuses my sympathy. I got impressed by how she take lessons and bear with the tiring long process of her parent’s divorce. She keeps telling me that she eventually learned from her ‘broken-home’ family. She even told me about the big problem that made her parents separate. Learning from it, Her idea about the future family she will build with her partner is something I could never think of.
I also love to hear someone tell me stories about their parents. I know it’s kind of weird, but that’s just what I love.
Those who appreciate the journey more than the destination.
Having close people who have this mentality is a privilege to be grateful for. They are the ones who always encourage me to love the process I am going through. They don’t put me in a rush to achieve things in life. For them, as long as I put in the effort, I have already reached the highest stage of being human. Lucky me, I’ve been surrounded by this type of person my whole life. The way they encourage me to grow and evolve into something better always makes me thankful to have them. These people always bring warmth wherever they are. The respect they give radiates from the way they speak. Usually, they ask about what we are doing in life, then without further ado encourage us to continue to do it with a feeling of pride that can be seen in their eyes. Ah! I really love these people.
People with big dreams.
Have you ever met someone who has such big dreams and is passionate about achieving them? I have ever. One day I visited my distant relative’s house. He was an 11-year-old boy who was just about to enter high school. I didn’t know what kind of energy he had until he was able to pull me into his story when he told us about his dream. I was surprised, I mean, I don’t really know him and he’s an 11-year-old kid. What did I do when I was 11 years old? I guess life taught him a lot of valuable lessons until he could become that mature at such a young age. I remember how his eyes lit up and how he waved his hands as he spoke as if his whole body was in pursuit of the dream. That day I was completely stunned by the spirit that the boy had. Ever since then, I really enjoyed listening to people talk about their big dreams. I believe this world belongs to those who dream big.
Those who celebrate the simplicity of life.
I often think that what is presented by social media today is too much to accept. People who become idols and role models are those from upper economic groups, elites who squander wealth, people who buy luxury goods without knowing the benefits, etc.
The concept of happiness created in society becomes very materialistic and makes people who do not have ‘wealth’ feel unable to be happy. Not to argue that money can give happiness. I strongly agree that money obviously can increase prosperity, reduce stress, and other benefits. But I think, in the end, happiness is born from a sense of contentment and gratitude.
So, in a world where people celebrate life to the max, I’m so happy to find people who celebrate the simplicity that life always has to offer. The concept of happiness possessed by these people gives infinite peace. Those who embrace the concept, “Less is more”, will always be very interesting people to me.
People with high composure.
I’ve always been amazed by people who have good self-control. those who can remain calm in the face of a situation, whether the situation is happy, sad, surprising, or infuriating, without showing any particular emotion in an explosive manner. Those who can hold their anger in any frustrating situation and still try to be aware of their responsibility for their behavior. Those who understand that most spontaneous reactions carried out by humans have long-lasting effects, therefore they prefer to refrain from unnecessary reactions. Those who actually have a lot of sentences to say but are able to manage their desires as well as possible so as not to offend others. I think it takes years of practice to have good self-control. Not everyone can be patient in learning this, that’s why people who have this ability, as far as I know, are very few in number. But, if I found someone like this, I would immediately be attracted to that person.
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jinogasux-fr · 3 years
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xjoonchildx · 4 years
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guarded | jhs x reader | chapter two: i’m screwed
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summary: you’ve tried to separate yourself from your infamous crime family, but a new case has your carefully-constructed world crashing down around you.  now you have to figure out how to heal old wounds and handle the new man who enters your orbit.
pairing: hoseok x reader
genre: mafia AU, E2L, slow burn, tsundere, eventual smut
rating: 18+
word count: 3.1K
A/N: you guys are? the? best? i’m so thrilled that you guys like the story and i hope you like this chapter, too.  i’d like to thank my emotional support llamas @ladyartemesia and @taetaewonderland for being the amazing people they are and beta reading for me, too. they really are the best.
Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | EPILOGUE
************************
“What’s with the muscle?”
Donghyuk looks over his menu, eyes narrowed on the man just behind you.  You sip your wine as you decide on how you want to answer that.
Jung Hoseok is seated at a table for one, barely three feet away.  If you thought spending the last four days with him under one roof had been the most awkward stretch of your entire life, then you were dead wrong.
Tonight is infinitely more awkward.  
“Personal security,” you say casually, picking up your menu to peruse the entrees for effect.
Donghyuk’s answering huff of agitation is loud -- probably loud enough for Hoseok to hear and your skin prickles with embarrassment.
“You need security to have dinner with me now?”
“Don’t be silly,” you say under your breath, hoping Donghyuk will take the hint and lower his voice.  “I’m getting some heat on the Kwon and Lim case, so it’s just a precaution. Nothing to worry about.”
“Right,” he deadpans, one skeptical eyebrow raised.  “I see you every day at work. How is this the first I’m hearing about this?”
“Must have slipped my mind,” you say with nonchalance, looking back to your menu.  
You should be deciding on something to eat but your mind is wandering.  You wonder if Hoseok has ever been to this restaurant before. You wonder if he purposely picked a table where he could see you but you couldn’t see him. You wonder what he plans to order.
You wonder --
“Well, you’re sending him home for the night, right?”
Your wine glass thumps against the linen tablecloth when you set it down with more force that you’d intended. A flush creeps up your neck.
How much of this conversation can Hoseok hear from his vantage point?  The thought makes the tips of your ears warm as you fix your dinner date and occasional hookup partner with a warning glare.   Smart as Donghyuk is -- with the law degree to prove it -- he can be downright thick sometimes.  
‘No,” you say quietly.
He narrows his eyes.
“No, you don’t want to? Or no, you can’t?”
You blow out one long, irritated breath.
“‘Hyuk, I’m about two seconds from walking out of here,” you hiss. “Can we just drop this?”
He stops just short of frowning, eyes sliding back over your shoulder to Hoseok.
“And for the love of God, quit staring at him.”
Donghyuk slams his menu shut.
**********************
Jung Hoseok is like a ghost in your home.
He moves with a practiced stealth that makes it hard for you to keep track of what room he’s in at any given time.  He’s awake when you wake and still awake when you head to your room at night.
You have no idea when the man sleeps or when he eats.
Conversations -- if you can call them that -- are stilted and awkward. Short discussions limited to working out the logistics of your day.  You tell him where you need to be and when and he makes it happen.  
Apart from that, there is silence -- thick and suffocating and constant.
In fact, Hoseok is so silent inside your home that when you’ve retreated to your opposite corners of the apartment you could almost pretend that things are normal.  You could almost pretend that you don’t have a complete stranger living in your home.
But then you catch a scent.
It’s the smell of coffee that greets you when you wake every morning to a freshly-brewed pot.
It’s the clean, masculine smell that wafts under his bedroom door, carried on humid air after he’s showered.
And sometimes it’s the scent of gun oil that creeps into your room at night when he’s cleaning his pistol, bringing back memories you’d thought were long lost.  Memories you’d hoped were long lost.
That’s the scent that always brings you back to your senses -- the one that reminds you that the man under your roof isn’t just any houseguest.  
He might not look like the battered thugs who worked for your father all those years, but underneath the designer suits and composed exterior is a man cut from the very same cloth.  
And you’d better not forget it.
***********************
The sunlight beating down on the window to your office this morning is deceptive.  
Behind the protection of the thick glass, it’s powerful enough to make you feel uncomfortably warm in your lightweight sweater -- but outside it’s bitter cold.
Hoseok is parked just across the street from your building, like he has been every day this week.  You can’t help but notice there isn’t any steam coming out of the exhaust of the sleek black sedan and you wonder if he’s warm enough in there.
“You busy?”
Hyejin interrupts your thoughts with a knock at your office door.  
“Not at all,” you sigh, turning to smile at her before taking a seat at your desk.  “I should be busy, I just seem to keep finding ways to put things off.”
“Tell me about it,” she laughs. “Listen, I was looking for the photos we got from the Daerim warehouse. I can’t find them in the file and thought maybe you pulled them for something.”
“No, I haven’t pulled them,” you say, lips pursing into a frown as your hands skate over the papers on your desk.  You flip the corners of the folders up, checking to see if the photos are hidden underneath.  “They’ve got to be here somewhere.  Maybe Hajoon took them?”
Hyejin nods. “Yeah, maybe.  I’ll check with him.  You alright this morning?”
Tense laughter bubbles up your chest.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just have a lot going on, is all. Let me know when you find those photos, okay?”
“Will do,” Hyejin promises before leaving you alone to your work and your thoughts.
Hyejin is probably the closest thing you have to a friend — but there’s no way you’d tell even her that your brother thinks someone is trying to kill you and you’re living with an armed guard.
That’s not a conversation you can have with anyone.
You grab a drink, straighten up your papers and get to work.
The raid at the Daerim warehouse turned up enough guns to arm the entire city.  Police spent hours unpacking weapons from giant crates, hidden inside huge sacks of coffee beans and offloaded from a ship that docked from Colombia.  The coffee was pretty decent, actually.
As for the guns -- you knew the Ssijog leadership was furious about the confiscation. In all, investigators estimated they took about 7 billion won worth of firearms out of that warehouse that day.  That’s the kind of financial hit that could level any criminal organization, including your brother’s.
What you can’t seem to understand is why the Ssijog seem more worried about the men taken away at that raid than the guns.
You take a close look at the side-by-side booking photos of Kwon Jiho and Lim Joowon.
These are the kind of men who look like the muscle your father kept around. Heavily-tattooed, thick-necked and ears cauliflowered from one too many fights.  Their criminal records read like street gangster templates, page after page of petty crimes starting in their youth graduating to more violent crimes in recent years.
Men like these are a dime a dozen in this line of work.  So what makes these two so special that the Ssijog are this desperate to get them back?
You pull a post-it note out of your drawer and grab a sharpie. In big block letters you write the question you have to answer before this situation really spirals out of control.
WHAT DO THEY KNOW?
****************************
Car rides are the only time you let yourself get a good look at Jung Hoseok.
When he’s driving, his eyes never leave the road, never stray in your direction -- and you refuse to make him feel like some kind of glorified chauffeur by riding in the backseat.  So you use the silent drives as an opportunity to steal glances at him from the passenger seat like a shy kid.
Hoseok has strangely elegant hands for a man with a career in crime, you think. Long fingers free of scratches and calluses; prominent veins that move when his hand works over the gear shift.  And then there is his face -- his chiseled jawline and sharp nose and bow-shaped mouth.
He’s handsome, of course, and you -- a woman with a pulse and perfectly-functioning eyesight -- would be lying if you tried to deny it.
Tonight you are so distracted with looking at Hoseok’s face that you miss the fact that he’s skipped the turn he normally takes to get back to your apartment.  It isn’t until you are well into the heart of downtown that you snap out of your stupor and take a look outside.
“Where are we going?”
“Your brother wants to see you.”
Your scowl is wasted on the man because he doesn’t bother to look your way.
“So is this how things work now? You and my brother decide where I go and when and I’m the last to know?”
Hoseok is unmoved by your obvious irritation.
“Just following orders,” he counters evenly. “You’ll need to take up any concerns you have about your schedule with Namjoon.”
“I’ll do that,” you murmur, turning to glare out the window.  
A short while later you’re walking into your brother’s office, Hoseok trailing closely behind.  Namjoon signals for him to leave the two of you alone to speak privately.  You round on him as soon as the door latches behind Hoseok.
“If you want me here,” you say tightly, “Then tell me. Directly. I don’t like finding out I have plans second-hand from my babysitter.”
The corners of Namjoon’s mouth lift into a wry smile.  “Good to see you too?”
You roll your eyes but you can’t help but smile back. Your brother seems at ease tonight, lighter somehow.  It’s a good look on him.
“I want to know how things are going,” he says, leaning back into his chair. “How are you finding Jung Hoseok?”
Let’s see. Frigid? Intense? Unapproachable?
“He’s...quiet,” you say after a long moment.  “And maybe unnecessary at this point. I haven’t had any more trouble since that letter.”
“I assure you, he’s still very necessary,” Namjoon returns quickly.  “We’ve still got a lot to work out as far as this situation goes. My guys on the street say the Ssijog are in planning mode. I don’t want any of them catching us unaware with some kind of nasty surprise.”
You sigh.  “So no end in sight.”
“Not right now. Just bear with this a bit longer, yeah?”
“Yeah,” you agree quietly, reaching into your pocket to retrieve your buzzing phone.
Your mouth pulls into a tight line when you read the waiting message.
hyejin: can’t find the pictures. hajoon doesn’t have [ 6:15 PM ]
you: ? i have backup on my laptop [ 6:17 PM ]
hyejin: okay need to make sure we have those tonight? [ 6:18 PM ]
you: yeah, i’ll call you from my place when i get them [ 6:18 PM ]
“Everything alright?” Namjoon asks when you rub your fingers against your temples.
“Yeah, just work stuff,” you sigh, a low-level anxiety simmering in your stomach. “I actually have to go, unless there’s something else you needed?”
“No, just—“ your brother looks like there’s something he wants to say, but decides against it.  “— just be careful, okay?”
You nod and send him a small smile.
“I’ll try.”
You’re almost to the door when you hear him call out to you again.
“And Amsaja -- with Hoseok.  Try being nice.”
He nearly laughs at the disgusted look you shoot back.
*****************************
HOSEOK
Hoseok’s got a pretty good idea of what a prosecutor makes in this town, and it’s damned sure not enough to pay for your lifestyle.
Your spacious apartment in one of the best buildings in town, your expensive furnishings, your fancy car and your designer clothes.  Hoseok has done the math in his head and that shit does not add up.
You’re a hypocrite, he decides -- too good to associate yourself with the trash that brings money in for the Gajog, but apparently not too good to spend it.  Living comfortably on the backs of men you wouldn’t acknowledge in the streets.
Men like him.
Hoseok wishes that didn’t get under his skin the way it does.  
He wishes he didn’t feel resentment simmering under the surface every time he sees you, every time he even thinks of you.  You keep to yourself and you don’t make demands and you haven’t really given him a reason to dislike you, but he desperately wants to.  
He needs to.
He wishes he truly didn’t give a shit about the idiot you had dinner with the other day.  The one straight off the assembly line of some prep school in the Seocho District.  The one with the loud mouth and the loafers and the country-club grin.  He wonders what you see in that guy, when all he can see is how punchable his face looks.
That’s why Hoseok doesn’t give too much weight to the furtive looks he can see you stealing in his peripheral vision.  He doesn’t put too much stock in the way your cheeks color when he looks at you sometimes.  He has to remind himself that underneath the polite distance and pretty packaging, you’re just desperate to be done with this entire situation.  You’re desperate to distance yourself from him and people like him.  
When he finds himself staring at you when you’re not looking, Hoseok forces himself to remember that men like him don’t warm your bed, they pay your bills.
And he’d better not forget it.
**************************
Hoseok can read the agitation in your body language loud and clear the second you slide back into the car.
He can see the way you keep scrolling through your phone, firing off texts and emails from the passenger seat. Tonight, you stare out of the window instead of pretending not to stare at him and he wonders what happened behind closed doors with your brother.
He almost lets it go because it’s none of his business. But he’s curious.
“Are you...upset about something?”
You seem to startle when he asks the simple question.
“Uh, yeah. Sort of,” you admit quietly, eyes falling back to your phone. “Work stuff.  I have to find something when we get home.”
Hoseok nods, eyes glued to the road.  “We’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks,” you say, turning to look out the window again.
Minutes later, you’re both walking into the apartment.  Hoseok turns to secure the deadbolt lock and when he turns back, you’re gone.  He hears the room to your bedroom click closed.  
He briefly entertains the idea of asking you if you need help, but resists.
Instead he sweeps the open rooms of the apartment like he does every night before heading into his room and closing the door.
************************
The knock that comes almost two hours later is just short of aggressive.  Hoseok jumps up off the bed, ready in the case of trouble.
He does not miss the way your eyes go a bit wide when he opens the door, dressed in a thin tank and sweatpants.
“You need something?” he asks when you don’t say anything right away.
“Uh yeah, sorry,” you say with a shake of your head. “I’ve just never seen you in anything but a suit.  For a second I wasn’t sure you were the same man.”
“You think I sleep in a suit?”
“Well I wouldn’t put it past you,” you say hotly.  “But that’s not the point. I need you to take me to the office. Please.”
Hoseok glances at his watch.
“Now?”
“Yes,” you sigh. “I know it’s late and I’m sorry. This is super important.”
“Alright, hang on,” Hoseok says, turning to grab his holster from the dresser.  He slips into it and notices your gaze lingering on the pistol he fits onto his side.  You clear your throat and look down at the floor while he slips a sweatshirt overhead.
“It’s just a precaution, okay?”
Hoseok doesn’t know why he’s bothering to reassure you.  You know that he’s armed all the time, you grew up in this life.  None of this should surprise you.
You say nothing.
It takes only ten minutes to get across town to your office, in the dead of night and in the absence of traffic.  You look almost as irritated as you are surprised when Hoseok climbs out of the car to escort you inside.
“You’re coming in?”
“Yes,” Hoseok fires back, keeping pace just behind you.  “It’s well after hours. No one will see us together, since that’s what you’re so worried about.”
You stop for a moment, turning to face him and mouth opening like you want to deny it.  But you don’t.  
“Fine,” you say under your breath. “Please avoid looking at the cameras.”
“I know how to do my job,” Hoseok manages between gritted teeth.  
“I never said you didn’t,” you hiss back.
The two of you stand just outside the entrance to the building, trading glares.  
The tension feels like a step backward somehow.
One strained elevator ride later, Hoseok trails you into your office.  You flip the lights and immediately get to work going through file cabinets.  Hoseok takes a look around.
It’s not a huge space, but the large windows looking out onto the street make it look a little bigger.  Piles of file folders and papers are sorted into neat columns on your desk.  A desk, Hoseok notes -- completely devoid of personal effects.  No pictures, no mementos.  He doesn’t know why that bothers him so much.
“Shit.”
It’s the first word either one of you has spoken in five minutes.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Hoseok turns to find you on your knees at the base of a filing cabinet, a pile of flash drives scattered across the floor.
“What is it?” he asks, crouching down beside you.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, covering your face with your hands.  
Hoseok picks up a flash drive, turns it to the side to read the small label.  It’s dated three years back, with the name “Cheon” written on the side.
“All of my digital evidence is gone. All of it,” you whisper, voice wobbling with emotion.  “I was searching the cloud at home and thought there was some kind of mistake. There’s no way this is a mistake. There’s no way my cloud and flash backups disappeared by chance.”
You’re right, of course, but Hoseok doesn’t voice that out loud.  You look stricken already without him pouring salt in that wound.
“What about these?” he asks, handing you the flash drive.  
“Old cases,” you say, shoving a hand through your hair.  “They didn’t bother to pull my old cases. Whoever took them knew exactly what they were looking for.”
Hoseok almost forgets himself for a moment.  
He nearly forgets who you are and who he is and what this is. He stops himself just short of reaching out to put a comforting hand on your shoulder.  
You turn tired eyes up to meet his.
“I’m screwed.”
**************************
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TGF Thoughts: 5x10-- And the violence spread.
So, that’s it for season five. I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about the season as a whole and Wackner’s arc. I’m hopeful that writing this will help me decide.
This episode has a Previously, and it’s rather conventional. I’m guessing it’s here to bookend the season, with conveying information being only a secondary objective.  
Did we see Rivi scream, “You’re done, Wacko, you’re done! Canceled! Canceled!” in the last episode or is that new to this previously? I feel like I absolutely would’ve had things to say about a) Wackner being called “Wacko,” which has been RIGHT THERE this whole time, and b) the use of “Canceled,” which is a thing Rivi would never say but is VERY thematic (you know, cancel culture and also Wackner having a TV show and also this being a TV show that’s wrapping up* Wackner’s arc).
* The way things end this episode, I’d say we’re done with Wackner. The Kings have said they aren’t sure about the plan for season six, so never say never, but I think that if we see Wackner again, it will be as part of a different arc.  
I went back to 5x09 and while we do see the same shots of Rivi screaming, whatever he’s saying in 5x09 is in Spanish. So either he was saying this in Spanish or the dialogue here is totally new.  
I’m a little sad that I knew in advance Robert King had directed this episode, because I want to know how long it would’ve taken me to guess. I’d like to think this first shot, of Diane flopping down on her bed in a very pretty floral print dress, then Kurt flopping down in the opposite direction, would’ve given it away. We usually don’t get shots that are both striking and kinda balanced unless RK’s directing.  
This also has some big season three opener vibes—the scene where Diane turns to Kurt and says, “I’m happy,” thus jinxing the entire season.  
Diane and Kurt are about to go on vacation, which means, of course, that Diane and Kurt are definitely not about to go on vacation. I’ve watched 12 seasons of this show; I know all the tricks!  
If I didn’t get it from the initial staging of the opening shot, the camera panning to Diane and Kurt’s suitcases and then back would’ve been another clue that RK directed. He ALWAYS has the camera in motion.  
I love that Diane’s travel outfit is a dress you could wear to a fancy party and a statement necklace. Of course it is.
And if I needed evidence that RK and MK wrote this episode (which I didn’t; it is a finale so I knew they wrote it), Diane quoting Waiting for Godot is a clue there.  
I really should read Waiting for Godot, shouldn’t I?  
“Wow. Educated and a good lay,” Kurt responds. I know that the political stuff between Diane and Kurt can get more than a little murky, but banter like this reminds me why they stay together and why politics never drive them apart. Also, it’s really nice to see Diane and Kurt have some fun banter that isn’t about politics.  
And Diane making kissing noises and asking Kurt to meet her halfway! This just feels like I’m spying on someone’s private life and I love it. Not in a voyeuristic way, since this is actually a little uncomfortably private, but in a, “ah, yes, these do feel like real people” way. This is the kind of “a little goes a long way” character moment I always want more of, and Kings episodes ALWAYS include stuff like this.
And there it is. The phone rings as Diane and Kurt are about to start out for the airport. Diane thinks the call must be for Kurt, but it’s for her. It’s a very flustered Liz, informing her that STR Laurie’s execs are on their way to the office for a surprise visit.
If the Diane/Kurt scene didn’t tell me that Robert King directed, I almost certainly would’ve gotten it from the sudden cut to Liz, walking through the hallways and doing a million things at once with a ton of background noise. No one loves chaos the way Robert King loves chaos.  
This episode STRONGLY reminds me of the Wife season five finale. It is equally chaotic and also spins a ton of plates. But, mostly, the similarity I see between the two episodes is that they are both extremely fun and captivating to watch because of how much momentum they have, but everything just feels slightly hollow and not exactly focused on the thing you want to see.  
(Shout out to my friend Ryan, who messaged me the 5x22 comparison before I could message it to him!)  
I decided I should rewatch the first few minutes of 5x22. I am now 15 minutes into 5x22 of Wife and 2 minutes into 5x10 of Fight. Oops.  
Apparently, STR Laurie planned a surprise visit because they heard RL was dysfunctional. You don’t say!  
I felt like 5x09 concluded with STR Laurie being won over by Allegra and the RL team, so this is a bit of a surprising place to start the episode. But, since Diane seems surprised too, I’ll allow it.  
Now Liz and Diane have 90 minutes to agree on a financial plan! Kurt’s on the phone with the airline before Diane even hangs up with Liz.  
Diane is determined not to lose out on her vacation and asks Kurt to change the flight to 8:00. “Kurt, we are going on this vacation if it kills me!” is a line I would worry was foreshadowing on basically any other show.
The RL/STRL PowerPoint template is pretty ugly. They want to call 2021 their best year yet, thanks to the deal between Rivi and Plum Meadow Farms we saw last week. Even though we saw champagne and signatures, the deal isn’t done yet because Plum Meadow can back out if Rivi goes to jail.
RK also loves close-ups more than any other director on the show; I do not love close-ups.  
The Plum Meadow deal is such a big deal that for the quarter, they go from $45 million to $5 million without it. They should just not say numbers. I can believe it’s big enough to take them from a modest profit to being behind projections or whatever, but I can’t believe that they have $5 million in other business and $40 million on this one deal.  
It seems that Rivi was arrested. I don’t think it is ever said in this episode why. I assume the arrest relates to his behavior in Wackner’s court, since there were police officers there, and I suppose that Rivi is a big enough deal the police would actually take him to real court, but are we not going to address the weirdness of Rivi being arrested in a fake court where his employees are being tried, then taken to a real court by the same people who just an episode ago were disillusioned with real court? This seems like a plot point.
Carmen on a frantic phone call in the backseat of a car feels very 7x22.  
Who is James that Carmen has in her contacts!? And why does everyone always put Liz in their contacts as “Elizabeth Reddick” when everyone calls her Liz?  
Carmen calls Marissa to go argue in Vinetta’s court since she’s on Rivi duty. Carmen doesn’t take Marissa’s job in Wackner’s court seriously and then notes that this instruction is coming straight from Liz, so Marissa falls in line.  
Wackner’s case of the week is about rural Illinois wanting to form its own state separate from Chicago. There’s a farmer who feels like his tax money is only going to the big city and he wants it to stay in his community.  
They’ve just now added stage lighting to the set of Wackner Rules, dunno why they wouldn’t have done that earlier!
I don’t know what standing you’d have to have to bring a case about wanting to divide the state in two to court, or if this is even something a court would or should decide, but, sure, Wackner and Cord, go for it. There are no rules!  
This map splitting Illinois into two new states that Cord is holding is a dumb prop because Galena, where this farmer is from, is in the same section as Chicago. Do I pause every reference to Chicago on this show and then google information to see if the writers bothered to look it up or pretend they’ve ever set foot in Chicago? You know I do.
“Secession!” the audience screams. Does the audience of Wackner Rules really want to see this?
A Good Fight Short! And it really is short: “Stop this obsession with secession and breaking up the Union. It’s boring and it’s dumb, end of song.” I feel like that’s the thesis statement for this episode, or one of them (that this episode seems to have about ten thesis statements is kind of my problem with this episode, tbh). This episode is very much about danger of things becoming too fractured—the COTW, the copycat courts, the firm drama—and I feel like the writers come around to just saying no, this is enough, we need structure and consistency.
But more on that later. MUCH more on that later.
Marissa is swearing more because “the world has required it.” She notes this to Wackner as she calls him out on the secession case. Cord barges in.
Take a look at the employee of the month poster on the back of the door at 5:39. Then at 5:40, look at what’s in the box just to the right of the center of the screen: it’s an employee of the month poster with Wackner on it! Cute easter egg. (Would Marissa definitely notice this and have questions? Yes. Is this here as a cute easter egg for eagle-eyed fans? Almost certainly.)  
“Insane is just one step away from reality if you get people to believe, and you know what makes people believe? TV.” Cord explains when Marissa asks how they can possibly be litigating this case. That’s thesis statements two and three, folks. The first is that if you get people to believe, then anything is possible, which sounds like a tagline for a Disney movie but is actually super dangerous; the second is that reality TV is a way to persuade people and change opinions.  
So we’ve got: (1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. Let’s see if there are more.
(Yes, these theses do kind of add up to a whole—The rules don’t matter, so if you persuade people, through reality tv, you get factions of people believing their own sets of rules and facts—but what I'm interested in tracking throughout this episode is how well the writers actually bring these theses together.)
(And this is setting aside that key themes in previous episodes, that I think many of us were looking for resolution on, included outlining the flaws with the extant “real” justice system and exploring the role of prison in the justice system. From this episode, I don’t think the writers ever intended to really tackle either of those issues. That’s fine—I'm not sure that TGF has something to say about prison abolition and I don’t want a thought experiment where the writers actually try to fix the legal system—but feels a bit disjointed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but 5x08 and 5x09 needed to do a better, clearer job of setting up this finale. The key themes of Wackner’s arc were always present, but they needed to slowly narrow the scope so the resolution felt inevitable and clear. Instead, we spent time on things like parking spaces (when we could’ve had a real plot about how Wackner’s court gains legitimacy through violence, incarceration, and playing on people’s frustration with the real systems) and Del’s focus groups (when we could’ve instead done a plot about Wackner gaining fans who wanted to use his methods to do ill). Everything I just mentioned in the parentheticals is in the show! It’s not subtext! We see it all! We see Cord use violence and prisons to enforce Wackner’s rulings; we see the cops turn to Wackner out of frustration; we see that the people drawn to Wackner Rules and to Wackner’s court are increasingly sounding more and more like right-wing populists! I can’t be too hard on this arc because, again, all these ideas are there. I’m not coming up with them on my own!)
I’m just saying: this ending would’ve been a lot clearer and a lot more interesting had the writers focused on what I mentioned above instead of the distractions of the last two episodes.  
Whew, that was a ramble. Hope you’re ready for more rambles.
On a similar note, I’d like to reiterate my problems with how the writers used Marissa after the private prison reveal. I don’t have much more to say than what I wrote last week, but it’s another example of the same problem. Marissa objecting to Wackner’s court because she notices what it’s becoming and how Cord plans to use it for political gain (two Illinoises (??) changes the Senate and the Electoral College...) always was going to be part of the endgame. Marissa only seriously objecting after the fourth or fifth line Wackner crosses feels bizarre.  
Cord does NOT like that there is another court, and wants to protect Wackner’s IP. Wackner, as we saw last episode, does not feel threatened by the other court. In fact, he seems to be excited by it.  
I love Liz questioning Diane’s outfit like it’s unprofessional. It’s a little low-cut and showy, but I don’t think unprofessional is the word I’d use for it.  
Now they have 45 minutes to decide The Future Of The Firm and Diane wants to be considered a name partner. Oh, that debate is still raging?! Every time I think it’s done it comes back, which should probably be a sign to Diane that her options are to leave and start something new, jettison Madeline and the others, or step down. Staying on as name partner and calling it a black firm is just not an option.  
“Diane, there is a split in the firm that...” Liz starts, before asking some associates to leave the room. Ha! The reveal Liz and Diane aren’t alone is a pretty fun touch.
“The Black equity partners don’t want to be in your work group,” Liz informs Diane. “Because they think they’ll be punished by this firm?” Diane asks. “No, that’s paranoia. We don’t punish here,” Liz responds. “Of course you do. My fracking client. My union client. The Black lawyers who work on those cases—they're considered traitors” Diane says. “Because those CEOs are racists,” Liz counters.
Lots going on here, and I’m not sure I understand it all. Why would the equity partners—who are partners—feel like they’re being punished by being in Diane’s work group? (And also what does a “work group” mean and why haven’t they talked about it in the past?) When Diane starts talking about the lawyers who staff her clients, she’s not talking about equity partners; she is talking about associates.
And people are giving associates shit for working on Diane’s clients whom they happen to be staffed on!? That’s sad, though believable.
“So what do we do? Only bring in clients who can pass the racial smell test?” Diane asks. I mean, actually, yes. IF the goal is to be a black firm and to have that designation mean something in moral terms rather than marketing terms, then yes.  
“It’s okay if you’re a drug kingpin like Rivi, but it’s not okay if you want me as lead attorney?” Diane says. Also, yes. Diane makes good points here.  
“Diane, this is not about you,” Liz counters. Um, sure, but it has to be about something, Liz. Unless you’re trying to build a firm you don’t control that makes 88% of its revenue from a drug dealer (40 million out of 45 million this quarter = 88%; I told you they shouldn’t give me numbers) but happens to have black people in charge, you have to grapple with this question. I don’t think anyone who’s fighting for the firm to be a black-led (not owned, bc STRL) business is the type of person who thinks that having a black-led firm that does all the same shit as any other firm is in itself a good thing, so you NEED to address your client list. Madeline is anti-Rivi, anti-Cord, anti-Wolfe-Coleman (the rapist guy), pro-social justice, and pro having a black led firm.  
“I mean, why... why do white people personalize this?” Liz asks. “Oh, now I’m just a white person?” Diane responds. I... don’t know what to do with this! Liz is right that Diane is taking this personally; Diane is right that Liz needs to deal with the rest of the client list. But no one is saying the things that REALLY need to be said: That all their decisions are meaningless in the shadow of STRL, and that deciding to be a black led firm isn’t the end of the discussion if they haven’t decided what types of clients they want to have.  
“What happened, Liz? Last year we were intent on an all-female-run law firm,” Diane starts. Oh, THIS AGAIN! Diane never learns, does she? She never seems to realize that no one she’s approached with this idea is NEARLY as in love with it as she is. She probably still wonders to herself why Alicia—who partnered with her at the end of season seven basically just because it was the easiest, most frictionless thing to do—didn't seem more committed to their firm.  
“Diane, there is history here that we are trying to...” Liz says, but Diane cuts in to note that women (women like Diane Lockhart!) have history too! In fact, she’s spent “35 years fighting gender discrimination to get to this position.” “And we have spent 400 years fighting racial discrimination to try and, you know...” Liz starts, before cutting herself off to get back to the ticking clock.
Sigh. Just talk about the actual thing instead of talking around the thing, guys. Diane is obviously deserving of A name partnership, in the abstract. This is an undeniable fact. And while Diane is definitely making this about herself rather than the big picture, I don’t think Liz trying to trump Diane’s 35 year career with the history of black people is going to win her any arguments? Like, just say what you mean and say it clearly. What Liz, I think, wants to express is that Diane’s individual accomplishments aren’t the issue here and everyone thinks she’s deserving (though Liz suggested Diane was not deserving a few episodes ago, which I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now). The problem is that Diane is trying to fight a battle that’s about something much larger than herself with, “but I'm a good lawyer!”  
And that’s KIND OF what Liz is saying here, if I add all her sentences up and read between the lines, but, again, why not just say it?  
“Alright, now we have 43 minutes to fix race relations, gender relations. STR Laurie’s gonna fire our asses, and you know it,” Liz says. I am curious what that would look like. Wouldn’t that just mean that STRL wouldn’t control them anymore? I’m sure being fired would be bad and all, but wouldn’t it free them from the contract they wanted out of last year?  
“Let’s split the firm down the middle. I hire half the lawyers, you hire the other half,” Diane suggests. What does this mean? Why are you hiring your employees? Huh?
“You hire the white associates, and I hire the black associates?” Liz confirms. This seems like a very bad idea that would make things a lot worse and open them up to lawsuits! I also still do not know what they’re even talking about. And I don’t know why Allegra isn’t a part of this conversation.
“I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying it’s what we’re left with. It's what we can agree on,” Diane says. I really wish I understood what “hire” meant in this context because I don’t understand why they have to split anything or why this has to be done now and I don’t understand why this would possibly be a good solution. Can you imagine the backlash when people realize all the white people report to Diane and all the black people to Liz and that people were taken off of the accounts they’ve worked on for years to accomplish this? And this must be something that the employees would know about eventually; otherwise they could just randomly assign half to Liz and half to Diane.  
I’m sad Madeline isn’t in this episode because I feel like we needed to see more of her POV as well as the associate POV. I don’t really understand the divides at play within the firm or what the staff and other partners are asking for, but I suspect it isn’t this.
Hallucination Jesus is back, and at least there’s actually a point to him this time (he shows up when Jay is in Vinetta’s court and reminds Jay that Vinetta will rule based on her religious beliefs). I still dislike the hallucinations.
Jay advises Marissa, who is Jewish, to talk a lot about Jesus in her defense.  
Charmaine Bingwa is really great as Carmen, and obviously she is not fluent in Spanish, but it’s so funny to me that the only time you can hear that she’s Australian is when she’s trying to say Oscar like she’s speaking Spanish.  
"I know you’re hiding something when you speak English,” Rivi says to Carmen. Heh.  
“Community court” is such a nice, unthreatening term for referring to Wackner and his copy cats. Thanks for that, Carmen!
It’s a smart plan to mention Jesus a lot, I guess, but Jay and Marissa both should’ve realized that Vinetta is too smart to tolerate obvious pandering. I’m a little surprised Jay doesn’t get up and argue since Marissa is, obviously, not familiar with the New Testament.  
Marissa wins this round with facts and logic.
Why is the judge who was handling Rivi’s previous charge now in bond court? Make it make sense.
I like that Carmen calls out the ASA for swearing hahaha  
Why... would this Matteo kid just casually mention he was holding a gun, omg.  
In Vinetta’s court, you can be charged with murder and tried because... you had a gun and also there were murders at other times. Coolcoolcool no problems here.
Community courts for civil cases? Sure. That’s basically arbitration. Community courts for criminal cases? Bad, bad, bad idea.  
Vinetta’s reasoning: “Those murders happened on our street, and the police haven’t convicted anyone because they don’t care. We care. This is self-defense. And how is it different from your court?” Aside from the whole imprisoning people in her basement thing, Vinetta’s not wrong. I almost brought this up last week but hesitated because I couldn’t remember the details enough to decide if I wanted to recommend it, but there’s a book I read a few years ago that seems relevant here: Ghettoside by Jill Leovy. Again, been a while so don’t take this as a wholehearted endorsement or anything, but from what I remember, the central issue at the heart of the book (it’s non-fiction) is that a poor black community (I think in LA?) doesn’t trust the police (in part) because the police don’t solve murders, and then with no way of getting justice through the court system, there’s more violence as a stand-in for justice. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12631962/ghettoside-jill-leovy-black-crime
I’m not sure if that’s QUITE what Vinetta is saying but it seems similar, and it’s a decent point (though not a justification for her court). Why should she trust the system to improve her community when it’s ignored her community for years?
I like that the writers chose two very different, very understandable characters for their community courts. It’s easy to see why Wackner and Vinetta feel the need for alternative courts; it’s easy to see why others would trust them. This arc doesn’t really work unless there’s a legitimate frustration with existing systems...  
Marissa calls Wackner’s court a “joke,” which she should understand by now isn’t the case. (Marissa’s smart; she knew it wasn’t a joke the second she saw David Cord get involved.)  
Vinetta accuses Wackner of copying her court, which alarms Marissa. This isn’t addressed again, and I don’t know if it’s true! I could really go either way on this. On the one hand, I absolutely believe that Wackner saw/heard about it, liked it, and did it himself without thinking much of it—and if this is the case, then the ending where Vinetta gets in trouble for violating Wackner’s IP is a lot more of a gut punch. On the other hand, I don’t really feel like the seeds for this were planted. We see Wackner innovate a lot and try new things and he has an explanation for why he does everything—how much of that is Vinetta? And Vinetta clearly watches the show and likes it or she wouldn’t have recognized Marissa, so it’s a little hard for me to just believe her claim when literally all I know about her is she has a court that looks like Wackner’s and she is aware of and feels positively towards Wackner rules. Also, Wackner knows about Vinetta’s court (from Marissa) and sounded excited about it last episode. Sure, he didn’t necessarily know which one it was, exactly, but I assume if he’d copied the idea and then heard about a case involving people from the exact same community where he found the idea... his reaction would be different. So IDK. My reasons for doubting Vinetta’s claim are probably based a little too much in things I’m not meant to spend that much time paying attention to.  
“I fucked up. It’s in the same court, but now it’s a murder case,” Marissa tells Diane. I do like hearing characters admit when they fucked up!  
Diane hears that STRL is delayed, so she heads out to help Matteo. When she goes to change into her pantsuit, she finds that she’s grabbed Kurt’s bag by mistake. “Of course. That makes sense,” she reacts.  
Diane pushes her flight to the next day, also telling Kurt, “And yes, for some reason, I took your suit instead of mine, so fuck it.” I love it when the characters feel like real people.  
I am not sure why Kurt is getting to the office when Diane is leaving or why Kurt is there—to pick Diane up on the way to the airport, maybe?
Carter Schmidt walks into RL at the worst possible time, threating to blow up the Plum Meadow deal. Another 5x10 to Wife 5x22 similarity: he’s in both episodes.  
Liz heads out to help Carmen with Rivi, and then STRL arrives. Oops.  
Credits!
One thing about Wackner’s court that should definitely be a warning sign even though it seems noble: he ignores just about every warning sign, like this rowdy crowd screaming WE LOVE YOU WACKNER or the potential interests at play in a case about secession, because he thinks his fair judgement can overcome these obstacles. If the world worked that way, there’d be no need for his court in the first place.
Is anyone representing the State of Illinois in this trial? If not, then... how is it happening?  
Dr. Goat, some dude who claims to have some hidden historical document about how Illinois is actually two states, is clearly making stuff up and yet Wackner indulges him and Cord. I feel about this the same way as I feel about the Devil’s Advocate: That Wackner would not allow this to go on for more than five seconds before calling bullshit and therefore there is no reason I should have to sit through it.
Why is some guy screaming, “No taxation without representation” like dude you absolutely have representation. But of course, I’m expecting him to be logical, and the point is that he is not.
Dr. Goat’s Latin phrases—shock!-- don’t actually translate into anything like what he said. Even though this information is verifiable by a quick google search, the crowd starts screaming “Liar!!!!” at Marissa. If only I could say this felt unrealistic.
Wackner asks Dr. Goat to bring in the document.  
“You look like you’re heading to the beach,” Vinetta says to Diane, who looks like she’s heading somewhere but definitely not to the beach. Vinetta asks where Diane was headed on vacation. Diane says she’s headed to Lake Como, and unnecessarily clarifies that “It’s in Italy.” She assumes Vinetta doesn’t know that... but Vinetta does.
“So you’ve been there before?” Vinetta probes when Diane says it’s beautiful there. “Just once. We don’t get away often. We thought we’d splurge,” Diane says. Vinetta stares at her and smiles, and Diane hits her head on a basket that’s hanging in Vinetta’s kitchen. If I just write out the dialogue here, it sounds like a perfectly average conversation, but everything about this conversation is so charged: Diane is afraid to look like a wealthy white woman; Vinetta’s pleasantness is pretty clearly also a way of sizing up Diane.  
Vinetta shows Diane pictures of neighborhood children and young adults killed as a consequence of gang violence. You can see she’s not trying to do anything other than help her community, even if her methods are highly questionable.
Diane argues that Matteo should be given over to the police; Vinetta disagrees: “The police haven’t arrested anyone for those murders, any of these. Since the BLM movement, they’ve pulled back from our streets. No one’s coming to help. That’s why I started this court. It’s not a joke to us.” Wait I’m sorry did Vinetta just blame lack of good detective work in black communities on... the BLM movement?!?!?! Is there any foundation to this!? Why can’t it just be that the police weren’t actually doing a good job of policing/finding justice and were being antagonistic towards the community instead of being helpful and no one trusted them?? That explanation is literally right there.
Jay suggests the Jesus strategy, again.  
“It’s women! We could just move on, install men,” STRL guy says. I don’t know if he’s joking, but ugh. Also, what is RL if it has neither Diane nor Liz? A bunch of lawyers who will all promptly quit when they see their bosses get fired and a few opportunists?  
Kurt is watching golf in Diane’s office, and the STRL people love it. Of course Kurt accidentally makes friends with them.  
Court stuff happens. It’s not good for Rivi, and then Liz and Carmen come up with a theory: Plum Meadow is stalling the deal so they can find Rivi’s more stable second and make a deal with them instead.  
Wackner giving Dr. Goat a single point on his stupid little board, for any reason related to his obviously fake totally unverified document, is dangerous. Why would you signal to a crowd that’s clearly not interested in fact that they have a point? That’s basically egging them on.
I know Wackner’s judgment is obviously not 100% sound—need I remind you of the PRIVATE PRISONS?-- but I thought it was more sound than this.  
Wackner shows off his knowledge of paper and proves that Dr. Goat’s document is a fake. Why... did he just give Dr. Goat a point???  
Or is he moving the point from Dr. Goat to Marissa?  
Dr. Goat sounds like a fake name I would call a character in my recaps long past the point of anyone other than myself remembering the joke. (See: Mr. Elk)
“The truth is ugly. The only thing uglier is not pursuing it,” Wackner tells Marissa. How is taking on a case about very obvious falsehoods, funded by someone with a vested interest in the case, that gets people riled up, some noble pursuit of truth?  
STRL and Kurt are now drinking and discussing hunting, while Diane’s arguing for Matteo in Vinetta’s living room. Vinetta is—as was always obvious, sorry Jay—far too smart to fall for this patronizing bullshit. She screams at Diane and plays back a recording (on a baby monitor) of Diane coaching Matteo to lie about his faith.
Soooooo yeah no you can’t do that, that is bad, recording conversations between lawyers and their clients is not good even if it leads to you exposing their schemes...
Then Vinetta places Diane under arrest, which obviously isn’t going to end well for Vinetta.  
Liz and Carmen suggest a post-nup to Rivi to see if Isabel is planning on turning on him.
“I’m going to have to kill her,” Rivi says sadly. I don’t think Rivi will ever kill Isabel because we already did that with Bishop.  
I’m going to assume that Diane chooses to stay in basement prison instead of calling one of the many, MANY, MANY people she could call to get her out/take down Vinetta because she doesn’t want the situation to be publicized or further deteriorate. That said, it’s really not clear why Diane just accepts being sentenced to basement prison with a cell phone.  
Love the STRL man looking at that picture of Diane and HRC. They’ve gotten so much mileage out of that photo.  
Wackner’s court has no rules, but at least since it has no rules, I can’t complain about how its rules make no sense!  
What is this, debate practice?! Ugggghhhhh I can’t deal with this case for much longer.  
Marissa takes a breath, then decides to pursue a strategy she knows could blow everything up.
“Then why care what Judge Wackner decides? Why should you defer to him? Why defer to anyone?” Cord says that’s the point—the people have decided to trust Wackner. “So if you don’t like this court’s decision, you’ll just start a new one?” Marissa asks. “I guess,” Cord concedes.  
“So then why does this matter? This court?” “It matters only insofar as we continue to agree that it matters,” Cord says. “So if you don’t like Judge Wackner’s rulings, you can just ignore them and create a new court?”
Good point, Marissa. Good point. (Does this count as a thesis?)
“I’m guessing that I will like the way the judge decides,” Cord says. Well, that’s basically a threat.
Wackner takes a break and heads to chambers—without Marissa.  
Kurt goes to visit Diane in basement jail. He’s granted a conjugal visit, which means Matteo gets moved up to the bedroom so Diane and Kurt can have some alone time.
Diane is staring at an image of Lake Como in her cell. I thought it was odd she brought a printout of her vacation destination with her, so I LOVED the line where she explains that Vinetta printed it out for her. COLD. (You know who also would’ve done this if they’d for some reason had a basement prison? Bree Van de Kamp. You know what show DID do a basement prison arc I’d rather forget? Desperate Housewives!)  
I love how Diane responds to basement prison by making jokes non-stop.
“I thought the craziness would end with 2020,” Diane says. Nope.
Kurt brought alcohol; Diane brought pot gummies.  
I love that Kurt has never had pot before. I was going to say that I bet Diane’s had a few experiences with recreational drugs when I remembered we had a whole damn season of Diane microdosing.  
Christine and Gary’s acting and their chemistry really bring these basement prison scenes to life. The writing and directing are really sharp, but it’s the actors who make these scenes something special. You can tell Diane and Kurt love each other a lot. You can tell they’re disappointed about their vacation and exhausted by the chaos of the day. You can tell they’re in disbelief over this situation but also find it funny.  
Didn’t Rivi and Isabel have an adult daughter who died of COVID a few episodes ago? Weird she isn’t mentioned in this scene. Maybe from a different marriage/relationship?
Isabel called the SA’s office because she thinks Rivi’s a threat? I think this is a power play.
Heh, Carmen saying, “Shut a black woman up!?” in disbelief in court. Love it.  
Isabel instead flips her story and supports her husband and fights for his release. With no intervention from Plum Meadow, this gets the judge to free Rivi. I don’t really understand what’s happened here or why. I get the resolution, but I don’t get why Isabel called the SA or why this went away so quickly. I still don’t even get why Rivi’s been arrested.
Diane and Kurt put up Christmas lights for ambiance and talk about how they never go on vacation.
“I wanna see the pyramids on this coast!” drunk & high Kurt insists, hilariously. “I mean hemisphere. I like the Aztecs. They, they care about people.” I’m not going to transcribe the rest of the dialogue because it loses its magic when you’re not watching the scene.  
After some fun banter about travel and movies, Diane changes the topic. “I should quit, shouldn’t I? That judge upstairs? She looked at me like I was the most entitled white bitch on the planet. And that’s the way they look at me at work.”
Kurt tries to say that’s not true, but Diane knows it is: “Yes they do. I’m the top Karen. And why do I care? I mean, I... I could find another firm. I could quit. I can’t impose my will on people who don’t want me.”
YES. I see a lot of debate over what the “right” thing to do is here. But I think we are long past “right” and “wrong.” At a certain point, this stops being about absolute moral truths. If Diane doesn’t have the respect of her partners and employees, that is a very real problem for the firm and for Diane. How can she continue to impose her will on a firm that doesn’t want her, all the while claiming to be an ally? (The back half of that sentence is the most important part.) Forget whether or not Diane “should” have to step down. Forget what’s “fair.” If the non-Diane leadership of RL thinks the firm should be a black firm, and the employees of RL think so too, and Diane just doubles down on her white feminism, she’s creating an even bigger problem for herself and ruining her reputation in the process.  
Kurt stands up on the prison cot and warns Diane she might make a decision she’ll regret. This scene is so cute. Why can’t other shows do drug trips where the characters just act silly and have great chemistry? Why does it always have to be some profound meditation on death whenever characters get high?
“I think I like starting over. I like the chutes and ladders of life. I mean, I want the corner office, but then I wanna slip back to the beginning and fight for the corner office. I mean, I think maybe it’s better that I don’t get the top spot,” Diane says. LOVE to hear her admit this. I’m not sure I would’ve come to this conclusion on my own, and it sounds like it’s a bit more about how the writers like to write (you know, the “we love our characters to always be underdogs”) than Diane, but... you know what? I believe it. I fully believe it. Diane LOVES to fight, LOVES to feel like she’s in the right, LOVES power plays and to be making progress. She LOVES winning. The fact that she isn’t just choosing to retire right now, even though she’s past retirement age and has a great reputation, is in itself enough for me to believe that she would find it fun to repeatedly start over.
Plus, it’s a fun new direction for the show to take in season six, because they’ll get the same sense of conflict without the actual conflict. This season’s arc was firm drama and resulted in a firm name change... but it didn’t feel like a knock-off of Hitting the Fan. Diane trying to work her way back into power (I assume by becoming a better actual ally, otherwise doesn’t she just end up in the same exact situation?) should also provide conflict without being repetitive.
Hahahahahaha Kurt immediately reacting to this serious statement by being incredibly silly and horny and then Diane singing “I Touch Myself” to him, man, I love these two. I want to know the story behind this song choice.
Wackner emerges from his chambers. The score is tied. Wackner calls Cord corrupt and notes that they can’t just decide to call Downstate Illinois a new state based on his ruling. Now it’s thesis time!
“I was taken by Mr. Cord’s arguments of individualism. So much of our country has been built on people finding their own way, not being held back by bureaucracy. Yet, if we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos. And that was not the point of this court. Or at least not my point. Judgment for the defense. There will be no Downstate Illinois.”
“If we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos.” is probably the clearest of the many theses of this episode. To recap, we have:
(1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. (4) Institutions only exist when we collectively agree they exist (5) Individualism = chaos.  
But let’s put a pin in this for now and let the chaos of individualism play out.  
The crowd does not like Wackner’s decision, and decides that an appropriate way to express their displeasure is to make anti-Semitic remarks towards Marissa and then start throwing chairs. What nice people.  
As the crowd goes totally 1/6 on Wackner’s court (thanks for pointing this out to me, Ryan—I cannot believe I didn’t make the connection myself!), the door slamming into the desk finally pays off since Marissa and Wackner are able to use it to keep the crowd from reaching them.  
They immediately turn to the police, or they would, if they could get service. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that as soon as things get bad, they want to involve the existing system.  
Wackner Rules is, somehow, still taping in the midst of all the chaos. I don’t know if I think they’d air this, but someone certainly would. (I wonder if any of the cameras we see in these scenes are actually the cameras filming the other angles of the riot.)  
Cord shakes his head and walks out, unharmed.  
“You think they’ll kill us?” “I think they might,” Marissa and Wackner fret.  
“My dad said the whole world would be a better place if everybody realized they were in the minority. ‘No matter where you are,’ he said, ‘Make sure you keep an eye on the exits, and make sure you’re closer to the exit than the Cossacks are to the entrance.’” Marissa says. Love Eli Gold coming through with thesis number 6 (and maybe thesis number 7).  
“Your dad sounds a little paranoid,” Wackner says, correctly. Remember how I mentioned I accidentally wound up watching 5x22? Eli calls Alicia and responds to her hello with, “DISASTER!!!!” I miss him.
“He was, but he wasn’t wrong. He said, ‘Stay away from parades. They’re cute until they’re not. And don’t trust any pope who was Hitler Youth.” “What’s that law called?” “Godwin’s Law. My dad said anybody who argued for Godwin’s Law has never been near an actual crowd. Crowds love you, they hug you. Then they grab a gun and try to kill you.”
“Why? Why do they do that?” “I don’t know. Hate is fun. It’s clear-cut.”  
I really like all of this. It is a little preachy, but it isn’t wrong and it’s self-aware. And, more importantly, it’s in character. I absolutely believe that Marissa would tell lots of stories about Eli in a moment of extreme stress. It’s nostalgic, probably comforting, and it also helps her feel like she’s on the right side with the right arguments. So, even backed into a corner, she’s still a winner: she has theory on her side.  
Wackner speaks a foreign language (I do not know what language but I wish I did) and says, “A guy could get killed doing this,” which makes him and Marissa laugh as things crash around them.
Idk about you all, but I couldn’t really get myself to actually worry about their safety during this scene. Maybe Wackner’s, just a little, but I got the sense we were supposed to focus more on the chaos and destruction and monologuing than on the actual danger. That’s not to say the stakes didn’t feel high, but rather to say that this didn’t feel like an action sequence where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. The point was to watch the court fall and think about why it fell, not to worry about if Marissa would live.  
Diane and Kurt are woken up by sirens and loud noises. The cops arrive and are shocked to find professionally dressed white people in a basement cell. They let Diane and Kurt out with compassion, but scream, “don’t you fucking move” to the people on the floor.
“It’s okay, they didn’t do anything,” Diane says. This is, as I theorized earlier, probably why Diane just sits there until her punishment blows over instead of escalating things.  
If the cops weren’t there to free Diane, why were they there? Why, because they like David Cord and David Cord has gotten Chicago PD officers to protect Wackner’s IP.  
If I had to say one thing in favor of Vinetta being the originator of the community court idea, it would be that it’s SUCH a gut punch to watch Diane and Kurt walk away from their bizarre little adventure as Vinetta gets arrested in the background, and it hits ten times as hard if Vinetta’s only being charged because some white guy is claiming IP that’s actually hers.
(I think Vinetta is probably, at this point, actually being arrested for imprisoning people illegally, but, still.)
“Pfft. Some judge,” one of the cops who adores Wackner says of Vinetta. Racist much?  
Marissa and Wackner emerge from the backroom. “I think I better get back to work,” she says, meaning her RL job. "Me too,” Wackner says, grabbing a Copy Coop apron. He’s an employee of ten years.  
I don’t think this lands as well as it’s meant to. I think the point is supposed to be that Wackner’s just some guy—not a billionaire, not an academic, not a judge, not a lawyer—with an idea. But it’s a little too neat. And it doesn’t explain how Wackner financed his court initially, nor does it explain why he has basically unlimited access to Copy Coop space and resources. I’d buy it if he were the OWNER of Copy Coop, but I have so many questions about him being an employee.  
Diane tells Liz she’s actually going on vacation this time, and they laugh about how Kurt bonded with STRL.
“I want you and Allegra to be name partners. I’ll be an equity partner,” Diane says. “Why?” Liz asks. “Five years ago, when I hit rock bottom, this firm took me in. So I don’t like the idea of splitting this firm in two. And I can’t lead if no one will follow.” “And your clients?” “We’ll manage them together.” YES! I love this. I don’t love it because I necessarily think it had to go this way, but because it’s so refreshing to see Diane say that she actually is willing to take a step back because she cares about the firm and the people there more than she cares about being a name partner. This isn’t something we usually see. When we hear “this firm took x in” it’s usually being said incredulously against someone who’s decided to leave and steal clients (cough, Hitting the Fan, cough).  
It’s been pretty clear for most of this arc that Diane and Liz like working together and they like their firm, but that no one (other than Diane, I guess) is willing to let RL lose its status as a black firm, and that the employees and equity partners weren’t going to be satisfied until Diane stepped down. Diane really had three options: Stay and piss everyone off and claim the whole firm for herself, quit and go somewhere else and totally abandon the good working dynamic she had, or step down and put her money where her mouth is.  
Also yeah the clients were never actually going to be an issue! They were only an issue because Diane intentionally went about informing them she was stepping down in a way she knew would make them worry!  
“I think I need to prove myself,” Diane says. I’m not sure that’s the key issue or that she can ever prove herself fully, but we’ll worry about that next year.
“I missed you,” Liz says. “I’m here,” Diane replies. “I know. Thank you,” Liz says.  
Diane decides she’s going to move downstairs so Allegra can have her office. I think there’s another office on this floor, since she, Adrian and Liz all had offices. This feels a little bit like Diane’s in love with the idea of making things difficult for herself and maybe hasn’t fully grasped the point, but, you know, I’ll take it.  
Diane tells Kurt her decision and he asks if it was the right thing to do. She says she doesn’t know—but she says it with a smile. Kurt notes he’s going hunting next month with the STRL folks and will put in a good word for her. Ah, yes, because STRL still controls all of this and all of this is moot! Thanks for the reminder Kurt! Diane says she wants in on the hunting trip. Of course.  
And the elevator doors close. Remember how closing elevator doors was a motif earlier this season??? It’s back!
Then we get a little coda with Wackner Rules airing a new episode that’s just violence and destruction. This sequence seems to straddle the line between being there for thematic reasons for the viewers and there to show what happened in the show’s universe, but I think it’s main purpose is theme, so I will not go on a full rant questioning why Del would want to air this.
A white blonde lady in an apron watches the destruction of Wackner Rules. She looks concerned. “That was violet,” she says with dismay. And then we see she’s holding a guy in a jail cell in her kitchen.  
And then we see other courts, as America the Beautiful plays. One’s in a garage debating kicking someone out of the neighborhood; another is across the street about the same case. There’s one in Oregon about secession. There’s one among Tiki Torch Nazis deciding only white people can own property. There’s (inexplicably) one about pronouns. There’s one with arm wrestling, one that happens while sky diving, and a bunch of others. It’s pretty ridiculous, and not necessarily in a good way. It feels at once like the natural extension of the Wackner Rules show and like an over the top parody you’d see on another show. Tiki Torch Nazis screaming “only white people can own property!” is the opposite of subtle writing. Tonally, this sequence feels more like the zany humor of Desperate Housewives or the insanity of BrainDead than anything TGF has done before (and TGF’s been plenty surreal), and it doesn’t quite work for me. It feels like it is trying to prove a point in the corniest, most on the nose way possible. It almost feels like it’s parodying its own plotlines.  
On my first watch, this ending for Wackner left me stumped. I knew the writers were making an argument against individualism (Wackner’s speech + the repeated references to The Apprentice) and cults of personality. But I couldn’t figure out a real life analogue to Wackner’s court, and since this ending was so obviously trying to be About Something, that bugged me. Sure, that last sequence could be an argument against people making community courts, but WERE people making community courts? I didn’t see the urgency.
And then I talked to @mimeparadox. And as soon as he said that it was about factions and people playing by their own sets of rules beyond the justice system, it clicked. I’d been looking for Wackner’s plot to be a commentary on the legal system. It is much broader than that. It’s a commentary on the weakening of democratic systems (the Big Lie, etc.), more broadly, and Wackner and his common-sense approach are just a way to get liberal viewers to go along for the ride.  
Now that I understand the point, or what I think is the point, I like this conclusion. Circumventing the system leads to chaos; that’s why we have institutions and bureaucracy, and I think the show is arguing that these institutions should still be respected despite their flaws. The many theses of this episode all come together to make this point (though the reality TV stuff is a little more tenuous and I'm a little shocked we got through all of this without any commentary on social media?): If we stop having a shared belief in institutions and instead follow individual leaders (whom we may learn about through reality TV), the rules will stop mattering and we’ll end up with a fractured country and widespread violence.  
But, and maybe this is just about me being upset I missed both the obvious 1/6 parallels AND the point of the arc the first time through this episode (my defensive side feels the need to also note I first watched this episode at like 5 am when I was barely awake), I don’t know that I actually think this episode does a great job of driving its point home. There are SO many moving pieces to the Wackner plot and SO many references. There are so many threads we never return to from earlier in the season, and there’s so much that strains credulity (like Wackner taking Dr. Goat seriously for more than a split second). It’s pretty clear what the themes are—even though I’m saying I missed the point my first time through, I've hit on all these themes separately in past recaps and posts—but, I dunno, something about this episode just feels scattered. Maybe it’s all the moving pieces, maybe it’s all the moments where it sounds like the characters are voicing related ideas that don’t quite snap together to form one coherent picture, or maybe it’s that Wackner’s plot gets two endings (the actual ending + the coda) and it’s up to the viewer to put together how they relate.
I really don’t know. At the end of the day, I think there was a little too much going on with Wackner and that the writers needed to use the episodes between the private prison reveal and the finale to narrow—not broaden—the scope of what they were trying to do with Wackner. But I also think that what they were doing with Wackner was really, really smart and original. I don’t think I can overstate how impressed I am that the writers took an idea that sounded, frankly, awful when I first heard about it and turned it into something captivating and insightful that I was happy to spend nine weeks watching.  
Overall, a few bad episodes aside, I thought season five was the strongest season of TGF yet. I haven’t seen this show be so focused in... well, maybe ever. Having two overarching plots that received consistent development and felt like they were happening in the same universe at the same time REALLY helps make season five feel like a coherent whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch it.  
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appples · 3 years
Text
Oh, Cats (4/10)
pairing: Aizawa x Reader (OC)
genre/warning: 18+
words: 1535
summary: An average girl with a cat quirk starting over in a new city, as typical as usual. Until it’s not. You drop into someone’s life unannounced and not necessarily wanted.
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Walking past the UA gates, you felt invincible. Since your confrontation with Aizawa, you launched into training in the evenings; self-confidence inflating rapidly. This was the first time you had left UA without hiding any of your features. Although you didn’t often go, if at all. Feeling like you don’t need to hide was still a very new sensation. People always looked as you walked by, but fewer than you remember pointed. It’s not often cat feature quirks manifest in this particular way. The heavier cat-like influence was more common, resulting in realistic heads of paws.
Out of all the things you could have missed the most, it was merely sounds of everyday life. People were so happy and oblivious to what heroes had to do to protect them. Without a plan, you wander the streets. Meandering in back alleys, meeting some local cats. Hours passed before you knew it and started to look at going home. Abruptly a bad feeling washed over you as you stood still. Unaware until now, there had been a coordinated effort to try and funnel you to a specific location where you currently were. How could I be so naïve to think this wouldn’t happen? People don’t change. Looking around and surveying the area gave you a brief advantage. You saw something racing towards you on the ground and jumped to the side. As you jumped, you saw it was a tentacle; aware, there must be a second coming soon. It wrapped itself around your ankle and pulled you backward, you tried slashing at it, but it made no difference. Knocked down, you try to break free. Another man emerged from the shadows holding his hands forward in front of himself. Nets eject from his fingertips, ensnaring you further. Finally, the third accomplice appeared, pleased with the finished task.
“Bind her hands, watch she doesn’t scratch you” the three men laughed above you. The tentacle began to move its way up to your legs, searching for something.
“No, stop! Please stop!” you were trying to kick at the tentacle with your free leg, but it only continued to rise. Inching closer and closer to your underwear, snatching at them in attempts to pull them down. There was a swift thick, wet sound. You looked down at the tipoffs, the tentacle still hanging on to your panties, now detached from the arm it belonged to.
“Ahh, what the fuck, man?! That was my fucking arm!” The tentacle man was screaming over his loss.
“It’ll grow back.” Aizawa emerged from the shadows. Unfazed, he practically danced in front of you. Releasing his capture weapon, he sent it around the man's throat with the net finger quirk, then another around the third man. Aizawa crossed his arms over, sending the two men crashing into each other. Having wounded the last man already, Aizawa bound him with the capture weapon. You were still on the ground when he walked up to you, standing up, avoiding his gaze.
“T-thank you.” You squeaked. “I was in a little over my head.”
“What the fuck happened” he snapped at you. Until this point, you had never actually seen Aizawa angry. You thought you did but had now been shown how incorrect you were.
“I just wanted some time away from UA, a -and they followed me” your words shook as a response to the ordeal you had just been through.
“If you can’t protect yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be leaving campus. What if a student saw you and decided today they were going to be the hero? What if they were hurt or killed?” Staring at the ground, you bit your tongue in an attempt not to cry.
“Did you even think of that?” He had moved closer. His shouts grew louder and more accusatory in tone. “Did you?!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t give a fuck, how sorry you are.” He paused and collected his thoughts, pinching the bridge of his nose. Stepping back from you as he realized how close he had gotten. “If you can’t take care of yourself off-campus, then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching,” his words stung like the tears in your eyes. You knew he was right, as much as you hated to admit it. You were too weak to keep yourself safe, so why should you have any agency over students. You’re supposed to be protecting them, not the other way around.
“Just go back to campus. I will take these guys in and leave you out of the incident report. Neither you nor the school needs the extra attention right now.” You nodded your head and turned to leave, digging your claws into your fists as you stiffly held them by your sides.
Aizawa watched you leave before returning his attention to the task at hand. He hadn’t realized how furious he was with you at first, and it caught him off guard. It wasn’t logical. But how could you be so careless, had your time at UA really taught you nothing? What if he hadn’t shown up or showed up too late? The thought made him sick to his stomach. There were reasons why he didn’t have close relations with most people in his life. Aizawa always tried to maintain enough distance between the two of you, but it didn’t seem to be making any difference. He still refused to admit to himself how much he cared about you, instead following the safe route and shutting you out.
To get ready for the workweek, you had come up with responses to just about any question someone could ask about the injury’s leftover. Most of the noticeable abrasions you were easily able to hide under clothing. Unfortunately, some around your neck and face were a little trickier. Your colleagues left you alone for the most part, merely asking how you were g. It gave the impression that these sorts of things operate on don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Once the initial discomfort went away, you were left with your classes with Aizawa. You would have just about traded for anything else right now. Neither of you went out of your way to speak to the other, interacting as minimally together as possible. Thankfully it did provide some reprieve. At the end of one of your shared afternoon blocks, you had to turn over some marking you had completed, making eye contact as you place them on his desk. He stared up at you. Tired would be an understatement; he looked exhausted. Eyes redder than usual, and his facial had was longer than you had ever seen him let it go. Ripping your hands away from the paper, your fingers yearned to reach out and touch him, but you turned towards the door and left before your heart could overrule your mind. Despite having walked away from Aizawa, you could see your last conversation with him on replay.
“What if a student saw you and decided today, they were going to be the hero. What if they were hurt or killed?”
“If you can’t take care of yourself off-campus, then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching.”
Could you have had made the wrong decision when taking this job? What were the students even gaining from you being there? Sitting back down at your desk, you start to seriously consider quitting your job. Brows furrowed deep in distress. After turning your computer on, you make quick work to find a resignation template. Writing it made you feel good, like you were in power, that this was your decision to make. Finishing it, you read it over. It kind of felt like you were running away. This wasn’t supposed to be about you. It was for the students. Your feelings for the final decision should take second priority.
Forging on, you sent the document to the printer, waiting for the finished product. Holding it in your hands made it feel much more real, heavier. Sighing, you lean on the nearest desk. Something rustled as you leaned up. Without realizing it, you had sat at Aizawa’s desk. It was full of papers with coffee ring stains and empty jelly drink containers—a reminder of his bad habit you had picked up. You hated cooking, and the supplement drinks weren’t the worst. Aizawa knew what these kids needed better than anyone. And he spoke the truth about your lack of self-reliance and ability being a hindrance to them. It started to feel like your head might burst. You had been thinking about this so hard over the last few days. Is it okay to continue believing that I add value to their education, something because of who I am and cannot be replaced with someone else? With another sigh, you look up at the ceiling, lights screaming at you. But what was really bothering you, what were you avoiding?
Of course, it was Shouta. You wish you could take back how you felt, gather it all together in your arms and pull it back in. Sometimes it bordered on hating how you felt. Giving someone that much power and influence over yourself only ever ended in anguish. Then what do you do? How do you continue to move forwards and push past these obstacles? What is it that I can’t stop myself from falling for? Could it be something I’m searching for and missing in myself?
Your eyes closed as you stood up from the desk. Opening them, you walked back over to your desk and began to open your bag.
“I think there should be…Aha!” you withdrew two jelly pouches. Assessing the flavors, you chose your preference and placing the other on Aizawa’s desk, separate from the empties. The poor guy really did need to talk better care of himself. At least you seem to hold that advantage. Feeling a little more optimistic, realizing that Aizawa was also human. He didn’t have everything covered all the time. You left work for the day reviewing and reanalyzing everything you had just thought about.
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mneiai · 3 years
Note
alpha/obi-wan, Mandalorian Empire AU? If you're interested
Alpha-17/Obi-Wan, Mandalorian Empire AU!
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Jedi didn’t last long as Mandalorian prisoners--it was something they learned as Padawans, horrible stories filtering their ways down of just what had happened to this Knight or that Master captured on the field of battle. Jedi weren’t often Mandalorian prisoners, at least. Capturing a Jedi alive was hard to do.
Mostly, that was because the Mandalorians gave as good as they got, they wanted an epic battle against a trained Force user, wanted a fight to the death that could be glorious even if they didn’t win. Obi-Wan had known something was wrong the moment he faced down a group of Mandalorian supercommandos and they had their weapons set to stun. He'd almost gotten away, still. Then, because he worried they wanted some information out of him, almost fell on his own saber, but they'd gotten in closer enough to knock him unconscious despite all his tricks. Waking up on a surprisingly comfortable bed in a fairly large prison cell, Obi-Wan had spent the last few hours trying to figure out an escape route with the limited information he could glean. There were no other prisoners nearby, there were holorecorders at every possible angle, overlapping each other so there would be no blind spots. The vents were far too small for him. He was not restrained, but there was no way to turn off the forcefield keeping him locked in the room that he could find. It was a cell designed to keep a Force sensitive in for a long period of time. When noise finally picked up, he didn't bother acting casual, simply stood in the center of his cell and stared down the hallway as the door opened--and saw a mantrap, with doors clearly shut on the other side, meaning he'd have to get through both layers to get to whatever was beyond. Only one figure approached, in silver and blue armor and blue kama and cape. No weapons visible, not even the hidden sort that Obi-Wan had learned to look out for over the years. "While these are lovely accommodations, I really don't have time for a vacation." Despite the vocoder, he could hear a snort of amusement in answer to his words. "Always in a hurry, Obi-Wan." The voice wasn't familiar, not through the speaker, but something about the tone--and certainly the familiar address-was. "You seem to have me at a disadvantage...." he trailed off, leaving the space for the other's name. When the helmet came off, Obi-Wan had the briefest moment to think "oh," before the seriousness of the situation crashed down upon him. He'd never met the dead Mand'alor used as a template for the Fett clones, of course, but he had met some of the clones--a three-way battle with the Sith had gone badly and he'd found himself with a wounded Master quickly on her way to joining the Force and three supercommandos, two of which were clones. Knowing that the Mandalorians had cloned an old Mand'alor over a century ago and had kept up the process was not the same as actually meeting them. They weren't the current Mand'alor, but they looked nearly identical to him. Would always look identical to the Mand'alor, unless some major changed happened in Mandalorian politics. This one was Ta’raysh E’tad, Seventeen, though he'd been called Tar'etad by one of the others who had been too delirious from pain to keep formal before a Jedi. They'd allied, temporarily, and four weeks later separated when they could finally flee out of sight of the Sith. Obi-Wan had thought the incident forgotten (had assumed, sometimes, that Tar'etad would go the way of many of the other clones going through their trials for Mand'alor-ship and die in battle). He'd never expected to see the man again. "...I don't suppose you are here to release me? For old time's sake?" When Tar'etad waved a hand signal towards one of the holorecorders and the field between them cut out, Obi-Wan froze in place, putting on the best mask he could to hide his worry. "You...are?" Tar'etad smirked. "Of course, it wouldn't be right to have you locked away." "That doesn't sound the same as releasing me." Still, Obi-Wan took cautious steps forward until he was out of the cell, standing just before Tar'etad. Who stared at him as though soaking him in, before raising a hand to cup Obi-Wan's cheek, ignoring the shocked offense and rising blush he caused. "I thought of you, after those weeks. The pretty jetii who worked so well with us, fitting in like you'd been made to be in our unit." Obi-Wan shivered at the growing implications. "When I came to power...I knew what reward I wanted to give myself, for winning." His calm expression faltered. "...You're the new Mand'alor?" Tar'etad chuckled, hand moving from Obi-Wan's cheek to grip the back of  his neck. "Don't worry, cyar'ika, I'm not expecting any formality in private." Flicking his eyes to the holorecorders, Obi-Wan replied, "And what exactly is it you're expecting from me?" He'd had to put down the other Jedi with him, to spare them a painful death, and then he'd spent four weeks with nothing but the Mandalorians as company. Watching each other's backs, hunting together, eventually trusting each other in some way. Intense emotions had accompanied it even for him, he couldn't imagine what Tar'etad must have been feeling, without the practice of acknowledging and releasing such things. That last night, drunk on the possibility of finally getting away from that Force forsaken planet, he'd let Tar'etad in far too close. Now, reminded of it, he could almost remember the feeling of those strong hands, those chapped lips. The offer for Obi-Wan to follow them back to the Mandalorian encampment instead of continue on alone to the Republic ships ringing in his ears once more. "I've followed your career. The jetiise keep trying to kill your spirit, but you're too mandokar for that." "Tar'etad--" "Do you know why I don't fear you running away if I don't keep you in that cell? We're in Keldabe, the heart of the Empire." Obi-Wan's heart sank at his matter-of-fact words. "By the time you figure your way out of here, you'll realize I was right all along, that you should have come with me." He barely registered when Tar'etad began to kiss him.
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zirkkun-uthcs · 3 years
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Generic Headcanons (Sanses)
This list includes short bits of information on the various Sanses to be included on this blog. If you’re looking for a specific one, please use CTRL+F to search for the AU, due to the length of this list. Reminder as well that most of this information is entirely headcanon. If there’s canon information that I’ve messed up somewhere on this, please let me know so I can fix it and adjust accordingly!
Please note: When answering asks, I will first list the character being requested in the format of AU!Sans, but the nicknames here are listed because sometimes I drift off while writing and lean towards those names.
Undertale
Nickname/s: Comic, Tale Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / asexual
+ takes a lot of time to like someone at all, usually by default doesn’t trust people + isn’t a fan of physical contact, but if someone was to manage to get close to him, he’s incredibly cuddly + horrible with directions, will get lost really easily; uses shortcuts to make up for it
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Underswap (original concept by p0pcornpr1nce, who has left the fandom and deleted the content)
Nickname/s: Blue Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: non-binary Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / bisexual
+ is a pun connoisseur; will only accept the best puns, anything less is just unacceptable + is emotional, but tries to hide it because he feels the need to keep on a strong persona for the sake of everyone else +  is secretly an incredibly talented writer and has a lot of written works in his room
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Underfell (original concept by Vic the Underfella)
Nickname/s: Red, Fell Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: panromantic / pansexual
+ is extremely self-conscious and hides this by acting like as much of a confident asshole as possible + crushes incredibly easy due to the lack of caring people he has in his life, but refuses to believe he’s lovable + secretly hates cats. doomfanger may or may not be the cause of this
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Underlust  (original concept by nsfwshamecave, who has left the fandom.)
Nickname/s: Lust, Lusty Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: biromantic / bisexual
+ is secretly a hopeless romantic, but has yet to meet anyone interested in romance over sex, so he takes what he can get + flirts with anything that breathes; has a plethora of horrible pick-up lines + has been outside of his own AU and is well-versed in the multiverse
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Xtale (by jakei)
Nickname/s: Cross Date of Birth: Oct. 10th Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / bisexual
+ has difficulty trusting anyone anymore due to the betrayal he’s had in the past + he finds comfort in doodling or other art-related things, and can often be found locked away for hours doing so + will wear literally anything but his uniform when no one’s around, no matter how stupid it looks
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Ink (by myebi/comyet) (same headcanons apply to Underverse!Ink)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: April 15 Height: 3′9″ / 116 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: aromantic / asexual
+ his ink vials’ colors represent: green = comfort/safety, yellow = joy/energy, orange = encouragement/creativity, red = wrath/violence, pink = love/care, purple = lust/attraction, blue = sadness/concern, cyan = calm/relaxed + refuses to ever drink his pink or purple vials anymore due to the fact he doesn’t want to mislead people into thinking he cares about them + his tastes change based on what emotions he’s feeling/ink he’s drank
character tag underverse-specific
Pale (by unu-nunu-art/unu-nunium)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: May 26th Height: 3′9″ / 116 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: aromantic / asexual
+ clings to people who help him literally only once, because he considers all nice gestures as “Oh, so we’re friends now?” + appreciates any and all physical contact and can get a bit nervous if he’s near someone but can’t hug them + when he absorbs an AU for emotions, he has even more emotions that Ink does, but it’s far more temporary
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Fresh!Ink (by myebi/comyet)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: ??? Height: 5′0″ / 152 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: aromantic / asexual
+ is a parasite like Fresh is, but isn’t the same exact one; they exist as separate beings + doesn’t ever really drink ink vials, hence why he’s replaced them with his spray cans entirely, which just contain normal pain + enjoys making large street-art style murals, but never keeps them, so he places them in hugely inconvenient parts of the multiverse just to annoy people
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Error (by loverofpiggies/CrayonQueen) (same headcanons apply to Underverse!Error)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: April 4th Height: 5′4″ / 163 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / demisexual
+ doesn’t trust anyone and would rather just dispose of someone before he gets the chance to even try and trust them + has tried to delete his own emotions on several occasions, but concludes he must lose his SOUL to do so, and is too scared he’ll die + lacks logic due to the fact that he’s a glitch in a program, meaning he can no longer create logical conclusions
character tag underverse-specific
Template (by unu-nunu-art/unu-nunium)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: April 3rd Height: 4′5″ / 135 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / demisexual
+ constantly does a plethora of redeemable, good things within the multiverse to compensate for the fact he’s an “Error” + tries to be more comfortable with things like hugs in order to further distance himself from Error, despite also having haphephobia. + unlike Error, remembers his past as Geno a lot more vividly
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Ragnartale (by NaomyMikolMaria) (please note I’m a bit behind on this AU)
Nickname/s: Knight Date of Birth: ??? Height: 5′5″ / 165 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: heteroromantic / demisexual
+ doesn’t like using his magic anymore, but can’t exactly remember why it leaves a bad taste in his mouth + actively tries to void out his emotions for others’ sake, as he finds his own life far less valuable + part of him likes being a monster more than a human, because he thinks he looks horrible now and that more people will leave him alone
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Dusttale (by ask-dusttale)
Nickname/s: Dust, Dusty Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: lithromantic / asexual
+ absolutely despises all humans and it wouldn’t be surprising if he tried to kill any on sight + can often be seen talking aloud to “himself,” but he’s actually talking to “Papyrus” + has the same observant skills as Sans and is just as quick on his feet if not faster, however he’s also more rash in his decision-making due to his insanity.
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Fresh (by loverofpiggies/CrayonQueen)
Nickname/s: None Date of Birth: April 20th (pretends it’s April 1st) Height: 6′3″ / 191 cm Gender: genderfluid Pronouns: he/him or they/them Sexuality: aromantic / asexual
+ while he be default doesn’t have any emotions, if for some reason he starts to feel anything, he will reject it immediately, and become incredibly harsh + started dressing in 90′s clothes as a joke, now he enjoys them unironically and has genuinely started watching human 90′s shows + sends memes to Error just to piss him off; his favorite to send is Rick Rolls
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Outertale (by 2mi127)
Nickname/s: Outer Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / asexual
+ because he can see the stars all the time, he’s far more fascinated by the Earth’s sun and atmosphere compared to other Sanses + has had his jacket since he was a kid but just didn’t bother getting rid of it. that and he never outgrew it. sometimes people still think he’s a kid because of it + gets cold easily; his jacket is extremely thick and fuzzy to make up for this
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Altertale (by friisans)
Nickname/s: Guardian Date of Birth: ??? Height: 4′9″ / 145 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: biromantic / demisexual
+ despises his brother so much that he won’t even look in his general direction and will likely burn or destroy anything that reminds him of his brother + appears very calm and collected most of the time, but can easily turn around and be manipulative or angry when least expected + is horrible at keeping watch of the human children because he always teaches them how to exploit things and they use that against him
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Aftertale (by loverofpiggies/CrayonQueen)
Nickname/s: Geno Date of Birth: ??? Height: 5′0″ / 152 cm Gender: demiboy Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: demiromantic / demisexual
+ is really bad at social interaction due to extended isolation and because of that may come off as blunt or rude + if anyone acts friendly around him, especially if they are a more physical kind of person, he will instantly not trust them + seeing spaghetti is a sure way to make him burst into tears, but he’ll pretend he’s not actually crying
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Swapfell (by poptatochisp and community)
Nickname/s: Mal Date of Birth: ??? Height: 5′3″ / 160 cm Gender: cisman Pronouns: he/him Sexuality: panromantic / demisexual
+ doesn’t do well with people who disagree with him. this will cause genuine unintended arguments over the smallest things + very formal in most situations possible, but assumes everyone else should be too + is bad at emotions, just, in general. understanding them, having them, everything
character tag
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(Oh, sorry, here it is) 10. Do you think you could do one of those my ship in five minutes things for tulula?
“My ship in five minutes?” I don’t think I know what that is. Hold on, let me bust out the old Google. (One search later.) Ooh, this looks fun! Okay, so I don’t really have the means to recreate that template, but I’ll try to answer all of the questions as best I can! 
Height Difference: Tulip is 5’5. Merula is 5’2. I just can’t picture Merula ever being the tall one. She is shorter than everyone she knows, it’s just a fact. A fact that infuriates her. 
Age Difference: Well they’re the same age, but I’ve always interpreted Tulip as having an April birthday, and Merula having one in November. She just has total Scorpio energy.
How does it happen? Very much falls on the “unintentionally” side of that scale. Merula doesn’t want to fall for anyone because she would think of it as a weakness, but she slowly but surely falls hard for Tulip. On the other hand, I think Tulip fell for Merula almost immediately, or at least within the first time she spent an extended period talking to her. I like to imagine that Tulip made it her goal to prank everyone in her year at least once when she was a first year. That Merula was the only person to catch on ahead of time and retaliate. Which caused Tulip to realize she’d met her match.
Showing Affection: I feel like Tulip takes the initiative, and Merula doesn’t. I feel like Merula is the more verbal one, and Tulip shows her fondness through actions. Like big, grand gestures. Or pranks. So many pranks. I feel like Merula would be more free about expressing affection over time, but it would take time. Probably longer than it would have taken before they had their falling-out, but AUs can change everything.
Handling Conflict: They are polar opposites Tulip is the more laid-back girlfriend who takes some time to mull things over. Merula starts fights more easily but she also forgives more quickly. It’s all connected to her short temper and her insecurities. I feel like Tulip one-hundred percent has anxieties and insecurities as well, but I also firmly believe that she more or less becomes a different person when she’s “wrangling” Merula. More capable. Because one of them has to be. 
Dealing with Jealousy: If you know my head-canons and interpretations about these two, then this one is probably not going to be a surprise at all. Simply put, Merula is so totally the jealous type. She’s so insecure and territorial around the people she dates. She doesn’t want to share. She’s also very needy, she would need more attention. Tulip on the other hand? Look, I’m not saying that watching Merula faun over Jacob didn’t kill her inside. But on the whole, she just doesn’t get jealous. She’s more likely to want her space, though not as much when it comes to Merula. I actually interpret Tulip as poly-amorous. 
Relationship Attitude: This one is quite simple. They are both highly dedicated. I don’t think Merula knows how to be “casual.” Like I don’t think she knows how to be in a relationship at all, and she wouldn’t even bother trying for anyone that she felt less than serious about. Tulip is certainly serious about Merula in return. But I think she’s more into PDA, that Merula would be less comfortable with cuddling or holding hands in front of people, etc. 
Attachment: Merula has a bad case of Separation Anxiety but she would never agree that this is true. She so badly wants to be Independent and be seen as someone who’s Independent. Contrariwise, she wishes Tulip had more Separation Anxiety and was less Independent. But assuming that this is when they’re in a stable relationship, Tulip doesn’t have that anxiety anymore. I’d say they can both get pretty overprotective, but that Tulip is the more relaxed one. 
Miscellaneous: Tulip is the first to apologize after a fight. She is also the first to confess her feelings. Merula does the cooking because Tulip is only slightly better at that then she is at singing. I don’t think either of them are that charismatic or popular, though Tulip is probably slightly moreso. I don’t think either of them would be particularly good at caregiving. They probably wouldn’t know what to do or would panic. I foresee Tulip getting her act together more quickly, however. Merula is the one who does most of the talking. She also does the housework even though Tulip is better at it, because Tulip simply can’t be trusted not to plant dungbombs behind the cushions. Tulip has better penmanship. They probably would switch off whoever was the designated driver, or else call the Knight Bus because they both got drunk when one of them was supposed to stay sober. As for who has more experience in relationships? Well, probably Tulip. I also think she would be more sensitive to emotional changes, if only because Merula wears her heart on her sleeve and tends to be pretty wrapped up in herself. But I actually think Merula would be the one to plan a proposal, that her whole plan would blow up in her face, and she would have a tantrum about this. Leading to Tulip completely turning the tables on her, and proposing herself. Then they lived happily ever after. Neither of them dies protecting the other because that would conflict with their destiny which is to grow old together and not die :)
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jkflesh · 3 years
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Interview with jesu January 2021 New Noise magazine #56
Read the interview by Antoine "Neredude" Duprez below:
The “Terminus” Bandcamp page states that the album was done between 2016 and 2020. That's a long period in your standards! Did you get some sort of writer's block with Jesu? Or was it because you were so busy with your numerous projects?
— I never get writers block, I just simply move on to the next thing if I’m not currently inspired to work on a specific project. Most my records, for many years, have been written and recorded over extended periods of time; I work when inspiration strikes, when it doesn’t I move onto the next thing; there’s never a block for me with creation generally, maybe just specific areas. i take large breaks for my music so as to afford some sort of distance, gone are the times when an album would be hammered out in a month!
''When I Was Small'' has kind of a Radiohead thing in the vocals, whereas ''Alone'' reminds me a lot of Sigur Rós. Are those bands part of your background?
— Ok, interesting observation, but no Radiohead is not an influence on this song, the biggest influences on the vocals were Liam Gallagher from Oasis, and subconsciously "White Flag" by Godflesh (which I only discovered after the album was complete). I do love some Radiohead though, as I do Sigur Rós, but neither band is a direct or conscious influence. Musically “When I was Small” was mostly influenced by trying to recreate a vibe of early Neil Young mixed with Oasis, in a jesu fashion, coupled with a demo production; intentionally underproduced. I’m not sure where a lot of the influence on “Alone” came from, electronic pop music for sure, short and sweet was the intention, driven entirely by the voice sample.
Regarding “Terminus,” did you set yourself a framework or musical approach beforehand like you did for “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came?“
— Not really no, generally when I work on a bunch of songs things will fall into place naturally, the songs become a whole and then collectively the songs will become conceptual as i write, they build their own logic, so to speak, I don’t force anything, I let things happen organically as I write and record.
I think around 2013, you said “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was going to set a precedent for the next album. Now that it's out, do you still think so? Personally, even though both records are different, I can definitely hear a connection.
— Yeah, shame it took 7 years to come to fruition! And many things changed over those 7 years, as ever. Jesu certainly documents my personal journey in life, it’s ultra personal, Godflesh is much more external comparatively. A lot to the solo jesu work took a backseat when I worked on the collaborations with Sun Kil Moon, but that was very refreshing and inspired me to take jesu further, I had notions of discontinuing the project at some point, but the collabs with Sun Kil Moon inspired me to keep pursuing jesu.
"Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was inspired in great part by you becoming a father. Can you tell us a bit about what was on your mind when you wrote “Terminus?”
— That’s very true, especially the initial journey of bringing life into the/our world. everything is there in the lyrics and artwork for "Terminus" so of course, like a lot of my work, depends on the listeners perspectives, they can make it their own, make it personal. But it’s essentially about endings, and my obsession with finality, my sensitivity to it and my fear of it. There’s a line in the title song that says “my end, our end, the end, the end”, which pretty much sums it up.
The EP “Never” you released before “Terminus” is quite different and more focused on electronics. I remember you telling me that you liked going experimental on EPs, doing stuff you wouldn't do on a full length. So I figure that's still the case?
— Yeah, I like experimenting with everything, I like satisfying myself with different ideas, obviously that doesn’t suit my listeners too much, but I make this music for myself, and I’m always trying to do better. I still don’t know why I put myself through the trial and hell of releasing music, I often think about just recording for myself and not bothering with an audience, but I’m not really capable of earning money in other ways, so I have to finish music and release it, let it go. For me "Never" was just another way of interpreting the jesu mood, nothing deviates too much from the original intention of the project. It’s weird, critically, it was perceived as this big electronic departure, whereas jesu has sounded pretty much like this most of it’s lifetime! “Pale Sketches", "Lifeline" even "Silver” is all mostly electronic, save a real drum loop in the song "Silver", but this EP seemed to get this thing that its all electronic, whereas it;’s no more electronically oriented than any other jesu record I have made. jesu is a mood that can be explored and experimented with, I’m not making the first album over and over, some can’t get over that, but that was a different moment in my life which I captured, and as an artist who challenges oneself besides the audience you can never win, and one will generally never win hah. This is a new jesu, it comes with age, transitions. "Never" was intentionally idiosyncratic and deliberately fvcked up sounding, and I think by and large critically the subtleties were lost on people.
“Never” features two version of ''Never There for You'', one of them described as the ''original vision''. Can you explained how you ended up releasing two version of this song?
— The “original vision” existed like that since around 2010, I shelved it, it was to be a Pale Sketcher song, I had an album’s worth of similar songs, I still do, couldn’t decide if they should be jesu or Pale Sketcher. I sent them to Aphex Twin / Richard James because he was a huge fan of the Pale Sketcher EP “Seventh Heaven”, we were talking about a release on his label Rephlex, I had all these songs that were floating between jesu and Pale Sketcher. But then he folded Rephlex for good, a real shame, so I was left with all these songs in limbo, I still am, but at that period I shelved them all. I returned to them around 2018 and started adding guitars and vocals, thinking that they will now definitely be jesu songs. “Never There for You” was one of them, so I wanted the listener to hear what it was originally before I added more of organic me. I’m working on finalising all those songs for Rephlex into future jesu, probably an album that I hope to release late 2021, it’s not a "Terminus" though, and probably most ppl will hate it hah.
“Terminus” is the first album to feature Ted Parsons in a long while. Did you invite him because you felt these songs needed his touch?
— I wanted some live drums, 3 songs only. I was going to play them myself, like on "Opiate Sun". "Infinity" etc, but I really wanted Ted involved and see how he interpreted my drum parts, he always swings something and makes it interesting. he’s a very real drummer, and a very real human being.
When touring is possible again, would you like to tour with Jesu, with Ted on drums?
— I may tour solo, with electronics and projections. The band thing is tiresome and always just sounds like a band, bands bore me these days because of the constraints of the instruments, rock records also bore me these days; same productions, etc, very little actual aesthetic, but its popular and what do I know. But I’d rather jesu now sound hugely expansive live, not just like a rock band. But i’m still unsure. Live drums swallow my voice live, I can’t sing above them, and jesu is a tiny project, can’t play big venues with stage separation and screens around the drums, and 8 guys diving around onstage, it’s not affordable. I stopped performing as jesu for some time due to all those reasons.
You said “Silver” is probably your favourite Jesu record. Are there other Jesu albums that stand out in your mind?
— Did I say that?! Haha. I don’t recall, and that opinion changes every day I feel. I like how concise and all encompassing "Silver" is; it covers most of the ground that I feel the project should cover. But "Terminus" is my favourite jesu album, and it should be, otherwise I would not feel I was moving forward, and I feel I am, it is the best jesu album I have made.
Last year, you told Olivier ''Zoltar'' Badin that the next Zonal album would probably go in the direction of it's title track ''Wrecked''. Is it still true to this day and what can you tell us about that upcoming album?
— Well, a lot of time has passed since, but I think Kevin and I are still quite struck on that song as a template for future recordings, although everything changes all the time, of course, and time is passing fast once again, we haven’t discussed Zonal in some time.
I know you don't actually consider yourself as a guitarist. With you focusing on your electronic projects like JK Flesh and Zonal lately, do you ever get tired of guitar? I'm asking this because I recently discussed the subject with Steven Wilson. He basically told me that after 30 years writing and doing gigs with guitar, he's feeling more creative and excited when writing music on other instruments and I wondered if you ever felt something similar.
— All instruments are just a means to an end for me; a tool for the bigger job, I don’t really wish to be overly proficient at any instrument, I liked that about punk, and it’s what I’m not that fond of about overly progressive music, it’s like it’s for show, I don’t do anything for show, I’d rather be shit than great, it’s more interesting, it reflects the human condition, imperfection. I don’t wish for things to sound perfect, whatever that is, people should not come to my music for that, they probably don’t and it’s probably why my audience is so small haha.
I recently discovered that you worked with Josh Eustis with the mastering of the JK Flesh / Orphx live album and was a bit surprised. How did that happen?
— Josh is a very good friend of Dominick Fernow’s (Prurient / Vatican Shadow / Hospital Productions, etc), and Dominick is a very close friend of mine. I was aware that Josh does very good mastering besides being an extremely talented artist, so Dominick suggested josh master that collaboration, and it sounds excellent!
I interviewed Lee Dorrian some time ago and we were talking about the impact Napalm Death had, not just the band itself but all the bands who were formed after playing in that band: Godflesh, Carcass, Cathedral, Scorn... Lee thought this legacy had a lot to do with John Peel broadcasting a wide array of music on young aspiring musicians. How would you explain such creativity and versatility from musicians who all played in Napalm Death at one point?
—  Lee is absolutely correct, a lot of very young kids listened to John Peel, most generations did, his taste exposed music to many of us who were already enquiring at a young age that we would not have heard anywhere else and of course back then this centralised things, not fragmented them like the internet does; a kid now can absorb an artist entire catalog in an hour, speed listen to it all, then have an opinion, but it’s informed, no context, no history, no experience. We heard music then on Peel and then hunted it down. It took work, valuable work that paid dividends. Peel’s broad appreciation of eternally subversive music and otherwise told us that music didnt need to exist in such strict compartments, that’s it’s all part of a greater whole, so when groups of musicians collaborated even at such young ages, our tastes were informed and wide, very rarely singular.
Can you tell us a bit about you latest remixing output? What were the tracks that you enjoyed the most remixing? Those are the names I could find: Full of Hell, Oathbreaker and a lot of projects I've never heard of.
— I always and love to remix, I love the fact that I didn’t create this music but can make something new from someone else’s work. Music is endless, for me, it’s just when you wish to end it, but ultimately it can never end. I have some remixes that I love moire than others, but only over time, I never let a remix go unless I am as happy as can be with it. Sometimes I would’ve loved to have done more, my Killing Joke remix is a good example of that, I wanted to go further, but Youth of Killing Joke told me they were happy with where I was at, I think I could’ve made it much better. The Oathbreaker remix you mentioned is a favourite of mine from the last years worth of my remixes. I’ll remix anyone, if they can afford my fee and I have the time!
I'm curious, since you released some of your music with your own label with Godflesh, Jesu and other projects, did it have an impact on the revenue you got from streaming platforms like Spotify, compared to albums released on Earache or Hydra Head? I'm asking this in the light of the neverending controversy regarding streaming revenue for musicians.
— On my own label more money can be earned from these services due to no split with another label, which usually would be 50/50, but streaming is very small as is common knowledge. I never see any royalties from Earache so can’t compare their rates etc since Godflesh is constantly recouping an advance from Columbia / Sony for the "Selfless" album that Earache, contractually, can recoup from, even though they didn’t give the advance, so they’re making money from the band and from an advance they never paid, which these days you would think that besides being unethical that it would be criminal, but such were the contracts in the 80’s / 90’s. So I’ve never seen a single penny from streaming with Earache!
I know it might be pointless to ask you, since someone's mind can change with time but do you still think “Post Self” may be your last album with Godflesh? Your told us last year that you weren't sure if you had enough in you creatively to do another album and also that the constant screaming was a bit harder to do.
— Hah, the shouting/screaming live now takes its toll, it does with age, I’m unsure due to not performing for so long thanks to the pandemic how my voice would be for Godflesh now in a live setting, I’d have very little problem in the studio. I’m still struck on the fact that there may not be another full length studio album from Godflesh, I haven’t been inspired to initiate one for numerous reasons, and I don’t wish for us to repeat ourselves in any way, I do have a lot of interesting old material though, some good rare stuff, demos, “Us and Them in Dub” which is also in the works, but I work on that sporadically, when I feel inspired to do so. So there’s a lot of good stuff coming.
Last time I interviewed you in 2014, Aphex Twin was making his grand return with “Syro”. I remember you telling me that the album was still shrinkwrapped on your desk. Knowing you're a big Aphex fan, I wanted to know if you liked that album, especially knowing that a lot of fans were disappointed by it.
— Ahh it was such a long time ago now that we spoke last! I love "Syro”, but I love Aphex, and since I first heard "Didgeridoo" when it was released and then "Quoth", he will always be a favourite, "Syro" may not be an Aphex favourite for me, but it’s still amazing, he is amazing; creative, subversive and doesn’t give a fvck ultimately, he’d also never release anything if he didnt really have to, he does this for himself, for me the best art is entirely selfish and should consider no one. People are always disappointed, a lot of people just can’t live with the fact that an artist strays from their own personal conception of what an artist should be, it’s some sort of misguided entitlement, I lost that when II was around 14, a lot of people don’t lose it and now these people have the internet. No artist owes me anything, if they gave me one thing in my life then i will always respect their art, regardless of whether it works for me or not, and if I don’t like it much, I won’t be peddling that opinion on the internet in an entitled egotistical manner, I’m glad I did not know that a lot of people were disappointed, haha.
Thank you very much! Best JKB, Jan 2021
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twixtandshout · 3 years
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Tagged by @pidgeonpostal! And not tagging anyone else because I have SOILED the original template (soiled it!!) in deference to my [brushes off skirt] mostly clean public-facing appearance.
...I’ve been making a lot of Spongebob memes lately for someone who has not seen Spongebob.
How many works do you have on AO3?
71!
What’s your total AO3 wordcount?
...306,834. Jesus.
How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
Uh. Many! I do a lot of one-offs (and/or start long things I never finish) in many different places. My top three fandoms by fics written are RWBY (29), Undertale (25), Gravity Falls/Transcendence AU (4).
Bet you can’t tell where my hyperfixations have fallen. 
I’ve also got some Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog fics back on my ff.net account, or I think I still do, anyway, but let’s never go back there pls
What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
1. Sweeter Than Honey (Undertale): Taking a Completely unsurprising first place, with over 600 more kudos than the runner-up, the haphazard Underswap fic featuring a post-college self-insert I wrote just after high school! I shake my head some at how overblown and ridiculous the gap between this and all my other stuff is (c’mon, guys, I’ve written way better fics), but this is also the fic which prompted me (and at least one other person!) to start using they/them pronouns. I’ve gotten a lot of really sweet comments about how seen and appreciated it’s made people feel, so I can’t get down too far about it.
2. To Be A Hero (BNHA): I don’t count myself as part of the BNHA fandom, for a number of reasons, but for something that’s arguably the main motivation for the entire plot, Midoriya’s quirklessness is something I’ve never thought has been handled well. This fic marked the first time I (somewhat tentatively) claimed the disability label (thanks again to Sweeter Than for prompting that realization) to hold that lens over canon. It also really shot up my chart, dang! It’s the only thing here I’d consider “recent.”
3. Three-Sentence Shipping (Undertale): Self-explanatory.
4. Brothers Beyond Bonedaries (Undertale): Ah, the way-overcomplicated AU³ I got nowhere close to finishing. One of the things I really like about Undertale is the interface screw, how Toby Fox uses the medium of the video game to pull off crazy things and enhance his game, but most of the fic written for the fandom seems dedicated to explaining it away, grounding it, rather than taking it to the next step and messing with the medium of fanfiction when you keep the story going. I tried to do something cool like that here, playing with questions like narrator and authorship and breaking the fourth wall, even taking the “final boss” fight to a “totally separate” fic reached through the first by link – but, well, then I never finished it, which probably didn’t make anything less confusing for the poor folks who missed the intent.
5. Spirit and Such (Gravity Falls: Transcendence AU): A whole fic written to line out a particular image I had, which, naturally, never made it to the page. I consider it a bit of a cautionary tale for myself when it comes to writing (near-)original content; there’s a lot I look back on and cringe. I still love the characters, though – well, the important ones – and I think just stepping away from the tried-and-true Mizar formula nets it a star sticker here.
Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
>w>; I try, but a lot of the time I just don’t have anything to say? Like, oh, you liked it? Neat. There’s not much to respond to in comments like that, and then I’m weighing falling down on an ~obligation~ to respond to every message in my inbox vs annoying people with copy-paste fluff responses all down the page. Plus I know I make more of an effort to comment on things that didn’t get the attention I feel they deserve, so if I’m driving up my own comment count with nonsense, am I preventing myself from being in a position to receive more comments later? And then if I do comment, am I being too effusive or running people’s ears off explaining things they don’t actually need to know? Sometimes people just want to express interest or admiration and don’t necessarily want a whole peek and guided tour behind the curtain.
Can you tell I have anxiety? x3;
Anyway, I do respond when I can. And I keep most of the comments I’ve gotten to go back and reread. 
What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
Hm, hmm. Lots of stuff in the TQ Nonsense series would probably qualify! I’m thinking of Unfixable, Wolfsong, and Ethanol. And there’s Bursting Through A Blood-Red Sky (I Can Live, I Can Breathe), of course, but that was always intended to have a fix-it epilogue. It’s just that I wrote it in a couple of hours day-of, stared at it, and decided I didn’t wanna just then. But now that’s As Long As You’re Still Burning Bright (I’m Still Awake), and that’s probably the best romance I’ve written, so that one worked out.
Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve ever written?
Now and then! When the urge strikes. Uhhh, I’ve got a series of Doctor Who x Undertale crossovers I actually made a whole dang verse for that never made it to print. Get a couple great comments on that every few months or so. I think the World Trigger x Undertale crossover is probably weirder, though, by virtue of WT being a very small fandom. My enthusiasm kinda sputtered out on that one.
Mostly I just daydream crossovers with whatever happens to catch my eye at any given moment. I have a lot!!!! Though odds are out on whether I manage to remember any of them once the initial thought’s passed, lol.
Have you ever received hate on a fic?
Gotten a couple eyebrow-raising comments, but I think mostly I’m just too small a writer to draw that kind of attention.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
I don’t? think so? Think my tastes are a little niche for most people to bother ^^;
Have you ever had a fic translated?
I had someone apologize once for any language mistakes in their comment cause they had to run it through a translator! That’s not what you asked (the answer is no), but it’s very flattering to think that someone liked my fic enough to read and comment despite the language barrier.
Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Yes! :D @pidgeonpostal was gracious enough to agree to co-write Five Nights at Denny’s with me off an idea about shoes. This has fulfilled a long-held dream of mine (collabing with someone, not the shoes) and also introduced me to some lovely people.
What’s your all time favorite ship?
Who has time for just one? ;3c Honestly, I care more about the characters and how the relationship – any relationship – between them changes them than I do about ~A Ship~ as a solid, bounded noun-object. I’ve got characters I like more and less and feelings about who does and doesn’t have chemistry in which directions with whom, but finding anything that agrees with those preferences is hard, harder when you take alloromanticism into account. I’ll play in any sandbox with cool toys, especially if other folks have already built sick sandcastles there.
What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
[kicks every single unfinished fic further under the bed] What nooo no WIPs here, everything on my account is either finished or does not exist
I’ve got a couple extra chapters of Sweeter Than floating around unposted, but 1. that fic’s a mess 2. high school Twixt and post-college Twixt are different people and trying to contort myself into three other me-shapes just cause people Like this fic is not something I’m super interested in 3. it’s headed for an emotional dip and I’d rather leave it where it is than post two chapters, stall out again, and leave folks with a bad end.
As for other fics... it’s looking more and more likely that v7 of my Yellow Brick Road AU will never actually make it out. >w>; I’ve got some really great ideas, but not enough to make me feel like I know what I’m doing, and that’s a big roadblock. Plus trying to engage with RT’s Atlas-Mantle worldbuilding in any serious capacity is... a headache. I can’t recommend the Happy Huntress Cinematic Universe enough, but it leaves some pretty big shoes to follow! And I’ve got small feet. <w<;
What are your writing strengths?
Dialogue’s fun, probably as an extension of characterization. I love tearing into what makes people tick, especially against the backdrop of their environment, the story they’re in, and the people they’re up against. Voice is a double-edged sword; I’ve been told my writing is really recognizable and individual, but on the other hand, I’ve been growing frustrated with with the limits of my narrative ability. There’s a strong rhythm I keep when I write (you might notice it here, even) but that leaves me feeling predictable and stale. I’m not sure I’m great at setting as a matter of course, but I’m pretty good at describing setpieces where the need comes up; that comes from my background in poetry, as does the fun I have with sublimating and abstracting complex imagery. And I think I bring some needed nuance to the universal. For good or ill, I don’t do what “everyone else” is doing.
What are your writing weaknesses?
Well, writing, for one thing. If I don’t know how something’s going to go and don’t have the urge to write it, it isn’t getting done, which means there’s a billion things that will never see the page and a few hundred more that are never getting finished. I lose momentum easily and have a hard time getting started, and I put way too much standing on finding a foothold with other people; as critical as I am of my work, I have high expectations for the stuff that passes muster, and it never seems to measure up. I’m also really uncreative. Yeah, I can mix up elements and extrapolate events, but coming up with things wholesale is really hard, which is why I avoid it wherever possible and steal/reskin stuff from other places instead.
What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
Something along the lines of “Hoo boy, I am Not qualified for this but hopefully it’s decent anyway.” Maria’s Spanish lines haven’t been a big deal – I’ve used it sparingly and, as a Latin language, it should be easy for English-speaking audiences to pick up on the gist – but I’ve had a harder time with Tai’s Chinese, both because I have Even Less background there and because it is, of course, an entirely different language system. If I write it out in English or Romanized italics, am I colonizing it or changing the meaning? If I write it out in the presumed-original characters (presumed because it’s Google Translate and who knows if I’m even barking in the right forest), am I confusing or alienating my presumed-majority-English-speaking audience? Where should I put the translations? Should I put the translations? And for Frisk’s sign language, thinking back, are the brackets I used instead of quotes alienating/infantilizing? I like that different characters give the text between a different feel, but I’m not an ASL speaker – and I’m pretty sure the word is “speaker,” which would only reinforce that that demographic would rather I didn’t do that. It’s important for all these characters, I think, that they use non-English language where it makes sense; it’s part of who they are. But as a white monolingual English-speaker, I don’t think I can really weigh in.
What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?
Thaaaat’d be Pokémon, followed closely with Sonic the Hedgehog. Whether those fics are still on my ff.net account or not (pretty sure I’ve purged them, but you never know) I’ve still got a couple saved to a folder on my current laptop, ostensibly so I can look back and see how far I’ve come and more practically to allow for the possibility of furthering group cohesion through public shaming.
What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?
I still like the idea behind The Man Who Is Atlas, and Burning Bright (Still Awake) gets props for being my current fic, though it’s currently in that spot where I’m excited to get new chapters posted but also quietly marking everything up in red pen. I think Harbinger gets the crown here, at least for now.
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jjaeong · 3 years
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Color-Correction Post (50 Followers Edition).
(Posting this through my laptop because my phone kept crashing when I change the colors or even link the source?)
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DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional, this is post was created just to put into perspective how I always tweak the colors in each GIF I attach to my fics. I just wanted to share this because it’s honestly satisfying with the end result (and in celebration of 50 followers).
Before I got into this entire GIF in fics thing, I thought that it was cool how there’d always be a GIF attached into what I’d always read on this site—I’ve observed how it somehow made it easier to get into whatever it was you were reading when there was some visualization attached to it (no matter how lightly written the fic is). And I’ve done this “writing template” with the two borders and the gif in the middle—but I don’t consider the fic on my other account as influenced as this account because it was just literally one drabble (if you find it—hmu lmao).
Also, I think I mislead you guys about my last writing account being back in 2014 (but honestly, I don’t remember any other time than my last drabble in the Summer of 2020—I had a lot of things going on since I started attending University).
But that’s a story for another time.
I just like the idea of incorporating the right visuals in my fics because—other than I don’t seem to have anything else to do (lmao)—I just found it easier to write with what I can see with the imagery, and so I thought that it would be cool if my readers would get to experience the same thing and not just in my head, you know? 
Honestly this sounds so taxing and it looks like I’m putting too much effort into it but.. It’s art? This blog is a passion project that had just been brought to life— something we can always come back to when we feel like doing so.
Anyways, here’s the step by step process of making the GIFS.
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One. Finding The Right Visualization.
I’m not strict in finding a source, usually I’d be watching loonatv and I’d suddenly be hit by the scene like—oh, that looks like it’ll fit in this idea that I thought about earlier. But what I am strict about is if I can find a better angle (this goes with the fan site sources and etcetera), because it usually starts from “this looks nice” and should end with “okay, it’s time to write about it” but sometimes, sadly it would end with “I don’t feel that great about the plot idea though”.
But for the series stuff (such as The Heiress which is currently ongoing) it’s harder to find more cinematic shots that fit the mood. I try my best on finding a video that would set the foundation of the fic before going ahead and downloading the videos from a separate online video converter.
I also make sure to take note of the dates, the links and specially the channel name or basically the source because if I found the shot pretty and just took it without giving credit—I admire these non-profit(?) fan sites (I love vantablack’s fan cams of Hyunjin the most) so that’s why I started to include sources. Simply appreciating the craft.
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Two. Color Correcting By The Fic’s Tone.
The thing that I honestly do not like the most is the fade(?) effect that loonatv adds to their videos, I’ve noticed how they always applied this because it makes the girls somewhat “brighter” but it takes away their more.. Natural colors. The lighting in this shot was bright enough to somewhat strengthen the fading effect that they put—but the thing I keep feeling upset for is that you lose a bit of the natural setting that the girls themselves make brighter.
So if it’s a light fic, a happy one shot like Rest Easy Love, I’ll Always Be Your Favorite Girl, I added a warmer tone to the GIF.
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(I think I corrected it some more after recording this on my screen, but you guys get the point lmao sorry).
And when it’s a more darker type of fic, this is an example of how I envision the lighting would be like The Heiress effect (which I applied to this exact GIF just for comparison). That’s all to it when I CC—just keep in mind the vibe of the fic, adjust the lighting and etcetera, and finally add the effects if you have them.
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Three. The Cinematic Border And Final Export.
I found it easier to just adjust the video itself under the border to fit it instead of cropping because it really takes so much space when you crop it. You’d barely get a full decent view so I just drag and adjust it. 
After I’ve finished the video, I then export the file and send it to my online archives or via cable to my phone (when I’m in a hurry). The reason why I upload it on a cloud is that sometimes after I edit the video, I tend to burn myself out so I can’t be bothered to turn it instantly into a GIF.
I use my phone to convert the video into a GIF because whenever I use my video editing software it tends to not upload in this site, and after looking for the reason why—turns out you can only upload up to 15MB of your GIF here—I just convert it on my phone because it’s the quickest when it comes to compressing the file.
Then I open my drafts and attach it there along with my borders, and that’s about it.
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At this point I think now you guys know why I take my time to post and follow through my chapters (because I like to wait for the inspiration to hit before I start writing, and that I look for clips that will help me visualize better)—but I just want to say that one day we’ll reach a bigger audience, there will be more people expecting quality from this blog and as much as I’d hate to admit it, I am aware that it will take a toll on me.
But that will never stop me from loving these girls because they’ve been nothing but a positive source of happiness from me—I’ve been through so much last year and they somehow made me feel like myself again, and that’s such a big impact in my current situation right now and this is how I want to express myself in loving them.
I want nothing other than to give these girls a positive light in this blog, and though times may be rough we’d still have these Y/N fics to come back to when we feel like we’re not living the Y/N life in reality.
And I know this is a lot of talk for a small following—but someone out there will always read your notes, no matter how silly it will be there will always be a reader that will like your work even if you don’t feel confident in your writing.
Because if your following is the reason you’re writing, then write for them.
If you’re writing for yourself just as I am—do it.
As long as there is passion inside of you, pursue it. Even if it’s just writing Y/N fics while you’re balancing too many things at once.
Stay passionate, that’s all I truly had to say.
You guys are cool.
Laters,
JJ
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>ovc: loonatheworld (171212)
https://youtu.be/eUeFUBy40ow
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phoenixfell · 4 years
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Protecting Yourself & Creating a Good Experience
An unfortunate post necessitated by recent events.  The unfortunate truth of reality is that we, as non-psychic human beings, are unable to determine with certainty the motives of other humans around us.  If someone claims to have good intentions but are hurting you, are they simply presenting themselves poorly or are they lying entirely?  This is a question you can never truly answer, but here I will guide you through some ways to protect yourself while being kind to yourself and others.
You may reblog this if you’d like.  
Although this post was created specifically in response to the turmoil in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, it’s not specific to this exact situation and the purpose is not to take a side.  The purpose is to encourage everyone to do their part in ending hateful behavior and crafting a good community.   
Contents:
0.  Don’t send mean asks to people 1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog. 1.a (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog. 2.  Curating your Experience 3.  Making First Contact 4.  Analyzing a Message 5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality 6.  The Author’s Duty 7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking 8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road to Hell) 10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways) 11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)
0.  Don’t send mean asks to people.
You know, I saw a post some time ago on the internet that basically said:  Why do we see so many posts teaching people how to avoid being raped and virtually nothing telling people not to rape others?  So, as obvious as this may sound, I’m going to give you a gentle reminder to not send mean asks to people.
Perhaps you are angry.  Perhaps something else is bothering you.  Perhaps you honestly feel like you are doing the right thing.  These feelings are entirely valid and I understand.  However, being mean to someone else on the internet is not going to solve anything.  At best, it’s going to get you ignored and at worst, it’s going to actively escalate things.  
If you feel down, depressed, or upset, consider this service:  https://www.crisistextline.org/
US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808
It’s a confidential service that will help support you.
On the other hand, if you feel like you genuinely have a bone to pick with someone, take a step back.  Get a cup of coffee, or tea; watch a YouTube video, and later on in this post we’ll discuss cooperative problem solving, the importance of word choice, and how to deescalate a situation.  
1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog.
This is a very simple and completely legal process.  The easiest way to do so is to sign up for Statcounter.  This is a website for market and visitor analysis, but it does IP tracking for free, which is what we’re looking for.  The site will even guide you through installing it.  However--do not post it into the description.  In my experiences, this does not work.  Instead, click Edit HTML, search for <body>, and paste it directly underneath that.
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For this to work most effectively, make sure that you have the Timestamps extension enabled within the inbox in XKit.  If you do not have XKit installed, you can find directions on their Tumblr page, here:  https://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com/
1.a.  (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog.
Although Tumblr claims to give you the ability to IP Block through the inbox by blocking anonymous asks, many people have expressed doubts that it actually works.  Therefore, here’s an explanation showing you how to do it yourself.  There are three steps to this, all taking place in the Edit HTML section we’ve left off in last section.
1.
Directly below where the web analytics code above ends, paste this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://l2.io/ip.js?var=userip"></script>
2.
Directly below the previous command, paste this:
<script>
function ipBlock() {        var ip = userip;     //example: "0.0.0.0", "5.5.5.5", "3.3.3.3",     var bannedips=[         "155.555.55.55"     ];     var handleips=bannedips.join("|");     handleips=new RegExp(handleips, "i");            if (ip.search(handleips)!=-1){ 
                window.location.replace("http://www.tumblr.com");        } 
} </script>
You can customize this script in a few ways.  First, bannedips needs to be the ip(s) you wish to block.  You can add more by separating them by commas and enclosing them in quotes, as the example shows.  Secondly, in the window.location.replace line, you can insert any valid address.  Here are some suggestions I give people:
Tumblr homepage.  Basic and effective.
A link to a Google search of something, e.g. How to not send mean asks on the internet
Your own tumblr blog, so they get stuck in a refresh loop
A similarly spelled but nonexistent blog, to give the illusion you deleted/moved 
3.  
Finally, add onload=“ipBlock()” to your body tag:
<body onload = "ipBlock()">
That should be everything to get it working.  If you want to test it, click the link in step two, copy and paste the IP address that is displayed into the bannedips, save, and visit your blog.  If it’s working right, you should get thrown off.   
If you don’t want your IP Block active, just remove step three and return your tag to <body>.  
2.  Curating Your Experience
Although Tumblr itself does not allow the functionality, there are ways to ensure that certain words do not appear on your dashboard.  XKit has a blacklist feature which will hide posts containing certain words.  Also of note is the wildcard feature, which is accessed by adding an asterisk after the word, ex.
nsfw   ->  Only blocks exactly that word and that tag nsfw*  ->  Will block any word or tag containing that phrase
However, I would like to gently notify you that there is significant research that actively avoiding content does more harm than good!  Only you can know what is best for you, but there is a such thing as excessive avoidance.  
3.  Making First Contact
If there’s anything you take from this post, please let it be this one thing:
Always be kind.  At first.  Then tear them a new one if necessary.  
The inevitable happens.  As far as you can tell, you’re minding your own business on your blog.  Your ask box lights up and you perk up, wondering which of your friends is reaching out to you.
Instead, the message is nasty, condemning you for your support of your favorite ship and the theme of your blog.
You’re upset, of course!  And you have every right to be!  You put a lot of time and effort into this blog and your ship, and to have someone so coldly butt in--you can feel the frustration mounting!  Tears are glistening and your body trembles as you type up a strongly worded essay and--
Stop.
It’s okay.
Take a deep breath and step away from your emotions for a minute.  Your emotions are valid-- but so are the sender’s.  
Instead of starting a fight, be kind.  It may hurt.  You may not want to be, but I promise you it’s worth it.  Here’s a template response:
Hi, anon.  I’m really sorry that you feel this way about [thing] and will gladly take it into consideration in the future.  Could you please tell me more about why you dislike [thing]?  If you’d like to take some time to gather your thoughts, I’d be happy to discuss this issue with you.  
Let me confess something.  I don’t suggest this out of pure kindness.  I suggest this because their response will tell you what you need to know.  Remember how the intro talked about how people’s intentions are incredibly hard to figure out?  This is a little trick I like to use to get them to play their cards.  
There are three possible responses:  They respond angrily, they respond kindly and respectfully, or they don’t respond at all.
In the first case, you may get something that resorts to expletives.  They may call you names.  They may tell you to delete your blog or any other amount of nasty things.  It’s very likely that your very attempt at kindness will anger this person!  This is a troll/bully whose sole interest is to get you upset and get themselves attention.  At this point, you can safely delete and ignore the messages without any guilt.  
In the second case, you have a person with a genuine grievance who just happened to address it poorly.  Both of you have a duty to humanity to resolve the problem respectfully and politely.  You’ve avoided escalating the conflict, you may learn something new and you may even make a new friend!
This also applies to reaching out to someone for the first time.  You see someone doing something you don’t like.  Oh, it just makes you blind with rage!
Again.  I’m going to advise you to stop. Take a deep breath.  No one responds well to name-calling and being condemned.  There’s a few techniques you can use (see if you can spot them in the template message):
Listen to their opinions
Actively ask to hear their opinion
Ask for clarification
Validate the way they feel
Avoid casting blame 
(These techniques work a lot in real life, too!)
Again, there are some genuinely scummy people in life!  But, there are many, many more ignorant people.  A gentle pointer goes much further than yelling and screaming.  
4.  Analyzing a Message
We’ve all been there.  We’ve gotten a message and we’ve panicked--do they hate me now?!  Is this a troll message or genuine criticism?!
Again.  Relax.  Push aside your emotions and focus on the logical words as they appear before you.  Ask yourself if you are reading a tone that doesn’t exist.  For example, not everyone puts active thought into choosing between “ok”, “Ok”, “okay”, “Okay”, “ok.” etc.  Sometimes an ok is just that.  An ok.  
Break the message into parts.  Find the logical structures and decipher them piece by piece.  Someone who throws some very hurtful words into a message may indeed have a point, despite coming off as very crude.  Accept that different parts of a message may mean different things.  The world is very complicated and multifaceted.  Try to avoid sticking labels to things.  
5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality
I’ve seen a lot of arguments floating around recently that seem to think that these two ideas exist in a vacuum.  It’s simply not true.  The ideas are entwined intrinsically--Fiction is both fiction and reality.  Fiction was created to mimic reality yet extend it far beyond what can happen in the confines of reality.  What happens in reality impacts fiction and what happens in fiction impacts reality.  
This is undeniable.  
Both of these ideas exist, and as the author it is your duty to figure out what that means for you.
You cannot hide behind Fiction as Fiction to ignore your responsibilities as an author.
You cannot hide behind Fiction as Reality to promote censorship.  
Both of these ideas are far too simple for the complicated world we live in.  A complicated concept requires complicated solutions.  
Every word you write has an impact on the people that reads it.  This is the very definition of writing.  We use writing as a tool to share emotions.  Extend empathy.  We use writing to make people cry, to make people laugh, to make people angry.  
To deny that this impact exists is to deny what writing is.  
But censorship is not an option.  Censorship prevents these stories from being told, and quite frankly, no one should have the right to decide what story should and shouldn’t be told, regardless of what is in that story.  
What is the solution then?  There is no easy answer. 
6.  The Author’s Duty
When you put words before another human being, it becomes your responsibility as a moral individual to give your best effort into ensuring that those words have a positive impact on the individual.
This doesn’t mean not making them cry.  Or not making them upset.  It means ensuring that the morals you impart on them are sound and logical.  
How one achieves this is up to you.  
In general, tone makes all the difference.  Writing murder in a positive light versus writing murder in a negative light can drastically alter how the audience perceives your scene.  
Empathy, too, can help sway your audience.  If your writing must involve racist police officers stopping a young black man, make sure you delve into how unfair this is, how terrifying it is, how this needs to change.  Do not normalize it.  Do not let it go by without a somber note indicating your awareness of the topic.  
Sometimes, the solution is to simply avoid the issue.  There are certain topics that only some individuals should write about, and that’s just how it is.  This isn’t to say that you can’t write about it, but keep that writing private.  
Most importantly, do your research, and ask for help and keep an open mind.  It’s a grave responsibility and you may not do it right and that’s okay!  Everyone is capable of learning.  Everyone is capable of changing.  
7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking
An echo chamber is a phenomenon where an individual’s exposure to certain topics becomes self-enforcing because they don’t see, or actively avoid, differing opinions.  
Echo chambers are also exactly what happens when a rift this massive opens in a small community.  
When Orange blocks Green and starts posting about it, all of Orange’s friends decide whether they agree or not.  The overwhelming majority, due to peer pressure, will agree.  Many of them will then block Green and the users directly associated with them.  In retaliation, Green will defend themselves.  Because Orange’s group had already blocked Green, Green’s friends only seen Green’s point of view and will rise in response to the perceived slight.  
What results are two heavily biased groups of users that refuse to communicate with one another and many individuals swept into the mess because they don’t wish to be isolated.   
Even worse, it turns a complicated and multi-faceted issue into a binary issue.  Either you agree with Orange or you agree with Green.  The world is not this simple.  
Instead, I would encourage everyone to practice lateral thinking of their own accord.  I would encourage you to make your own decisions, rather than blindly supporting or condemning the people around you.  Everyone has their own opinions about what is or isn’t okay, and that’s perfectly fine.  Even your closest friends will have different opinions than you.  
8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 
Once you’ve accepted these different opinions (good on you!) what do you do now?  Simply put, the choice is on you!  There’s a few options:
Quietly accept it
Respectfully debate it
Avoid it
Escalate it
The first two are pretty obvious, and the third one is where blocking people and the blacklist comes in.
The fourth one is extreme and only recommended for activities causing active, known, measurable harm to other people.  
This involves actively seeking a legal entity to handle the issue.
Being mean to people on Tumblr is not a solution.  Tumblr is not a place to pursue a justice agenda.  There are bigger issues in the world, and I encourage you to find ways to make a difference that will actually be fruitful.  Donate to charities.  Extend yourself as support to victims.  Contribute to research.  
Changing the mind of strangers on the internet is not a good use of your time.  
9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road To Hell)
This has been a phrase for a very long time.  
What does it mean?
Well, I’ll offer my own interpretation.  
It means that people often become absorbed with the idea that they are doing the right thing and forget to be mindful of the true consequences of their actions.  
It doesn’t mean to not do good things.  It means that good is relative and not everyone will find your actions good.  It’s important to keep an open mind and realize that just because you think something is good, doesn’t mean everyone agrees.  
10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways)
Yeah.  
It’s okay.  You can admit it.
Being mean is fun!
If it wasn’t fun, people wouldn’t do it!  In fact, this very blog was created because I found that writing the character being mean was very enjoyable and cathartic!  
So, if you find yourself tempted to be mean to people in your life, maybe find another way to get those emotions out.  Hell, people on tumblr just might appreciate you taking up a nasty, villainous character that’ll tear their character up...
People love angst.  You can take this bad thing and twist it into something good.  
11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)
Bringing this long post to a close, I would like you all to end by thinking about what morality really is.  In particular, I’d like you to think about morality on three different scales:  Your personal morality, the morality of the community you’re in, and morals as described by laws.
You’ll find that these morals don’t overlap.  
Or, at least they shouldn’t. Please revisit section 7.  
Being aware of morality in these three ways may help you determine how to proceed when going forward.
Do I personally agree with this? Does the community I’m in agree with this? Do the laws have anything to say about this? 
None of these are right.  Everything has different morals, and it’s up to you to find the exact opinions that fit you.  
Don’t let people blindly tell you how you should and shouldn’t feel about a topic, and don’t let people bully you into changing your morals to fit into their perceived moral high ground.  
But at the same time, be open.  Extend yourself to new ideas.  If enough people tell you that something is wrong, it just may be time to listen.
Be you.
Be unique.
Be safe.
And above all, be kind.  
Have a nice night, everyone.  I hope we can all work to a brighter future.  
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starwarsfic · 3 years
Text
PTR.8
Originally posted October 9, 2020
Summary: Obi-Wan is taken prisoner, but not for torture or sport.
Details: Alpha-17/Obi-Wan. Mandalorian Empire AU.
xxxxxx
Jedi didn’t last long as Mandalorian prisoners--it was something they learned as Padawans, horrible stories filtering their ways down of just what had happened to this Knight or that Master captured on the field of battle.
Jedi weren’t often Mandalorian prisoners, at least. Capturing a Jedi alive was hard to do.
Mostly, that was because the Mandalorians gave as good as they got, they wanted an epic battle against a trained Force user, wanted a fight to the death that could be glorious even if they didn’t win.
Obi-Wan had known something was wrong the moment he faced down a group of Mandalorian supercommandos and they had their weapons set to stun.
He'd almost gotten away, still. Then, because he worried they wanted some information out of him, almost fell on his own saber, but they'd gotten in closer enough to knock him unconscious despite all his tricks.
Waking up on a surprisingly comfortable bed in a fairly large prison cell, Obi-Wan had spent the last few hours trying to figure out an escape route with the limited information he could glean.
There were no other prisoners nearby, there were holorecorders at every possible angle, overlapping each other so there would be no blind spots. The vents were far too small for him. He was not restrained, but there was no way to turn off the forcefield keeping him locked in the room that he could find.
It was a cell designed to keep a Force sensitive in for a long period of time.
When noise finally picked up, he didn't bother acting casual, simply stood in the center of his cell and stared down the hallway as the door opened--and saw a mantrap, with doors clearly shut on the other side, meaning he'd have to get through both layers to get to whatever was beyond.
Only one figure approached, in silver and blue armor and blue kama and cape. No weapons visible, not even the hidden sort that Obi-Wan had learned to look out for over the years.
"While these are lovely accommodations, I really don't have time for a vacation."
Despite the vocoder, he could hear a snort of amusement in answer to his words. "Always in a hurry, Obi-Wan."
The voice wasn't familiar, not through the speaker, but something about the tone--and certainly the familiar address-was. "You seem to have me at a disadvantage...." he trailed off, leaving the space for the other's name.
When the helmet came off, Obi-Wan had the briefest moment to think "oh," before the seriousness of the situation crashed down upon him.
He'd never met the dead Mand'alor used as a template for the Fett clones, of course, but he had met some of the clones--a three-way battle with the Sith had gone badly and he'd found himself with a wounded Master quickly on her way to joining the Force and three supercommandos, two of which were clones.
Knowing that the Mandalorians had cloned an old Mand'alor over a century ago and had kept up the process was not the same as actually meeting them. They weren't the current Mand'alor, but they looked nearly identical to him. Would always look identical to the Mand'alor, unless some major changed happened in Mandalorian politics.
This one was Ta’raysh E’tad, Seventeen, though he'd been called Tar'etad by one of the others who had been too deliriously from pain to keep formal before a Jedi. They'd allied, temporarily, and four weeks later separated when they could finally flee out of sight of the Sith.
Obi-Wan had thought the incident forgotten (had assumed, sometimes, that Tar'etad would go the way of many of the other clones going through their trials for Mand'alor-ship and die in battle). He'd never expected to see the man again.
"...I don't suppose you are here to release me? For old time's sake?" When Tar'etad waved a hand signal towards one of the holorecorders and the field between them cut out, Obi-Wan froze in place, putting on the best mask he could to hide his worry. "You...are?"
Tar'etad smirked. "Of course, it wouldn't be right to have you locked away."
"That doesn't sound the same as releasing me."
Still, Obi-Wan took cautious steps forward until he was out of the cell, standing just before Tar'etad. Who stared at him as though soaking him in, before raising a hand to cup Obi-Wan's cheek, ignoring the shocked offense and rising blush he caused.
"I thought of you, after those weeks. The pretty jetii who worked so well with us, fitting in like you'd been made to be in our unit." Obi-Wan shivered at the growing implications. "When I came to power...I knew what reward I wanted to give myself, for winning."
His calm expression faltered. "...You're the new Mand'alor?"
Tar'etad chuckled, hand moving from Obi-Wan's cheek to grip the back of  his neck. "Don't worry, cyar'ika, I'm not expecting any formality in private."
Flicking his eyes to the holorecorders, Obi-Wan replied, "And what exactly is it you're expecting from me?"
He'd had to put down the other Jedi with him, to spare them a painful death, and then he'd spent four weeks with nothing but the Mandalorians as company. Watching each other's backs, hunting together, eventually trusting each other in some way. Intense emotions had accompanied it even for him, he couldn't imagine what Tar'etad must have been feeling, without the practice of acknowledging and releasing such things.
That last night, drunk on the possibility of finally getting away from that Force forsaken planet, he'd let Tar'etad in far too close. Now, reminded of it, he could almost remember the feeling of those strong hands, those chapped lips. The offer for Obi-Wan to follow them back to the Mandalorian encampment instead of continue on alone to the Republic ships ringing in his ears once more.
"I've followed your career. The jetiise keep trying to kill your spirit, but you're too mandokar for that."
"Tar'etad--"
"Do you know why I don't fear you running away if I don't keep you in that cell? We're in Keldabe, the heart of the Empire." Obi-Wan's heart sank at his matter-of-fact words. "By the time you figure your way out of here, you'll realize I was right all along, that you should have come with me."
He barely registered when Tar'etad began to kiss him.
xxxxxx
A/N: Originally posted on my tumblr.
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plays-the-thing · 3 years
Text
The Mandalorian S2: Style Over Substance – A Companion Piece
This is a companion piece to this video where I examine the strengths and weaknesses of the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. It’s a collection of ideas and evidence that were cut for time or focus reasons from the main video. I’ve included both timestamps and quotes of what section of the video each idea refers to. Under a cut for length.
[1:48] Akira Kurosawa, whose movies would be very important in the western genre was very big on complete and realistic sets and effects because it helps the quality of an actors’ performance.
“The quality of the set influences the quality of the actors' performances. If the plan of a house and the design of the rooms are done properly, the actors can move about in them naturally. If I have to tell an actor, 'Don't think about where this room is in relation to the rest of the house,' that natural ease cannot be achieved. For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity." – Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography
 [2:27] Like the original trilogy, The Mandalorian has its fair share of humor. The sequel trilogy also had a lot of humor, and was criticized for it, but it wasn’t the humor itself that I think people had a problem with, it was how the humor was done. See, in the original trilogy humor never changed or undercut the overall tone of a scene. If a scene is tense humor might lighten or even break the tension but never undercut it. The original trilogy would never, ever, make fun of the plot, character, or scenes in its own movie. The Mandalorian follows this mold of lightening or breaking tension without undercutting the scene itself which also helps it feel like the OT.
Just Writes video on Bathos is a good expansion on this idea. Personally, I find that particular brand of humor, popularized by the Marvel movies, extremely off-putting because it just screams at me to not take the story seriously and that makes it pretty hard for me to stay immersed in it. My three favorite marvel movies are Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, and Thor Ragnarok because Black Panther doesn’t really do that kind of humor and Guardians and Ragnarok manage to make it seem natural by genuinely being comedies.
 [7:18] This brings us to Episode 4. Last time I criticized this episode, but I wasn’t very specific, I just mentioned that we were starting to get away from showing and towards telling. Let’s take a closer look.
The first part of this scene, where the kid was being a nuisance, was actually really good. It kind of seemed like it was going to lead into some genuine frustration with him being a nuisance and therefore maybe some drama in their relationship. 
[9:51] Cowboy Bebop is another space western with a strong style and a mix of vignettes and episodes which advance a characters story. But every single episode builds up the themes of the overall story even if the plot has nothing to do with it.
To be fair, not every episode builds up *Spike’s* story and themes, but Cowboy Bebop has four main characters and every episode works towards at least one of the characters’ stories, characterization, or relationships.
[12:20] Mando’s mistrust of IG, when they really have quite a lot in common, speaks to something about his character.
What does it speak to exactly? Well, everyone might have their own opinion about that but here’s mine:
 IG-11 used to be a hunter, but now Queel has reprogrammed him. Mando still sees the droid as the hunter and is adamant that it can’t be trusted no matter how much Queel insists that Mando must trust his work reprogramming the droid as an extension of trusting Queel himself.
Now, why does Mando hate droids so much, and particularly this droid? Well, that’s an open question, but I have my theories. Part of it is the trauma he experienced when he was young, but I think it runs deeper than that. You know how sometimes the traits that really bother you the most in other people are the things that you don’t like about yourself? The IG-11 that Mando met is a lot like the part of Mando that I’ve been calling “The Professional.” IG is efficient and ruthless, just like Mando on a job. They are deaf to moral and personal appeals in the face of a contract. This is also the part of Mando that took the kid to the Imperials in the first place, the part that he conquered and redeemed by the end of the third episode.
But IG has been reprogrammed. Just like Mando, he has changed and now cares for the child over himself. IG even develops a personality, and at one point attempts to tell a joke. But because IG reminds Mando so much of that part of him he had to defeat, he can’t bring himself to trust him. The tension between them persists pretty much up until IG fully demonstrates to Mando that he is there both to care for the child, and for Mando. In this moment Mando begins to really see how similar they are.
This connection makes it hard for him to let IG make his sacrifice, and he even appeals to this by telling IG that he thought his old core functionality was gone. But by reactivating his old functionality as a part of his new core function, IG is also giving Mando a template to incorporate his Professional self into his new self. He shows Mando that those two halves of his self that came into conflict back in the beginning can be synthesized into one new whole. He doesn’t need to reject any part of his identity.
Then the newly synthesized Mando dons his jetpack, fulfilling his only stated desire in the entire season, and defeats a scenery chewing villain to win the day.
But that’s just my interpretation, and I’m willing to haggle over what exact interpretation the evidence best supports.
[15:29] Speaking of Luke, let’s talk about fanservice. Now to be clear, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with fanservice, what matters is what always matters: how you use it.
This also applies to the other two “Trademarked Star Wars Problems” I mentioned in the last video: repetitiveness and hamfisted merchandizing. These things are not necessarily bad. For example:
I would bet Baby Yoda is the most successfully merchandized product since the OT, but there’s nothing wrong with that because they’re part of the story being told. Baby Yoda doesn’t distract from the story, they are part of the story. On the other hand you have Ewoks, which were originally going to be Wookies. I would bet they went with Ewoks at least in part to sell more cute toys…but at least they still sort of work with the story. In TLJ the penguin things are there for no other reason than to be cute and sell toys. Same with the crystal dog. They have literally no purpose in the story, and their obvious and prominent inclusion only to sell toys distracts from my immersion.
Obviously repetition is part of stories. That’s why we have tropes, and the Hero’s journey, as tools for a writer to communicate information quickly. Just from his outfit we know a lot about Han before he ever opens his mouth, same with Obi-Wan. In RotJ, the heroes need to blow up the Death Star again. It’s kind of annoying that we’re literally doing the same thing we did two movies ago, but at least it’s a little different. In TFA Han Solo reassures us that the Starkiller Base isn’t that big of a deal by saying “don’t worry, there’s always a way to blow it up.” This is an example of a character reaching out from the script and telling the writer to change their story because the repetition is getting ridiculous.
[18:32] So…why is it here? Yeah, I know who Thrawn is. I don’t know why Ahsoka does, or why she cares, or why I should care. If the writer had cared about that they would have made her talk to Mando about it so she could give some sort of story or character-based explanation for why she cares, instead of just dramatically saying his name.
I mean I know the most likely reason it was here: to build hype for her solo show, but they could have done that without punching my immersion in the kidney.
[20:20] So it was no surprise that in the end the Expanded Universe’s greatest hit of all piloted his X-Wing into the show. But, I didn’t mind this. They had been seeding that a Jedi would be coming to collect Groghu for a while now, and if you had been running through the timeline in your head you were probably at least half expecting this. It’s foreshadowed well, it’s part of the story, and it triggers our emotional climax.
The reveal is quite well done too. First it’s an X-Wing, then we see a Jedi dressed in Luke’s RoTJ gear but it’s over the security cameras so there’s no color, then we see it’s a green lightsaber, then they clearly show that it’s Luke’s lightsaber hilt, then they finally have him peel his hood back. Each small reveal builds up the suspicion in your mind that it’s Luke until it’s confirmed.
That being said I would totally understand if someone thought it was obnoxious and hamfisted to shove Luke into another story, even though it did work for me.
[29:12] Parts of it even connect back to Mando’s story and character, though not in a new way because it’s mostly a redo of Mando’s relationship with IG last season.
I understand that Mando breaks his rules a little bit more here, but it’s still a riff on the same theme of: Mando has a conflict with a character, the he sees the similarities between between them, and then circumstances force Mando to take his helmet off in front of the character.
However if his arc with the other Mandalorians was functioning properly than this could work as a synthesis of a change in ideology and a reassertion of his willingness to bend the rules, but instead it just comes across as another redo of stuff in the last season. It’s still halfway functional because by this point it’s easy to forget that Mando had a character arc last season and it reminds us of that right before they pull the trigger on his and Groghu’s separation…but redoing the development from last season doesn’t count as a real character arc.
[31:08] There is so much more I could say about all of the bad writing, plotting, and characterization in this season. There are so many things that just don’t make sense, waste our time, or just plain don’t work.
I’m still confused over what the writer was trying to do with the snow planet. Like they crash land there and Mando decides to go to sleep inside his hull-breached freezing ship and the fish chick is like “Mando this is dumb you should fix your ship” and then he just fixes it. What was even the point of handing Mando the Idiot Ball there? Why not just have him fix the ship without trying to commit suicide by hypothermia first? Like…what?
[31:27] Why are you just listing off a bunch of names that mean nothing to us like she’s a video game character telling us where we need to go next?
I want to point out that even though I’m using this footage of Delphine as a reference she’s actually managing to tell you something about Malborn and why he is trustworthy, so it’s actually better than what Bo is doing. Though to be fair the tidbit about “the forest planet” is cute since it will be a deforested planet when we show up, that line needed some character connection to not sound so weird.
[33:13] That’s what the point of Show Don’t Tell *really* is, it’s not about how much dialogue you use or whether a character is explaining something. It’s about using exposition to tell us something about a character at the same time. It’s about putting the camera in a place that shows us something about the character or the action, not just what’s happening. It’s about packing as much of the story as possible into every choice you make.
In Avatar, the way that Zhao tells us about Zuko’s banishment tells us a lot about both Zhao and Zuko. The camera angle here emphasizes Katara standing encouragingly over Aang’s back as he stares dejectedly at the ground (contrasted with Toph’s angry stare) and tells us about the nature of Katara’s relationship to Aang as his teacher and friend as opposed to Toph’s. In the opening shot of A New Hope, the low angle of the camera implies dominance and the length of the Star Destroyer shows us the long reach of the Empire. Every single time Zuko is on screen it is worth paying attention to which side of his face is dominating the shot: scarred or unscarred. Exactly what each side represents is up for debate: I tend to think of it not as good Zuko vs. bad Zuko but more as Zuko’s feelings of obligation to his family and people and Zuko’s obligations to his own sense of what he believes is right and what he needs to self-actualize.
Show Don’t Tell is just a saying. It’s a saying to encourage writers, particularly new or inexperienced ones, to focus on the *art* of telling the story instead of focusing solely on the plot and facts. I am using it somewhat liberally here to say it’s about “using exposition to tell us something about a character at the same time” but since that is about the art of telling stories, and not just a recitation of facts, it does technically count.
[34:32] With television shows and the way they can go on forever, and with how much money there is in going on forever, it seems like they always become a sagging mess at some point. Some of them manage to bring the quality back, but some of them don’t. So to a certain extent, these problems with the Mandalorian are kind of normal for television shows.
I can’t remember exactly where I stopped watching How I Met Your Mother, the last thing I remember is Ted dating some crazy girl and swearing off relationships. I abandoned The Expanse midway through season 2 earlier this year…maybe I’ll go back but boy was I bored. I made it all the way through the Wire. Season 2 had its problems but eventually got back on the right foot midway through or so, but the problems came roaring back in season 5 which it took me almost a year to finish because it was so agonizing.
Avatar is probably the most controversial choice here of a show in which the quality slipped but I firmly believe that if they cut out the second half of season 2 and the first half of season 3 the show would have been much, much better. Most everything in Ba Sing Se is tonally weird and the whole idea of a city with too many rules and bureaucracy is way too complex an idea for this show to tackle. Avatar does tackle incredibly complicated and adult themes for a kids show but in my view this was one step too far. They get Zuko to a place where he’s ready to join the Aang Gang but then have him backslide temporarily. There’s this whole idea of an invasion on the Day of the Black Sun but it would be such a story cheat to allow Aang to beat the Firelord without actually mastering the four elements and so obviously isn’t going to work. All of these things together just make it feel like wheel spinning where the story and characters aren’t actually growing or developing but just being padded out.
Except for “The Tales of Ba Sing Se” and “Appa’s Lost Days” obviously, those are great.
It’s actually pretty funny because the episode before Aang is supposed to fight the Firelord the first time (the Black Sun time) he’s a nervous wreck and everyone is trying out different psychological techniques to try and make him feel better which is…I guess sort of valuable for kids to see that nervousness is normal. But when you compare it to the second time he’s going to fight the Firelord, for real, it’s *so obviously* for real this time because Aang is having a *character* based crisis about the conflict between his pacifism and his duty to stop the Firelord. The comparison of the two is telling in terms of what was going on in the story of each.
[35:03] Now they are spinning it out into not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different shows all based on the Mandalorian. It’s almost gross how hard they are milking this.
Okay apparently they fired Gina Carano so I guess it’s not four anymore. Or maybe it is who knows. Listen, the point is they *intended* to make four shows okay.
[35:06] Thanks for watching all the way through to the end. These videos take a ton of time and effort so that means a lot. Even though I’ve reset my subscriber count to zero now that I’ve criticized the Mandalorian, I will continue to work on the channel as much as I can, so subscribe if you want to see more videos like this.
I promise to always give you my honest opinion.
Also I know I was shooting for one video a month and, well, I still am but these videos are really time-consuming. I want to make sure I maintain a really high level of quality and so sometimes I get halfway through a video, realize it’s no good and have to start over with something else. Sometimes it takes months of rewrites to get it to a place where I’m happy with it. This one came out pretty quickly, it was about 6 weeks from when I started the script to when I uploaded. Hopefully I’ll only get better and more efficient at it as I get more practice.
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