#[ I was trying to find something in my screencaps and got this ]

[beehunterkisser]

Im in the middle of watching the new pnf episodes (ep 4 rn) and I wanna know ur indepth opinions of the new pnf episodes soooo bad,,, They carry the same energy of the early episodes which I love and theyre so fun!!! I LOVE PHINEAS AND FERB!!!! THANK U FOR MAKING COOL ART ABOUT IT!!!

AHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH.. THEY REALLY ARE SO MUCH FUN I LOVED THEM ALL.. Since you asked so niceys im fully lifting my spoiler lid and now will deliver to you all . as IN DEPTH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE

the BEEHUNTERKISSER (first half of) SEASON 5 PHINEAS AND FERB REVIEW!!!

(THIS IS A LONG ASS POST BE WARNED)

SUMMER BLOCK BUSTER/CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MOM

GOOD ASS INTRODUCTION!!!!!!!

i did find block buster to be a lot weaker than cloudy but U need to have a calm before a storm if u catch my drift. also i think this is the episode where the animation is at its weakest. it ramps up sooo fucking good in cloudy. but even then i thoroughly enjoyed it. it was so fun seeing everybody again My bebbies have returned to me...........

That one back and forth where candace steps in after and goes what if you built.. all of them. was so insanely weirdly paced and not funny to me the womp was giving johnny test whipcrack but lucky for me both bread bowl hot tub and the rest of the show get funnier as it goes on LOL

OH AND the scene in cloudy where candace is chasing down momcloud and trying to get through to her has such beautiful lighting and is so SWEEET THEY LOVE THEIR MOM SO MUCH. Also everybody teaming up to save her AND i got yuri pellets (wipes tear from eye) its so damn peak..

LOOK AT THIS MAN ITS SO FUCKING COOL ID EXPECT THIS FROM ONE OF THE MOVIES OR SOMETHING. Linda cloud holds that power over people.. This was genuinely like REALLY cool and exciting im really glad they went with a double episode high stakes adventure for the premiere because like. ive been hungry for some phineas and ferb 22 minute episode drama... its been too long.

ALSO the art in general just had some really cute moments too izzy looks so cute when shes serious. and candace hugging irving. vv first i loled then i serioused. i took a lot of screencaps so im gonna add them here as i go

I genuinely do not have much to say about these episodes for some reason despite how much i loved them. I love that Buford found a Thingy and he Loves it. buford hungry feed him onions and discarded blue couches. Everybody got their own moment here it ruled

The songs in both. summer is starting right now changed me on a molecular level when it dropped it was stuck in my head ALLLLLL DAY EVERY DAY.

I was in work making delisandwiches and in my head technically the first day of summers tomorrow but today is the last day of school. schooooooooooool....

The song of tyhe Summer is insanely cooked and flop i dont even remember how it goes but i guess you could say its meant to be generic so like. no thoughts here. MY RATINGS:

SUMMER BLOCK BUSTER: 7/10 solid introduction banging song gotta get gone instrumental. saves the weaknesses

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MOM: 10/10. he found me crying. he crew too. we both crode

final assessment - were these episodes MADE for me?: yes. its new phineas and ferb i think i can say they thought of me when they were making phineas and ferb. who wouldnt.

SUBMARINE SANDWICH SUBMARINE/LICENSE TO BUST

I GOT A LICENSE TO BUST FULL THROTTLE FULL THRUST GOT ,Y PEDAL TO THE METAL GONNA EAT MY DUST. Ok back to the first one

I was really really excited for submarine sandwich submarine for 1 entire day when they dropped the screenshot of isabella and buford standing next to eachother because i foolishly believed they would have the plot centered around them beefing which i live for if you know me at all. BUT!! Idk it was just kinda an episode.

It really felt like an s4 plot in the sense of a really hard reach for a big idea. Im telling you my bermuda triangle idea from my beach art wouldve been better But like this was the next best thing. it even had wacky sandcastles. Umm the jessimpsons predicted submarine sandwich submarine. The fish was ugly as hell

I can really tell which episodes i liked the most based on how many screenshots or clips i took and this ones an outlier because i found everything baljeet was doing in this episode to be mega cute.

look at him go............ hungry for a cheese and pummelled by olive...

LICENSE TO BUST was a lot of fun too im so proud of my sweet little candace for getting her drivers licensed when faced with the adversary of a balding man. the SONG made the episode for me she ate that shit up thats for later though

LAWRENCE NOT THINKING SHES GONNA PASS WAS SO FUNNY WHATS HIS PROBLEM.................. HAVE FAITH IN YOUR BEAUTIFUL BABY GIRL OK.. also the gecko gear was so cute i want it so bad... but i think id get stuck to myself and wither up like a sad little freak.

and ferb has literally perished.

I LOWKEY DID NOT EXPECT HER TO PASS I CANT EVEN LIE. The twist that mr. driving guy is also a candacetype is funny but does this mean she passed her test via bias. what does this mean for the future of danvilles road safety? We'll never know cause she goes right back to riding her bike in the episodes after this. (read like cinemasins please)

oh and also while im here. im usually an A-plot only andy so ill probably only talk about doof and perrys plot if its PARTICULARLY funny or engaging to me (no arguments against this this is my protest for every b plot guy that ignores a plots existence. we have to balance it out or we're all gonna die ok?) and this one was.

Hes literally so real ITS LEGAL ITS ENTRAPMENT. KILL YOU PERRY THE PLATYPUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE LIGHTS ARE GREEN !!! heinz is a good name for a boy or a girl. DOOF WAS ACTUALLY REALLY REALLY FUNNY IN THESE EPISODES i was worried considering how bad he got near the end with like owca files doof and mml doof but MAN I WAS WRONG. SO WRONG. HES FUNNY AGAIN!!!!! BUT ILL GET TO THOSE WHEN WE GET TO MY STANDOUTS LOL. MY RATINGS:

Submarine Sandwich Submarine: 7/10. Over-animated isabella and buford scene will feed me for the rest of my life, baljeet attacked by various foods. Song mid though it was like a worse version of the sea shanty hng song

License to Bust: 9/10 IT WAS REALLY GOOD AND HAD A GREAT SONG.. The callback to her parralel parking fiasco and the Shenanigans was sooo much fun. Now that im here doesnt the intro of license to bust also sound like fred vs fred. whos better at paintball whos better at pool. whos better at driving her car safely near a school. idk just workshopping it.

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: license to bust maybe not but subsandsub was really fun and 24fps buford animation makes me feel seen. 1 out of 2 score.

DRY ANOTHER DAY/DECONSTRUCTING DOOF

UNFORTUNATELY. neither of these clicked with me very much........... DESPITE THIS. DECONSTRUCTING DOOF MAY HAVE ONE OF MY TOP 3 NEW SONGS. GOOD AS FUCK but dry another day is first so shhhhhhhhhhh

this episode we see a character made because they want to keep writing veronica hill from hng but theyre in different parts of danville so they got this new weird guy in. and also a really hot day episode where theyre all sitting under the tree im litrally ghostwriting this show

microorganisms. they need some wawer. baljeet get out of the sun. and the zebra is back. and he drinks boba.. Now i feel like hes part of the mortal realm hes real. and candace reacts with JOY when she speaks to him i thought she BEEFS WITH THIS ZEBRA. Something must have happened between them over the 9 months they mustve reached some kind of peace agreement.

i also really love this karmic cycle buford and baljeet have going on in this season where as soon as one of them gets a moment to gloat over the others misfortune they also immediately eat shit. It makes me laugh every time i was literally hoping so much their dynamic this season would be them breaking chairs over eachothers heads and i think my dream came true.. also what was with the ferbjeet crumbs in this one. (Pic of the riddler) what is he cooking.

SO CUTE... The song in this one didnt really stick out to me that much i couldnt remember it at all. this ones less of a s4 flop song and more of a HNG flop song which is a different ballpark entirely..

NOT MUCH TO SAY. IT WAS A FINE LITTLE JAUNT I HAD FUN WITH IT AND THATS WHAT MATTERS. Its definitely not a skip-on-rewatch episode but its not lifechanging either.

Deconstructing doof is one of the 3 only episodes that i felt some semblance of negativity over. It wasnt bad by any means the therapist going crazy over discovering the truth was a lot of fun and i did have a good time with the episode but like. idk. the leadup was great i just didnt really like the ending it soured it in my brain

the bits where hes investigating and piecing things together is really fun and i love when hes interviewing all the kids and pnfs family. and isabellas like Hes a Genius :-). buford pulls the Im not talking to any cops move. and baljeet performs the candace reddit psychoanalysis.

what makes me think this episode didnt really resonate with me is that. i usually take screenshots. i took ONE. In this ENTIRE EPISODE. i took ONE MEAGRE SCREENSHOT AND ITS THIS

that aside though the song may be in my top 3 s5 songs. i LOVE doo wop songs and omfg this one was so fun. another candace and doof duet.. WAITER WAITER ILL TAKE SECONDS.. THIRDS.. FOURTHS. WHEN HE GOES I THINK I HAVE A THEORYYYYYYY. he ate . and seeing norm and nessa hanging out with doof is so cute im so happy norm is like. Around.

i hope he gets a bigger part eventually but i take what i can get thats my special guy. THE ENTIRE ROLEPLAY PART WAS SO FUNNY. WHYD HE GIVE NORM PAPER JUST FOR HIM TO NOT SAY OR DO ANYTHING. EXIT STAGE LEFT

and the flying disco blimp sequence SO CUTE i rlly thought that was just gonna be its own episode. the song was GREAT and their little dancemoves were so cute i cry.....

buford hitting the 'artist drawing character floating in the void cool-style pose here. MY RANKING:

DRY ANOTHER DAY: 6/10. inoffensive theres nothing much going on here. its just an s4 episode to be honest. great balls of water solos

DECONSTRUCTING DOOF: 8/10 despite my hangups i can tell this is gonna be considered a legendary episode and i love the song so i cant really complain. Its a great concept and i think they did it well theres just something rotten in my heart

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: no these arent beehunterkisser episodes for sure. My battle does not lie here.. onward.. HUZZA

TROPEY MCTROPEFACE/BIBLIO BLAST!

Remember when we thought this was gonna be a ferb centric episode. and it instead turned out to be a zoetrope centric episode. maybe theyre more similar than we thought.. just something to make you think haha....

ANYWAY. MAN THAT EPISODE WAS FUNNY. THERES SO MUCH FUCKING NONSENSE I DONT EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN... MICHAEL BUBBLE...... HES HERE.

Im not used to michael buble singing anything thats not a christmas song tbh but he kind of ate this This is one of the ones thats been stuck in my head since i watched it. Episodes like this that center on some random object and what it gets up to are some of my FAVOURITES and this ones no exception its so fucking funny.

something i, as local pnf tumblr buford guy would like to point out, is that biffany got a new voice and a new design. Im kinda sad she doesnt sound like she smokes 30 packs a day anymore because that was such a vibe but THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER. I WAS LAUGHING SO FUCKING HARD

THATS THEIR FAMILY GARB. THEIR HERITAGE. Im so obsessed. i am also pretty happy that there is still no sign of anyone from bufords other side of the family so they didnt forget the lore tidbit that he comes from a broken home. The family get together from that one other pnf episode where all his family look like normal skinny background incidentals is so dead to me now. THIS is the real shit. lets all go cut down this tree. doesnt one of them look like vargskelethor joel anyway back to tropeface.

the drama.. the heartbreak.. michael bubble.. im so glad that tropey got to be with his beautiful ferris wheel wife and have triplets and the buford is a fat little hamster allegations are confirmed true. this was kinda the point in the season where i eralised hey isnt he like in this season a LOT. did they do it for me?

honest i dont even know what to say. its so serene its so beautiful. tropey has lived such a full and vast life. hes been through so much. im glad he finally gets to relax. At peace with the world......finally. Sorry to phinabella fans for this one though im keeping you in my thoughts

biblio blast was also a lot of fun it was kinda done dirty by being after the bombshell that was tropey BUT it was a giood time. IM EATING IM A PLANT IM A PLANT PLANT PLANT

THEYRE so cute i literally get so happy when they stand next to eachother. baljeet autism handsing i know what you are.

Again this is apparently the season of buford so we got him shitting on metamorphosis because edgar allen poe is his oshi or whatever which made me laugh a lot. ISABELLA DOING A BRITISH ACCENT WAS SO CUTE ALSO When she and buf banter it gives me life. yes it happens one other time this season its really great guys. things are looking up for me. ALSO DOOF WAS SO SO FUNNY IN THIS ONE. HEINZ HAS NO CLOROPHYLLLLLL UGHHHH THATS SO EMBARASSING FOR HIM. SO EMBARASSING.

The doof plants are really cute i like them id have one in my house but i guess id have to muzzle it but that feels inhumane. so i guess i have to let them live in the wild.. free.. like a bird.. if a bird was a plant.....

The song for this episode also has hng disease in that the vocal mixing is really strange. i had the same problem with strawberry festival im not sure why it happens it just isnt all that nice to listen to. the VISUALS were so cute tho theyre so cute... my little friends! MY RANKING:

TROPEY MCTROPEFACE: 10/10 Oh my Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood Its PEAK

BIBLIO BLAST: 6.5/10 Good innocent fun but not quite memorable enough to be a 7. if baljeet got to kill more itd be different.

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: YES SIR. Buford lore scraps a funny circle and plants. i love all these things. these are beehunterkisser episodes for sure

A CHIP TO THE VET/MORE THAN JUST AN INTERN

this damn episode. Its so bad.

I cant even lie. I did not enjoy it. but it wasnt quite the worst episode so i guess it has that going for it.

The stakes of perry getting a chip were completely dumb and not good. i thought theyd realise the potential of this but perry gets out of getting a chip thru being a platypus and not cartoon hijinks sio basically im gonna die. i was left feeling desolate and alone after this flop and then carl shows up like an angel and brings me to a new beautiful world. thats what these 2 paired up means

the song was pretty decent i do love sophia james singing voice and her work on HNG were always the best songs so it obviously translates over. The littel dance bits with the animals are so cute phineas is literally so cockatiel coded its adorable. and i do love to see a fireside girl or two. believe it or not i genuinely took no pictures of these episodes on my first watch; chip because it sucked and i just wanted it to be over and more than just an intern because it was so damn good i didnt even think of it.

highlight of this episode was probably buford flirting with jeremy. this means he has a crush on both candace and jeremy. whats his play. what does he think hes doing.

let him keep it its cute. and isabella confirmed baldy. IM trying to avoid talking about the goat scream joke because it makes me want to throttle somebody just know it fucking sucks and i hate it. anyway The song guys :). i do really like im just gonna excema this room. i might say that one irl some day its real good. guys im just so apathetic to this episode. its not real...

MORE THAN JUST AN INTERN however is VERY MUCH REAL. ive really really wanted a carl episode for a long time cause hes one crazy son of a bitch. and it makes em wanna attack monogram. but i know some people genuinely hate monogram but i like how shitty he is because its funny LOL.. sorry carl......

i made a really bad joke to one of my friends when they were saying that doof always smelled like fish and i mean im not gonna disclose that here becuase this is a family friendly review but the connontations of this sentence tells you everything. and carl is canonically microchipped.. in case he gets lost... so sweet

THE RETURN OF THE CARL THE INTERN SONG WAS REALLY GREAT I WAS HAPPY WHEN I HERD IT. I do love a good callback and this one wasnt forced or nothing thats just his theme song. but NEW

i have an engineering degree..

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN TO SEE CARL GET SOME RECOGNITION FOR HIS INSANE FUCKED UP WORK ETHIC AND IT FELT SO GOOOOOD TO WATCH HIM BLOW UP AT MONOGRAM AND FOR HIM TO ACTUALLY LISTEN FOR ONCE. WOW.. THINGS ARE A CHANGING

the ending was genuinely really sweet and carl getting to be some sort of weird part of the Monogram family like he wanted to is really nice to see.. carl win.. your strange fixation on approval from your boss has become Something New. MY RANKINGS:

A CHIP TO THE VET: 3/10 this couldve been something. you couldve done something. but you didnt. 3 points for sophia james banger

MORE THAN JUST AN INTERN: 10/10 HOOOWEEE MAMA. SWEET MAMA. THATS A GOOD EPISODE RIGHT THERE SON.

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: a chip to the vet was made to make me mad. carl episode wasnt for me because im not the carl guy but if it was itd totally be for me.

THE AURORA PERRY-ALIS/LORD OF THE FIRESIDES

made me scared. i have an irrational fear of when characters get shrunk down really small in cartoons and get eaten. i dont actually know if monty ate them but i saw enough and got scared and skipped like half the episode. Idk the context of the booger napkin and i never will journey to the center of candace finally has a 2nd episode to join it in my 'scared' tier in my pnf episode tier list.

OK ASIDE FROM THAT. I really liked it. seeing montnessa again and getting a reason for why they kinda fizzled out was great and i really hope they do more with their relationship. The scene with the aurora was BEAUTIFUL AND I LOVED THE LIGHTING and i quite liked the song it was niceys i just checked its sophia james again i shouldve known. ITS SO NICE

i could make them butchfemme. all hope is not lost. i can imagine anything.. and the sweet lil family moments with the flynn fletchers was awesome lawrence joining the conga line and getting rlly into it made me giggle. love you Bro

cause i missed half this episode due to getting scared we are just gonna go to lord of the firesides. IT HAD SO MUCH GOING FOR IT. AND THEN IT JUST FLOPPED RIGHT AT THE END

Gretchen declaring anarchy was so funny she was being such a little shithead. i like to think that shes just Like that sometimes even without a plot convenient inator because obviously girls would never fight like that on their own accord . ALSO ISABELLA SHOVING PNF OUT AND BEING LIKE YOU CANT SEE US LIKE THIS AHAHAHAHA

i LOOOOOOVED THE SONG IT WAS SUCH A SURPRISE and i love it when GIRLS kill eahcother but like i was genuinely really disappointed by this one. i thought it was gonna be something but it like was not. much.

I GENUIENLY THOUGHT ID HAVE MORE TO SAY. I THOUGHT WED GET MORE ABOUT THE FIRESIDE GIRLS AS INDIVIDUALS. YEAH NO That wont ever happen. Oh Whell Guys....... Oh well.. (kicks rock) oh well.....

calling all besties......KILL. MY RANKINGS:

AURORA PERRY-ALIS: scared/10. i cant really rank this one on good conscience. it made me scared

LORD OF THE FIRESIDES: 6/10. really really disappointed but ignoring what i wanted from it its still a really solid and funny episode.. im sure itll grow on me but i guess i just wanted them to fight for real. Its a shame

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: NO SIR! NO SIR THEY WERENT. i got let down

THE CANDACE SUIT/AGENT T FOR TEEN

Well. we are finally here. im sure it is genuinely no surprise to anyone that the candace suit was my favourite episode of the entire batch and even made it to my top 5 pnf episodes ever. there was just so much good buford.

Why the FUCK did he show up in his garage in a purple velvet bathrobe smoking a pipe. whered he get that. they put bubbles in it but i wouldnt have even batted an eye if he was just like acutally smoking atp. IT WAS SO FUNNY. WHYS HE A CRIME BOSS

ladies. to what do i owe this pleasure. what the hell man i need to draw this fit. ALSO BALJEET BEING IN ON IT AND BEING PROUD OF THE FACT THAT THERES A FUCKING BALJEET HOMUNCULI TEA PARTY ROOM WHERE SOME OF THEM ARE SUSPENDED IN THE AIR BY CHAINS AND HANDCUFFS. ITS FUCKED UP WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THEM. i love it. They couldnt have done better.

The suit shenanigans in the episode were so fucking funny but maybe the biggest highlight to me was that THE SONG LEAK TRICKED US. IT WAS SUNG BY BUFORD??? I THOUGHT IT WAS A DANNY JACOB BANGER. Lowkey bobby gaylor ate with it Buford has a hard voice to sing in but it was REALLY good. Like it was reminding me of how lord hater sings in WOY it made me laugh so hard. Stealing jeremy from work . why

i did this when the leak came out but i have to REDO IT BECUASE BIFFANY GOT REDESIGNED AND THE SUIT IS WAY WAY WAY WAY MORE SINISTER. BUT I ALREADY KNOW ITS A BANGER

But ohhh my god it was so funny. Their idea of buford development is turning him into some kind of art freak that knows everything about everyone. he clones people in his garage. his moms ok with it bnc their family cuts trees down for fun so theyre all fucked up in the head. awesome. Literally so fucking awesome

This episode got so many laughs outta me and i loved isabella and buford making fun of candace together for literally no damn reason. SHIT STIRRERS. LETS WEAR OUR CANDACE SKIN AND MAKE FUN OF CANDACE. For an internet trend. Yay! anyone who hates this episode is weak minded and wouldnt survive the baljeet dungeon.

AGENT T FOR TEEN. Ok so i was sad my manifest didnt work but this was SOOOOOOOOOO GOOD. I love the video at the very start the vibes are immaculate and stacy and perry team up so cute and beautiful. you ARE a donny do-good stacy. with the scraps beforehand of them playing video games together its just so peak

so cute. HER GETTING HER OWN THEME SONG AT THE END I SQUEED. AND ALL OF HER RANDOM TALENTS.. How does she ever feel like shes not enough for her mother shes insane at everything. she can even be a dolphin. GENUINELY THIS WAS EVERYTHING I WANTED AND MORE. SHE JUST JUMPS INTO ACTION FOR PERRY SHES SO NICE... and owca knows now.. and she gets a fedora AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ITS BEAUTIFUL ITS SO DAMN BEAUTIFUL

And its really nice to see dr hirano again she is So fine. mad about coltrane mention though hes not real no hes not sir.

i had predicted to myself shed have to cover for perry and keep candace away from him in some way. also dr diminutive and doof beefing is so funny. youre small. well youre uh divorced. shady af comebacks. its so good

I LOVE THIS EPISODE RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY RANKING:

THE CANDACE SUIT: FAVOURITE/10 I LOVE IT WHEN BUFORD DOES MORALLY QUESTIONABLE THINGS WITH NO REPROCUSSIONS. MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD I STARTED SILENTLY CRYING

AGENT T FOR TEEN: 10/10 NO NOTES. Stacy badass and awesome moments and shes friends with perry and its so beautiful. i have nothing intelligent to say its just genuinely so good.

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: YES BITCH. CANDACE SUIT WAS FOR ME. Buford van stomm why do you enjoy being candace (a girl) and living her life (girl life) so much. Much to think about. And STACY YAY

THE HABERDASHER/OUT OF CHARACTER

battle of the mid

Ok jokes aside i LIKED the character of the haberdasher but the most impressive and interesting part of that episode to me was the damn robot spider he was in at the start.

i love that hes steampunky and i love his earnest enthusiasm. hes a fun guy. this black beret really slays . Mothman doof was awesome also im really sad the mothman song was seemingly scrapped becuase i loved it But like YAY AWESOME BUG MAN. I didnt like whatever he was doing with his voice but i kinda forgot abt it after a while so like. WHO CARS.

this is the most ive ever related to doof because back in my youth i used to chew on fabric because i thought it tasted reall;y good. sometimes i crave it. like how he tried to eat socks.

The song that REPLACED THE moth man song..hoo boy. i have a hat for that was almost a good song but the pacing was just kind of off for me it felt like it was moving too fast and then would randomly slow down and then just kick off again and i was left afraid and alone.

I DO LIKE HOW HE CAN JUST TURN HIS SHOP INTO A DINKY CAR how come he has a totally different aesthetic to owca. i guess hes friends with professor elemental from real life and phineas and ferb. much to think about. hes a sweet guy and i wonder if hell ever show up again. ALSO THE SUBPLOT OF THE KIDS BUILDING SOMETHING WITHOUT PNF WAS SOOO CUTE. Buford bringing back the Thingy from cloudy made me laugh a lot. and him being like cant lie guys we're shit.

ITS SO GOOD i really want more episodes where its just them 3 because i feel like theres untapped potential. (buford isabella guy voice) particularly one dynamic in particular (hooked off stage by a cane)

Out of character was also really fun as someone who was raised into a star trek loving household . The set was REALLY fun and baljeet being so excited for acting was adorable i wanna pinch his cheeks. also buford movie interest scraps slowly making me like that career path for him so good job guys.

The song was kinda un memorable for me i do like whenever baljeet gets a solo of some kind but idk if this genre really worked with him he was just a bit shrill. I like that they tried to go for a patter-song type thing but i think with a patter song it needs to have yknow. the signature instruments. and the switch to the singers just doesnt work. Its flop im sorry my sweet little ball

also baljeets badass anime sakuga moment where he takes down the robot was awesome hes literally so iconic

HE DIDNT DESERVE TO LOSE HIS ROLE FOR BEING TOO GOOD!!!! FREE MY BOY! MY RANKING:

THE HABERDASHER: 6/10 i had a fun time but nothing really amazed me. I want moffman back.. sigh

OUT OF CHARACTER: 8/10 A LOT OF FUN. really cute character moments. I smiled and grinned I LOVE YOU BALJEET!! MY PRECIOUS BOY

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: Nahhhh not becuase theyre BAD or anything. i just dont go here. there are baljeet guys out there living their best lives and i cant pretend im allowed to be considered a baljeet guy. id just be a poseur. and im definitely not a doof guy. Im a tourist

THE CHRONICLES OF MEAP EPISODE 42: MEAP ME IN ST. LOUIS

its bad

MY RANKING:

THE CHRONICLES OF MEAP EPISODE 42: MEAP ME IN ST. LOUIS: its bad

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: stabbybarfpain you are one of the best songs ever written you deserved a better episode. my god

NO SLUMBER PARTY/THE BALLAD OF BUBBA DOOF

THIS WAS SOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE. BALJEET HAVING A 9:30 BEDTIME IS SO CUTE HES JUST A BABY. THE movie dome is the dream i was really hoping that hed get mega scared of the scary movie because umm idk rlly itd be cute. AND CANDACE STACY AND VANESSA HANGING OUT I COULD CRY.. ITS SO GOOD.. Vanessas outfit was great the mindy doll tanktop is so iconic and i kinda need it. Im really sad candace didnt get toi have much fun because she was so focused on busting.. but maybe in another world. in a fic my good friend wrote maybe. she could have fun. hint hint nudge nudge cometcrystal has a great slumber party big idea fic written before this episode dropped ANYWAY.

i HAVE to talk about it.

HIM HANGING OUT WITH THE GIRLS WAS SO CUTE AND HES LOWKEY IN DRAG MAKEUP... STACY SAYING SLAY QUEENIE GENUINELY MADE ME STOP BREATHING FOR A FEW SEOCNDS. s5 delivered so fucking hard on buford ive never been more vindicated as a buford fan. its literally all coming up milhouse.

the song was ALMOST really good but theres something about the takes they used for the second verse that is like grating. particularly isabellas AND THE SOUND SYSTEMS BOPPING where she sounsd like if a germ coiuld speak. WHYYYY DID THEY USE THAT TAKE. Buford eavesdropping on the girl gossip is literally so cute too i love him so much. hes so cute. ok but like genuinely the dancing in the last chorus the lipsyncing and movements are so horrifically bad they remind me of those inside out 2 songs. this is the phineas and ferb song yeah grab your friends and sing along. type shit. ASIDE FROM THAT ITS A REALLY CUTE BIT AND I LOEV HOW EVERYONE GETS A LINE

baljeet being woken up by the inator and immeditealy going back to sleep is so cute also i literally love him so much he gives me cuteness agression. THIS WAS A FUN EPISODE

Ok sleepmaster general its 9:29. next episode. THE BALLAD OF BUBBA DOOF is the other episode i felt real negativity for. i was really excited for the cowboy episode after i saw fullchains storyboards i thought it was like. an AU episode. but not only is the big idea convoluted and not in a fun way. I DIDNT EVEN GET ANY REAL COWBOY ACTION. I did like bubba doof though . Lunch :D.

i really dont have much to say about this one because like. this being the last one to watch and it flopping made me so mad. I did really like the kids outfits though they were so cute... the song was not memorable and kinda blew chunks. it just was generally . I DONT CAER ABOUT IT.. I DONT EVEN HAVE ANY PICTURES I HAVE TO GO TAKE ONE. WHAT THE HELL MAN. OK WAIT THERE IS A HIGHLIGHT. NED

NED HES SO CUTE.. NORM COUSIN.......AWWWWWWWWWWW COME AN GET IT LITTLE FELLERS. i also liked the scene where monogram tastes perry. kind of fucked up considering they ate agent T if i was perry id be scared that hed like it HAHAHAHAHA.. ANYWAY MY RANKING

NO SLUMBER PARTY: 7/10 Its FUN AND CUTE. A little bit of wasted potential but nowhere near as bad as lord of the firesides. Its fine totally cute. i love seeing all these guys hang out, makes me Snile

THE BALLAD OF BUBBA DOOF: 3/10 idgaf guys. its wasted on me

final assesment - were these episodes MADE for me?: Slumber party yes. If im crazy enough i can taqke it as stanessa crumbs. and also whatevers going on with Buford. Its good. Bubba no sir.

FINAL VERDICT

its good as HELL!!!!!! ITS JUST LIKE OLD PNF BUT WITH NEW HUMOR AND MORE FREEDOM TO DO WHAT THEY WANT.

Its everything i wanted except the things i didnt get which i will soon get over. Im so happy with it I literally stayed up till 4am yesterday to finish it. Its SO GOOD.

and overall.. ido believe.. this season really was made for me. last year was year of shadow the hedgehog this year its year of buford van stomm BITCHES

[aedearly]

hii! i absolutely love your work. i've been getting into trying to make borders myself, and i was wondering if you had any tips on where to find good pngs or do you create everything yourself? i feel like my luck so far hasn't been great but maybe i just don't know how to search for it correctly!

Hello, nonnie! I'm so glad you enjoy my work; thank you for your kind words. ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ ) And oh my gosh, it's so nice to see a new GFX creator in the making! One of us, one of us, one us. ~ Welcome to the wonderful world of editing, hehe!

I've compiled a list of websites that I use for my graphics, but please do let me know if you need anything else and I'll be happy to assist!

For general assets, as well as inspiration, I generally use these websites: behance (which is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to graphic design in general, they have cool studios or experienced designers that post their works and/or assets), booth (an independent japanese resources hub with many free and paid assets), huanban (an independent chinese resources hub, same proposal as booth), abdz (mostly focused on typography and branding), dribble (more focused on web applications and design) and envato (templates).

Since I'm colourblind, I'm not always confident about how to compose colours together. So whenever I'm in doubt, I use coolors (to get palettes from images and browse through palette ideas) and colorhunt (which gives ideas for palette themes and motifs).

I love typography a whole bunch, but sometimes it's hard to find that one right font for your project. Whenever I need to look for something else, I always run to these websites: google fonts (when I'm on a budget and want to use 100% free fonts, including for commercial use), 1001fonts (to quickly find fonts based on themes, it has a great tag system), dafont (a big classic huge dabatase of custom fonts), befonts (for more industry standard-leaning fonts) and kerismaker (for those magazine looks). When I want to identify a font used on an image and where I can download/purchase it, I use myfonts and font squirrel. They even give you similar options for free, too!

Suppose I'm specifically searching for illustrations/PNGs I can use on my upcoming project. In that case, I'll either go to flat icons (for websites, applications or presentations), vertex (for 3d icons and/or general vectors), graphic burger (for logo making), cleanpng (for I want a tree PNG and do not want to clean it myself, for example), pngtree (same idea as the previous one, you just search for a word and will see all PNGs related to it) and pngall (self explanatory).

Regarding backgrounds, textures, and photography in general, I rely on websites like pixabay, vecteezy, 3d ocean, morguefile, freepik and isorepublic. They have high-quality photos and videos that you can use on your projects. However, if I specifically need mockups or patterns, I turn to unblast, pacage and ava.

Besides those, you can always search for things on Deviantart and Twitter! Though I do not use those much, I think Instagram and Threads also have pages dedicated to sharing resources. Discord can be a nice place to search for graphic design servers, too.

However, if I cannot find specific resources for a commission/project for whatever reason, then I will make them myself. Be it through photography, drawing or anything else I can get my little hands on.

For the more technical/applications side, the programs I use for my graphics and edits are Adobe PhotoShop 2020, Adobe After Effects 2020, Adobe Illustrator 2020, Clip Studio Paint (for when I need to draw or polish something for specific projects/commissions), and HandBrake (for when I need to make screencaps). My drawing tablet is an oldie, Wacom One.

Hopefully, this can be a nice starting point for you! Please feel free to reblog and/or like this post if you'd like to save it for whatever purpose. ~ I hope you enjoy this journey ahead, and if you need anything else, let me know! You got this! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

[shadyvoxtruth]

How ShadyVox Threatened Myself & Others For Years

My name is Martin Billany but I am also known as LittleKuriboh in the YouTube sphere/Yu-Gi-Oh fandom.

I am posting this here for posterity in case all of my other posts elsewhere about it are removed. Also because there has never been a single unified place to find all of this information presented in sequence.

Patrick, also known by his pseudonyms of ShadyVox or Scratch21's Matt Robinson or Blake Swift, spent the better part of 2019-2023 both threatening me and manipulating a group of real victims.

A brief history - for those who don't know, Patrick/ShadyVox and myself were heavily involved in the "abridged series" world in the late 2000s/mid 2010s. I myself started the whole abridged parody nonsense with Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, and Patrick would follow suit by doing a Yu-Gi-Oh GX Abridged. We met through content creation and formed a friendship through it. Not best friends or anything, but friendly enough.

Patrick would later leave the abridged series stuff behind and start over making music, working in original animation for popular internet channels, etc. Stuff he was genuinely very good at. It was a strong choice to move away from parody content, as it likely would have held him back at some point.

At a certain point in 2018, I received a communication from him that requested I remove certain YouTube comments on my videos that featured him. These comments were demanding to know why Patrick was following various right wing channels and were calling him alt-right, etc.

I agreed to remove the comments because I considered him a friend and automatically assumed there was some big misunderstanding. As it turned out, he was subscribed to a few channels that caused me to confront him.

I was emotional and upset, admittedly. Things politically were at a fever pitch and I had been swept up by it. I have included screencaps of our conversation.

Later I would apologize to him for my outburst and try to make amends. You're probably wondering why I would include this since it doesn't seem to involve Patrick threatening me, and it seems if anything to suggest I got upset at him.

That is because I truly believe this is the moment Patrick decided he was going to find some way to come after me. I believe that Patrick had spent a lot of time creating a mask for himself, and had worn it very well, and the moment someone saw through it for even a moment he decided I had to be dealt with somehow.

At this point - mid 2018 - Patrick and I were not close. We hadn't worked on anything together in half a decade. We really only kept in touch in a cursory fashion. So I imagine this interaction stuck in Patrick's craw something awful.

I was, however, closer with the person Patrick had worked in conjunction with on his abridged series, X. These days X is my best friend. Back then, I don't know how close we were. But definitely closer than either of us were with Patrick.

One day in 2019, entirely out of the blue, Patrick messages me privately to inform me that X once slept with a girl who was 17 when he was in his early 20s.

My own spouse was sexually assaulted before I met them, and as a result I have a no tolerance policy on anything that even could resemble assault. So I immediately ended my friendship with X.

And as I was doing so, Patrick told me repeatedly that I was overreacting.

As you can see, by Patrick/Shady's own words, this was a long time ago. Just under a decade or so, by my count.

And most importantly, Patrick had been aware of this for the whole decade or so and chose this very moment to tell me that this happened.

I want you to keep that in mind, especially the fact that when I said I was ending my friendship with X, Patrick's actual response was "it was a long time ago, he's gotten better."

It was painful to end my friendship with X, but I did. I told him that if he could provide satisfactory proof that what Patrick had said didn't represent the facts of the situation, I could be his friend again. Until then, I cut off all communication from X.

A week or so later I received specific evidence that pointed to a situation wherein Patrick was intentionally misrepresenting what happened, or the alleged victim's story. The alleged victim VERY specifically disagreed with Patrick.

You'll note that I'm not including screen caps of these conversations - that is because the alleged victim, and other involved parties, DO NOT WANT to be part of any of this and have needed actual therapy because of Patrick's behavior in the past. Not just here.

Anyway.

I returned to Patrick/Shady and told him there had been a misunderstanding. I wanted to clear the air and give him a chance to say something along the lines of "oh okay, obviously I had my facts wrong." I mean, as you yourself have just read - he said himself that this was a long time ago. Maybe he got some wires crossed.

This is how Patrick actually responded:

The screenshots were taken on different dates, hence why his twitter icon looks different suddenly.

But yes. His response to me explaining that the alleged victim disagreed with his stance, was to insist that the alleged victim must be lying and that I should be absolutely infuriated.

After he'd tried to tell me that there was no point in being upset about this information that he had sat on for the better part of a decade.

Patrick continued to scream at me via dm, repeatedly requesting that I give him my phone number so we could talk about this. I assume this is because he didn't want any kind of text evidence of what he was going to say to me, or what he was doing.

He would later, mid-conversation, tell me that he was deleting all of his dms to me. Not sure why. It doesn't remove them from my side of the conversation, so I still have access to all of them. I have not shared the entire private message thread yet, because it's sensitive and involves people beyond just myself. But if the dms ever do need to be made public entirely, I have them.

I ended up blocking Patrick during this very conversation because he had begun screaming at me, behaving extremely unhinged and in a frightening manner. I honestly think he had hoped that I would initially try to defend my friend from his accusation, in which case he was going to fly off the handle then. But because I had genuinely believed him and removed my friend from my life, only to then learn Patrick's story didn't hold water, he had no choice but to lash out now. When it didn't make any sense to suddenly be irate about a thing he had told me about, and had literally just said "it was a long time ago."

Within 24 hours, Patrick had sent me a threatening email saying he was going to expose me for everything I was doing. I have attached the highlights of the email, parts that don't involve other people's names.

Some of the references in this email - specifically about how I've associated with others and ignored people calling me out for it - are related to a podcast I was on, alongside Patrick. Until recently I had indeed tried to move on with my life after a number of the people involved had revealed themselves to be toxic. I had made efforts to separate myself from those people. It had been years since I'd really had any direct connection to any of them.

I do indeed regret not speaking out about it sooner.

Having said this, Patrick himself was equally as guilty for not speaking out - and had in fact spent a significantly larger amount of time talking to/working with the people in question.

As such, I believe a lot of this is some form of bizarre projection on his part.

I ignored the email because I was a) worried that he had suddenly snapped, and b) I didn't think any of the content warranted a response.

A day later, I received this email from Patrick where his tone has changed entirely:

As you can see, this is more in line with the reality of the situation. He is apologizing profusely and insisting I didn't actually do anything wrong, and that he was the one in the wrong.

You'll also note that he signs this particular email "Patrick." That is because it is his real name, and I believe he was possibly appealing to my humanity and the part of me that might still have seen a friendship worth salvaging. Otherwise I could not tell you why he signed his real name - he typically hates using it.

I still did not reply because at this point I was confused and scared and wanted him to leave me alone. And to that point, he had specifically stated at the end of his email that he was the problem and he would not "involve himself in my life any longer."

The police were contacted and they told him to stop. I had hoped that my part in all of this was over.

Later that very month, Patrick announced on his ShadyVox twitter account that a new GX Abridged was coming out for April Fools.

When it is posted on April 1st - less than a month after he had sent his email saying he would remove himself from my life, and not long after the police have visited him - the video contains many references to our conversations, and specifically the fact that the police got involved.

Yes, after being told by the police to stop - and after writing an email that insisted he knew he was the real problem and would be getting help - he decides to make a mockery of the situation publicly, in a manner that nobody else will understand. Except the people it is targeting.

The tweets about this video are the only thing remaining on Patrick's twitter account, as he had purged it some time ago.

(An aside - I do recall someone attempting to call Patrick out for being toxic previously on twitter, and his response was to spam them with the words "PROVE IT. PROVE IT. PROVE IT." until they gave up. I would include screenshots of this, but like I said - he purged his entire twitter except for this specific GX Abridged video he'd thrown together in a week to respond to the fact that the authorities had intervened to get him to stop)

One other important element of this video - which is where, I believe, this whole thing veers into genuinely disturbing territory - is that it is interspersed with garbled footage intended to look like some sort of creepypasta/vhs effect. At the end of the GX Abridged video, it is clear that Patrick is using this video to allude to some upcoming song tracks he is producing.

Songs that are tailored to threaten me in cryptic, indirect ways that very few people pick up on.

But I'll get to those later.

During 2019, Patrick reaches out to actual victims of the toxic individuals from the podcast I used to be on more than half a decade before any of the stuff chronologized in this post. He tells them lies, and demonizes me to the point that it convinces them that I am still both defending/supporting the toxic individuals, and actively mocking their victims in private.

I am aware of this because Patrick tweets about it - before deleting the tweets entirely. He even attempts to throw popular abridging group TeamFourStar under the bus, which I assume was merely out of spite because they had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

I wish I had screengrabbed the tweets when they were still up, but there is still remaining evidence that they did exist.

Here is someone posting on Reddit about it - he only references one tweet, but this was around the time Patrick was posting and then immediately deleting what he'd said. I honestly can only assume - but I think he was fishing for people to latch on to what he was saying and contact him privately.

Not to mention the fact that the police had specifically told him to stop, so that was likely in the back of his mind also.

Here is someone replying to a since suspended twitter account that was discussing what Patrick was saying about TeamFourStar. Obviously I have no clear way to prove it, but please know that I have no reason to make that much up and point to a random ass tweet.

I imagine Patrick (not the suspended person in the above screencap) realized the best way to not seem directly to blame or involved at all was to remove any and all posts he'd made. Admittedly it would have worked if I didn't have the dms and these emails.

Speaking of emails, I received a third one in late 2019 - as you can see, Patrick's promise of leaving me alone forever didn't even last a year.

You'll note that he's speaking as though the second email never even happened. He's also just plain lying through his teeth for a significant part of it, but I think it's most important to note that this email requires you to assume the second email never got written.

He has gone from pages and pages of "of course it wasn't your fault, I'm the problem, you're good, I'm bad" to "I told you..."

Also, I think the words "You tried to damage me" should be highlighted here as it reinforces my theory that all of this was about me insulting him for all the right wing channels he'd subscribed to. Which, to me, was barely even a thought in my mind at this point.

So I choose to ignore this email also. Because y'know, why would I even humor responding to the guy at this point? I decide that I will only speak on any of this if it becomes public conversation. Until then, anything that happens would be because of Patrick's actions.

I do let my friends know about all of this - including TeamFourStar, who through this entire thing have been blameless and didn't even do anything to Patrick to begin with. And every time Patrick does something, I make sure people in my circle are aware and to be cautious.

Meanwhile Patrick alludes to all of this indirectly in the songs he posts to his YouTube channel. Yes, a situation that involves actual victims and one alleged victim that Patrick hadn't spoken to in years. He chose to make reference to all of this in videos where he raps, amongst other things.

There are a number of songs that feature references to this, it's mainly these two that I want to focus on

Birdy Boy is a song that is explicitly referencing Patrick's issues with me, without actually going into any details about what the issue is.

It is so clearly about me that people pick up on it - and rather than confront the issue or have a dialogue, Patrick decides to pin the comment about it to the top of the comments page.

Of course, if Patrick made any attempt to directly describe the issue or explain himself, it would likely result in the police becoming involved once again.

So he sticks to singing about the whole thing.

This next song is the most upsetting one.

Patrick/Shady writes a song called "Joker" about a psychotic individual murdering someone who "used to be funny." This is, specifically, the song that he teases at the end of the GX Abridged Episode 21 video he posted earlier in 2019 for april fools.

He has teased it multiple times on his twitter, and elsewhere, with the words "Coming Soon." The very same words he used to title his third threatening email.

Here is the email, placed next to some lyrics from the song Joker.

He is seemingly very specifically trying to threaten me without anyone noticing, in plain sight. I was unable to watch the video in full until after all of this stuff came out into the public. It was only through reading people's responses and the lyrics that I realized what he was doing.

Again, at this point I am doing and saying nothing publicly. Just watching this behavior and waiting.

Meanwhile in 2021, a videogame based on the web series TOME gets fully funded and Christopher Niosi - the creator of TOME - reaches out to the voice cast to see if they'll return. I myself was the voice of Nylocke, one of the main characters, and Patrick was the voice of THE main character.

As such, I told Christopher no and explained my reasons.

And here is Christopher's response.

Please pay careful attention to the fact that Christopher Niosi flat out says he already knew Patrick was doing this stuff - it isn't just me imagining it.

As a result of this interaction, I do not reprise my role as Nylocke and Christopher Niosi chooses to just recast every single character. Please note that he could have just recast Patrick, but did not. As a result, I feel responsible for all of the original cast losing out on work. It hurts to think about. But at least I feel like I did the right thing.

One member of the TOME production staff takes it upon themselves to reach out to Patrick personally. They discover that he is planning to write more songs/raps that target me. They ask him nicely to stop. He insists that he has to do this. Y'know, make vague allusions to extremely sensitive topics that he lied about in the form of song. Has to do it.

The member of production staff tells Patrick he should seek professional help.

Patrick ignores them.

Patrick continues to engage in behavior that, while not openly hostile or even specifically targeting anyone, is very clearly intended as mockery at best and a threat at worst until 2023 when all of this comes to a head.

In August of 2023, the real victims that Patrick has manipulated make a callout post aimed at myself and TeamFourStar. It specifically cites Patrick's testimony and the songs he has posted. They have been misled, but their anger is understandable.

Within a week, it becomes apparent to all sides that this is Patrick's fault. The person who posted the callout takes it down and apologizes to everyone. Not just me. They apologize to TeamFourStar, and to X.

And only then do I speak publicly about what Patrick has been doing.

I share all of the screencaps I've posted here, and give context. It's all a little muddled as at the time, my cat was dying of terminal cancer and so all of my posts are somewhat scatterbrained and aren't in chronological order. But it's still remarkably clear to everyone that Patrick has manipulated this whole thing, starting in 2019.

And that's only the stuff I feel comfortable sharing.

Since the callout post first dropped in 2023 and I began pointing people's attention toward Patrick, Patrick himself has been entirely silent. He has dropped off the internet with nary a word in defense. Not a single person directly associated with what happened has attempted to dispute my description of events.

This isn't my word versus his. It is my word versus silence.

I have it on good authority that Patrick is alive and well. I am grateful for that much. My attempts have not been to hurt him, but to defend myself. My efforts have not been to hunt him down and crucify him, but to make people aware of what transpired - and what could have easily been undone by Patrick/Shady just choosing to stop.

Instead a number of victims, and people who never did a thing, experienced a considerable amount of trauma as a result of his thoughtless and spiteful actions.

Patrick is a remarkably talented individual, and it makes me sad I have to be the one to show people who he is. I genuinely think all of this could have been avoided. It's so meaningless. It's just pain on top of pain.

And Patrick stood in the center of it all, not just pulling people's strings but practically uprooting them and then acting like he didn't do a thing.

I'm not expecting an apology, and I'm not asking for his cancelation, whatever shape that would take. But I do think it's important that people know this happened, that he chose this.

He did this for almost no reason to a person he considered a friend, who worked on videos with him.

It just seems like the responsible thing, to make sure people are somewhat aware that he could do this to them if they aren't cautious and careful and super aware.

I'm sorry to anyone disappointed and hurt by all of this information.

Believe me, I understand.

[avaantares]

Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!

(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)

SO. GUYS.

Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.

I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.

Y'know, this disaster:

I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.

Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.

Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.

That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.

Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:

So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:

It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.

Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?

This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:

Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...

Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.

Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?

.

(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)

[actual-changeling]

hi. hey. it's been a hot second since my last meta post but ohhhh did i realize something while making my edits. ready? i wasn't. there's gonna be a number of screencaps so let's go

i think everyone *noticed* while watching but didn't really mentally elaborate on it because i at least was already too busy sobbing. now, during the entire confession scene, crowley is attempting to make eye contact while aziraphale does his best to avoid it.

wanna take a guess when that changes? the second he steps closer and says nothing lasts forever. suddenly crowley is the one looking away, he can no longer stand to look into his eyes because his heart just got broken into a million little pieces and he loves zira so fucking much.

aziraphale is staring straight ahead and crowley looks past him, looks out the window, up, everywhere but at him. he ends up looking down and at the glasses in his hands and guess what.

aziraphale? aziraphale FOLLOWS his eyes. FOLLOWS. look at how he moves his head to keep meeting crowley's gaze. the head tilt.

i quite literally could not decide which screencaps to use so have all of them.

what really gets me though, and this might just be me being a little bit insane and very gay, but i swear aziraphale glances at his lips. it is literally one frame but it is THERE. look!!

his eyes flick DOWN. just for a second but they move from crowley's eyes, where they have been for the last half a minute, to his mouth. and when crowley says good luck and walks past him? he STILL follows him. turns his entire head and body with him even while he is trying to catch up with what crowley is really saying.

alex, you may ask, why does this matter? because it is the other way around now, they switch roles, because crowley kept eye contact during his confession and this is aziraphale's confession.

this is HIM saying run away with me, let's go off together, let's be an us in heaven. he tries to soak up literally every single heartbeat of being able to look into crowley's eyes without any barrier between them. this is him trying. he literally moves with him just to keep looking at his pretty yellow eyes, the eyes he has come to get to know so so well over the last few years. the eyes that have been uncovered, his face bare, presumably every single time crowley was in the bookshop.

crowley hears "nothing lasts forever" and takes it as rejection.

aziraphale says "nothing lasts forever" and looks at the one thing, the one person, that IS forever to him - crowley. he cannot say the words and lets his eyes speak for him yet crowley has already closed himself off.

(side note: call me delusional which i am clinically psychotic and all but if crowley had not put on his glasses? had stayed just a bit longer? said the nightingale bit right then and there? fuck me, but i think aziraphale would have kissed him first)

aziraphale loves humanity, loves the world, but crowley is HIS world, he sees all of his creations, all his nebulas and stars, in his eyes and tries to find the joy in them that he once saw before the beginning of time.

[nephilimeq]

Hey, I was just wondering what age you thought Derek was in season one? Cause it’s a heavily debated and unknown piece of information. Me personally I always thought he was 19 in the pilot, and this was before I had read anything about the writers wanting him to be that age in the pilot. It was just the way he acted, to me, it doesn’t seem like a mid-20s man. Also stiles says the fire happened “ like ten years ago” but then a few episodes later Peter says he’s been in a coma for 6 years. So I was just curious what you thought. Also stiles saying that is always made out to be taken as it literally happened exactly ten years ago, and people always bring it up but they never talk about how long Peter said it had been.

Sorry if this is long I just enjoy your blog and your thoughts. I wanted to share mine while also hearing it from your perspective. Hope you have a wonderful day, you deserve it!

This is a very tricky subject to handle, because the writers made mistakes in their own timeline so they switched things around.

But in the very first episode Stiles says that Derek is only a few years older than them. I always figured that Derek was around 19 in Season 1, while Stiles was 16.

The reason why they messed everything up so horribly is because they hadn't actually created a timeline for all the events when they started writing, and to me, it made the show feel like a fan fiction writer who was just making it up as they went and then all the reviewers were saying, "Hey, you have a few continuity errors," and instead of trying to make it work, they just made something up and didn't really try to go back and adjust anything.

There's a scene that happens when Stiles is asking Peter and Cora about Derek's past (Season 3, Episode 8 "Visionary"), and he is trying to find out how old they are, and this train wreck section of dialogue occurs:

Stiles: Okay, if Derek was a sophomore back then, how old was he? How old were you? ...How old are you now? Peter: Not as young as we could have been, but not as old as you might think. Stiles: Okay, that was frustratingly vague. How old are you? Cora: I'm seventeen. Stiles: See, that's an answer. That's how we answer people. Cora: Well, seventeen how you'd measure in years. Stiles: Alright, I'm just gonna drop it.

This dialogue made me so pissy when I heard it the first time because I knew that this was the writers' response to the viewers and fans. The fans are Stiles in this conversation, and the writers are Peter and Cora being purposely "frustratingly vague" in the hopes that we'll just "drop it", which a lot of us did because they wouldn't give us any straight answers.

They messed up and they know it.

In my head canon -- because it makes the most sense to me -- Derek is three years older than them. Canonically, Derek is actually only ten days older than me, as seen in this enhanced screencap right here (from Season 1, Episode 11, where Kate has him kidnapped and held up in chains):

So according to this he would have been around 22, about to turn 23 in the first season...but here's something to take into consideration. This driver's license isn't for California -- it's for New York. I have a theory that he got a professional fake I.D. so that he could do more jobs (such as bartending) while he was out of state.

Now, when Stiles mentions the fire was "like, ten years ago," I genuinely think that he was just generalizing. Derek was sixteen when Kate took advantage of him raped him, which means that the fire happened when Stiles was around twelve/thirteen (as he has a canonically April 8th birthday, so it all depends on the months).

Regarding anything Peter might have said...please remember that it has been firmly established in the show that Peter is an unreliable narrator. Stiles openly admits that to Cora in the previously mentioned Season 3, Episode 8, "Visionary".

A lot of these issues are because of the lack of consistency from the writers.

I think the biggest problem was when they cast a younger Peter and totally threw the timelines off, trying to make him only a few years older than Derek -- which he wasn't. Peter is Derek's uncle, for crying out loud! The man would have been in his late twenties, early thirties when Derek was a teen, barely looking any different than he does in the show...and yet the writers and producers thought that making him look almost like a teenager was the right call.

I do think it was a last ditch attempt to try and make Derek waaay older than Stiles because they didn't like the shipping -- but they had already established too much of their timeline at that point and simply messed up and didn't have the guts to admit it.

Simply put, I genuinely think Derek was nineteen and turned twenty during season one.

Hope that answers your questions, anon!

[sorrygotthesesacks]

Can I admit that I'm surprised that there are practically no full-length Sebek/Silver fanfics with a Soulmates theme? And about the idea of ​​Soulmates AU, what do you think would be better, Soulmate-Identifying Marks? SoulBonds? Feeling each other's pain, feelings or passing messages to each other through the body or Soulmate-Identifying Timers? Would Lilia and them be surprised when both of their timers hit zero when they first met?

When I got this ask, I remembered that I've had a soulmates AU in the back of my head for a while. And then I wondered why I couldn't find even an outline for it in my twst folder. I knew I'd had a vague-ish kind of idea and could even remember one particular line that I'd typed out.

Then I remembered that I will sometimes talk about my ideas in a chat - and I had! Took me a while to find the chat in question, but I found it! 🎉

I should thank you for inspiring me to track this down. It will go into my WiP folder, never to be seen again.

I don't really need the chat screencaps, but then, how would anyone know that I didn't just make it up on the spot? 😋

(Also: Lilia would probably not be surprised in the least. From using his UM, he knows that, when he found Silver, Silver had been asleep for about 400 years - perhaps it was Fate that ensured that Lilia had gone to the castle when he did, so that he would be able to meet Sebek!

btw, someone in the chat mentioned a head canon that Mama Zigvolt got baby fever after seeing Silver, and I love the idea that Silver is the reason that the Zigvolts decided to try for baby #3)

The rest of my vague-ish thoughts on the soulmates AU below.

Sebek has of course been upset for a while about not having scales. His older siblings have some small scales but poor Sebek has nary a one.

And then he starts training with Lilia and he notices some appearing on his neck!

except that he goes home and they're gone

but they're back the next time he and Silver are sparring

fast forward to overhearing his parents talking about a dental patient with interesting markings on their skin and how the patient mentioned they hadn't shown up before meeting their soulmate

followed by Mama Zigvolt stating that she didn't need any soul mark to know he was the one, ha ha ha

but now the seed has been planted

and Sebek is almost resentful of the scales which seem to grow larger the closer he and Silver get

and then Silver notices them

without thinking (he's on top of Sebek because he has him pinned to the ground), he reaches out and touches one of them, thinking Sebek got something stuck to or embedded in his skin during their battle

and it's extremely sensitive

like crocodile skin is

and Sebek starts wearing turtlenecks

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

Jesus fucking Christ I fucking hate "The Doll Community" especially Monster High and g3 monster high, I really do...

I was just watching a video of this big name doll youtuber reporting on doll news, as they do, and they were covering the new Beetlejuice Skullector Two Pack, but what got me is they how said some pretty Anti leaning shit that was just unnecessary?

Like they literally said: "Obviously NO ONE ships Beetlejuice and Lydia so NO ONE would promote this as a romantic thing.. But if it's a wedding set that's set to release Valentines day then la de dah blah blah!"

And like? I honestly didn't know if this person was just saying this to just like, cover their own ass so THEY didn't get harassed by other tenderqueers because they were young, or if *they* genuinely believed what they were saying? Because from what I've watched from their channel, they're young and don't seem to know or care a lot about horror as genre in general? Like I don't mean to gate keep, but they're one one those obnoxious Monster High fans I made of fun of in my one post where it's like, "knows nothing about horror, just learned who Elvira is, only got into mh as a kid as the 'alternative' to their conservative ass parents who already believe pokemon is The Devil letting them experience Actual Horror and just never stopped consuming the dolls and Skullectors regardless if they're even familiar with the source material" kinda people? And yeah, that gets really annoying?

But I obviously didn't want this to be my cutting off point for watching their channel because ... Doll news?

So, I just wrote up the most, civil. neutral comment I could possibly articulate explaining how the Beetlejuice fandom's been practically built off of nothing but shipping for 36 years and how people can think whatever they want but Winona Ryder does ship it and it was quite frankly unprofessional of them to alienate Beetlebabes who might want to grab the two pack by implying there's a right way and a wrong way of interpreting the movie and the relationship between these iconic characters and they should respect the older fanbase and all the history that came before the musical?

And I was about to post it, but then I got nervous when I remembered, that I once purchased a doll from this person, which meant that they had my address at one point, which meant if they didn't like what I was saying, they could like, maybe dig it up and dox me? Or at least threaten to and I'd have cause to panic over it being like, legit or not? And I tried to brush it from my mind like nuh nuh they're cool they're cool... They're not on *that* level of Anti...

So then I just tried to check and refresh the comments to see any more overt ship bashing was taking place and of course, I just immediately find this:

So then I do this little blackout thingy for the usernames so that none of this can get back to youtube, and I go to screencap my comment so I can at least post it here in a vent, but I lost my comment trying to get the screen cap thingy to work and accidently clicking the youtube refresh button... 😔

... I just...I hate having such a lil' ghost face moment right now, but just like... I hate you legit fake horror fan Monster High collectors who can't appreciate horror having romantic subtext when that's the entire point yet you keep hoarding all the dolls anyway, I hate you little faggity boys with broccoli haircuts and split dyes who pressure girls into sending you nudes and the retired Mommy Vloggers who enable you, I find you extremely annoying XCanadensis, I hate you for your extremely annoying editing and intros zombiexcorn, I like you Lookin' Bratz but I hate your bratzline podcast cohost for fully admitting to doing a binge watch of all the Harry Potter movies in the franchise for "the first time ever" in fuckin' 2024 with absolutely no disclaimers or acknowledgment of the elephant in the room there and thinking that was a good idea to disclose something as quite frankly as disgusting as that and ruining what could've been a nice gothic doll chat for me and putting sour taste in my mouth about listening to the rest of your podcast...

And I especially hate that one dude with the ugly live action beauty and the beast dolls with the pink hair and the bowl cut and the glasses who for some reason keeps insisting every time she's brought up that Ghoulia Yelps can't be disabled/autistic because she's supposed to have some type of racial coding...

They're HEADCANONS!

They're PIECES OF PLASTIC!

GROW UP! 💀

(I love you weirdo OOAK Doll Artists, you're the only Real Ones left! ❤🫶)

[pinkyjulien]

This might be the only occasion to talk about it, and It's no secret that her and I stopped talking more than ~1year ago, so here we go

Some of my personal experience with Zwei and her modding gatekeeping / monopol

For some reasons, my guts told me to screencap our very last conversation, right before she blocks me and wipe our DMs, and looking back now I'm glad I did

▶ You can find the conversation here

Please read the post for more context:

Important to note that live in Europe, meaning my timezone is CET

Zwei and I weren't up at the same time

Back in September 2022, a Drama happened in the Modding Server

This is the only screenshot I have of the drama, provided by a friend, I have since left that server (you should be able to find it with the search option tho)

Anec, the guy who can be seen on the screenshot, and who initially asked about the glowing eyes in the server, shared this imgur album with Zwei DMs as well back in 2022

I was asleep when it all happened, waking up to Zwei accusing me in DMs of being involved in it

The day before, a fellow modder asked me if they could make a mod similar to my old Player Replacer that would involve Photomode, asking me for help on the matter too; I gave them the greenlight and told me to ask NoraLee, as I do not have much knowledge on Photomode itself

So when I saw Zwei's DMs I assumed it was about this encounter, but I quickly understood that it wasn't the case

I later went to NoraLee's DMs to ask them what that whole "glowing eyes" stuff was all about, and thankfully got more context (and confirmation that Zwei was once again trying to gatekeep mods ideas)

That's about it for the whole context on the last convo I had with her

Now I want to mention some details and explain a lil bit more, especially about the Scenerids bit here

For the lil story, Scenerids animation were something I always wanted to figure out, way back in 2021 even

When I was still in AMM, we were making progress on the matter with the help of a fellow modder; the goal was always to make them, and the knowledge, public

One day, Zwei asked me in DMs about Scenerids Animations, and where I was with my digging; She wanted to share the knowledge with Deceptious, a new guy (at the time) who was making all kind of cool mods, if there was one guy that could find how to grab them, it was him

Excited, I told her all I knew back then

She also told me that Deceptious was doing streams in the Modding Server and that I should come by and check what he does

So I did, I jumped into his next stream, and yeah the guy was impressive with his method. In the stream chat, I asked him about Scenerids animations, we chatted a bit more and he seemed interested, said something along the lines of "it shouldn't be too complicated" - I went to bed after his stream ended

Next morning, I woke up to Deceptious sharing videos of Zwei's V, in the modding server, doing Alt's animations from her romance scene in the middle of Tom's Diner; he had it figured out during the night

So I went to his DMs, asking him how he did it, and got a somewhat cold reply; not unexpected, nothing to overthink at the time. I asked Zwei as well- I wanted to know, and to me it seemed only ""fair"" considering I ""helped"" with the whole thing

It all spiraled from there; Zwei would told me the "secret" ONLY if I kept the knowledge to myself. I somehow got involved in a ""modding ring"" involving Zwei, SilverEz (can't remember his full name, the owner of the Modding Server) and Deceptious

Zwei and I would extract the animations from the Scenerids files; She would work with SilverEz to release them for PMU, and I would release them as AMM packs

At first, I had to wait until Zwei's packs were published to publish my own mods; nobody would keep me updated on WHEN they would hit live, so I had to rush my own modpages to release them for AMM simultaneously

It was a lot of unecessary stress. One day, I asked SilverEz directly if I could just release the packs as I was making them? And he told me something along the lines of "Yes, of course, it's your mods you do whatever"

I was so confused- I thought he said he wanted me to wait until the PMU releases? But no, it was just Zwei's lies/manipulations/whatever

(Important to know that everything was going on by her, I was sending her the files, and she would share knowledge with me from Deceptious and SilverEz if needed)

Anyway, the scenerids stuff happened in October 2022, but that's when I started to be even more cautious of her. It wasn't the first time something rubbed me wrong, of course not, multiple instances happened on a lot of different things, but I do not want to share it publicly since I do not have any screenshots to prove it

Going back to the "Glowing Eyes" drama, which happened in September 2022

As said at the begining of the post, this was our last conversation, both in DMs and in public. I noticed a mood shift following the next weeks in the Modding Sever; most of the people here were either her friends or fanboys

Zwei and I were ignoring each others, but I quickly noticed Deceptious was also ignoring me

I decided to confront him in DMs about it, that's when I noticed he wiped all of his DMs

That's something we all know now that Zwei does a lot- so it had to be her, somehow telling him to wipe his DMs with me

I felt my blood go cold; Deceptious was someone I looked up to, his knowledge was really impressive and I wish I could've learned more modding from him somehow, but anyway

Seeing this, I rushed to Zwei's DMs to tell her to basically fuck off, to stop draging others into her bullshit- and that's when I noticed I was blocked, I couldn't send anything, but most importantly, her DMs were slowly being deleted

Now, I should've done a quick back up of everything, there's a lot of script that exist to extract full logs or to wipe them out. I didn't know about such scripts back then

I decided to ask around for the script she uses, called "Undiscord", wanting to give her a taste of her own medicine

So I was sitting here, watching her bulk delete her dms, as I was bulk deleting my own. Yes, it looks really fucking dumb and cringe lmao

And that's about it, really, that's how it all went down

▶ Pre-Shooting random questions

❓ Why did you compared her to Wing

Wingdeer is another person who is known to harass others for doing similar "Inversed Cross" makeup and cyberware, it happened a couple of times now. Zwei never liked her, despite modeling a lot of her mods; I thought comparing her to Wing would snap her out of her bullshit

❓ Isn't it hypocrite of you to say you're against gatekeeping?

"Gatekeeping" is when someone actively harass others for liking/doing/having something that they like/do/have, like Zwei (with hair color/makeup/rockergirl style) and Wingdeer (with reversed cross mods) for example I never harassed anyone, all I ever did was blocking people People taking a block as a personal attack is not my problem, and shouldn't be turned into general fandom drama

[ninthprime]

calling a shot for severance 2x04 tonight

trailer/review spoilers for the episode in this post, just putting stuff that’s already been released together

i’ve been trying to put together things people have said from reviews about this episode, the clips we got in trailers of everyone outside, etc. this does appear to be the episode where everyone goes outside for a “staff retreat” type deal, and a lot of reviews have stated it’s big, emotional and lore-heavy. everything came together in my head last night as i was trying to sleep. i think we’re losing, or at least seemingly losing, innie irving tonight. i hate to say it, he’s probably my favorite innie, but it would match up with a bunch of trailer stuff (the melon head irving for example) as well as a lot of the ways this episode has been described.

specifically- i think over the course of whatever weird outdoor experience the innies have this episode, irving is going to go from sort of suspicious to completely sure that “helly” is helena, and milchick/helena/miss huang/etc are going to rush to cover it up by re-firing him. there’s a shot in one of the trailers that looks like irving switching innie/outie while outside, so i’m wondering if they even have to do the OTC or a reverse OTC, potentially risking outie irving meeting at least one of the innies briefly. this too would be a big deal. it also opens up a bunch of questions- can a severance chip get deactivated permanently? are there lingering effects if you don’t switch between the two modes often enough? this could also explain those weird trailer shots with irving in a dark place seeing burt looking sinister- it could be memory bleed. alternatively, they don’t manage to stop irving from telling the others about helena, but they still have to fire him because he’s getting to close to something even larger with the exports hall revelation, likely something to do with gemma and cold harbor.

despite how much i’d miss innie irving, i think this would have a lot of good story possibilities. mark’s reintegration means he could try to track outie irving down. outie irving probably will want to know why he got fired again and what burt has to do with all of it, so he’ll presumably keep appearing and investigating. outie irving clearly lives a pretty singular life and i think knowing that his innie 1. fell in love with someone who basically died and 2. has three co-workers who have literally known his innie for their entire lives and genuinely care for him would be extremely jarring and moving. would it cause him to try to revive his seemingly dead innie, or reintegrate? can you reintegrate with an inactive chip?

(the worst case scenario is that both irvings die, but i feel like we have way too much to learn about outie irving for that to be true…er, at least until we find out what his deal is)

…and i wake up this morning to find someone has also posted this theory on reddit with screencap evidence, so i’m technically not the first one to call it. but that’s a good post, particularly the suggestion that helly finally comes back properly because of this.

side note: i’ve seen a bunch of people guess burt is reintegrated and that’s part of why we haven’t seen what happened to him and outie irving after the season 1 finale. i think either that’s true, burt has some memory bleed outside of reintegration, or he at least has some knowledge of the severed floor. i’m kind of wondering if he retired when he did because he found out about his innie’s relationship with irving and thought that was a bad idea when his outie is married. it would be devastating to learn for innie irving, but a pretty sane and logical decision from outie burt’s perspective. it also, again, opens up interesting possibilities for outie irving’s reaction.

anyway, genuinely excited for this episode even though i’m sure it will upset me. so excited to see everyone in big silly coats. so excited for weird lore. so excited for ridiculous reintegration cinematography

[gamesception]

Sception reads Batgirl (2024) #2

writer: Tate Brombal artist: Takeshi Miyazawa colors: Mike Spicer

Ok, so I'm done comparing this run to the Puckett/Scott Batgirl (2000) run. Got that all out of my system last time, this time we're just appreciating Batgirl (2024) on its own merits, and on those merits I actually like issue 2 a lot more than issue 1, so this time I get to be largely positive. No, entirely positive. I have a few minor complaints I could gripe about, like I think Brombal's leaning a bit too much into the faux-noire internal monologue that saturates so many Gotham titles, but whatever. I complained enough last week. This week I'll try to just focus on the things I like.

And the biggest thing I like by a wide margin is that the new team has started giving Cass her own supporting cast of original characters... or I think they're original to this book? If they were already introduced in previous post-reboot Cass stories than that's even better for finding and drawing on existing connections, which is something I wanted this book to do, but if they are original that's still great too. Either way, an excellent choice by Brombal and well implemented by Miyazawa, who gives Bà Bao in particular a super expressive and immediately memorable face.

Bà Bao is a fantastic character, serving a similar sort of character role to Jackie from the 'Shadow of the Batgirl' book, while also effectively functioning as Cass's own Dr. Thompkins in terms of convenient medical support. She's a trained doctor and experienced war veteran but makes her living running an ethnic restaurant in a way that feels pretty authentic to immigrant experiences in the US. And she can be a connection for Cass not just to a cultural heritage - albeit Vietnamese not Chinese - but more importantly to the people she's protecting in Gotham.

She's also already serving as Cass's own Alfred in terms of an older, wiser surrogate parental type figure able to offer advice, and already that's paying off with Bà Bao offering advice to Shiva on how to connect with Cass, advice that Shiva then sets her pride aside to take in, which is a great bit of subtle characterization showing how much Cassandra actually means to her.

Which is a nice bit of issue two carrying forward the one thing I really liked about issue one - the way it handled Cass & Shiva's relationship dynamic.

re: the watermark - I grab screencaps from the pirate site because it's more convenient than scanning pages myself, but I do buy my own copies and read the physical books first.

We don't see as much of the crew here as we see of Bà Bao, but I love this idea of Cass training her own little school of pupils in the back of her restaurant. I hope we get to know all of them individually as time goes on, see their lives, & struggles, get to know the city and Cass's place in it through them.

This supporting cast also gives Brombal someone Cass and thus the reader cares directly about that he can put in danger to highten the dramatic stakes, and on that note...

Later dialog maybe implies that the antagonist thinks he killed Bà Bao here, but I don't believe it for a minute, and if it turns out to be true I will take back every nice thing I just said. Not because dealing with loss shouldn't be part of Cass's stories, but because this character had way too much potential to kill her off in the same issue that introduces her. But yeah, I don't actually believe she's dead, so I'm not actually complaining.

But speaking of this dude, "Kalden the Unseen", yeah, we finally have an antagonist with a face and a personality. One issue late, but I'm not supposed to be complaining this time around. I just think these particular pages with him killing the firemen to cover his tracks but mourning them at the same time would have been better placed at the end of issue 1 rather than the start of issue 2. But whatever, he's here now, and while we don't know him well enough yet for me to call him a great character, he is immediately worlds better than the generic faceless ninja henchmen working for him.

And even they get a little bit cooler now that we see the gimmick that sets them aside from previous ninja clan Batman antagonists - a flower that gives them temporary mystical powers

though at the cost of their lives.

On the one hand, that downgrades them from 'faceless generic ninja mooks' to 'expendable faceless generic ninja mooks', but on the other hand it's a cool gimmick, so again I'm not really complaining.

And Kalden at least isn't faceless. His costume is a bit generic, but the facial scars are super distinct, and the Blind Master gimmick, while it can be a bit cliche, is a classic kung-fu movie trope for a reason. To the extent that this Batgirl (2024) has already been playing into that sort of thing he really fits the story he's in perfectly.

Brombal & Miyazawa also do a pretty good job of establishing Kalden as a real threat here, even to Cass & Shiva. Miyazawa in particular does a good job of expressing the pain Cass is in on her face.

The 'reluctant killer' thing is also a bit cliche, but again it's a well worn trope for a reason, and so far I think it works here, and works especially as a foil for Cass. A villain who agrees with her that killing is wrong, but is willing to sacrifice his own moral purity if he thinks doing so will prevent greater suffering is a strong challenge to her unbending commitment to her own no-killing rule.

So yeah, too soon to call this guy a great antagonist, we'll have to see how Brombal develops him, but the introduction at least is really strong, so there's a lot of potential here.

And we finally get to see Cass's face, as she's forced to accept Shiva's help and flee Gotham in defeat, abandoning her friends - and yeah the angst of all that does suit my preferences for Cass stories, so I'm ending this issue much happier than last time.

But in terms of Cass's face, Miyazawa does a solid job here. This is more recognizably Cass to me than she is without her mask in Birds of Prey. I do miss the bushier eyebrows, broader nose, and stronger jaw of her very early depictions, but those features had largely been lost years and years ago, long before the end of even her original ongoing, so their absence here isn't at all a complaint about Miyazawa's depiction.

..............

All in all, this was a really strong issue 2. It makes me sorely wish DC had opted to spring for a double-length first issue, because the two issues together would have been a much more effective launch for the new ongoing. Entirely apart from not standing up to Batgirl (2000) in my eyes - which no book really could, that comparison was inevitable but not at all fair - Batgirl (2024) #1 even on just its own merits felt incomplete. We didn't get a real antagonist, we didn't get a feel for Cass's life in Gotham outside of her relationship to Shiva, and we didn't get a strong breaking point to close out the first chapter - but these are all things issue #2 provided.

But whatever! It is what it is now. And as of issue 2 I'm actively enjoying this book, and really looking forward to seeing what happens next, so yeah. This is good. Hopefully I'll get another old school Cass review in this month, but if not I'll definitely be back for issue 3.

[ethanhuntfemmefatale]

Actually no I can't let it go. As someone who finds TC hot, pls rank the MI movies based on Ethan's hotness in each. I have a Guess on the correct order and am dying to know.

ok so i have an order but i really want to know what order you would guess....i wonder how close you'll get. ALSO arc i need to know your order as someone who appreciates TC's physicality but is still on the fence about his hotness

i will say i agonized over this...and rewatched bits of each movie on the list to try to solidify my answers and make sure they were as accurate to my actual feelings as possible. every version of ethan has a different Brand of hotness, so I'll also go on little rants for each one trying to explain how i think each movie tries (and succeeds or fails) to make Ethan hot.

From least to most hot, including visual aids in the form of low-quality screenshots handpicked from the movies:

7. Mission: Impossible III

The thing about MI3 Ethan is that of all the Ethans he's the one who's trying the hardest to assimilate. Which means it is completely understandable that he is the most boring of all the Ethans. I don't blame him for it. It's just a fact, an unfortunate fact. He's cute, he's sweet, I'd probably like him better if he wasn't completely obscured by shaky cam all the time. Overall he's not striking enough to be sexy. He's got this very girl-next-door energy that's nice but not my thing.

Honestly I think MI3 Ethan's hotness falls to the JJ Abrams curse that hits this entire movie, which is that he's treated as an action hero instead of as Ethan Hunt. So much about him feels generic, simplified. I think if the movie leaned more into the way Ethan intentionally takes his teeth out, the domestication of Ethan Hunt, the devoted house husband thing, it would make this version of Ethan way more interesting and the movie way better. As it is, Ethan's supposed to have been out of the field for a while (a year? a few years?) but the second he gets back in he feels like a soldier to me. Just an action hero.

6. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

This is where it starts to get difficult (which is to say almost immediately)....Rogue Nation ethan is my dearly beloved. I chose this screencap cause i feel like the scene in the record shop encapsulates to me what makes RN Ethan sexy, which is his gentleness. He's got so much calm and warmth in this movie, you can feel it even as the action ramps up. He's also got an edge of vulnerability especially later on that goes hand in hand with the sweetness (shoutout to that one scene after he drowns where he's dazed and happy to see Benji, there's something so deeply charming about him there, and in the car chase after). And he's really handsome in that one scene with the purple shirt. My problem with Rogue Nation Ethan is simply that I find other Ethans sexier. This will continue to be a theme

5. Mission: Impossible - Fallout

featuring screenshot that i edited for my own nefarious purposes (you know that one post about slut meaning end in swedish)

I LOVE FALLOUT ETHAN. The vulnerability that we see from him in RN continues, and deepens, making for one of the more expressive Ethans we get in the franchise, an Ethan who feels worn thin, who's too tired and old to hide how much he cares. I love his little hoodie at the end of the movie I love the way he reacts to comfort from the people he loves I love him in the helicopter when he is devastated by losing contact with his team I love him in the bathroom scene fucking Wheezing after getting hit in the throat. I love his build in this movie, I love how solid he is. I love the shot where he starts awake with a gun in his hand. The thing about Fallout Ethan is that he's dearly beloved to me more than he is sexy...sex feels like too much to expect from him...this is probably his most asexual movie, it's the movie where despite being basically required by circumstances to try to leverage Alanna's attraction to him he can't find it in himself to do more than just stand there and take it, he's there to protect people and try to survive and that's it. That worn-thin edge makes it difficult for me to fantasize about more than petting his hair and tucking him in a nice soft bed and turning off the lights and then LEAVING. so he can REST.

4. Mission: Impossible

we've all seen the slutty corset we've all seen him and max but i want to take a second to highlight the tank top and specifically this one back muscles shot that made me snap my teeth at the screen the last time i watched this movie (last night)

The thing about MI1 Ethan is that he's just objectively by far the sluttiest Ethan gets, and I'm including MI2 in that. MI2 is the movie where Ethan has sex with a girl he likes. MI1 is the movie where Ethan has sexual tension with every single person he meets and strings along all of them for his own purposes. MI1 is the movie of the corset, the glasses, the pretty-eyes-slightly-open-mouth look, the long shadow of his eyelashes in the alley with Sarah after Jack dies. The problem with MI1 is that despite Ethan being at his sluttiest, and looking just gorgeous, and the camera loving him, I just actually don't find MI1 Ethan as hot as other Ethans. The hair doesn't do it for me. He's a little too young, unstable, desperate, cocky. He doesn't have the power he has later.

3. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1

ETHAN IS SO HOT IN THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shoutout to this scene in particular which ended up pushing both MI1 and Fallout down a rank so I could place DR1 above them. Ethan Owning kittridge without ever raising his voice probably ranks among the sexiest things he's ever done for me. DR1 Ethan feels so earned--there's a deep sense of strength, a knowledge of who he is, and a fearlessness that comes from having survived this long. I love the contrast between his conversation with Kittridge in this movie and his conversation with Swanbeck in MI2, for example--both are films where Ethan is asked to take a powerful object from the hands of the enemy and transfer it to the IMF; both are films where Ethan knows immediately he's not going to fucking do that. But in MI2 Ethan is still young, still subject to authority, and he plays along. In Dead Reckoning Ethan says, "no." and it's really hot

I feel like by DR1 there's so much confidence in the handling of Ethan, too. There's a confidence in the audience's love of him and trust in him. It doesn't feel like we're being sold on him so much as given the privilege of seeing this character that we all adore. It kinda has the feeling of Harrison Ford in Force Awakens, except if that movie was good, and also if Han was the protagonist. It's pretty fucking powerful.

2. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

im such a fan of this shot cause it's the first time we see his face in the movie--incidentally if i could make gifs my entire argument for ghost protocol ethan hotness supremacy is That One Shot of him vaulting smoothly over the railing and dropping down a floor, which happens immediately before this--and there's so much tiredness and kindness in his face, it feels softer and older than anything we've gotten from him before, it's really striking. This to me is the first time we ever see what I think of as McQuarrie Era Ethan, you can see it in his expression and his eyes. And I love it.

This is where we get into pure indulgence picks. I love Ghost Protocol Ethan so much because I love how feral and flawed he is, I love how hard he's trying, I love how annoying he is at times (shoutout to the seduction scene my best friend the seduction scene), and I Love his hair. He's one of the most striking Ethans to me, especially in the very opening, because he feels so (as I've talked about before) purely physical, purely functional, or at least like he wants to be both of those things. He ends up feeling deeply genuine, raw, and grounded, because he's so sorta prickly and reclusive. There's a focus on his body and physicality that's outside of just fighting ability, that is all about grace and control. He's powerful in a way that doesn't need to be shown--he doesn't do a lot of fighting this movie. His power is all private, self-contained, gorgeous.

Mission: Impossible II

look, you know. look. it's just.

how are you gonna beat that? you can't beat that.

ethan is just so fucking beautiful in this movie it's absurd. I have so many screencaps that happened when I was watching and went "oh ok so he's breathtaking let's just take a quick shot of that." I love the way the camera treats him in this movie, there's a reverence to it, an indulgence, and also a playfulness. I love his outfits!!! I love that he's grimy, I love that he's utilitarian. I love that he gets wounded in the most aesthetically pleasing ways. I love his leather suspenders. Obviously I love his hair you guys all know how I feel about the hair. There's a kind of--no idea how to describe this--doggedness about Ethan, both in the sense of determination and in the sense that in the screenshot above he literally feels to me like a guard dog who's come trotting back to his owner.

anyway he's gorgeous. the end

arc ill be expecting your ranking. and like i said at the beginning im interested to know what you expected and how close my ranking was to your expectations

[twinsunstars]

Thoughts on The Bad Batch Episode 8 - Bad Territory - A Discussion Post

This episode has so much action and so much needed healing this week, it made me feel relaxed. Let's dive back into the exciting parts!

(SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE EPISODE YET! all screencaps from www.cap-that.com! https://www.cap-that.com/starwars/the-bad-batch/308/)

At the beginning, Omega is worried about Echo and Rex, relating back to the chaos that ensued at Rex's clone base and how he lost so many. Omega feels guilty for everything that's happened because the Empire is after her, since so many are getting hurt and losing their lives because of her.

Phee makes contact with the Batch, and I am so happy to see her again. She mentions Tech, which just hurt my heart. Crosshair gets to see Phee for the first time, and I hope they make some good interaction later on during the season. Phee's been trying to figure out things regarding the "M-count" situation, and so far no luck. The crew thinks of getting Fennec involved, and they decide to go with it.

Crosshair this entire episode: "Who??" Man was so lost.

Omega wants to go along, but Hunter gets strict and tells her to stay on Pabu with Crosshair. He tells her to try to get Crosshair to have someone check his hand, noticing the recurring shaking.

Hunter and Wrecker travel to a bar where they find Fennec Shand, and queen looks so fine as always. It's great to hear Ming-Na Wen's voice again. Also, the boys look so good in the purple and lime lighting, as does Fennec.

Hunter reasons with Fennec to try to get her to help them, and of course there's a price involved. Fennec gets them to help her catch a bounty she's been after, and the boys agree to help her for the information they need.

Meanwhile on Pabu, Omega easily gets Crosshair to get his hand looked at by AZ. I wonder how she managed to do so, she probably looked at Crosshair with sad eyes and pleaded with him, and he just went "Fine." AZ tries to figure out what is wrong with his hand, but he can't quite figure out a solution. Crosshair gets frustrated and walks out, and Batcher tried to follow him but got left behind. Omega's not gonna give up with him.

Fennec tells Hunter and Wrecker who she's after and takes them to a swampy planet, obtaining a boat to navigate around. Hunter finally gets to use his enhanced senses more, and Wrecker used his skills with explosives to get around the water. Fennec really called out the boys for being broke, like girl 😭

They got attacked by so many gators, everything was so hectic. This shot is crazy, but Wrecker would do this.

Crosshair keeps trying to aim with his shaking hand, getting more frustrated. Omega comes to him and suggests he try something out, and Crosshair sighs, agreeing. Batcher keeps a close eye on Crosshair and keeps him company as always, she's such a good girl.

Omega has Crosshair trying out meditation, as she mentions Gungi. Crosshair knows he missed a lot, and he definitely did with two seasons. I kinda want him to find out about Cid and he'll be like "Dang, where is she now?" He would have not tolerated her if he was with them during the past seasons.

The way Omega holds Crosshair's hand here is so soft, and Batcher is silently napping cutely. I was lowkey breathing along with Omega while she was teaching Crosshair, I really needed that healing this week. Seeing Crosshair start his healing journey makes me so happy, as I've been slowly starting my own healing journey after everything that happened last year. I resonate with Crosshair so much this season.

This shot is so beautiful and calming, I need an ambience video with this shot with them meditating for an hour or longer.

Hunter and Wrecker finish up the job with Fennec, managing to catch the bounty. They ask her for the information she promised, which Fennec reveals she does not have on her at the time. Though, she promises to keep in touch once she figures something out. She leaves the boys, making contact with someone unknown. I feel like she contacted Ventress considering her past as a bounty hunter and the Empire going after M-count targets, but who knows. We'll see next week hopefully.

We've officially hit the mid-season mark, and things are going to get hectic soon. I am nowhere prepared for anything they throw at us now.

[vegasrogueagent]

How I got hooked on Flynn!!

Here we go!! I'm rewatching "Timeless" as I began screencaping our favorite; Garcia Flynn ❤😏

Even though I had seen Goran in other movies, way before "Timeless" It wasn't until COVID-19 shut down all the restaurants, so I was out of work for 3 months, and I was spending way more time with my boyfriend ( we don't live together) That's when I returned back to school to get my post secondary Diploma to work as an Automotive Service Advisor as I realized that being a waitress wasn't the best option for a future!

Back to Timeless; One night Paul came to me and said "I found a good Tv Show on Netflix" And It's actually Paul's job to find something to watch on Netflix, he's way better than me at this 😂 So I ended up watching "Timeless" with him and for some reason, I got hooked on Garcia Flynn in the Pilot Episode when he encounters Lucy for the first time after the crash of the Hindenburg...

We could say the 5'3 woman in me have a penchant for tall actors that portray Evil-Doers 😂Alright, alright, let's be serious in here ahah!

So, I'll try to go through screencaping "Timeless" as fast as I can, It should take around a month (I'll try ahha)

Enjoy the HD 203 screencaps from the Pilot episode, available in the gallery section of the website 👉 HERE or directly at this link

[fablesrose]

Ch 16 - The Future Job

Series Rewrite Masterlist 

Pairing: Eliot Spencer x Ford!Reader

Description: The team takes down a psychic after the team predicts their own future.

Words: 4301

A/n: Can I just say, Eliot looked so good this episode, I couldn't exactly find a place in the chapter to gush about it, but yeah, look up screencaps. I had so much fun writing this one, enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn’t know what I believed when it came to the afterlife. I did know that I thought most, if not all psychics were con artists. And this guy, our current mark, was definitely one of those con artists. Disgustingly exploiting the grief of those who have lost loved ones, leeching all of their money away, making them lose everything along with their deceased family members. 

We were doing recon on his live show. It was at a local studio and cable network, surrounded by warehouses and storage lockers. Nate chose to bring Parker along with him to watch the show. Hardison was in the van with Tara doing the technical recon, and Eliot and I were doing physical background recon. 

“Looks like there’s going to be a network scout from WMN in the audience today, sounds like he’s trying to go prime time,” Hardison told us after looking at Dalton Rand’s schedule.

“TV show means a control room” I commented, looking at Eliot. 

“Let's go see what we can find,” he responded. 

I heard Parker comment that psychics freak her out as Eliot and I wandered the halls of the studio. Rand started the show with a ‘reading’ when we found what looked to be the control room. We glanced at each other. 

“Do you have the bug? Do you wanna do a solo breach? Pull the bathroom card,” I asked him.

He only took a second to think about it, “Yeah I got it, but let's do the pair stumble in.”

I looked at him skeptically, “Really?”

He nodded, “Yeah.” He then put a hand at the small of my back leading me towards the door.

I leaned against it a touch when he flipped the handle just enough for the door to open behind me. When I was supposed to pretend to stumble in, I actually tripped over my own feet causing me to fall. Luckily Eliot caught me, just like he was supposed to, though the grip he had told me he knew exactly what happened. I tried to settle my rapidly beating heart from the drop and let out what I hoped sounded like a flirty and surprised giggle. Eliot helped stand me up again, putting us further in the room in the process. The person who was watching the monitors became upset and told us to get out.

There was a camera just inside the door where the bug should be able to access everything if we could get it placed there. Eliot seemed to read my mind since as I turned to face the other man, he slipped the bug into my hand. I placed my right hand on the man’s shoulder and reached around with my left to place the bug. I profusely apologized to him as Eliot pulled me back out of the room by my waist.

Once the door was closed, his hands stayed there a few moments longer than necessary before they dropped off. I let out a shuttered breath though I couldn’t decide if it was from the release of adrenaline from my almost-fall or because of his touch. 

“Nice catch,” I said once I turned to face him. 

He nodded, “Of course. Nice job getting that bug in there,” he replied.

I raised my hand for a high five which he completed when we heard Nate bring Rand’s attention to himself in the studio. We made our way back over there when Rand did a reading on Parker, seeming to identify that her brother died in an accident and that Parker blamed herself for it. 

Parker dashed off the stage, brushing past us when she bolted out the door. 

We only caught up with her when we got back to Nate’s apartment. She was sitting on the floor of the living room, her back against the couch. It was clear she had been crying. 

“Parker?” Nate asked when he approached her. 

We all sat down in the living room around her, waiting for her to say something. 

“There’s no way he could have known that stuff,” she said quietly. “I’ve never told anyone, no one, ever.”

“Parker, he didn’t know anything,” Nate said. 

“No Nate,” she said clearer, “you said we’d find a trick up his sleeve. You said we’d find a trick. Well, we didn’t find a trick, did we? He knew things. He’s really psychic.”

“He’s not a psychic, Parker,” I said, my hand tentatively on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. 

“He’s just a con man,” Eliot added. 

“He just did a cold read on you, that’s all,” Nate said. 

“He just asked questions and used your answers to guide him,” Tara explained. 

“But I didn’t say anything,” Parker replied, her voice cracking. 

“You didn’t have to,” Nate said. “Can I show you something?” He nodded at Hardison. 

Hardison pulled up the video from the studio that he was able to get by using the bug Eliot and I placed to hack into all of their video feeds and cameras. The screen showed Parker when Rand began his reading.

“Right there,” Nate pointed when her face twitched on the screen. “Do you remember when he asked you, ‘this energy that I’m getting, does it have anything to do with you father?’ Remember? Well you furrowed your eyebrow, you might as well have told him, no.”

“And when he keyed in on your brother,” Tara took over, “your eyes widened, just slightly. He knew he was on the right track.”

“He just guessed Parker,” Hardison said gently, “he got a hit when he said that you were both very young and he just went with the odds. An accident of some kind.”

“But he knew about the bicycle,” Parker pointed out tearfully. 

“Not at first,” I said, remembering the exchange. 

“What happened was,” Nate elaborated, “he said wheels, and then he moved on and said skateboard, you told him about the bicycle.”

“No, I didn't say anything,” she insisted. 

“You had a certain tell, Parker,” Nate continued. “Your mouth opened, just a little bit. Just enough to register your surprise. Then, he just guessed.”

The screen was showing everything that Nate was pointing out on the video. 

“He used all of these things during the reading,” Tara said, “How your breathing changed, if your shoulders were raised or slouched, how you were holding your hands, if your lips were pursed.”

“What about other people in the audience? He knew names and relationships,” Parker asked more calmly as if she was starting to get it. 

“Yeah, the hot read,” Nate called it. “What he does is he researches before the show, gets himself armed with as much information as possible to help him with the readings. It’s really not that much different than what we do.”

“But he doesn’t know who’s going to be in the audience ahead of time.”

“Well, no, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know until they’re there. He’s got cameras all over the place hoping to pick up something, hear something that’s going to help him in the readings.”

“He also has a plan, he has an assistant who stands in line and pretends to be part of the audience,” Tara added. 

“That person feeds him the information about the readings in his ear using earbuds just like we do,” Nate continued. 

Hardison pulled up some of the data he pulled from the studio on the screen, “He’s got dozens of hidden cameras and the bug that Eliot and Y/n planted in the control room, I’ve got audio feeds off of twenty hidden microphones taped to the chairs in the audience. I’ve got names, people they want to contact, dates.”

“And that, is what Rand has hidden up his sleeve,” Nate concluded. 

“So what do we do now?” Tara asked. 

“Cut off his arms,” Parker answered. “And his head. Yeah. I wanna kill him. Can we make that happen?”

There was a beat of silence before Eliot answered, “Yeah, I can…I mean, I could…”

“Or we can give him exactly what he wants,” Nate countered. “Make the world think he is the greatest psychic who ever lived, and then in front of the network and his audience, we destroy him.”

I glanced down at Parker to see she was smiling, pleased with the idea. 

“How do we do that?” Eliot asked. 

“We go and steal the future,” Nate answered cryptically. 

Tara posed as a hippie psychic woman who was helping people out of a coffee shop. And the kicker was, she didn’t charge anything, so when Rand heard that some of his clients canceled because of her, he came to check it out. 

“How may the spirits serve you today?” Tara asked when he approached the outdoor table where she sat. 

“Maybe they can explain why you keep poaching my clients,” he responded. 

“I must apologize Mr. Rand, it’s true I’ve had more visitors lately, but I had no idea it was at your expense. I’m Bethany, Bethany Noble.”

“The outfit is a little on the nose, but other than that, I find your shtick amusing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Working out of a coffee shop? No neon lights, no taro cards or ouija boards. So what’s your story? You got me curious.”

“Two years ago I was diagnosed with a brain tumor,” Tara answered. “The doctors removed it, but ever since… I guess you could say I was twice blessed. With renewed life, and with this gift.”

“You’re serious.”

There was a pause before Tara said, “Feel the scar?”

“Alright then, tell me something only the spirits would know. Tell me about my father, how he died.”

Around the corner of the coffee shop, the rest of us were listening. 

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you girl,” Hardison replied as he frantically searched up how his father supposedly died. 

“Wait, we didn’t give her that scar did we?” Eliot asked. 

“No, we did not,” Nate answered. 

After a bit of searching, Tara answered Rand, “Well I could channel your father Mr. Rand, but that might be difficult seeing as he’s still alive. Indiana, isn’t it? Do you still have the prayer book he gave you?” There was a pause before she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Just felt something.”

“Nate had me rig the table with a mild electrical current,” Hardison smiled, showing us the remote. 

“You electrocuted him?” Eliot asked. 

“Yes I did, it helps sell the bit,” Nate replied. 

“I approve,” Parker said with a solemn nod of her head. 

“Thanks Parker.”

“No, her agreeing with you is not a good thing,” Eliot insisted. 

I had been biting my lip to keep myself from smiling, but at this the laughter bubbled out of me, “Well I think it’s hilarious. What does my agreement mean, Eliot?”

He looked at me for a moment before shaking his head. Nate then turned to the both of us with a quiet thanks and slight wink. 

Rand wasn’t convinced with Tara’s answer, still insisting that she tell him what the spirits say about him. 

“You want to know your future,” Tara deduced. After a moment of her collecting her thoughts, she started to ‘predict’ his future: “They’re calling you by a different name. Do you know the way Jose?”

“What?” Rand asked. 

“They say Jose doesn’t pay his tickets, and it’ll burn him. Don’t ask the officer for help, he has his own problems, but don’t worry, you’re the life of the party, so celebrate. And bring extra cash because you won’t have enough. A day late, a dollar short, and if you don’t look both ways, you’ll never live to see tomorrow.”

“Okay, I think I’ve heard enough.” Rand stopped the reading, “Lady, I love your act, I really do, and I wish you all the best with it. This is my turf, stay off it.” It sounded like he left the table and entered the coffee shop. 

I pushed myself off of the van where I was leaning, “Well, let’s get this party started.” I walked around the corner to the coffee shop and carefully replaced the paper cup that had Rand’s name on it with one that had Jose instead, fulfilling Tara’s prophecy that he would be called by a different name: Jose. 

Meanwhile, Eliot was hooking up Rand’s car to the tow truck he got his hands on, pulling away once Rand came out of the shop. This fulfilled her saying that Jose doesn’t pay his tickets. Parker swiped his wallet so he wouldn’t have cash for his dinner later. Earlier, Hardison and I replaced a bunch of fortunes in fortune cookies to say ‘you’re the life of the party, so celebrate’ to fulfill that part. Hardison also hacked Rand’s scheduling records and discovered one of his new clients for that day would be a police officer. And finally, much to his delight, Nate nearly drove Rand over, making sure he looked both ways. 

The next day, Rand was waiting for Tara to return to the coffee shop and begged her to work for him. She gave him a decent fight, saying that she needed to share her gift and not con people, but he eventually persuaded her because of her supposed financial needs from the medical expenses and the promise that it would be temporary. 

So far, we had him on the hook. He wanted to do a trial run of Tara talking to him behind the scenes, telling him info from the control room. So, we went to work. Hardison was pulling information in time, Parker was stealing wallets (and returning them) to get names, and Eliot and I were on parking lot duty to see what we could find from their cars. We were running across the parking lot between readings with Hardison furiously clacking on his computer in our ears, trying to pull any and all information we could find. 

It seemed to pay off though. Rand was impressed with the results. He walked Tara out of the building towards her car, thinking out loud about the future of his show with her in it when a van pulled up quickly behind them. 

“Tara, you’ve got company,” Eliot warned, but it wasn’t enough when four guys hopped out, put a black hood over Rand’s head and started to pull him into the van. 

Tara started fighting them off, though it was clear they weren’t there for her. Eliot ran to help yelling at me to stay where I was while he fought the guys off. When he scared them off enough for him to check if Tara was okay, they drove away with Rand in the back. 

“Any theories?” Nate asked once we all got back. 

“Maybe someone didn’t like one of their ‘psychic readings,’” Eliot answered. 

“Maybe someone liked it too much,” Nate countered. 

“What do you mean?” Parker asked. 

“Rand told me it was the best show he ever did,” Tara said. 

“Now, everyone was there to talk to the dead except that woman at the end,” Nate began. “Why was she there?”

“Her husband,” Tara answered, “She thinks he’s cheating on her.”

“How did you know that?” Hardison asked. “All I said was she hired a private investigator.”

“A married woman in her forties? She’s not looking for the maltese falcon.”

“What do we know about this husband?” Nate steered us back. 

Hardison began with facial recognition scanning the guy she came with, “Nickolas Kusen. Age forty four, he did time in Riverview a few years back for armed robbery.”

“One of the thugs that tried to grab her had a prison tattoo,” Eliot commented. 

“So what, Kusen has a secret and he’s gonna kill Rand so he doesn’t reveal it?” Parker asked. “That’d be good.”

“No, if you wanna kill someone, you don’t go out and throw them in a van,” Eliot said. “You don’t get out of your seat.”

“Okay, Kusen needs Rand for his ‘psychic’ abilities. That’s why he’s being so secretive around his wife,” Nate said. 

“So let me get this straight, we did such a good job of convincing people Rand was a psychic that we got him kidnapped?” I concluded from what everyone was saying. I raised my hand, “uh, high fives I guess, good job guys.”

Eliot and Parker were the only ones to give me a high five. 

“Which means we have to find him, rescue him, and then, you know, take him down,” Nate continued. “Let’s go to work.”

Hardison got to work tracking the van and he was able to track the route they took. Tara and I were searching through Kusen’s financials to get any clue as to what was going on or what he wanted. 

“Give me some good news on the financials,” Nate said.

“They are all over the place,” Tara replied, lifting papers. “It’s hard to get a clear picture, must be a cash heavy operation. Probably import, export.”

Eliot and Parker then walked in from checking out some sites connected to Kusen and his business. 

“You know that body shop Kusen pays property taxes on?” Parker asked. 

“Let me guess, not a body shop?” I answered absentmindedly, looking over more paperwork and business addresses. 

“It’s a parking lot,” Eliot said. 

“Guys,” Hardison said, pulling our attention, “I managed to track them as far as Tremont before I lost them, but they’re definitely somewhere on the north end. If I were to guess, I’d say-”

“Somewhere in the north?” I interrupted, flipping through papers trying to find one that stood out to me. I finally pulled a single page, “I think I’ve got an address.”

After some discussion and some more research surrounding the place I found, it was determined that it was a very likely option and worth checking out. Eliot accompanied Tara to the warehouse, staying just outside in case she needed help. The rest of us were in the van, monitoring the situation. 

Once Tara revealed herself both to Kusen and as a psychic, Kusen welcomed her and layed out what he needed from them. Ultimately, his partner from the bank robbery hid the money and died before revealing where it was. Kusen wanted Rand and Tara to show him where it was. 

“Well at least he’s not cheating on his wife,” Parker commented. 

Hardison pulled up some documents, “I found his ex partner, Cesar Broncato. His name was on the lease for the body shop Kusen supposedly owned.”

“Okay,” Nate said, “This guy wants a bag of money, let’s get him a bag of money. Everybody, listen up.”

He then explained the plan. Nate left to buy a storage unit. Hardison found Broncato’s car, or more accurately, one that could pass as it. Parker planted evidence in the car, a fake registration that we wrinkled up and sanded to look old and the storage locker key. Tara gently led Kusen along, to the car and then to the storage locker facility. 

From there, we needed more time to get the storage unit set up, so Tara stalled with a lost connection to the spirit realm and Nate posed as the facilities employee, taking some time to check the records to ‘find the right storage unit.’

Meanwhile, Parker, Hardison, Eliot, and I were moving boxes into the storage unit.

“We need more boxes,” Hardison said. 

I looked around the room with the walls covered and boxes stacked three or four high, “Really? This seems about right.”

“We need a lot of luck,” Parker countered. 

“Yeah, well I think we used all our luck on finding this place,” Eliot said. 

“Hold on,” Hardison said as he put duct tape on the back wall, “It ain’t luck, okay? Finding the perfect place to end a treasure hunt is a testament to my intellectual prowess.”

Eliot looked at him for a second before deliberately dropping a box on Hardison’s foot. 

“Ow!”

Parker and I huffed a laugh. 

“What?” Eliot asked, “It’s baby clothes.”

“It says books, man!” Hardison said. 

“Does it?”

We finished up the storage unit and locked it up behind us, hoping he wouldn’t notice the lack of dust. We gave Nate the all clear and he finally told Kusen which storage unit.

Kusen and his goons tore up some boxes, trying to find the money when he finally pointed his gun at Rand again, “What’s your crystal ball say now?”

“I don’t know,” Rand replied. 

“You better go into a trance or something, whatever it is you do, because I’m fresh out of patience!”

“I’m not psychic,” Rand blurted out. “I can’t. I can’t communicate with the dead. It’s all fake.”

“I think you’re holding out on me,” Kusen said. “I think you know where the money is, you just want it for yourself!”

“No! It’s not- listen to me, my studio is wired up with microphones and cameras and I make it look like I’m a psychic, but I’m not! You know, I cold read people! Yeah, I ask them questions, I look at their reactions, that’s all I do,” he became more frantic as he went on until he finally said, “It’s a scam! Okay? I’ve been running it for years!”

“Have to say guys,” Tara said as she closed the door, locking them in, “I totally saw this one coming.”

I laughed at her turn of phrase. Hardison blew a hole in the wall where he was putting the duct tape and made a makeshift door into Rand’s studio. Rand and Kusen walked through to find a whole audience watching footage of his confession on repeat, courtesy of the cameras and microphones we planted in the storage unit and linked with the studio broadcast systems. 

The audience was mortified, finding the microphones hiding under their seats. The cops came in and arrested the both of them, and we were there waiting outside to watch them be placed in the cop car. 

“He who sells miracles will have the devil knocking at his door,” Hardison said. 

“What is that, a Proverb?” Parker asked. 

“Fortune cookie,” Hardison corrected. 

“What?”

“We read a bunch of them when we replaced the fortunes with ‘you’re the life of the party, so celebrate,’” I explained. 

“They do make a cute pair, don’t they?” Tara said about the crooks. 

“Lets see,” Nate said, “We’ve got assault, kidnapping, and burglary for our friend Kusen, and garden variety fraud for our psychic friend Dalton Rand… Any way we can get them in the same prison?”

“That can be arranged,” Hardison confirmed. 

“Let’s go,” Eliot said, his head resting on his arm leaning out of the driver side window of the van.

We pushed ourselves up from leaning against the van and made our way around to get in. 

Along the way I grabbed his arm teasingly, “Relax, we’ll get home in time for dinner.”

He grunted at me, “I just wanna get home.”

“I know.”

It wasn’t long before we could meet with the clients, see how they were doing. Originally, a man came in worried about his pregnant sister who had lost her husband. She was the one throwing everything she had into Rand’s lap to talk to her husband. This time, they were both at the table. 

“It’s okay, Jodie,” the brother consoled. 

“I’m sorry, I’m just so embarrassed,” she confessed. 

“Don’t be,” Nate reassured next to me, “Dalton Rand is a con artist. He took advantage of hundreds of people, maybe thousands.”

“Now he’s heading to jail,” Tara said, “he can’t do it to anyone else.”

“There was a part of me who knew it wasn’t real,” Jodie said. “But I didn’t care. I just missed Mike so much, I wanted to see him again so bad.”

“You will see him again,” Nate said. I couldn’t help but look at him, wondering what he meant. “Maybe it’ll be a look, or maybe it’ll be a gesture,” he looked towards Jodie’s pregnant belly, making his point, “maybe it’ll be the way he spreads peanut butter on a slice of bread. But when you see it, you’ll know, that’s Mike. Do you wanna know how I know?” Nate placed a hand on my knee, “I know because I see my brother and his wife in my niece so frequently, that sometimes I forget that they’re gone. And you know what? That’s a miracle no one could ever sell you.”

Jodie placed a hand on her stomach, on her baby and said, “Thank you Mr. Ford.”

At their touched expression, I placed my hand on Nate’s, lifting it up enough for me to hold and squeeze. He gave a squeeze back as the woman and her brother stood to leave the pub. 

“Now I see why you do it,” Tara whispered.

We watched as Parker stopped the brother right before he walked out the door and handed him an envelope with money in it equaling the amount Rand took from Jodie. He wrapped Parker into a tight hug. Parker had a very touched expression on her face, even if I could see that she wasn’t expecting the affectionate gesture.

I turned to Nate, “Do you really see mom and dad in me?”

“Almost everyday.”

“You don’t talk about them much.” It wasn’t an accusation, or even a suggestion, just an observation I had made. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to talk about them more. It wasn’t a taboo subject between us. I had asked him about them often when I was younger, and even if he didn’t answer right away, he did always answer eventually. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it lately. I missed them sometimes, but I had come to terms with the fact that Nate and I were family, and that was enough.

Nate squeezed my hand one last time as I was contemplating this before answering with a simple, “I know.”

A/n: Reblogs and comments are welcome and encouraged! Thank you for reading!

Tags: @instantdinosaurtidalwave @kniselle @technikerin23 @kiwikitty13 @plasticbottleholder

[the-tubort]

Today I found a song that ended up being a perfect song for a project I've been working on and I started to think about how I even wound up listening to it and it made me really appreciate the people I have in my life.

This project started cause I was on call with some online friends and had a random idea that they really liked and then offered to help with as a fun thing to do for ourselves.

I only met these people and were on call with them cause of an IRL friend I have who introduced me to them.

I met this IRL through both school and my best friend who became friends with one of THEIR best friends.

The reason I was looking for songs was cause I needed to find something that fit the specific vibe I wanted for this project, which again came from these new friends.

The song itself came from a coworker who recommended this band and I do honestly give credit for me being in the field im in, with the coworkers I have, cause of my friends. My coworkers are also the reason I got this current job cause I knew them from a different company as well.

I found a different song that ended up being a huge push for me to try storyboarding a fucking anime op because I really liked the dungeon meshi opening that sumika made.

I got into dungeon meshi partially cause of some tumblr mutuals who had posted some screencaps and art of the Manga and friends who had also read the Manga prior to the anime.

Those friends who introduced me to it, I only met cause my best friend introduced me to a lot of the people I have in my life now.

And the only reason I even have any of these friends at all, is cause my mom loved me enough to let me choose where we lived back when I moved in kindergarten and I chose the silly little house with a swingset and blue rooms (they didnt stay blue though).