#but knowing the characters all now... theyve won me over...

[studiokhara]

i love nu carnival... it really is a game made for fujoshis by fujoshis. like even if we didnt know already from interviews and such how the devs are it would be so clear from.the game itself. like firstable being the first yaoi gacha game where the male playable character IS HIS OWN CHARACTER and not a self insert. the game itself is basically a dating sim but with gacha and tcg strategy/mechanics. the game design and battle systems are soooo phoned in man....THE ULTS DONT EVEN GET SPECIAL ANIMATIONS... but they do have specific battle lines. and getting the card means you can stick your limited edition blorbo on your screen and if you do enough pulls you can get the relevant eiden and that unlocks more specific dialogue!! every birthday anniversary theres an in character letter from the character to eiden. every other month or so they seem to come out with a new line of outfits to sell as standees, and i always looove zooming in and inspecting each character. and of course the writing of the rooms, events, stories, etc..but i think all the little flourishes and details that work to establish more characterization and relationship stuff with eiden is so great. product/marketing strategy made in a lab to perfectly tap into the fujoshi contingent and get us to open our wallets

[opal-owl-flight]

Can you please tell us more about Neo4. What's their background.

“I need your help.”

Thing is -- I dont exactly own that character! Hes owned by @pastille-pain ... I asked them abt his deets, so here it is under the readmore!

His recruitment by 3 is also under the readmore :) (+more notes abt pre-sploon3)

(From my pal)

My Precious Soy Sauz

Aka croissant

Where he comes from is inkopolis

Lived there his whole life actually. A very sheltered kid due to being raised by grandparents that were in Octaria at one point. So they wanted to make sure nothing really happened to him

An only child but he had his cousin (Nakji, Takoyaki) of the three, he'd be the middle child with Nakji and the youngest.

He's got two friends (three if we count malachite -- the smallfrt) outside of the platoon. Dulce, and (unfortunately) Scara

He dating Melon (oc of mine), we know this

Kinda funny it started as her just battling with him cause he was good but then it turned something more

His time before the platoon was mostly

"Hey are you related to that Sauz idol?" Or "hey, you related to that Sauz wrestler?" It got annoying very quickly so he started introducing himself as croissant and nothing else

Aside from that, if he wasn't turfing he was at home reading or watching shows. Guys a very boring person

He's a pretty big OTH fan...

All this above is still the same even while being apart of the platoon minus the constant questions about his relatives and adding college into the mix

He can do some really cool shit when he's focused (like absolutely demolish competition in turf) but he's also easily distracted so I think you can imagine how that goes

His stress relief is shopping (mostly window shopping, very rarely does he actually buy anything)

He never gets too mad but we know the face if he does

Fun fact, you will never catch this man in pants

Short and anything else

Not pants

The only time he's ever seen wearing pants is in his agent gear and that's cause it's what was given to him.

-----------------------

Heres a bonus too, of 3s recruitment of him!

It was a turfing match, and theyve been watching the krak-on user the whole round. They took note of how he responded to stress, to bad calls, and how he acted on his own following calls he had judged as bad. Once it was over, they followed the team into the lobby.

They stand tall against the doorframe theyre leaning against, presence as cold and as commanding as ever.

(Nevermind that Croissant is taller AND older than them, that squid is intimidating as FUCK)

A whistle, calling the team over.

"|May I have a word?|" they sign, "|Ive been watching your team turf for the last few rounds.|"

Scara, the team captain, spits a "Who the FUCK are you."

3s eyebrows raise in surprise. But they should expect it... casual turfers dont usually know their name.

They went to the smaller leagues for a reason. If something happened to a big name in the scene, and its found that they had something to do with it-

No. No. They mentally shake their head. They are NOT picking this person because they are going to be fucking canon fodder.

"|Who I am is not important. Not much, anyway.

I am... interested in one of your teammates.|"

a nod towards Croissant. "|As a krak-on user myself, his performance has impressed me.|"

"Has he now. You seen our losses?? Are you making fun of us??"

"|He has great potential.|" they sign, ignoring the outburst. "|I would like to...|" theres a slight pause. "|...train with him.|"

"I can train my team perfectly, all by myself. Get lost."

They give a cold stare back. "|Im sure that has worked very well for you thus far.|"

The captain didnt seem to want to back down. 3 continues, ear twitching.

"|This request was not aimed towards you, anyway. Im asking him.|"

"BUT-"

"|I want to hear HIS answer.|"

A test. 3 saw that Scara was pushing him around and the only reason they won the match was bc Croissant decided to go his own way. Will he go his own way now?

"Well I know he'll choose to stick with me-"

"Oh I'd love to train with you I like helping others :D"

"You weren't supposed to say that."

3 nods. "|It begins now. Come. We have much to discuss. And as for you.|"

They clack their beak. "|Captain to captain. You need to listen to your teammates more.|"

-----------------------

Once they are in a more private space...

"|Training is only one part of the deal.

I apologize for not being upfront. This is a matter of national security, and I cannot mention much about it beyond base.|"

I suppose Croissant hasnt heard...or at least, isnt into much of the so-called Hero of Inkadia thats plastered everywhere in Inkopolis? If he was, hed at least start thinking of all that being like... "wait all that media was based on something real???"

(3 mentioning national security and a base may also inspire thoughts of "wow this squid's a fucking nerd...")

"|You are free to reject my request if you feel unfit for the task at hand. But where are my manners? I have yet to formally introduce myself.

Topside, I am known as FOR3VRFRSH. Here, I am the Captain of the New Squidbeak Splatoon.

I suppose youve heard of such a force...? No?|

Mm.

|Just know that we keep Inkadia more or less safe from nation-destroying threats.|"

He accepts the offer... but he also wasn't thinking too hard on it cause he saw an opportunity to step away from Scara and took it immediately.

3 nods, beckoning him towards the sewer line. As they walked backwards into base, they signed to him. "|From this point onwards, you will be referred to as Agent...Four.|"

Theres a very slight waver of their hand as they signed the number.

"|You show much promise, from what Ive observed in turf. Dont disappoint me.|"

"The only person I disappoint is that guy, but he's just very critical-"*

Theres a glint in 3s eye, a look of amusement... "|...Overly critical is putting it lightly.|"

"I promise to do my best still."

-----------------------

3 introduces him as the new Agent 4 and I feel Marie just scrunches her nose a bit. Then sees the look in 3s eye...

To the folks from the regions around 3s home (Callie, Marie, Cuttlefish), theyre not subtle about missing her.

[pclarcld]

──   (  nico higara. twenty4. nonbinary. they/he.  ) thank god you’re here, man - have you seen OSMOND ‘OZZY’ AVERSESCU anywhere? i totally lost them after their rendition of man! i feel like a woman by shania twain last night. no? they’re like, aye - high and go to PALLADIAN - i think they’re a SENIOR level studying ARCHITECTURE? but who knows, these days. all i know is that they’re AVOIDANT & HARMONIOUS and a LIBRA . last night they kept going on and on about how they won BEST PERSON TO SURVIVE ON A STRANDED ISLAND WITH last year, which is cool and whatever, but i just wouldn’t expect it out of them, considering they’re so, like, INDECISIVE & DIPLOMATIC, you know? anyways - i’m going to check down by the inner garden, i think that’s where they like to hang. text me if you see them, okay? bye! / as penned by parker.  twenty7.  they/he.  est.

BIO PINTREST MUSINGS VISUALS WC INSPO THREADS

STATS

full name: osmond "ozzy" aversecu

birthdate: september 29th, 2001

family: maria & gerald (parents) / devon & nathan (2 adoptive siblings)

gender: non-binary

pronouns: they/he

sexuality: queer

languages: english, japanese

height: 5'8"

hair color: brown

eye color: brown

tattoos/piercings: n/a

PERSONALITY

+traits: amiable, diplomatic, harmonious, optimist, affectionate.

- traits: avoidant, overwrought, indecisive, boisterous, perfectionist.

labels: the insouciant, the obsequious

aesthetics: a field of poppies, killing with kindness, bedsheets perfectly tucked, sending handwritten notes, freshly fallen snow, moss covered rocks., cheesy romantic comedies, tea with honey.

character inspo: charles bingley (pride & prejudice) lana lang (smallville) blaine anderson (glee) peeta mellark (thg)

fears: rejection, being unwanted, imperfection

hobbies: drawing, running, crochet, guitar

myers-briggs: ENFJ-T protagonist

hogwarts house: hufflepuff

temperament: sanguine

moral alignment: lawful good

HEADCANNONS

peeps over at devons bio and clears throat (disclaimer mack overrides me whatever they say GOES you got it... if i misspeak... no i didnt...)

from the start there were high expectations in the household. and ozzy? they were ready to rise to it! soccer practice, got it! ace all your tests, easy! follow a specific routine to a t, whatever makes it easier for everyone else.

they went thru childhood being told what to do and they just... listened...like fr. there was never a rebel phase. there were no tantrums. ozzy just... wanted to do their best wanted his parents to be proud? :(

they just like??? wanna see the best in everyone. homelife kinda was and is and probably always will be wonky and he just wants 2 make other people feel loved and appreciated for more than just their achievements

theyd never admit it but they def used palladian as an excuse to get the FUCK away.. theyve found themselves a lot thru college. he grew up as quite the push over and he sometimes still kinda is but ? has more of a backbone now like they wont compromise their morals to make someone happy but like back in the day it was constantly trying to do ANYTHING to be on everyones good side

other people can fail !! theyll be a shoulder for you to cry on and tell you all about your amazing qualities... but if they fuck up?? god just the worst person ever... how dare they..

ozzy isnt one to judge like tell him your worst secrets and he'll take it to the GRAVE !!! only thing that gets 'em going really is if you fuck for the people he cares about. they have a big heart. so much love to give. so theyre also a bit protective of his lil circle like he just wants everyone happy like they deserve

insanely picky eater like. probably eats the same 3 foods every week.

v affectionate and in tune w their options. theyll tell u they love u as soon as they do and it'll probably be day 1. a type to smooch their friend on the lips as good luck before their big show or whateva

they arent perfect like... they wanna be and try to be but... theyre flawed since, y'know, human. but they hate conflict so theyll do WHATEVER to not deal. big run-away from my problems kind of person... like... lemme just go to school in a different country and that'll solve everything...right? right....

WANTED CONNECTIONS

everything :( please :(

[chilchucks-timbs]

What do you think of the sequel of twewy then? You talk a lot about the original but I'm interested in your opinion of the second part because I saw a few fans disappointed :o

OKAY. Omg.

So first of all? Soundtrack? SLAPS. We won. We won with the sequel soundtrack. I actually prefer some of the new remixes to the original!

The artwork? Stuck to the original style. Can’t complain at all. The new designs? PEAK. They’re so cool. There’s new shopkeepers- who look AWESOME- who have LORE. We can access NPC LORE. I read about one who is married to one of the players? Catch me eating popcorn at that story.

Shout out to the sprites you get when you’re feeding your party members? They’re so cute. In original TWEWY we just had a voice telling us if they liked it after I’ve fed them. NOW we get to know via their face going 🤢 or 🥺 BEFORE they eat so I can give them something they definelty like! and I think that’s fun and funky fresh.

Gameplay? Fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. - the original game had a switch port and honestly? I really think they should’ve done better with the controls. What worked and was beautiful for the ds- felt very clunky on the switch. Especially when playing console? I mean what in the Wii controller buLLSHIT. I need my attacks ACCURATE and on tv that’s very very hard. My friend managed it but? Maybe I just need to get good LSLGFSPALDL. But NEO twewy? beautiful. Perfect. Great for the switch. no complaints on the new battle system.

The story:

edit: THE HUMOUR IS THERE. I FORGOR. I forgot how fucking funny it is. The amount of screenshots I have? Hilarious. Not any like quotable moments like there is in the original game. But there’s so much silly billy shit going on. Bunch of CLOWNS I swear.

Its messaging is not driven home as much as the original twewy is. Like my friend had to explain to me what they were doing because it’s very very subtle. The characters are changing but only just a little. -unlike the first game which, like? At the end of the game? These guys are CLEARLY not the same people who entered the game!! These are Zuko ATLA level transformations!!!: whereas Neo twewy game says? Hey. Your actions are kinda sucky bro. Ever thought about changing up your style? Like it’s THERE. But it’s clearly not the CORE of the game like the first one. And that’s where it falls flat FOR ME. I LOVE and ADORE character development and it’s just not the focus of NEO twewy. But that doesn’t mean I hated the game. I just don’t prefer it over the original.

What NEO twewy DOES focus on is world building which. I think they’ve made some super cool and interesting choices. Even if I, and many Joshua kiryu fans don’t agree with them. 💛 we just straight up ignore the new lore because we don’t like it- the one around Joshua anyway. They bring in some new reapers and some new plot line surrounding shinjuku. That’s fine. That’s fun. But. Joshua? MY MAN? No square enix, you don’t know my blorbo of 10 years better than me :))

So. In conclusion. I was not DISAPPOINTED. I just think they lost the core of what twewy meant to people for the sake of focusing on the new details theyve added. I think rindo and fret and nagi deserved better development.

ALSO IDK HOW I FEEL ABOUT TEAMS? I MISS PARTNERS. LIKE TEAMS IS FINE I GUESS BUT. PARTNER WAS SPECIAL.

Okokok real conclusion is that I was not disappointed. I had fun. I loved a lot about this game. But the original hit home so hard, and the sequel was just a good game.

[garak]

@marblekuchen: thank you so much for the extensive reply! I appreciate your thoughts and its inspiring to read such a raw take on him :) good luck with your work, if you feel like it id be interested to hear what you think about kkgai after the 4th war, but no pressure.

you dont know the demon you're awakening asking me to talk about kkg ive been thinking about them on and off for literally a decade now. again i know ill run long so my thoughts on them post 4th war under the cut

i have to be honest i have only read/watched konoha shinden and some small snippets of boruto in terms of the canon timeline (although i guess konoha shinden is filler lol) so my understanding of what actually happens in canon is much blurrier here. if there are small moments of them in between sasuke fighting a dinosaur and jiraiyas evil clone plotting against konoha or whatever i really wouldnt know it because i honestly dont need to know. im sorry im a fake fan i like all the side character kids but i cannot find it in my heart to love boruto the boy. he pisses me off.

that being said i loveeeeee them in konoha shinden i think their relationship is so beautiful. in my mind theyre in long term domestic partnership that no one is willing to really say anything about because technically theres nothing anyone can actually do about it because hes literally the sixth hokage lol. which still blows my mind what do you mean we went from hashirama senju to fucking kakashi you know back in those days having kage-level power actually meant something... ninja society is cooked. but still i think its beautiful that they have each other in the aftermath of everything like i know they were both struggling hard af those first few months especially gai (kks too i guess but whatever none of his students died in fact one came back so he should count himself lucky). that theyre still doing their weird gay rivals thing even after all these years... it brings a tear to my eye. gai put in the effort for all those years even when no one else cared and at the end of the day he won because you know what that rivalry WAS eternal.

i think what strikes me the most about them in konoha shinden is how open kakashi is and how willing gai is to accept his limits, both being things that they often struggled to do in their youth. gai surviving the 8th gate but it permanently disabling him is lowkey the perfect ending for him because it forces him to actually confront his flaws and allows him to retire and pursue his true calling: writing a book. one thing i love about gai is that hes sort of a commentary on a certain kind of almost campy heroic archetype and part of that is his over the top speech patterns and penchant for poetic language. anything that metatextually references that trait makes me smile and i also think its fun that now he and kakashi are both connoisseurs of trashy books. that and teaching at the academy are such perfect jobs for him idk i honestly think gais got it made this is the best ending for him. kks... i imagine being hokage wasnt exactly the best fit for him seeing as he really has no talent for politics and would rather be sitting in a tree reading porn. but seeing as hes retired now im sure he has plenty of time to do that alongside dressing up like another person and pretending he isnt himself. honestly im glad that kakashi is still his weird depressed perverted self well into his 40s its inspirational. but compared to the kakashi of yesteryear boruto kakashi is a little more willing to talk about his emotions outside of combat scenarios which for someone like him is massive progress... i love konoha shinden im sorry im getting emotional thinking about how far theyve come.

for my thoughts that have no basis in canon yet i find in my heart be true. i fully believe that theyre living together and are essentially married but kakashi never bothered to actually legalize gay marriage and now hes putting off telling naruto to do it because he knows the conversation is gonna be really awkward. in a more perfect world i.e. the boruto i made up in my mind they would be married and they would babysit metal when lee was on missions and gai would be wayyyyyy too involved in the PTA at the academy and kakashi would sit on gai's back every day in the morning when he did his pushups and eventually he would pick up the habit of writing from gai and would write his own series of trashy porn novels under a pseudonym but they would flop and have no impact and only after he stopped writing them would it come out that he was the author and suddenly everyone would want to talk to him about them because they were highkey crazy like 50 shades of grey helicopter crash crazy. technically this could still happen in boruto theres still time but im not holding out hope

id be so happy to hear more about your thoughts on Gai, I've been trying to picture him outside of the wooby fandom lens more o7 regarding the breathing exercise example I can imagine he'd perhaps even yell at Kakashi to get a hold of himself ( could be out of panic reasons but also bc of gais standards for excellence. gestures )

ok this is gonna get long and jumbled so its going under the cut

first off in regards to the panic attack thing lets be real here he would punch him in the face. if he was willing to do it to 12 year old lee to snap him out of distraction he would be more than willing to do it to kakashi.

this leads to my first point of contention with gai's characterization in fandom which is that hes like a well adjusted person. gai is not necessarily better adjusted, its just that he (ironically) is able to channel most of his frustration and anger into things that are more socially acceptable, or rather, things that benefit the status quo. i'm not going to get too deep in the reeds on ninja society and its evils because i assume anyone who follows this blog is already well aware of what i think about the village system and the necessity of violence to keep it going. gai is not in any way exempt from his role in that. i think that what people fail to understand is that while kks and gai are very obviously opposites and foils to each other, they are also very similar especially in their relationships to the village. gai honestly is worse than kks in this way because hes an 8 gates user which is explicitly a suicide jutsu, but both of them have committed themselves to being weapons first and foremost which is an inherently unhealthy relationship to have to one's own body. gai's obsession with training and pushing himself past the limit as well as the whole idea of the self rule (literally self-imposed punishment) is unhealthy! him pushing these same ideas onto lee to turn him into a weapon as well is unhealthy!

his relationship with his father and with lee i think give us the best idea of gai's true character and beliefs. i'll go over lee first because i think he gives us the best sense of how gai thinks about himself. gai obviously sees lee as a mini version of himself, and thus we can assume the things that he tells lee are generally the same things he tells himself. this is most important in regards to his self-worth and reason to live being directly tied to physical ability and rank as a shinobi. gais insistence that lee get the surgery after the chuunin exams despite it possibly being a death sentence reinforces the idea that it's better to be dead than be disabled or even just not a shinobi (the first part he eventually rescinds while the second seems to still trouble him). while he does positively reinforce his students at times and does not punish them for their failures, he does feed lee the idea of the self rule which means lee will automatically punish himself for failure without gai's intervention, and he does physically punish at least lee when he steps out of line or disobeys him. this is played for laughs but still shouldnt be disregarded as an important part of the way gai's entire life revolves around physicality and violence as well as his belief in hierarchy and obedience (like i said, reproduction of the values of the shinobi system). he also teaches lee the 8 gates which is such an obviously crazy thing to do that even kakashi (who famously taught his friend killing jutsu to sasuke and then got mad when sasuke tried to use it to kill his friends) calls him out on it being reckless, saying he lost respect for gai because of it. gai sticks to his guns, of course, because self sacrifice is gais whole thing even when not strictly necessary.

this brings us to dai and the 8 gates more broadly, which also ties back into his parallels with kks. i think people often gloss over the fact that both of their fathers killed themselves, albeit in very different ways, because naruto often frames purposeful self-sacrifice as noble in a way that suicide is not when those are effectively the same thing. but the 8 gates is a suicide jutsu there is no way around that, it is a technique that allows you to become powerful at the expense of your health up until it kills you and you have to choose to open the 8th gate thus choosing to die. this is the technique gai's father teaches to him and that he teaches to his (surrogate) son. dai i think plays a big role in gai's whole ethos of silent suffering since he teaches gai at a very young age to respond to any detraction with a smile. i do think that gai is a genuinely upbeat and high-energy person, but some of that exuberance and positivity is def an act (or at this point an automatic response in the face of a world that still doesn't respect him). gai comes off as very confident, but we can see through his rivalry with kakashi that a lot of that is just bluster and that he really does desire approval and recognition, which is in part because of his father's reputation and also because of his own shortcomings in ninjutsu and taijutsu. i wouldn't say that gai is insecure, because i think in general he is very proud of himself and sure in his abilities, but rather it's that he never stops feeling the need to improve himself because even as a jounin people still don't really respect him. he's sort of like naruto in this way.

okay this is getting out of hand i've lost the plot of what i was trying to talk about. as an easier way of formatting my thoughts HERE is a list of important gai traits:

competitive

dramatic

emotional

loyal

off-putting to most people

self-sacrificing and self-punishing

dislikes showing negative emotion (crying not included)

strict with his subordinates

determined past the point of reason

poetic and verbose

obsessive over improvement

will disagree with kakashi whenever possible

kills people with his hands for a living

here is a list of things that gai is not:

unaware of how he is perceived

always positive

always honest

emotionally intelligent or perceptive

stupid

impatient

good at talking to people in a way that reaches them

well-adjusted

insecure (especially about his body lol)

a quitter

gai is one of my favourite characters of all time despite his many shortcomings and the fact that hes mostly comic relief so i apologize for running long but thats how you know i care. theres more that i could say about him especially in regards to how him and kakashi play off each other thematically but i didnt want to go too deep into the kkg stuff because i think sometimes his relationship with kks clouds the way people see him as an independent entity. he also undergoes actual character development multiple times so its important to think about where he is in his life when thinking about how he would act lol. i could go on with more examples but i won't for now because i have actual serious things to work on that need doing but hopefully this serves as a decent survey of some of my thoughts on gai

[masterfrownn-archive]

*takes a deep elongated sigh bc im pretty certain of who is gonna be eliminated in bfb tomorrow*

[burning-sol]

i am thinking to myself "hmmm i wanna do a ranking of my fav jrwi pcs" BUT IM SO TORN?? like. what do i rank them based on??? i like them all for different reasons?????

fuck. like how do i compare my yucky gucky man rand to rumiracle me sparkling magical girl. they are disasters in difficult to immediately compare ways. some pcs i like because theyre goofy and others i like because theyve got so much going on!!! i fucking love thanatos cause he's thanatos and jay because she's a girlboss like what the fuck.

you know what FUCK IT!! CATEGORIES!!! (even some of THESE were hard to rank so yeah subject to change... some of these are nonsensical dont look too deep into it)

STRONGEST ATTACHMENTS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER:

1. gillion (the original blorbo) 2. exandroth (INTENSE but took a while to set in and i hate him) 3. rand (late comer but now am an avid lover of)

HAS MY SYMPTOMS:

1. rand (gross and psychotic) 2. gillion (dissociation for realsies) 3. rumi (complete identity confusion) 4. exandroth (loud, impulsive, self centered, god complex) 5. kian (depressed in a life threatening way) 6. rolan (depressed in a slowburn way)

SAME TRAUMA:

1. gillion (wanted validation and affection to the point of killing people, hiding pain including physical ailments) 2. rand (unemployed, dyfunctional and needing to rely on others, having scary symptoms, dealing with substance abuse) 3. jay (primal fear of parental figure and trying to run away but also feeling trapped)

SAME JOYS:

1. peter sqloint (OH MY GOSH LOOK AT THAT ROCK!!! oh the BLISS of pointing at that thing and explaining the thing!!) 2. exandroth (*LAUGHS MANIACALLY*) 3. thanatos (very content with big weapon) 4. gillion (i love my friends!!! i would take a bullet for you!!!)

HEADCANON EMPOWERED:

1. exandroth (whole character is hc at this point so ranked 1st) 2. rand (schizo girl!!!) 3. kian (god what a mess) 4. angelstone (but only post-campaign p much) 5. rolan (adhd AND insert spoilers) 6. gillion (HE'S A FISH!!!!) 7. peter sqloint (making him slightly more interesting than you'd think)

JUST A GUY:

1. rolan (just a guy) 2. peter sqloint (just a guy but slightly too funny to be ranked 1st)

SAYS THEIR OWN NAME AND IT'S FUNNY:

1. thanatos 2. goobleck!! 3. GILLION!!! 4. peter SQloint 5. exandrothh

IMPERSONATED ON ACCIDENT:

1. goobleck (i had this voice during a school excursion, it was attrocious and it hurt my throat and im ranking it 1st because of the horrors) 2. gillion (not a vocal impersonation but when gillion went brooding in the fey wild i became 'evil' and just like gillion it only last a short while before i went into an emotional breakdown so yeah) 3. peter sqloint (was a very funny voice but didn't scar my psyche like the other two so ranked 3rd little guy) 4. exandroth...?

MOST EXANDROTH:

1. all the exandroth introjects (haiii i love youuu) 2. exandroth (relatively exandroth im neutral on this guy) 3. xander (called og exandroth a loser, doesnt identify with the guy so he's obv less exandroth) 4. the different interpretations of exandroth in my head that all fought each other that one time (i don't know who won)

WET AND PATHETIC:

1. chip (just look at him) 2. peter sqloint (just look at him) 3. rand (just look at him) 4. rolan (just look at him) 5. exandroth (because she is SO fucking insecure!! girl get it together!!! sopping wet beast what a mess!!!!) 6. jay (just a tad pathetic when she's not girlbossing)

ACEAROSPEC RANKS THE ATTRACTIVE PPL:

1. gillion (fuck im i love... guy actually :flushed:) 2. rand (i want to smoke with this guy and make out even if he's gross) 3. jay (if she twirled my hair in her hand i would instantly EXPLODE) 4. kian (has that sort of vibe that i associate with someone in my life who i like so yeah) 5. rumi (drop dead gorgeous but ranked last because i would be so intimidated like rumi is too perfect for me you know what i mean) 6. exandroth (analyse whatever freudian bs is happening here, idk i like an offputting guy thats also an eldritch horror and nonbinary im into that)

MOST LIKELY TO HOLD HANDS WITH:

1. jay (obvious choice, warm hand, easy to lean up against) 2. rumi (i am nervous and you are pretty help) 3. rolan (mutually scared people holding hands) 4. exandroth (i trust this guy) 5. peter (clammy hands we have clammy hands i dont even know where we're walking)

I'M SORRY I DON'T TALK ABOUT YOU MORE:

1. chip (we do not have the same trauma) 2. thanatos (why did bizly make your character like that im so mad i love you but you have been slaughtered by your creator) 3. goobleck (IM SO SORRY I LOVE YOU GOOBLECK!! EVEN IF OTHERS DONT APPRECIATE YOU!!!) 4. peter (I LOVE YOU TOO!! MY BOY!!!)

NON-HUMAN I WOULD TRUST MY LIFE WITH:

1. thanatos (structurally sound and killed gods so we're set) 2. exandroth (biased but i would feel safe with an angel eldritch horror even if she has her flaws) 3. gillion (an obvious choice!!! please protect me) 4. spoilers (oh yeah that thing is a bug you got this) 5. rumi (i socially feel safe with you but physically i would be getting nervous) 6. goobleck (i would rank you higher but i have vivid imagery in my head of you going SPLAT and i cannot shake this)

BROWN HAIRED GUYS:

1. chip (he's vintage, you know? anyways probably cares way too much abt his hair to let it be destroyed) 2. rand (he definitely has greasy hair like he needs a shower but he smells like smoke so i have a bias) 3. peter (dandruff) 4. i can imagine all these guys potentially having lice and that makes me very uncomfortable so fuck this why did i come up with this category

GIRLBOSS:

1. jay (EMBODIMENT of girlboss!!) 2. exandroth (she's a big cringefail but super girlboss) 3. kian (that one image of the anime girl in a room thats a mess with the text "MY GIRLBOSS EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING")

GRIZZLY:

1. rumi (sorry but you can't beat a classic) 2. kian stone (KIAN STONE!! *GUITAR RIFF*)

CHARLIE:

1. exandroth (legally obligated) 2. gillion (equal homicidal intent AND fish) 3. peter sqloint (he's so... sqloint) 4. goobleck (goobleck)

CONDI:

1. rolan (sad!!) 2. jay (i LOVE you girl!!)

BIZLY:

1. chip (not my cup of tea but he's pretty funny) 2. thanatos (i love him) 3. timothy rand (you know he's a guy that does weed)

FUNNIEST PONIFICATION:

1. rand (WEED PONY) 2. thanatos (because he's thanatos)

ANIME GIRLS:

1. exandroth (she deserves it) 2. rumi (they are already a magical girl) 3. gillion (gillion is out here killing evil things like a magical girl too, fucking spectacular) 4. rolan (i imagined rolan girl with a grey streak in her hair so this is too hilarious to pass up) 5. rand (one of those anime weird girls im down with that) 6. kian (also writing this down to note she should keep the abs)

MINECRAFT:

1. goobleck (you met it on a server and it was really funny and you two are now friends forever) 2. thanatos (beats your ass in every competitive game but thinks youre good enough to team with despite you feeling bad and pathetic at the game) 3. rand (has been banned several times for swearing and being stupid but every time he's back you love him more) 4. rumi (has minecraft builds that blow your mind theyre so pretty) 5. peter (has minecraft builds that blow your mind for.. other reasons. needs some improvement. i like the big rock though. this guy keeps infodumping abt and he loved the addition of andesite btw) 6. jay (she is a hacker and is flying around like no one's business and got banned and was sad posting "i thought it was funny :(( please let me back in")

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

chip. just him. idk. i think he needs it.

i should have stopped this list over half an hour ago so yeah that's it I got way too lost in this sorry....

(maybe i will do more or redo this later because it was pretty fun)

[shu-glue]

Chapter 4: Annoying

Summary: A day in your life and you think it's going to be another annoying one, but a note always brightens up your day.

A/N: this chapter is focused more on you, the reader, so we're taking a break from suna's shenanigans! thank you guys for reading this series and supporting it, it means a lot to me ♥️ as always, like, reblogs and comments are appreciated! enjoy reading!!

prev / masterlist / next

taglist!

@milkteeboba @fairywriter-oracle @s-adidass @admiringlove @mmmaaannnsssiii @pavo-ocxllus @jojowantstocry @alienvarmint (taglist is still open!)

[THE BOYS™]

Piss Blond [7:31pm]

okay, what about urameshi yusuke?

Local Gossiper [7:31pm]

i dont exactly vibe with him.

Piss Blond [7:32pm]

now i know youre just turning these guys down for the fun of it YUSUKE IS AN ANIME CHARACTER

Osamu Ramsay [7:32pm]

lmao

Suna rolls his eyes skywards as he lies on his bed, homework forgotten on his desk as he stares at his ceiling. His shoulder still hurts, a dull ache in his muscles that he feels when he moves his arm around. His phone buzzes with each message sent to the group chat as he reaches over to grab it.

Piss Blond [7:39pm]

also dont think i didnt notice yall changing my name to PISS BLOND you traitors

Osamu Ramsay [7:39pm]

you want it as highlighter head then

Piss Blond [7:40pm]

YOU WANT ME TO HIT YA

Osamu Ramsay [7:40pm]

YOU CAN TRY SCRUB

Braincell Holder [7:42pm]

….i guess its safe to assume theyve started fighting again

Braincell Holder [7:42pm]

suna, have ya thought of anyone who can tutor you?

Suna frowns at Ginjima's message, sighing. No, he has not. He's been thinking, contrary to what Atsumu thinks, but he hasn't been able to think of anyone to ask to tutor him.

Local Gossiper [7:45pm]

no i havent

Local Gossiper [7:45pm]

anyone you suggest?

Piss Blond [7:45pm]

weve been giving ya suggestions for hours ò_ó

Braincell Holder [7:46pm]

are you guys done fighting?

Piss Blond [7:46pm]

yeah i won

Osamu Ramsay [7:46pm]

in what universe

As the twins start to bicker over chat again, Suna rolls his eyes, tossing his phone onto his bed and lying back down, splaying his arms all over the sheets. He's exhausted from the day he just had. A bunch of Erika's 'friends' had bombed his DMs, and he just resorted to blocking them so his poor phone could take a break from all the notifications.

Suna turns his head, catching sight of your shoujo manga on his nightstand. After much inspecting, he found your name scribbled in small letters on the back of the cover so now he knows that it's definitely yours. Blase and nonchalant you. Who would've thought.

But the fact that you own a shoujo manga isn't the thing that's boggling Suna's mind, it's the fact that you had a picture of you and KITA of all people when you were kids. Did the two of you know each other? He has never seen you two spend time together or even talk at school unless it was about academics. 

Judging by the picture he saw, you two must've known each other since you were kids.

Local Gossiper [7:58pm]

hey. does kita have any friends

Braincell Holder [7:58pm]

thats such a way to ask… of course he does

Local Gossiper [7:58pm]

no i mean like. friends he hangs out with outside of school.

Local Gossiper [7:59pm]

or like. a secret girlfriend.

Piss Blond [7:59pm]

wow, you live up to your name

Local Gossiper [7:59pm]

@Piss Blond you do too

Local Gossiper [7:59pm]

anyway

Local Gossiper [7:59pm]

answer the question pls

Osamu Ramsay [7:59pm]

not really??? we dont exactly keep tabs on what kita does in his free time out of school 

Piss Blond [7:59pm]

and if he had a secret girlfriend, we wouldnt know

Local Gossiper [8:00pm]

oh

So no one knows about you and Kita… aside from Suna…

The 'bingo!' moment has made itself known as Suna thumbs at the manga now on his lap, eyeing the polaroid picture seated carefully between the middle pages.

Local Gossiper [8:01pm]

another question: how do you think will high and mighty react to blackmail

Braincell Holder [8:01pm]

wh

Braincell Holder [8:01pm]

who?

Braincell Holder [8:05pm]

suna???

The first thought you had waking up in the morning was how one of these days, you're really going to throw your alarm clock at the wall. Alas, you decide to just slam on the nefarious object, stopping its incessant ringing. It's annoying.

Groaning, you slowly sit up on your bed, blinking to get used to the light in your room. The sunlight is so annoying.

Your body is aching a bit, and you rub your shoulder to ease the pain. Dammit. Why did you have to be so careless yesterday? First, you practically crashed into Suna Rintarou from 2-1 and right after, realized you lost your copy of 'Love-Hate Relationship with my No-Good, Very Annoying Roommate'.

You were so happy yesterday, too, after Kita asked you (well, your club but he came to you) to make posters for the volleyball club for fundraising. You wanted to do your best for him, so when you informed your president about the favor (to which he didn't even bat an eyelash, much to your expectation and annoyance), you immediately worked on the drafts so you and your friends can start taking reference pictures today.

Now you have an aching shoulder (plus head, did you hit your head yesterday?), a lost manga, and a sour taste in your mouth.

Your alarm clock starts to ring again and you slam your fist onto it, stopping the ringing once again. You groan, rubbing your face as you get out of bed and trudge towards the bathroom. You go about your daily routine; take a shower, brush your teeth, scowl at the dark bags underneath your eyes, put on your uniform. Your movements are sluggish, due to lack of sleep.

You spent the whole night flipping your room inside out looking for your manga. You're going to cry. You even tucked your favorite photo of you and Kita in between the pages. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What if you never find it again?

Sighing dejectedly, you grab your bag and walk out of your room, closing the door quietly behind you. It would be a shame to break the strong silence in your house. As you walk down the hallway, you pass by your parents' bedroom, pausing.

She should still be asleep at this time. And she'll have a massive headache when she wakes up.

Pursing your lips, you silently open the door to your parents' bedroom, blinking to grow accustomed to the darkness inside it. There's a distinctive stench in the room, one you've grown to be familiar with for all the years you've been alive. You sigh. She's at it again.

You have memorized your parents' bedroom like the palm of your hand by now, walking over to the curtains to pull them back, avoiding anything that could make you trip in the process. Once you do, light finally shines in the room, bathing everything in color again.

And you finally see the mess that is your parents' room. The sheets are haphazard, part of it even lying on the floor now. Beer cans and red wine bottles litter the wooden floor and you nudge a can away, a grimace on your face. Honestly, if she was going to do this again, she could have prepared a trash can to dispose of everything as well. Look, there are even cans and bottles on the bed.

And your mother is lying among the cans and bottles and haphazard duvets.

This is so annoying.

You feel your fists clench but you close your eyes and repeat the word "relax" ten times before you open them again, turning on your heel and walking down the stairs. 

You slip into the kitchen and open the fridge, taking out a bottle from your mother’s stock of Korean pear juice and some oranges. You peel the oranges and cut them into slices, putting them in a small bowl before taking out a pack of crackers and a bag of nuts out of the cardboard, placing all of them on a tray. You unscrew the cap on the bottle of Korean pear juice and pour the contents in a tall glass, placing it on the tray as well as some ibuprofen.

You pick up the tray and walk back upstairs back to your parents’ room. Your mother was still asleep, a beer can pressed up against her cheek while she’s none the wiser. You press your lips into a tight line and walk into the room, stepping over trash and cigarette butts, to place the tray on her nightstand. You gently remove the can from her face, tight frown still on your face.

At this, your mother stirs, unfocused eyes blinking open and gathering her bearings for a couple of seconds. She slowly sits up, rubbing her eyes as she groans from the piercing headache. You hand her the ibuprofen. “Here.” You say, and your mother blinks at you once, twice, through her haze and she smiles brightly at you.

“Good morning, sweetie!” She chirps despite her state, accepting the ibuprofen from you. “Thank you, what time is it?”

You check your phone, pursing your lips. “6:30. How are ya feelin’?”

“Oh, my head is pounding!” Your mother complains, whining. “And I feel like I wanna puke.”

“Don’t puke on me.” You quickly say, scrunching your nose at the thought. “And maybe you should stop drinking so much. Yer liver’s gonna give out and yer stinking up the place.”

Your mother opens her mouth, about to say something, and closes it. Instead, she sighs, nodding slowly. “Yer probably right. I’ll try to cut back just for ya!” She says to you, giving you an apologetic smile and you frown, furrowing your eyebrows.

“Ya always say that.” You grumble, averting your gaze away. “But ya never do.”

She goes silent, her eyes finally clearing up as she takes your words in. Her expression softens into a sad smile as her gaze falls downcast to her lap. You would have thought she looked ashamed. “Well, it’s a miracle I’m still alive!” She suddenly replies, going back to being bright and you give her a cold gaze. “Anyway, come have a bite, honey! You haven’t had breakfast yet, have ya?”

“How’d ya know that?” You ask, deadpan.

“It's a motherly instinct, ya know!”

She’s always like this. So talkative, and happy, and full of energy, and she’d fall into a deep depression where she’d drink all day, maybe all night if she doesn’t pass out fast enough. When she’d wake up, she’d have a hangover so bad she couldn’t get out of bed, and she’d be happy and acting like a mother again.

She always does it. You’re used to it.

And like every time, you don’t kick up a fuss and decide to just humor her, taking a drink of the Korean pear juice. It’s sweet and thick and kind of disgusting. Maybe it’s in your head (or maybe it’s the brand).

“You can have the rest of it. I’ll just eat on the way to school.” You hand the glass back to her with a grimace. She smiles sadly as you turn to leave.

“Yer a good child, honey.” Your mother says. “I don’t know how I’d live without ya.”

You pause, looking at your mother with cold eyes. She stares at you contemplating, swirling the pear juice in the cup. “Ya have yer papa’s eyes.” She blurts out, in her own little world once again, uncaring of the people outside of it. “Yer so like him. So like yer father. How he’d love you.”

At her words, your body freezes, staring at your mother with hard eyes. You don’t say anything.

She snaps out of it again and sighs, nodding her head. “I said something wrong again, didn’t I?” She laments, frowning.

You quickly avert your gaze, gritting your teeth. “Ya always do.” You say. “I’m going to school. Jus’ order delivery when ya get hungry.” Without waiting for her response, you exit the room and run out of the house. Your mother stares after you, her face sullen, and she looks at the mess in the room.

“Maybe I should clean up.”

You walk down the street, fingers gripping the strap of your bookbag. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining brightly (at this hour?), and people are already out and about doing their own thing. How annoying. You make a quick trip to the convenience store to buy yourself some melon bread. Convenience store food isn’t normally that good, but your rumbling stomach doesn’t really care where the food is coming from as long as it makes it to your digestive system.

A shame that your favorite bakery is closed for renovations.

You say thank the cashier as you pay for your melon bread and you exit the convenience store, immediately chowing down on the piece of bread as you walk towards the bus stop. It’s so good, you’re almost tempted to go back and buy a second one.

You arrive at the bus stop on time and wait for the bus to arrive, chewing on your almost finished melon bread in the meantime as you look around. You see a small dog standing by the edge of the sidewalk. It’s beside its owner who’s talking to somebody on her phone and it’s looking at you with its big ole’ eyes. When it barks at you, you narrow your eyes at it and it seems that that small action was enough to send it whimpering and hiding behind its owner.

The woman pauses, side-eyeing you and mumbling under her breath before going back to talking on the phone. You side-eye her back.

You finish eating your melon bread just as the bus arrives, discarding the wrapper in the trash bin before getting on. Just your luck, all the seats are occupied, rendering you unable to sit down. Figures.

Earphones in their rightful place, you hang onto the handlebars as you try to ignore everyone else around you. The ride to your stop wasn’t that eventful, aside from a baby staring at you with its unnerving big eyes (you stared back at it), and the bus slowly rolls to a stop nearby Inarizaki. A lot of people bump into you while getting off the bus, which irritates you even more. Relax, ten times, deep breath.

At least no one bumps into you on your way to the school gates, the look on your face is enough to make them jump away from your path. Very convenient.

You arrive at the school gates with time to spare, your hands stuffed into the pockets of your blazer jacket, when you hear a chirp voice from behind you. “Senpai!”

You turn around and nearly grunt when you’re almost tackled with a tight hug, looking down to see the smaller stature of Nana, who’s grinning up at you. “Good morning!” She greets, loosening her hold on you a bit.

You blink and allow a small smile on your face, patting your head. “Good morning, Nana.” You greet back. Nana’s normally brash and rude (she was to you when you first met) but she does an entire 180 when it comes to you. It’s like a younger sister looking at her older sibling.

The two of you start to walk to the school building. “Look, look!” She says, grabbing her Canon EOS, and going through the pictures, grinning widely. “I was walkin’ towards the convenince store, yeah? Because my Ma wanted ta make some maki sushi rolls but we didn't have any seaweed wrapper cuz' she forgot, anyway—"

You listen with rapt attention as Nana shows you around a dozen pictures of a ladybug on a weed growing from a crack on the sidewalk, the setting sun serving as the backlight of the photos. "—and then a bunch'a twats were walkin' by and ruinin' my shot and of course, I had ta give 'em a piece o' my mind, so I did jus' that! But then, the ladybug flew away!" She laments, shaking her camera and you gently take it from her, looking through the photos.

You nod as you look at each one. "These photos are beautiful, Nana. I don't see any problem with 'em, the layout's good, the lighting's just right. I didn't expect less from ya." You say, smiling as you hand her back her camera.

Nana practically beams at you. If she was a puppy, her tail would be wagging behind her frantically. 'I can almost see the puppy ears…' You think as you look at her. 

When the both of you arrive at the shoe lockers, you see Ryuji putting away his shoes. He notices the two of you and smiles, waving. "Good morning—!" He greets but is cut off by Nana.

"Ryuji! Gimme back my manga, ya ass!!!" Nana yells at him, doing a 180 once again as she stomps up to the tall third year. You follow behind her, giving Ryuji a small wave and a 'good morning'.

Ryuji glares at her. "A good morning woulda been great, Nana. And use honorifics when ya talk to me, I'm your senior!" He says, pointing at her.

"I can talk how I want, especially ta someone who's been hogging all my manga volumes and not givin' em back!" Nana retorts, pointing back at him.

"Please be quiet." You say to the both of them, voice icy, and they immediately stop, standing straight with a meek 'right!'.

Nana makes an ‘ah’ sound and turns to you, eyebrows raised. “Speaking of manga, senpai, did ya find the manga you were lookin’ fer yesterday?” She asks you and you stop, robotically turning your head to look at her for one, two seconds, before you turn back to your locker and—with a loud bang—hit your forehead against the metal.

“No…” You lament, and you're sort of glad that there were no students around to see your embarrassing plight. As you remember practically turning your room inside out last night looking for that recent volume of Love-Hate, you feel like crying. No, you are going to cry.

"Woah! Don't cry over it now, come here." Ryuji says, patting your head as he tries to comfort you.

"I mean, it's just a comic, senpai, ain't anythin' important…" Nana says, voice flat.

Ryuji snaps his head to glare at her. "Don't say that right now!" 

"Well, I'm right…"

"Ya threatened ta punch me over yer manga!"

"No, I didn't!"

"Not verbally!"

"It's not just the manga…" You say, rubbing your temple as you try to get rid of the growing headache. "I put my favorite picture of myself and my friend in between the pages… and now it's gone."

Nana and Ryuji glance at each other, lips pursed into tight frowns. "There's nothin' ta ba guilty about, I'm sure ya can find the picture." Ryuji reassures you, patting your shoulder. "And if ya don't, you can always take more with your friend."

You look up at him, eyes blinking, and you nod, muttering a 'thanks'. "Sure, if it's Ryuji, it's 'oh he's so kind', 'he's so caring', but if it's me, it's 'Nana, don't be rude' 'Nana, stop that'." Nana deadpans but slings an arm around your shoulder nonetheless. "Buuut, ta add to Ryuji's statement, I'll always be available ta take the pictures myself!"

You blink at both of them, fiddling with your uniform, before you hug them both, sighing. "Thanks, ya really ground me." You say, pulling away from them.

As the two of them talk and bicker behind you, you open your locker, about to reach in to take your slippers. But something flutters out of the shoe locker, much to your surprise. Glancing behind you, you check if Nana and Ryuji are paying attention.

Seeing as they're busy bickering about Nana's manga again, you pick up the piece of paper and peek at the contents.

The familiarity of the handwriting makes your stomach flutter, and it takes everything within you to keep from blushing on the spot. It's embarrassing, how such a short, simple note from him can elicit such a reaction from you.

'Come meet me. School rooftop.'

Insider Pursuit! Asagao Pharmaceutical Inc.

Founded in 2001, the company is now owned by the Asagao Group, spearheaded under the direction of the group's second son and his wife, retired actress who had lead roles in "Maiden of the Moon", "My Heart Still Remains in Tokyo", and "Petrichor". The couple's eldest daughter, Miki, oldest of three, is set to be the heiress of Asagao Group and will inherit Asagao Pharmaceutical Inc. in the near future.

[1-800-googleimagesearch]

thoughts on the bcs 6B premiere!! spoilers under the cut. like major spoilers its not hiding anything

so holy shit .

this post is rlly just for me! idc if someone else reads it this is so i can discuss somewhere public without spoiling someone

so first off the music was genuinely perfect for every. single. scene. kim driving to gus' house was so good, every scene with lalo had music that suited him so well which is something the show has always been good at, the song when they bury howards body was... such a perfect piece to encapsulate the feelings his death evokes. its beautiful but it also has that touch of somberness to really show just how tragic it is we lost him. plus they buried him with his fuckign MURDERER.. THE WAY they were laying together was so interesting..idk if it was intentional but i loved how they looked

lalo was so intimidating and showed his smarts in this episode like always but fuck. he made possibly his first ever mistake in his ENTIRE run on the show which is incredible! lalo has been so calculated up until his final scene and thats so fitting for him. one smalllllll mistake lead to his demise

speaking of his demise. i loved his death scene. also super fitting

i feel kinda fucked up considering hes responsible for like all my fav characters deaths (even nachos to an extent) but im so sad to see lalo go. im one of those ppl who always hoped he would survive in the end lol. i really really loved his death. i saw someone call it boring but tbh i think there wasnt a better way to send him off. in silence, in the dark, choking on his own blood and with a shit eating grin on his face. he was smug even as he was bested by someone for the smallest mistake on his part. i think some part of him was proud of gus. he recognizes hes won this. THE WINNER TAKES IT ALLLLL

oh and the spotlight on his shoes. for all the girlies who love his dumb fucking shoes YOU GOT FAN SERVICE

love how the episode took place all in one night! also everyone on this GOD DAMN CAST AND CREW better get their well deserved emmys.

i feel like i have more to say but idk.

lalos vlog channel is fucking amazing

i liked how when jimmy knocks the chair over him and howard are in a yin and yang position. theres both good and evil in the both of them, its just that each leans more towards another.

love how lyle was singing a los pollos hermanos version of la cucaracha after lalos death scene! amazing way to both call back to LALO calling jimmy a cockroach and to remind us that jimmy survives every single thing that comes his way, somehow. love mike using his "thats all i know" lie for the first time. love that kim and jimmys twisted fucking lie abt howard currently using cocaine is now going to haunt them for life. they have to paint his final moments as an unhinged addict who killed himself shortly after harrassing them for Totally Doing Nothing Officer!!!! /s they are fucked up and they can never and SHOULD never forgive themselves.

not fully sure who will take that villain role now! first it was the kettlemans, then nacho in a WAY (but we always had sympathy imo) then hector, then lalo and now... who next? maybe its that new character theyve talked abt but its gonna be hard to fill lalos turquoise shoes.

starting to think the south wall was a red herring! maybe it isnt but thats my thoughts because lalo put so much emphasis on it and now hes gone. dead without the one question he couldnt answer lingering in his mind. he saw the lab and still didnt know what the south wall was for. maybe it really is for nothing.

itll be so fucked to watch brba now and know theyre walking over the rotted corpses of lalo and howard, people who will be lost to time and soon forgotten by the masses. i think the final plotline will be watching hhm collapse without its h and m

okay i think thats all my thoughts. have a wonderful night friends!

[daaziscoolbesties]

i yearn for one(1) thing only, and that is to have a nice, simplistic, cartoonish artstyle. an artstyle that doesnt rely on anatomy, but the "movement" of the drawing, if you get what i mean.

i dont want realistic proportions and traditional colors and basic poses and gradient shading, i want funky lil dudes in funky poses with funky styles littering my sketchbook :( but alas i havent figured out how to develop that kind of style yet, my brain wants anatomy to look nice but also i dont want to draw eyes. i dont want to take time out of my day to learn how to draw lips i want to draw a line that extends past the characters face. i dont want all my characters to have pointy chins with curved cheeks i want their heads to be round and friend-like or full of sharp edges depending on their personalities and styles. i want to give them all not-quite human ears, blob feet, simple faces, but at the same time i want enough detail to convey the story or emotion im trying to tell.

ive spent so much time recently agonizing over how to use 3d model websites, using real-life references and tracing over them for practice, color-picking from real images to try and do realism and failing miserably, but you know whats easier than that? funky little dudes. little dudes who do not care if their legs are too long or their hair is too bouncy. i dont want my characters to look human.

ive spent enough time on the artfight website to realize that most people who classify their characters as "human" have the most basic ass designs (no offense to people who like basic human designs its just not my thing) or its like dnd-medieval style outfits which i cant draw for the life of me (ive tried). again no offense to people who actively enjoy and draw characters like that. i just need my dudes to have that certain,,, off-ness to them. tails are cool. wings are swag (especially if they arent even like,, fully attached,, ), elf ears are so wonderful to me no matter how much theyre overused, horns are so much fun to draw, and colors!! i have no knowledge in the color theory department so this works great for me!! the only thing i really know is dont shade with black, other than that i just colorpick from references usually but i dont want to do that!! i want the colors to hurt people's eyes but in a satisfying way. like the character's design is so nice to look at that you dont mind your eyes hurting a bit. like how im enjoying writing this post even though its 2 am and the brightness on my computer wont go any lower.

and then another thing ive noticed from being on the artfight website is that a lot of people classify their characters that are anthro/have anthro features under humanoids/monsters. like i made a google form to find some people to attack and someone sent me in a character with some sort of animal (wolf? idk) arms and legs. like dude!! peak character design i love her. but me personally? i cant draw that shit, its so hard for me. i tried a while back and its just Not my thing. nothing against furries i just. cant. and i dont want to either.

and i got another submission that i accidentally deleted that was like full anthro/wolf-like like my comrade,,, i cannot draw animals what makes you think i can draw an animal who acts like a human lmao. i can do like. very basic tails, and also animal ears but i cant do the arms and legs and such i just dont know the anatomy, and i know i was talking about how i dont want to care about anatomy but i feel like for anthros you really do need to know at least basic animal anatomy so you know how the limbs look and shit and i dont have that knowledge and dont feel like gaining it.

and then there were some submissions that i absolutely adored. there was one that like, was vaguely human shaped but definitely was not a human. they had a dark-ish lavender colored skin and horns and tusks and like goat ears and a sorta fluffy tail with spikes on it and they had wings and such and they were such a pleasure to draw i love them. and they had a fairly simple outfit too, nothing too complicated. and then i also enjoy object head characters, theyre so neato to me. i got one of those and i really wish i had the motivation to work on it cause it looks so fun.

i want to make funky characters but id have nothing to do with them because the only book i ever tried writing (key word tried - never got past planning it out) had strictly human characters in it, and most of the books i read are humans/humans with powers in situations specific to them so id have no idea what lore to make with the dudes. assuming i have the motivation to make lore and backstory because honestly i just really enjoy character designing its super duper fun.

(side note a song about trucks doing the deed came on just now and its interrupted my flow, apologies).

i only have three actual characters right now. one is an original roleplay oc whos design is literally athletic shorts, an oversized long sleeved grey sweatshirt, long purple hair, and demon horns. the second one is my persona whos design some sorta medival knight outfit kinda thing? but not ugly it looks really cool (idk one of my friends designed it bc i won some contest from him but the drawing was on a super small scale so idrk the details,,,) with a plague doctor mask and crown, and shoulder length wavy brown hair, dyed bright pink at the end. and then my last one im not too comfortable using other places because theyre a character my friend is using in the story hes writing, and thats really the only place theyve been used. but theyre easily my favorite and im already writing a ton so ill talk about them too.

they're a sorta elf species thing from another planet, with pale green skin and pointed ears. they also have a tail, its like,, super thin, but with a feathery bit at the end. probably not the texture of a feather but i dont know how else to describe it. they have short, curly, almost-draco-malfoy-blonde hair that when it gets too long they can put in a man bun. their eyesight is kinda shitty so when they got to earth, they were exploring some supply closets around the airship. drop off area. thing. like airport but for rocketships and also fancier. yeah. they were exploring that area and found a nice big pair of round glasses with grey frames. and they also found a cowboy-style hat and a sharpie so they wrote their name on the underside of the brim of the hat and stole the hat and glasses (but left the sharpie in the supply closet).

yeah theyre my favorite, my absolute beloved, my child, so cool. i want more characters like them but with maybe a bit more snazzier designs. theyre super cool and all but they could have more pizzazz if they werent in a story where its too late to give them more pizzazz. i just want to be able to give my characters thigh-high boots with a bunch of buckles and fluffy hair with tons of accessories crammed in and abnormally large and long ears that can harbor many piercings and horns that can hold rings on them and special little details on their outfits like who knows what but i dont have any characters to do that too, so i have to make them from scratch, which is always hard especially when you have artblock.

and i also have like 17 characters i need to fully draw, line, and maybe color for artfight before august 1st. so i dont know. i have many things to do and plenty of time to do it but instead i spend my time halfway watching repetitive youtube videos that get boring or sleeping all damn day because i stay up too late doing things like this or i just do nothing at all and its tiring and frustrating but i also feel nothing about it like theres no consequence if i dont do it besides you know. not doing it, not gaining that experience, not making something i enjoy.

so i should do it but i dont for whatever reason, i think its called executive dysfunction but im not sure. this post started out very differently than it ended and i said somewhere up there that i was writing this at 2 am but now its almost 3. this is so many words why couldnt i have put this energy into something productive

[saturatedsinset]

i know tonight was a classic tragic mattkenny #moment but i have to ask, how do you feel about whats going on with hangman right now? do you think he's going to commit to the dark order?

i dont know! i really love the dynamic theyve drawn out for the past little bit and i think it’s the right call to have it end with a definitive answer next week, because will they/wont theys can get really annoying after a while. hangman is definitely one of my favs and i honestly just want him to be happy? and have good friends that care about him and arent like, thoughtlessly cruel the way the rest of the elite were to him. i guess he kind of had that with cody, but cody is off in another character purgatory rn and i have never and will never give a shit about cody, so. if he does join im glad he’ll be with people i care about.

i really like silver, he’s such a lovable little goofball. and anna jay is of course the love of my life. idk im conflicted about it! part of me wants him to join and not be lonely anymore because my poor boy is so so sad but part of me wants him to uh, not join a cult. im confident that ill like whichever way it goes because theres only really been one part of the hangman storyline that i didn’t love since aew’s debut in october 2019 (and that was the alcoholism. i did not love the alcoholism. it felt in very bad taste to have that as like, almost a comedy beat) and i know hangman is charismatic and committed enough to keep me on his side no matter what.

i think it would be really interesting if hangman says no and dark order fully turns heel on him - like, silver starts a beatdown and hangman is just beaten and alone again. i think one thing aew has done really well is have a few different heel factions that don’t work together, so i’d love to see the more sinister culty part of dark order come through in a really harmful rage after hangman turns them down.

but at the same time i think it would be interesting if hangman joined and then they transform over the course of a few weeks from this goofy gang of dudes who just care about seeing hangman happy to The Dark Order, the more sinister cult we were getting vibes of last year. i think it would be interesting to see hangman try and fail to push back against that and gradually be won over to the darker side of the order himself, and ultimately attack his former friends at the dark order’s bidding.

there are a few ways i can see it going and i guess it depends if they want to keep playing the storyline for light comedy and that kind of dramatic tragedy of losing all your friends that hangman’s been doing, or if they want to make the shift from light comedy into more serious storytelling. i don’t think either of those is inherently better than the other and i would definitely enjoy either.

what do you think tho! i haven’t really talked this one out with anyone

[filibusterfrog]

hoo boy. Yeah i guess ive never covered it entirely so buckle in

will put it under a readmore so its not super long (sorry to mobile users sometimes they dont work for me)

Andrah is the youngest son of a wealthy family and uncannily similar to his mother in appearance. He was spoiled by his parents and Galvorn up until he was about 8 when the coming genocide of faunuses (any race+an animal characteristic) forced him and his mother out of their home with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a pocket watch. His parents decided that the safest place for them to wait out the war was his druid grandmas house in the neighbouring country,  completely isolated from society. Over the journey he remains optimistic that he’ll see his brothers and dad again soon, but then they reach the border, where his mother is killed. 

He doesnt witness it happen because what he assumes is the spirit of the forest whisked him away before the fact to barter for mums pocket watch in exchange for Imleranths (andrahs) safety. Its a very important pocketwatch. Comic detailing these events here (x) 

So he strikes a deal with the (assumed) forest god for power after seeing his dead mum- this is the point at which hes officially a druid. The pocketwatch is then on loan to him from the forest when a deal is struck, it’s his spellcasting focus

His grandma finds him eventually after a week or so of him wandering around in the woods. She just had to follow the path of destruction :) (Andrah is a bit of a subversion of your average nature protecting/loving druid because he absolutely didnt earn his powers and he has little to no respect for anything, let alone nature. He’s a spoiled brat and he never grew out of it but whatever gave him his powers doesnt seem to mind)

So he lives in the forest with grandma. Any optimism that wasn’t crushed by his mums death is further squashed by the dwindling letters that his dad sends him until they stop altogether when he’s about 15. Andrah concludes that his family has forgotten him, which becomes a huge sore spot for him, so he changes his name from imleranth (a name which had familial importance) to andrah (completely descriptive. Roughly translates to ‘Horned’) goes and does nothing for a further 90 years, letting that sentiment fester. Eventually his grandma gets dementia and forgets him as well, laying a painful curse on him. This is the last straw and he abandons his deteriorating grandma under the guise of searching for a cure for her dementia. He secretly doesnt intend to return, but thats how he justifies it to himself.

Meanwhile Galvorn, doting middle brother and crybaby extraordinaire becomes a paladin under the Fortunan regime that won the war and killed their mother. Sirion is a sorcerer and tries to not think about how he may have one dead brother (doesnt know if andrah is alive) and one fascist brother.

(old ref but you get the idea) The war still rages 100 ish years after it started and the ship andrah takes to leave his home is sunk- he washes up on the shore of an island and meets addedor and angus (yes our party member names all start with ‘a’ it drives the DM crazy)

So the adventure starts! They decide on the party name Fire Team Lightning because its cool and makes the DM weep. The island nation theyve washed up on is being occupied by the Fortunan empire. They meet a dude named Kova along the way and andrah gets his throat slit by the Fortunan general, Metriss.

While Andrah is dead, the raven queen chats him up and tells him that hes gotta put an end to all this war nonsense. Addedor and Angus make a deal with an archfey to bring andrah back. An archfey is now loose on the world and Andrah is alive again. He has decided that he doesnt like the raven queen because honestly if you’re a god you can sort out mortal mistakes yourself instead of making him do it. Andrah thinks he’d do a better job as the raven queen, there would be no fence sitting or indecision on his part. He decides to usurp her, and has no idea where to start. 

I went to england toward the end of this arc so i missed 9 weeks of sessions lol basically they killed Metriss (who turned out to be one of the heroes from our last campaign possessed and made evil) and liberated the kingdom while andrah was off fucking around fighting minotaurs and shit. sorry this part is a bit sparse.

this is getting long and ive covered a lot of the major character bits. Might do a part 2 later covering the further year and a half of our campaign ive yet to summarize. Galvorn and Sirion show up again!

[tfw-no-tennis]

hhhhhhxh

more abt hxh bc my last post was too long n i had to split it off holla

so i left off talking abt when gon woke up....i love how polite gon is to pretty much everyone - hes such a good lad all the time. s/o to his aunt for raising him right (tho i think hes also just a rlly good boy inherently too)

also is he named gon bc ging was like ha ha im boutta be GONe lol seeya kid!!!! like ????

i find it interesting that kurapika and hisoka fought....we really havent seen them interact at all yet. also hisoka is so smirk-y i hate that bitch...what did he say to kurapika?????? 

this poor red shirt old guy lmao hisoka is SO clearly uninterested in fighting him and then he fucking dies. rip mdude

what did hisoka whisper to HIM??? guess we’ll never know #RIPLegend

oh mannnn if killua had just won against pokkle then he wouldnt have had to deal with illumi doing That to him :( my smug son......

leorio is such a good dude....also its so funny to me how tall and lanky leorio is, espec compared to the other 3 main characters lmaoooo

or maybe those 3 are just rlly short??? i mean gon and killua are literally 12, but whats kurapikas excuse

GODDDD I HATE THIS BIIIIITCH. FUCK OFFFFFFF tho the evil piano music slaps. but jeeeeesus illumi is so creepy and awful, and seeing him take off his disguise is not any better a second time...he and hisoka truly deserve each other wrow

does illumi have hair powers??? cause it kinda looks like it. or maybe hes just gay and dramatic 

ok but the sick electric guitar riff (?) that played when illumis face was revealed was lowkey kinda hilarious

man i was so wrong abt killua knowing that that was illumi :( poor kid

killua is immediately freaking out and meanwhile illumi looks bored as hell. dude ur the worst 

killua: [freaking out] illumi, completely blank-faced: hey 

I HATE HIMMMM even tho his catman design is regrettably kinda cute

why do illumi and hisoka both have such snatched waists i hate this

wtf so killua has another different brother??? i assumed he attacked illumi....how many fuckgin zoldyk sibling are there?????

leorio ur too normie for this conversation lmao. also wow fucked up family huh

killua looks so like...small and helpless, which is so at odds from what we’ve seen of him so far :( this poor kid

illumi totally has some weird brain powers man callin it now 

gon: wow killuas family sounds wack...  satotz: oh lmao you havent even heard the rest 

KILLUA ;_; 

this poor baby assassin :( :( :(

IMMM INCONSOLABLE. HE WANTS TO BE FRIENDS W/GON.......ARE YOU KIDDING....AUGHHHHHHHH

meanwhile gon decided he and killua are BEST FRIENDS like 10 mins after they met. GOD 

like in the recap ep he called killua his best friend ;_; and meanwhile killua doesnt even think they ARE friends god destroy me 

this calming classical music is throwing me off vbhjfjhbsdkgndks

i sense that leorio and kurapika are rapidly acquiring a new son

DAMN THIS IS SO FUUUUCKEDDDDD illumi is such a crusty bitch wow. leave killua alone asshole 

all that stuff abt killua like, only thinking he wants to befriend gon but really wanting to kill him....that sure sounds like some ‘worst fears’ type of shit for someone like killua....illumi is such a classic abuser wow

i have 2 know is satotz like, repeating this entire conversation verbatim in a calming monotone to gon rn. like....

LEORIOOOOO I LOVE UUUUUUUU AUGHHHH him telling killua it doesnt matter if illumi is his brother, fuck that guy, beat him up as usual and leave.....ooooughhhh leorio is such a good dude ;_; 

and the OF COURSE him saying the obvious - that gon and killua are ALREADY friends....i love this, i feel like leorio said all the exact things the audience is thinking...yet it still didnt get thru to killua bc hes so rattled by illumi appearing, and the abuse in general 

i think if gon were there things wouldve gone much differently 

of COURSE crusty bitch illumi is like oh ok now i have to kill gon.....biiiiitch i hate uuuuu 

also that just shows that hes lying to killua (which we already knew obvs), bc if it were inevitable that killua would kill gon to like, test himself or w/e, then why not just wait for that to happen? that would have a much bigger impact on killua than illumi killing gon....its obvious that illumi is just manipulating him, but killua is too BSOD to be able to tell (also, hes 12)

ok bitch illumi is preaching abt not needing friends but he and hisoka are definitely fucking and theyve been teamed up for the entire hunter exam it seems.....what a hypocrite. hate this guy

god im so glad we didnt rlly get to see whatever the fuck illumi did to that random hunter examiner guy’s face. jeeeeesus. also i cant tell but i wonder if him forcing that info out of the guy was the result of his freaky mind powers or if the guy was just like oof ouch pins in me face

LEORIO AND KURAPIKAAAA THE PROTECT GON SQUAD!! and joined by new member hanzo!!! who ironically beat gon up for 3 hours str8 like, a very short amount of time ago lmao. but still i love that sm

illumi u dumb bitch.....tho i dont buy for a minute that he didnt already realize that killing gon would disqualify him...he defs just wanted to get under killuas skin even more :^( 

KILLUAAAA ;_; when he goes to step back from illumi but illumi tells him not to....ughhh HATE this guy, leave this poor kid alone. no wonder he wanted to leave

illumi saying theres only 1 way that killua can stop him - does he mean by killing him, or something more specific, like some forbidden zoldyk murder technique? 

‘your beloved gon’ wow gay. theyre 12 and theyre dating ok. killua is literally that kid whos like wow i wonder if gon likes me...and meanwhile gon is like wow cant believe me and killua have been dating for 3 months now

leorio saying ‘we wont let him kill you or gon’ ;_; leorio ily sm...thats like the exact right thing to say - hes offering protection and reassurance as an adult figure...unfortunately killua is clearly too freaked out to even process anything outside of illumis gaslighting and abuse 

also illumi is defs doing something to killua w/his eyes via his freaky mind powers. js

illumi i hate you stop being weirdly cute. augh 

classic abuse tactics, being like ha ha nvm i wasnt gonna kill gon! jk!

killua just shutting down completely after that :( :( noooo

and then he kills that old guy and leaves, ‘proving’ that illumi is right....noooooOOOO

and now we boutta see gon go FULL shounen protag for the first time, oh FUCKKKKKK yesssss

this is the first time we’ve seen gon angry oooh man and of COURSE its on killuas behalf,....im so fuckign emo already looooord

god ok the episode preview where its gon saying ‘do leorio and i look alike?’ YES U DO LOL youre father and son so jot that down 

oof, gon and illumi have such fundamentally different POVs on like, family and life and morals, and you can tell by their 4-line exchange before gon does the ICONIC one-handed grab’n’fling

AUGHHHH gon saying hes gonna rescue killua....SO good...he recognizes that killuas family is wack as hell and killua shouldnt be w/them - the classic ingrained ‘found family is more important than blood family’ stuff

tho thats an interesting contrast to gon himself, whos looking for his deadbeat dad

‘but it wasnt his choice’ that so good ily gon BEST boy, hes so perceptive and good......he knows that killuas hand was forced and that he needs to be RESCUED (love that word choice) from his shitty abusive family

of course kurapika and leorio voiced complaints ;_; best parents 

kurapika should be a lawyer tbh 

leorioooo ;_; such a good dude, saying he should be disqualified instead 

HOW is leorio a stronger combatant than that old dude hvbajufjbsja that guy had some moves it seemed, and leorio has,....a knife? a briefcase? the classic premed attitude of ‘fuck it, i could die anytime, lets do this’? like.....cmon vhabjdfjbhsf i refuse to believe this man is of any use in a fight. ill believe it when i see it

pokkle pls ur not plot-important enough to be jumping into this convo rn

tho i am curious abt what hisoka said to kurapika. tho i agree that thats irrelevant to the discussion 

gon repeating satotz’s wisdom :’) and saying that killua will definitely pass if he takes the exam again...ough

gon is SO GOOD i cant get over it !!!!!!!!! AUGHHHH....recusing killua from his abusive family and making it so killua never has to see them again is like...so good. what a good good perfect boy.

also thats like, the perfect response to this. killing illumi would just start a ton of drama, and killua would be conflicted abt that....but removing killua from his situation is perfect 

ok ive ranted a lot ill talk abt the rest later woohoo

PREDICTIONS: 

i predict that hisoka will show up in this upcoming zoldyk arc somewhere bc illumis gonna be in it (i assume) and theyre dating. also hisoka is a central character so itd make sense for him to show up in the second major arc. tho tbh this could end up being completely false and i wouldnt be that shocked lmao

i think leorio is gonna get Big Sad someday bc hes like, so normal compared to the other MCs, and also hes suuuuch a bleeding heart (i love him....) so i feel like thats gonna lead to some sadness for him once his friends start doing crazy shit or w/e 

also i predict that if he gets nen itll be like healing nen or st. does that even exist??? idk jack shit abt nen lmao 

i think that illumi has hypnosis powers or something, even just based on design alone. it could defs be for aesthetic (character design in hxh is wild), but his eyes look noticeably different from any other characters. also he was doing some freaky shit to killua. also i held this prediction before seeing the part where this is brought up so we’ll see if its right lmao 

as for this upcoming arc -  ruth and i are wondering if itll be similar to the vinsmoke drama in one piece - character goes back to abusive family, squad goes to rescue them...and then character refuses to be recused. w/sanji it was partially bc the vinsmokes threatened to kill zeff, his TRUE dad, but i predict in this case it could be more like the zoldyks saying ‘look killua these 3 weirdos showed up looking for you, convince them to leave or we’ll kill them’ and killua will be like, oh shit bc like.....think abt it. the vinsmokes targeted zeff (and not the strawhats) bc they knew they could easily kill him. same goes here, i assume - a family of trained assassins vs Good Good Fishing Rod Smell-Power Boy (who hasnt thrown a single punch yet), Lanky Dr Man With A Switchblade We Havent Seen Him Use Onscreen, and Mx 2 Wooden Sticks, Bloodlust, and Arachnophobia - 3 For 1 Deal! its a no-contest. so thats one thing i could see happening, potentially 

im way too tired to remember my other predictions rip lmao

[lizardswithoutlegs]

HOOOOOWOWOAH BOY

ART ASKS

when i walk into a building i get to eat everybodys pencils and they cant say no

do it 

( also thanks for asking ! ) 

itd bother me a lot less if everybody came to my apartment and took one of these beautiful eggs

YEAH UNFORTUNATELY IM STILL..... WORKING THROUGH THE SAME WAITLIST but im comparatively REAL CLOSE to being done with it and i should be opening up sometime later in...... the Year

Boy Have I

theres This messy thing from a while back and then also

THIS, from even FURTHER back, when i didnt realize how fucking RED all the outlines on my things were because of the monitor i was using, two for the price of one

why not both

i do Not but it you ever see me walking on the street please throw handfuls of teeth at me theyre the only things my wretched body can digest and im always hungry

OH MAN ok so, an art telephone game is based on, of course, the game telephone, where one person says a phrase and then whispers it to the next person, and so on and on until the person at the very end says whatever they heard and if its done right the final sentence is wildly different than what you started with

an ART telephone game is the same kind of concept, except one person draws out a scene or character, and then other artists draw THEIR interpretation of whats going on, and so forth until the last person can end up with something COMPLETELY different than what the first scene was

youd think thered be less room for error with drawings, but as each person ONLY sees what the person ahead of them has made, they can get PRETTY OUT THERE - im gonna be a part of pythosarts game, and theyve done a couple of em before - for example one round started with THESE as the first two drawings

and then fourteen interpretations later, ended up with these as the final two

its good its real good

I Cant Control Where Bigfoot Goes, I Can Only Take Note Of Where Hes Been

YEAH, sort of ! on the main, iguanamouth, i have a bunch of different tags for art depending on what they are but not really a catchall one, BUT i do have an art only blog where everything gets tossed over ! 

HONESTLY THE ADVICE i got is basically what all art advice is gonna boil down to eventually - you gotta just. do it. you gotta DO it

absolutely nobody you know who draws things well started out at the level theyre currently at, and putting down the things youre visualizing onto paper is a combination of getting the the technical aspects down as much as getting the idea in your head

and that goes with figuring out anatomy and how bodies are put together ! ive got to use references for a Million things,. especially the dragon hoards - theres absolutely nothing wrong with using references for your drawings ! and being able to create accurate representations of things without looking is something that comes more with drawing something over and over and memorizing the body shape more than just, feeling like you should KNOW how to do something

so dont beat yourself up for needing references. if youre trying to shy away from them a little bit but still cant make something look nice without em, try using several different reference photos to put together an entirely different pose ? 

theres ALSO the SHRIMP METHOD, which is great for practicing and getting good at one particular thing - this probably isnt SUPER HELPFUL but good luck ! 

god i tried. exactly ONCE maybe fourish years ago but it wasnt art, i was trying to stream the lion king movie and i had no idea what i was doing, i didnt realize i needed to wear headphones so the sound wouldnt snowball into a feedback loop of my own voice that never ended but i kept laughing and it kept distorting worse and worse, like the audio version of saving and resaving something as a jpeg

it was just me and my friend ronni in the stream and ONE other person who never left and never said anything and i kept addressing them out loud like WHO ARE YOU and that only compounded the noise problem and eventually i gave up

anyway i havent tried since

i uhhhhh dont think i COULD, really - fear especially is something thats kind of subjective and one persons Big Terror could be neutral or even cute to another person

like for me i used to have a lot of childhood fears about the ocean, and how deep and dark and vast it was, to the point where i couldnt play a lot of water levels in video games, even ( but i had almost drowned several times when i was Very young which probably had, a little somethin to do with that )

maybe sometime ill try to explore things IM afraid of, but its hard to encompass a psychological response in an image !! could be a fun experiment, though ! !

a few PLANT ANIMAL AZKZ, HUH, DONT HAVE A WORKING Z KEY

SHIT DUDE THESE ARE... SO GOOD thats the official name EVEN IF i didnt use. a daffodil as the flower base. it doesnt matter 

yes

i got A BUNCH of flower and plant themed suggestions and theyre all REALLY GOOD ( way more than these ) but straight up im taking a break from em for a while - if anybody is else is reading this though you should definitely tackle one of em

WASABI ASKS

Do Not Feed Animals The Paste

i keep going back to read this ask because you could replace wasabi with my name and its the exact same. its the same. i feel like i have to hide somewhere

this was real and this is the award they gave us

there were other awards but the judges refused to give them out. they burned them in front of the other dogs. we won

it depends on the age ! wasabis pretty much an adult, so her sheds are pretty infrequent ( usually once every 7-8 months ) BUT when she was still growing back like 6 years ago, she would do a full-body shed every other month !

wasabi accepts tokens of appreciation in the form of : fruit, green beans. No Exceptions

i would never seperate wasabi from her hands

absolutely..... not. not even a little bit h h hh a this isnt a disney animal companion, i dont even know what “kind of like a dog” means with , a lizard who cant make any vocalizations or get up on their hind legs or NOTHIN sometimes if i hold a piece of fruit on my hand and she reaches for it she gets confused on whats what and tries to bite my fingers instead

ONCE WHEN SHE was attacking her reflection in a mirror i put my hand in front of her face to break eye contact and she SUNK HER TEETH RIGHT IN THERE but immediately let go like “oh whoops”

lissten . . .  wasabi is so sharp, just absolutely everywhere, and these are the sharpest. the grabbers

heres a lil battle damage from earlier today actually

this is pretty tame BUT the long long lines are from claws, and the thinner, closer together ones are from holding her and her scales scraping against the skin. so not even just the Body is completely safe ! this is not an animal youre gonna wanna get your face real close to if theyre in a walkin mood

she doesnt even MEAN to scratch the shit outta me, its just kind of a byproduct of being a big tree lizard. her tail is absolutely the worst thing to get hit by though. the WORST. lucky me she doesnt attack anything that isnt a dog or a vacuum cleaner or her own reflection

ahhh i got her when i was 16 ! and i dont know her exact age but she was somewhere between 3-6 months when i get her - SHES probably closer to 9 years, but ive had her for about 8

LENGTH THOUGH...... the last time i measured her she was just barely under four and a half feet, but that was a few months ago and its possible shes. Just Slightly larger. shes currently sleeping as i type this so i guess we will never know

duel me

too late for coats..... its all tail action now

ROCK ASKS AND ALSO ASKS ABOUT PUTTING ROCKS IN YOUR MOUTH

oh MAN i feel you . . . . . . . . . . i dont think i could actually Bear To Eat any for real but some of em. just. they. i gotta. just. bite on em a LITTLE just a little bit, a tiny bit, a nibble

when i was real young i used to tap things against my teeth to tell what kind of substance they were made of based on the feeling/hardness/density WHATEVER and i still sometimes do it when im checking stuff out and. it uhhhhh sure is interesting finding out not a lot of people did that

a handful of these delicious raw agates, just for you

please stop spying on me

i DO NOT but you may eat this piece of bornite

meet me at the airport and ill cover your bus fair

theres a lotta different ways to figure out what kind of rocks you got but when you have absolutely no clue on where to start your best bet is to search for the biggest distinctive features of it, and try to narrow it down based on the results

like for something like these pieces of chalcedony, you could try “waxy green translucent mineral”, and from the search results find a few candidates that might be what you have on hand, and then look into each one to see if you can get a definite answer 

ive got a handful of rock and mineral guide books that i always pick through whenever i snag something im not sure of, and if youre REAL into it those are always something you could start keeping an eye out for 

now this is a REAL superficial way to telling what something is and wont be useful for a good chunk of minerals ( as a lot of samples can look really close to something else ) and THIS is a much more in depth way of telling something apart, but its also a lot more time consuming ! so good luck. and good eating.

Just Try And Fucking Stop Me

ANIMAL ASKS THAT ARENT............ ABOUT MY LIZARD

im married to this one actually

fuck. ok. heres. a secret. a In the ask Post secret. wasabi goes through a period that lasts a month every single year where she carries eggs in her gut, and spends that month not eating and digging around in everything, trying to find the right spot to lay these eggs. and. when it happens i never know what to do with them, and i dont want to just THROW THEM AWAY so i. eat them. i eat the eggs. i fuckin eat the eggs dude

Theyre All Goddesses

unless you plan on having your lizard roam around outside whenever they want, the outside environment doesnt really matter much for most reptiles as long as you set their habitat up right ! BUT i do know that australia has bans on certain reptiles ( iguanas are one of them ) and so youre gonna have to look up whats actually available in that area 

 bearded dragons are native and those are always a good option, but so are a lot of geckos - its really gonna depend on what youre into ( but i dont really recommend anoles if thats an option, because theyre fast as Hell and dont like being handled )

what the fuck is a bee

oh geez im sorry ! i remember going through this with spiders a lot when i was younger to the point where looking at photos of em used to be a fuckin, TRIAL 

you could try a really gradual exposure deal, where you start off with getting comfortable with just images, and slowly working your way to dealing with one in a controlled setting ( like a petstore, maybe ? not HANDLING em or anything, but just being near one in a way where its absolutely impossible for them to touch you )

the shitty thing about this kind of phobia is that even if you KNOW its irrational theres sometimes not a lot you can do about it, but if you can stand looking at photos of them you could try learning up about them, and finding out the types of species youre likely to encounter around your house, and seeing how many ( if any ) are ones you should avoid ?

i know some people that have major problems with snakes are because theyre unsure if the ones they find are poisonous or not, and it might go a long way to confirm that the reptiles you meet wont be able to harm you even if they TRIED ( which is gonna be the case with a lotta house geckos, they cant do SHIT youre a GIANT )

very VERY few lizards have venomous bites, and the worst most of em can do is give you a bloody finger if theyre large enough, and even then its usually not much worse than a cat scratch !

still though, if youre really serious about trying to get past this, dont force yourself too quick into what you think you SHOULD be, and take tiny steps outta your comfort level when you can

this probably isnt uhhh SUPER helpful hh hhah but good luck !  shit im going through this post and its like ALL reptile photos. im sorry

i feel about them, with my hands

MMM it shouldnt HURT them unless theres something Really wrong, considering its a natural procession of growth, BUT its definitely itchy as hell, to the point where reptiles trying to remove it will drag their bodies over stones or walls tryin to get it off

sometimes wasabi drags her whole hind foot over her head like a dog to get it off and it is. a Sight

ahhh honestly there arent a lotta reptiles thatre gonna do much more than TOLERATE the touch and not really, enjoy it, like a dog or cat or bird

but speaking from experience with wasabi, youll probably want to avoid most the head and stick with the top of the back near the sides - wasabi doesnt enjoy having her tail messed with much either, but shes ok with her dewlap and feet being touched

the most important thing to keep an eye out for when youre touching one is their body language, because  THATS gonna be a dead giveaway for whether you need to back off or not

closing their eyes is a sign of stress, not enjoyment ! same with tilting the head back, but if thats ALL theyre doing then youre probably not gonna face any retaliation

B U T if theyve got an extended dewlap with a raised body or tail off the ground, not a good idea to interact with em ! thats a defensive posture, and you risk getting hit with a tail or even bitten if your hand gets too close

youve got more to risk with males, who are way more territorial and generally larger, but if they seem pretty chill when you approach and dont stand up and stare at you, youre probably in the clear

COCK of the ROCK

I HAVE im so jealous of anybody whos got to see one in person - actually handling one is a level beyond that which i could even comprehend

OTHER THINGS.....

no but i was bit by a pigeon once

this is the only joke i know

i fuckin WISH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ayy im into it - honestly i havent been following the band so much as just kinda, picking up whatever anybody else mentions and so my knowledge on Gorillaz Lore is pretty uhhhh h hh h scattered but im definitely interested in seeing where this goes

i remember watching the first and second season and it being pretty good - some of the episodes and jokes are hit and miss but you absolutely got me with the creature and alien design

havent seen any of the third season yet though !

i mean the fruit ones could be pretty up there 

how bout. an abstract concept. who cares about physical forms wheres the dragon of melancholy 

why come theres nothing to eat in my apartment but bread. im good otherwise but its all just bread

i havent watched either of em in YEARS and YEARS but i distinctly remember. these lil dancing mushrooms

oh wait FUCK 

FUCK !!!!!!!!!

no... NO.... she is not allowed to eat ANYTHING from the plan shelf, try as she MIGHT

im a little mad that this sill isnt bigger because the only other one that gets sun is in my room and wasabi WIll... absolutely eat those. no doubt. a convenient and expensive salad, for my awful gremlin 

god im looking at these and its all jade plants isnt it

little golden books taste the best but they can make you sick if you have too many at once. my favorite genre for snacking is sci fi fantasy but anything over 300 pages tends to get a little tough if you dont break it up with smaller chunks. non fictions always a gamble because the taste is wildly different each time but you can usually tell how ripe it is by the cover color

ayy im already a big fan of some of their stuff, ive got a couple songs from them in my music tag - im especially into i miss you and their shut up and bring it here remix

TOP FIVE THINGS

1

2

3

4

5

this is barely related but once i filled up a bathtub with water and then dumped about ten bags worth of mint tea into it and then just. soaked around in the tea. listen it was really nice. id try the cheese

i dont have any ships but i was on one of those model pirate boats once for a school trip. our boat was named naruto and the other one was named sasuke and the captains shouted “make them kiss” and ran them into each other. everybody on board drowned

youre trying to trick me into googling yoshi without shoes and its not going to work

me reading this message from the safety of my apartment :

nice try, but wrong again ! : )

THIS IS GOOD info, thank you

oh SHIT the other side of paradise, take a slice, life itself, and season 2 episode 3 are all my Big Faves

the way you phrased this makes me think you already have a strong opinion on it

hey uh. coming from a person who was absolutely CONVINCED that theyd be dead in the future when they were 12, a not insignificant part of that was me feeling that there was something irreversibly wrong with me for not behaving or acting in certain ways based on what was going downstairs

and obviously im still HERE but it means i can understand how devastatingly terrible it can feel when youre that young and it seems like the way you behave and feel are flawed, or dirty, and anything that can lessen that feeling and make you comfortable in your own body is huge, can save your life

not that im saying its always a LIFE OR DEATH decision !

i guess if youre viewing it as adults forcing a child into making decisions that you dont think theyre capable of understanding its easy to be hesitant about getting behind it, but nobody is forcing a child to be trans. nobody has tricked them into feeling this way. you cant just walk in and get started on treatment on an immediate whim - some programs require 2 YEARS of concrete evidence before theyll even consider it

i feel like you should try speaking to the parents of trans children before you really put down a concrete opinion on whether this is a good or bad thing, and seeing the difference ( if any ) its made in their lives 

people whove detransitioned, or found they had ultimately a different identity than the one they were exploring could also be an avenue to look intto ! i have several acquaintances who, after a period of years, found they werent trans but wouldnt take back the time where they were figuring out if they were, and i know this doesnt invalidate the friends i have who ARE 

ultimately this is what it boils down to for me : Its Sure Gotta Beat Being Dead

i WILL give you that ive definitely seen a lot of overreactions to seemingly innocuous topics on this website

but youve also got to keep in mind that everybody who is saying these things MEANS them, and to them theres a completely reasonable explanation to why they feel that way

im not saying you should blindly accept any criticism you get, but to instead try to get a grasp on WHY theyre responding the way they are instead of immediately dismissing it

its because i cant drive and they wont let me sit in the front on account of the smell

NICE THINGS

AHHHH I GOT.. a bunch of other really sweet messages to the point where id feel weird about putting em ALL UP BUT... IF YOU SENT ME SOMETHING i can promise i absolutely saw it and it made my day better and just, holy shit, thank you for taking time out of your life to say anything to me at all

because you didnt have to, even a little bit

youre all beautiful and im kissing you on the mouths all at once. no take backs

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND February 22, 2019  - HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY

February comes to an end with the Oscars on Sunday and another family sequel hoping to escape the fate of the disappointing The LEGO Movie 2, plus Fighting with My Family becomes the widest WWE Films release since John Cena’s The Marine back in 2006.

Just a reminder that you can read my box office analysis and predictions over at The Beat, as well as my thoughts on Black Panther’s chances at winning a few Oscars this Sunday.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (DreamWorks Animation/Universal)

Written and directed by Dean DeBlois (How To Train Your Dragon,How to Train Your Dragon 2) Voice Cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrara, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kristen Wiig, Kit Harrington MPAA Rating: PG

A mere three weeks after the animated sequel The LEGO Movie 2disappointed at the box office, DreamWorks Animation returns with its first movie since 2017’s Captain Underpants, as well as the first movie under its new distribution deal with Universal. It’s also the first movie from DreamWorks Animation sans CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg who left after Comcast bought the company after building it up into quite a brand.

It’s pretty amazing that DreamWorks Animation has gone ahead with this threequel after it’s been delayed seemingly for years, but clearly, Universal/Comcast wanted to get its dragons in a row before bringing them back for an epic finale, especially with the company’s mixed success with their last few offerings. (DWA’s 2017 release The Boss Babyactually did quite well, just slightly less than How to Train Your Dragon 2’s domestic gross.)

The good thing going for the latest How to Train Your Dragonis that DreamWorks Animation has been keeping the franchise alive with a number of animated series that have streamed on Netflix, and kids definitely know these characters well. They’ve also been able to bring back almost all of the cast, including Cate Blanchett, Kit Harrington (from “Game of Thrones”) and introducing F. Murray Abraham as a new villain named Grimmel and a new lady “Light Fury” to match with Hiccup’s dragon pal Toothless. This generally should help revive the animated company who has made such an impact in the early ‘00s. So far, reviews have been far better than anyone expected, and Universal wisely gave the movie a Fandango-only screening a few weeks back where it grossed $2.5 million.

Mini-Review: I’ve seen both the previous How to Train Your Dragon movies, and I liked them just fine, but not enough to warrant a rewatch before the third movie is released five years after the previous one. Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to get up to speed at least in terms of figuring out who everyone is, though it does take some time before it gets into gear as far as storytelling.

Things have settled down at Berk, as Hiccup and his pals continue to save dragons from trappers and being them back to their safe haven, but new villain Grimmel (voiced by F. Murray Abraham) who wants to kill the last of the Night Furies aka Hiccup’s own dragon pal Toothless. In order to do so, he uses a white female “Light Fury” as a honey badger to capture the lovelorn dragon, as well as all the other dragons in Berk.

The problem is that there are way too many unfunny human characters and even more dragons that are hard to keep track of. The film begins by throwing so much at the viewer, but not in a good way, and it took a long time for me to be even vaguely interested in what was happening.  Surprisingly, Abraham makes for an equally bland villain, especially considering how great he’s been in such a role in movies like Amadeus, but the storytelling is obvious and even corny at times that it begins as a disappointing finale to the epic trilogy.

Granted, this is still an amazing technical achievement with all of the colorful environments and creatures, yet the dragons are generally more interesting than the humans, other than maybe Hiccup and his girlfriend Astrid. The dialogue-free moments between Toothless and his paramour tend to work far better than the attempt at getting laughs using the annoying humans.

Where the film really starts picking up steam is in the last act where the action starts to build to a peak, and we’re finally reminded what made the earlier films so special. In some ways, it’s hard to believe a movie that starts off so grueling and boring manages to deliver enough of a third-act payoff to win the viewer over, and it’s quite an amazing recovery to end the series on a high note.

Rating: 6.5/10

FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY (MGM)

Written and Directed by Stephen Merchant (co-creator of “The Office” and “Hey, Ladies!”) Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick Frost, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson MPAA Rating: PG-13

I’ve already written quite a bit about this comedic biopic already between my reviewand my interview with WWE superstar Paige, so I’m not sure how much more I have to say about this film which tells the story of how Paige came to the WWE. Produced by Dwayne Johnson, who also makes a couple appearances in the movie, this is a wonderful film that will definitely appeal to WWE fans, especially those who have been following the Women’s Revolution, but I think it will appeal to others as a fun inspirational story about an outsider making good. The movie opened in New York and L.A. this past weekend, but it will expand nationwide on Friday, and I hope that audience will give it a look, especially with so few strong movies in theaters right now and the box office being so dismal.

LIMITED RELEASES

One of the standouts this weekend is Suzannah Herbert’s doc WRESTLE (Oscilloscope), co-directed by Lauren Belfer, which just won two Hoka Award at the Oxford Film Festival last week, and that’s after winning awards at a number of other festivals. It follows five varsity wrestlers at a small-town Alabama high school who are competing to help take their school to the State Championships, but there’s a lot more at stake than a trophy. Each of the wrestlers has had domestic issues that has made going to college a struggle, and placing in the Championships would give them a chance for scholarships that would make a huge difference in their lives. The movie will open at the Village East Cinemas in New York on Friday with Herbert and Belfer in attendance to discuss this inspirational film. It will then open in L.A. on March 1.

I don’t know much (or actually anything) about the faith-based film RUN THE RACE (Roadside Attractions), hitting select theaters this weekend, but apparently it’s exec. produced by NFL star Tim Tebow and directed by Chris Dowling (Priceless). It involves two brothers dealing with the death of their mother and abandonment by their father as All-State athlete Zach’s hopes of earning a college scholarship are sidelined by an injury. With that, his younger brother David steps up to help get him and his brother out of town to a better future. (Actually, this movie seems to have quite a bit in common with the doc Wrestle.)

Metrograph Pictures makes its debut with its initial release, the French doc The Competition (Le Concours) from filmmaker Claire Simon, marking her first film to get a U.S. theatrical release. It takes a look at the entrance process for the prestigious French film school La Fémis, where hundreds of ambitious filmmakers in all aspects of the craft seek to be taught how to perfect said craft. I have to be honest that as I watched the movie, I didn’t realize it was a doc, because it reminded me of 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) or The Class, where there was just so much talking and most of it just seemed like pretentious showboating by students trying to impress the entrance panel. In fact, the educators and filmmakers’ reactions to the students is far more interesting, but this only had a few moments that captivated me in its 2-hour running time.  You can find out where else it will play after its Metrograph debut Friday on the Official Site.

Opening at the Cinema Village in New York Friday and in L.A. on March 1 is Barry Avrich’s doc Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz, which takes a look at the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trial who continues to fight for the law and peace.

Opening in Texas Friday (and expanding to other markets over the coming weeks including even MORE Texas theaters on March 1) is Ty Roberts’ adaptation of Tom Pendleton’s 1966 novel The Iron Orchard (Santa Rita Film Co.), starring Lane Garrison as Jim McNeely, a young man thrown into the brutal world of the West Texas oilfields in 1939, shortly after the Great Depression.

Lastly, there’s Stuart McKenzie and Miranda Harcourt’s adaptation of Margaret Mahy’s novel The Changeover (Vertical), starring Erana James as 16-year-old Laura Chant who lives with her mother (the always wonderful Melanie Lynskey) and four-year-old brother Jacko in a poor suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand and ends up in a supernatural battle with a spirit draining the life out of Jacko. Also starring Tim Spall, it opens in select theaters and On Demand Friday.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

A couple festivals and film series worth nothing is the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American Cinema, presented with Cinema Tropical, which will include Belmonte   from Uruguay, Carlos Reygadas’ Our Time, and many other films, none of which I’ve seen.

Also, the 22nd New York International Children’s Film Festivalbegins on Friday, running through March 17, opening with the East Coast Premiere of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s directorial debut The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which will also premiere on Netflix on March 1. The festival will be spread out across the city from the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyin to the IFC Center to the Cinepolis Chelsea, Quad Cinema, SVA Theater and even the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. You can find out more about the films and schedule on the Official Site.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Fresh from its Sundance premiere, Mark Duplass continues his relationship with Netflix, appearing with Ray Romano in Alex (Blue Jay) Lehmann’s PADDLETON, in which Duplass plays a man diagnosed with terminal cancer who asks his neighbor (Romano) to end his life before he dies from cancer.

This week’s foreign Netflix offering is Elizabeth Vogler’s French film Paris is Us, which involves a woman named Anna who misses her flight to Barcelona, which she misses, which starts her questioning reality and her relationships.

Because HBO is picking up so many great films out of festivals, I’m going to include them here whenever I can. Who knows? Maybe someone at HBO will see this and hook-up with a free HBO Now account. (And I’ll accept free Hulu, Amazon and Showtime accounts and any others while we’re at it, if those companies want to be included.)

One of my favorite films from last year’s Tribeca Film Festival was Madeleine Sackler’s O.G. starring Jeffrey Wright (who won an award for his acting) as former gangleader and lifelong inmate Louis, who is coming to the end of his 24-year sentence, when he takes the younger Beecher (Theothus Carter) under his wing, trying to keep him from him following the same downwards path he took. You can read more about my thoughts on the movie in my Tribeca Film Festival diary. O.G. will premiere on HBO this Saturday.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Produced by David O. Selznick concludes this week with screenings of The Third Man, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and one last screening of Rebecca, plus the Metrograph’s Valentine’s Day offerings continue, including Casablanca  (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). Late Nites at Metrograph is the Anime Ghost in the Shell (1995) and the Playtime: Family Matinees  is Disney-Pixar’s Oscar-winning Inside Out (2015)

QUAD CINEMA  (NYC):

The Goldblum Variations concludes with screenings of The Life Aquatic of Steven Zissou (Thurs.), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Fri.) and Earth Girls are Easy, but there’s also the week-long New York premiere of the 2k restoration of Joan (Hester Street) Silver’s 1977 movie Between the Lines  (Cohen Film Collection), also starring Goldblum, along with John Heard, Lindsay Crouse and more.

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Another busy weekend at Tarantino’s repertory theater with a number of Burt Reynolds double features, Hooper (1978)and Physical Evidence (1989) on Weds. and Thurs, plus his 1977 movies Smokey and the Bandit and Semi-Tough on Friday and Saturday. This weekend’s midnight movies are Tarantino’s Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction on Friday and the 1972 concert film Fillmore on Saturday.  The Kiddee Matinee of the weekend is Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’ 3-Ring Circus (1954), and then Sunday and Monday, there’s a double feature of Sandra Dee’s Gidget  (1959) and Dick Clark’s Because they’re Young (1960). The Monday Matinee is Bill Duke’s 1992 thriller Deep Cover, starring Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum, and Tuesday night’s Grindhouse offering is Burt Reynolds’ 1987 movie Malone and his 1986 film Heat. (All that Burt Reynodls movies makes me want to live in L.A.!)

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The downtown rep theater presents the 5 ½-hour version of Bernardo Bertolluci’s 1976 drama 1900, which will be shown in two parts, and this weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is the 1953 sci-fi thriller The War of the Worlds in a new 4k restoration.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The Egyptian screens Death in Venice (1971) on Thursday, as part of the Luchino Visconti: Cinematic Nobility series.

AERO  (LA):

On Saturday night, the Aero is screening a triple feature of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979) – with Coscarelli and producer Paul Pepperman in attendance -- along with Three O’Clock High (1987) and 10 to Midnight  (1983), as part of its Cinematic Void 2019 series. Otherwise, the theater seems to be playing Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Bookaround the clock.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Waverly Midnights: The Feds continues with John Woo’s Face/Off (1997), starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, Weekend Classics: Early Godard will screen the classic Band of Outsiders  (1964) Friday through Sunday, while Late Night Favorites will once again show Ridley Scott’s Alien. (It really IS a Late Night Favorite!)

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

On Friday at Midnight, the Nuart will show Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, starring Nicolas Cage.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):

Sergey Bondarchuk’s epic 1968 film War and Peace continues to run (in four installments) through Thursday.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

Starting Friday, BAM starts its ten-day Living with the Dead: The Films of George Romero, commemorating the life and career of one of the greatest horror filmmakers of all time, the late George Romero. It will be held together by a new 2K restoration of his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, which will screen Friday night, Saturday afternoon and on Feb. 28. Other movies in the series include Dawn of the Dead  (1978), Day of the Dead  (1985), The Crazies  (1973), Monkey Shinesand some of Romero’s newer films. The series will also have special guests like Romero’s daughter Tina Romero and producer Richard Rubenstein over the course of the series.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Sir Sidney Poitier offers Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night  (1967) on Weds, Blackboard Jungle  (1955) on Thurs and Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones (1958) on Friday.

That’s it for this week… next week, Tyler Perry’s Madea is back in Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral, presumably the last Madea movie ever… be afraid and glad at the same time! Also, Neil Jordan returns with the psychological thriller Greta.

[relationshipadviser-blog]

Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

New Post has been published on https://relationshipqia.com/must-see/esther-perel-fix-the-sex-and-your-relationship-will-transform/

Esther Perel: 'Fix the sex and your relationship will transform'

Esther Perels breathtakingly frank therapy podcasts Where should we begin not only make for juicy listening, theyve revitalised the stale private lives of millions. Miranda Sawyer listens to the psychotherapist

Passion has always existed, says Esther Perel. People have known love forever, but it never existed in the context of the same relationship where you have to have a family and obligations. And reconciling security and adventure, or love and desire, or connection and separateness, is not something you solve with Victorias Secret. And there is no Victors Secret. This is a more complicated existential dilemma. Reconciling the erotic and the domestic is not a problem that you solve. It is a paradox that you manage.

Ooh, Perel is a great lunch date. All psychotherapists are, in my experience, but shes particularly interesting. Sex, relationships, children; she covers them all in the two hours we spend together. But also collective trauma, migration, otherness, freedom all the good stuff.

Perel is a practising couples and family therapist who lives in New York. Aside from her clinical work she counsels around 12 couples or individuals each week she has two best-selling books: one about maintaining desire in long-term relationships (Mating in Captivity), the other about infidelity (The State of Affairs). She has released two fascinating podcast series, called Where Should We Begin?, where listeners get to listen in on real-life couples having therapy with her. The podcast is where I first came across her its won a British Podcast Award, a Gracie Award in the States and was named as the Number One podcast by GQ.

On top of all this, she hosts workshops and lectures as well as the inevitable TED talks, one of which has been watched more than 5m times. I went to one of her London appearances earlier this year. Alain de Botton was the host and he introduced Perel with quite some hyperbole, calling her one of the greatest people alive on Earth right now. (Perel dismissed this afterwards, though she likes de Botton: He put me on such a platter.)

Esther Perel sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

The reason for Perels popularity is her clear eye on modern relationships. She says, rightly, that we expect much more from our marriages and long-term relationships than we used to. For centuries, marriage was framed within duty, rather than love. But now, love is the bedrock. We have a service model of relationships, she says to me. Its the quality of the experience that matters. She has a great turn of phrase: The survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple. Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier. We will have many relationships over the course of our lives. Some of us will have them with the same person.

For a while, Perel wasnt taken particularly seriously by the therapist community: she tells me that when Mating in Captivity came out in 2006, it was only the sexologists that thought it was great. This is because her thinking went against long-established relationship wisdom, namely that if you fix the relationship through talking therapy, then the sex will fix itself. Perel does not agree. She says that, yes, this might work, but I worked with so many couples that improved dramatically in the kitchen, and it did nothing for the bedroom. But if you fix the sex, the relationship transforms.

We meet in a boutique hotel in Amsterdam, where Perel orders her food in fluent Dutch. She has a light Belgian accent (she says boat for both), and she wears some delicate gold jewellery, a bit like the Indian hath panja, on her right hand. (Both of these seem to excite American journalists, along with Perels good looks. A relationship therapist who you might fancy, shocker!)

We begin talking about her podcast series. Its an astonishing listen, partly because you get to earwig other peoples problems (always great) and partly because Esthers methods are so flexible: in the first series she got one young woman to wear a blindfold while her partner inhabited a more assertive sexual character, which he did by speaking in French. She sometimes sings to her clients; she tells them off quite a lot, especially if they think sex should come naturally: Who the hell told you that BS?

Series three, released next month, is slightly different to the last two. This time round Perel very deliberately chooses couples at different stages, because she wants to show an arc of a relationship, all the way to its end. Also, she says, I wanted to bring in the way that relationships exist in a larger, social, cultural, context. That context often gives a script about how one should think about suicide, about gender, about divorce and so forth. So we hear from a young couple coping with enforced distance in their relationship: one is US-born and the other is Mexican, without a US visa. Another is a mother and her child, who does not identify as either gender. Another couple, with a young child, have divorced, but seem to get along much better now: why?

Perel finds her podcast therapees via her Facebook page: they apply in their thousands. Her podcast producers sift through, using guidelines that Perel suggests them: this time round she knew she wanted to cover infertility and also suicide. Then theres a lengthy pre-recording interview process where its explained to the couples that, yes, this really is going on air and, yes, they might be recognised (from their voices; theyre anonymous otherwise). Are you OK in understanding that your story will become a collective story? You will be giving so much to others, as well. Its not just for you, actually. And then they have a one-off session with Perel for three to four hours, edited down to around 45 minutes for the podcast.

She loves the format. The intimacy of it, the private listening of it, the fact that you dont see them, thus you see yourself. You hear them but you see you. It reflects you in the mirror. But also, surely, its quite exposing for you? Oh yes. People can come and hear me give a talk, but theyve never seen me do the work and you cant talk about what you do. But when you write a book, that is the first part of exposure. Then comes TED and the podcast. If you ask, What does Perel do? My colleagues know how I do.

Perel is 60 now; I wondered how she found being a relationship therapist when she was younger, in her 20s. Werent clients put off by her youth? Actually, Ive always found that the age of the clients goes up with me, she says. It mirrors. I dont know why. She doesnt think lived experience is necessary, though sometimes she wonders how she had the chutzpah to counsel parents before she became one herself (now she has two grown-up sons; shes still married to their dad, Jack Saul, who is a professor and an expert in psychosocial trauma). But then I have worked a lot with addiction, and Im not an addict.

Interestingly, she came to therapy via drama. Drama and collective trauma. She was the second child of Polish Jews who came to Belgium as Holocaust survivors (Perels first passport was a stateless passport of the UN). In Belgium, they became part of a community of 15,000 Jewish refugees.

Loss, trauma, dismantlement of the community, immigration, refugees All these themes that I observe in the world today, were basically mothers milk to me, she says. Everybody had an accent, a good number of people had the number on their arms. There were no grandparents around, there were no uncles. Its all I knew. Its different than if it was just your parents. Its every home I went to. One of Perels earliest memories is of card games where her parents would talk of a friend, and someone would say, casually, Ah, he was gassed, he didnt make it.

Perels parents had her older brother in 1946, then she came along 12 years later. This was not uncommon. When people came out of the camps, the first thing they did to prove that they were still human was to have a child. They waited to get their periods back, and then they had a child. But then there was a gap of 8, 10, 12 years before they had another. Perel thinks this was because the parents needed to establish themselves in society. Hers ran a clothes shop in Antwerp. The family lived above the shop. They spoke five languages: Polish, Yiddish, German, French and Flemish. Every evening they watched the news in German, French and Flemish, to get a good all-round view.

Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier: Esther Perel. Photograph: Jean Goldsmith for the Observer

As a teenager, she was interested in psychology, mostly because she hated the strictness of school. She read Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child-Rearing, about a British school run like a democracy, and from there she moved to Freud. I was interested in understanding myself better and in people around me. People dynamics. I was quite melancholic and I was often wondering, How does one live better? How do you talk to your mother so she understands you better? Id say the primary ingredient I had was curiosity. I was a massively curious person I still am. She was also a good listener a confidante for her friends. I tell her she would have made a great journalist, and she agrees: That would have been my other career.

After school she went to study in Jerusalem, a university course that combined French linguistics and literature. More importantly, she developed her interest in theatre, which had begun in early adolescence. I assumed she was an actor, but shes talking of improv and street theatre, with puppets, of all things. Big ones, you hold them on two long high sticks, or I did hand puppets. She liked the immediate contact with people and gradually, she found herself merging these skills with her studies, doing theatre with gangs,with street girls,with Druze,with foreign students. At one point she went to Paris to study under Augusto Boal, who created the Theatre of the Oppressed. He would stage fake crises in everyday situations: actors pretending to have a physical row on the Metro, for instance. Perel found it interesting to see which passers-by would get involved and which would turn away.

She moved to New York to do her Masters. She specialised in identity and immigration How is the experience of the migrant different if it is voluntary migration or forced migration? and in how minority communities relate to each other. She led workshops for what were then called mixed couples: interracial, intercultural, interreligious. I knew the cultural issues. I knew how to run a group. I dont think I knew much about couples dynamics.

Around that time her husband, who is a few years older than her, suggested she might enjoy systemic family therapy. I ask what this is. For a long time when people looked at a problem, they thought the problem is located within the person, says Perel. But systemic family therapy thinks that a family, or a relationship, is made up of interdependent parts. What is the interactive dynamic that preserves this thing, that makes this child not go to bed? That makes this man never get a job? That makes this son be such a nincompoop? How is the family system organised around it? You need two to create a pattern, or three or four or five.

Its interesting how therapy has trends, I say, and how those trends manifest themselves in actual life. Couples therapy goes in parallel to the cultural changes and the expectations in a culture, says Perel. During the 1980s her married clients didnt come to her because their sex life was bad, they came because of domestic violence or alcoholism, not because we dont talk any more. Back then, the shame was to get divorced at all, even if one half cheated; now its not to get divorced if one half cheats. She saw clients having problems with infertility, the changing role of women and daughters, the Aids crisis. In the 90s, single mothers, blended families, gay couples with kids. Todays problems, she says, are often centred around people marrying later, after a sexually nomadic youth. Also, modern fatherhood dads wanting to be more involved in childcare and monogamy versus polyamory. Straight couples are becoming more gay, gay couples more straight.

The obvious question, of course, which she has been asked many times, is how Perels own relationship works. She doesnt like to give too many details, but what she does say is that she and Saul give each other a lot of freedom If youve had an interesting life, you have more to bring back, something that energises the couple and that they renegotiate their relationship as it changes. At the moment her husband is entering what she calls a third stage, and he wants to paint more. This means he will be away from New York a lot, while she is usually in New York or travelling herself. We need to, once again, come up with a new rhythm of how we create separateness and togetherness. Its a fundamental task.

She wants others not to copy her own relationship, but to use her work as a way to better their own relationship for themselves. And plenty do. Just the other week a young woman came up to her and asked for a selfie. She said, My boyfriend listens to you all the time, and he comes home and he says, Have you listened to this episode, we need to talk? The podcast is a transitional object, a bridge for conversation. Like a teddy bear that you hold and you say: Its OK, dont be worried.

Like when couples talk through their dog, I say.

Yes, she says. There is such disarray and such hunger about getting help on how we manage our relationships today, on navigating the challenges For the first time we have the freedom of being able to design our relationships in a way that we were never capable of doing before, or allowed to do before. So, I dont give the details of my relationship. Instead I will give you the tools to come up with your own thing.

Season 3 of Esther Perels Where Should We Begin is available exclusively on Audible from 5 October

Try this at home

Three ways to change the way you think about your partner at home

Pay attention to what is important to the other What happens in a couple is that we often give to the other what we want them to give to us. If somebody is upset, you dont talk to them, because when you are upset you like to be left alone. It isnt necessarily what they need.

Roles are often patterns rather than habits If you really want the other person to take out the rubbish, you have to be able to spend two weeks not doing it. You dont say anything. You just wait until the other person finally notices it. When youre not there, the other person sorts the bin. They can do it. Its just that when youre there theyd prefer not to.

Women are not less interested in sex than men, theyre less interested in the sex they can have What makes women lose that interest? Domesticity. Motherhood. The mother thinks about others the whole time. The mother is not busy focusing on herself. In order to be turned on you have to be focused on yourself in the most basic way. The same woman whos numb in the house gets turned on when she leaves. She doesnt need hormones. Change the story.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us