#‘it all began when i got divorced’ or smth like that

[ghostchills]

nostalgia binge

[seaslugfanclub]

Ok umm this is my first ask ever and im so so nervous but i love your writing and i was wondering if you could write scenarios of reader and king magnifico(or any villain really) just being friends? Like they’re just silly best friends or smth and they dont know how it happened but they were just friends one day? If you dont want to thats fine i just thought it would be funny

The Disney villains fandom has a serious lack of Magnifico x readers, shame on all of you

Magnifico and (Y/N)’s reluctant Friendship

————————————

Magnifico gives off newley divorced dad vibes

He’s fragile rn

When the company brought his Hologram to life, (Y/N) was the first person he met at the park. They explained where he was and introduced him to the other villains

He doesn’t get along with the villains, because honestly? He’s not really a villain

We’ve seen what real villains do when granting others wishes. Selling souls, stealing voices, turning people into frogs…

And god knows Holo!Asha ruined any chance at him getting along with the “good guys”

So who can he turn to? (Y/N), The strange park attendant who’s basically got a harem of theater majors

Understandably, he’s not the most thrilled about his situation

But after (Y/N) sat with Magnifico and let him rant to them for 2 hours (as well as patting his back as he cried) the ex-king began opening up

(Y/N) helped him look at the bright side, at least he’s not responsible for an entire kingdom anymore. He doesn’t have the weight of keeping so many people safe

Magnifico still has the idea that he only has value if he does something of service, so he likes to help (Y/N) with their daily tasks (I.e following them around and micromanaging)

(Y/N)’s total weakness is Magnificos big wet eyes, one look at him and they crumble

But (Y/N) is also super annoying, like a younger sibling

Magnifico: I’m worried about what others think about me.

(Y/N): don’t worry dude. No one thinks about you.

(Y/N) like to help Magnifico with his hair, that shits soft as hell

(Y/N) introduced Magnifico to those cheesy shirts with text on them, now he has a secret closet full of them

His favorite is “I’m not a stepdad, I’m a dad who stepped up” (no one sees him as a father figure)

[wc-confessions]

hi its the original cheetz animator anon again and SO SORRY for kicking off drama then dipping for days. however, this is gonna get LONG.

cheetz' entire work model screams offloading shit onto other people so they can produce as much as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Weekend maps (baby's first crunch culture), 200-part maps with 3 collabers on each one (literally 0 problem with collaboration and its very cool [even if its solely because of the insane crunch], but I'll get to why Im bringing it up), and TRAILERS for their maps to generate as much hype as possible for them. What these create is hundreds of videos about The New Cheeteh Z Map, thus boosting cheetz in the algorithm MASSIVELY.

To break it down, each of the 200 map part creators will post a video with the map title in it, pushing the topic out to as many people as possible. the trailer is there for the existing subs, making SURE they watch at the premiere and again putting the "X Cheeteh Z MAP" topic as smth that anyone who vaguely likes maps needs to watch Right Now. Premiere happens, everyone watches, maybe skims the part playlist, and subs to cheetz (or at least flags to yt that theyre interested in their vids). Because this happens every 3 weeks, it's a consistent stream of content running back to them. its the exact same content-farming dr**k did lmfaoo

The same thing happens to hype the animators for The Next Big Project in the server. I think it was hollyfawn that had a 10-day @/everyone spree with like? a scavenger hunt? to tease that the next project was coming, prepare to apply!!11! To add onto it, they literally dont even do the storyboarding themself. They recruit like 5 other people to do it and cheetz'll help out. This is why the visual language is as disjointed as it is, and no hate towards the board artists! Its just that everyone has different styles and cheetz isnt exactly there to unify it aside from some meaningless symbols (does anyone actually know what hawkstorm's wings mean. anyone?)

Now that we've dissected my perspective on cheetz' content creation style, I've done a wee bit of research on my end with the analytics of my vids.

DISCLAIMER: I am a smallish channel with a few hundred subs and I only upload once every couple months. in fact I'm in the process of divorcing myself from wc so its prolly gonna have a massive subdrop as soon as I upload original animations. I am also one person and have not corroborated my findings with any other animators. Part 2 of the disclaimer: Tigernoir was never finished. After the controversy and threats against the host+animators we agreed to call it off and unlist/priv/delete our parts.

The difference in analytics between my TN part and my other unrelated parts that have a fairly large amount of views within the same amount of time is Notable. This is based on the 4-day mark of each part being up (the numbers are accurate because these were recorded then, and not pulled up Now):

The unrelated part got 1.8k views by then, TN got 2.3k. the difference is the interactions though. By the 4-day mark, the unrelated part had 36k impressions, accessed thru the sidebar (a 5% watchrate), and TN had 10k impressions (23%), accessed mainly thru the playlist. TN had 4 comments by then, Unrelated had 12. Unrelated gained me 50 subs, TN gained 10.

Obviously 2 vids from one person can't be Concrete Evidence, so my theory for this is that people are just skimming through the playlist without actually Intending to watch the videos. With the algorithm, even though a smaller percentage clicked the video, the views clearly had their eye caught and chose to check it out. This meant the viewers were actually engaged with the content and chose to see what else the uploader had going. TN's part on the other hand was just kinda There and automatically watched, then likely skipped onto the next part when the process section began.

In all, the focus is not on the animator when it comes to a cheetz map from what I've noticed. It is quite literally All About Cheetz, and he doesnt do anything but PROMOTE that with their content creation style and how he interacted with the people that work for him. Downright disheartening, and this style becoming fairly mainstream + their fans mirroring it is a very large part why im packing my bags from the warriors animation scene. Once again, sorry abt the length! but that anon did drive me mildly berserk and I needed to delve a bit deeper into my stance.

all i can really say is that that sucks man. i'm glad you're trying to pursue something that makes you happy tho! i really hope you gain the traction you desire along your journey! ik all the animators on cheeteh z's maps are like super fantastic so like i can already imagine how good your content will be..

[gokubrain]

I love trashing veggiebull. Theres so much stuff of it and so many canon moments of good ol geta being like "wife exist" and not actually lovin her lmao. The fans go nuts at the mere suggestion of them not being perfect, and like. He does care for her, but doesn't love her and he can care for almost anyone. Thats how Gokou helped him be a better person. Its even more funny when theyre purely z fans, which has less meat than a skeleton for that ship. Gt and onwards kinda have moments but z, nada.

if u like v*gebul don’t read any further lmao

whew i’m glad i get a chance to talk about this because i FUCKING hate this ship so much you all have no idea

v*gebul began as an excuse to have a new character from the future (trunks) and if it had ended at that, i honestly would have been okay with it?? like i don’t mind that they got together as a one time situation in order to produce trunks like… impulsive hookups seem like smth vegeta would do but W H Y did that have to lead to a relationship. i’m still bewildered by it to this day and i’ve been a dbz fan for 11 years lmfao

there is simply no chemistry between them, no matter how much v*gebul fans or super will try to convince you there is. they are both angry, stubborn, demanding people and i can only imagine how toxic a relationship between them is -__-

smth i find funny is how people always use this picture when talking about v*gebul:

but the full scene is actually vegeta jerking away from bulma when she touches him LMFAOO

AHDHDHF IDK ITS JUST FUNNY TO ME LIKE not to make this deeper than it actually is or anything but its almost symbolic of how v*gebul shippers are blind and will ship them wholeheartedly despite the fact that theyre really… like…. not good…… at All……….. they barely even like each other lmfao

anyway despite my griping, v*gebul is a boring bland ship with no substance and it adds absolutely nothing to the story. toriyama has a terrible habit of throwing two random people together to create the worst straight ships youve ever fucking seen in your life and for some reason this fandom eats it up despite there being very little chemistry or substance. u can point out moments in super all you want but i simply won’t listen because dbs vegeta is literally NOT vegeta anymore he’s just a different person

that’s not to say i don’t think vegeta cares about her, i imagine they divorce sometime post-buu and despite having an ugly falling out i still think they end up best friends. they have a lot of potential to be a really funny friendship duo imo 😭

even the CANON v*gebul moments do not hold a candle to any kakavege insinuation in the entire show its so fucking funny LOL like vegeta is so clearly in love with goku -__- so why are yall bothering….

oh but. to each their own i suppose =)

[trannydean]

RvB High School!AU

This is another big favorite of mine--my high school AU. Take note on the fact that I've never gone to high school (I've been homeschooled since 4th grade) so I have no personal experience on how high school actually works. I am quite willing to take criticism and hear anything on how to correct anything that needs it.

Another thing is that this AU has a lot of OCs. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. There are multiple Freelancer OCs (including my main OC and a main protagonist, Mich), so many Chorus OCs, and one of my AI OCs, Tau. Altogether, there are 30 OCs so far! I'm not certain that every single one of them is going to show up at all, but I just wrote them out in my list of students and teachers where I thought they'd fit.

This AU was originally going to be a teen!fake-dating!AU involving Mich and her love interest, another OC I have, Del (Delaware). I began planning out how the process from fake-dating to real-dating would go, and I was enjoying it. I was reading @ cinead's Carolina the Teenage Witch series for inspiration when I realized something. Why not expand this AU into not just a specific thing happening in high school? What if this was just a whole high school AU, so it could involve so many other fun things in it? I figured this was a great idea, so I rolled with it.

Now, Mich is a junior with the RnBs (minus Lopez and Kai, including Tex and Wash), multiple other Freelancers (Florida, the Triplets), some of the Chorus crew (Kimball, Doyle, Dr. Grey), half the mercs (Felix and Locus), and the Blues and Reds (minus Biff) as classmates. Mich and the RnBs are a uh... friend group? Cliche? I don't know what it's called, but they hang out constantly. Other students in different grades include Kai (a freshman), Siris and Sharkface (both seniors), the Chorus lieutenants (all freshman), other Freelancers like York, Carolina, the twins, CT, and Maine (all seniors), and Niner and Dylan Andrews (both seniors as well).

We've got plenty of teachers that include the AI (this including Tau, VIC, Lopez, and Santa), barely remembered characters like Lemons and Jenkins (not to be confused with Genkins, who is also here and is Jenkins' brother. And Chrovos is their sibling as well! It's madness!), and other Freelancers like Wyoming, Illinois, and Utah. I don't know how big high schools can be, but there were lots of different classes and I didn't think every teacher taught 5 classes each, so we ended up with lots of teachers. If this isn't accurate to real high schools then please let me know.

I don't actually have a lot exactly planned out for this AU yet. I made the list of students and their classes (which will be included at the bottom, along with teachers and subjects they teach), and have been so preoccupied trying to figure out what regular high school is like that I haven't written a lot, plot-wise. I do have certain details and events that will happen eventually, though.

In this AU, the Freelancers, all orphans living at a huge foster home (run by the Counselor), go by state names rather than their real names (smth to do with their introduction to the rest of the kids... new kid start getting called a state that isn't taken. It quickly becomes the name they go by.). Practically all of them are in high school, so all of them are mainly just waiting to reach legal age rather than get adopted out. Carolina is the only exception to the Freelancers being orphans.

The "older" Chorus friend group consist of Kimball, Dr. Grey, Doyle, two of my OCs, Del and Dr. Lana, as well as Felix and Locus (until they betray the group and their connection with the rest are broke).

Carolina and Church are siblings, and Simmons is their cousin. Unfortunately, all of them have shitty parents (or, the parents that are there are shitty--Allison passed away years ago, which led to the Director's downfall, and Simmons has a shitty dad who is in the middle of a divorce with his not-that-much-better wife). All three of them try to stay at friends' houses as often as possible, to keep out of the toxic environment of their own houses. This works for the Church siblings, since the Director is often away on business trips, though Simmons has a more difficult time getting out of the house. Fortunately, Carolina and Church are always willing to give an excuse to get him out.

York is still at the foster home, despite being 18. He says it's because he hasn't found a place to stay yet, but it's really because he's waiting for his younger sibling Mich to be 18 too, so they can stick together after they've both completed high school. North has repeatedly invited York to stay at his and South's apartment, but York denies every time, saying he wouldn't want to intrude (despite intruding at their place constantly). He thinks Mich wouldn't like being that separated from him, since they have been together since she was born... he's not aware of the fact that Mich definitely wouldn't be bummed, because she would crash at the apartment whenever she wanted to see him. He's a bit protective. That's all right with South, though--she never agreed to the invites North keeps giving to York, and she'd rather not deal with her twin's idiot boyfriend living in the same building as her again. She had just gained the bliss of living on the opposite end of town from him...

Genkins, Jekins, and Chrovos (known only as Ms. C), as stated before, are siblings. They have quite the rivalry among themselves that most students and other teachers find amusing. Genkins and Jenkins argue over how to say each other's names, and Chrovos just adds fuel to the fire. Stufents often wonder why, despite all of them being unmarried and two being men, the three all have different last names. The main theory is that they all have different fathers and are actually half-siblings, despite Jenkins' numerous announcements that they are, in face, full-siblings. On top of this feud, there are two other teachers that are often confused for each other--Jones and Johannes--despite having no relation to each other. They just look strikingly similar. This annoys the fuck out of the both of them.

Illinois is the geography teacher, and he's one of those teachers who dresses up in full apparelrelating to the lesson of the day. He tries to have fun with his students, and he's a heavily favored teacher due to this, as well as his understanding and patience with both colleagues and students.

After a longer school break (idk whether it should be Christmas break or spring break), Shatter Squad and Viper are going to be enlisted in the school, with West and Axel as new teachers/coaches. Ik almost everybody hates these guys, but I came up with the idea that these new students with an already-made rivalry between them should appear in the middle of the school year and disrupt everyone's groove... shit's gonna happen, tensions are gonna rise, and all because these new idiots arrived. I think it'll turn out all right.

Mich likes to tell Church "if Carolina and York get married, then me and you are going to be siblings-in-law", which irritates Church because he truthfully believes she's the most annoying person he has ever met.

Some ships included in this AU are: Grimmons, Tuckington, Docnut, Chexboose (is that the ship for Church, Tex, and Caboose? There is a ship for that, right?), and a monstrosity (/j) I came up with... Dr. Sargida (any different ship name ideas are welcome, this sounds stupid lmao), a deadly combination of Dr. Grey, Sarge, and Florida. The ultimate power trio.... they could take over the world....

Now I'm going to be putting the lists of students and teachers. Again, if there's something funky with any of this, please let me know! I know not of the schedules of regular high schoolers and I don't know if any of this is possible!

Students and Their Electives, Special Classes, and Extra Curricular Activities

Red Team (juniors) Sarge - robotics, health/nursing, ap history, algebra Simmons - calculus, chemistry, mechanics Grif - Spanish, home economics/cooking, biology, algebra Donut - theater, creative writing, Spanish, geometry, chemistry Doc - track, health/nursing, Spanish, algebra

Blue Team (juniors) Church - AP history, business math, Spanish, physics Tucker - varsity volleyball, home economics/cooking, geography, biology, precalculus, Spanish Caboose - varsity football, robotics, biology, geometry

Freelancers

Mich (junior) - art, geography, gymnastics, Spanish, algebra, chemistry Wash (junior) - gymnastics, geography, French, business math, biology Tex (junior) - varsity volleyball, geography, wrestling, Spanish, business math, biology York (senior) - varsity football, chemistry, mechanics, algebra 2 Carolina (senior) - varsity volleyball, Spanish, trigonometry, physics North (senior) - wrestling, home economics/cooking, art, calculus, chemistry South (senior) - varsity volleyball, chemistry, French, calculus Delaware (junior) - track, health/nursing, French, business math Florida (junior) - French, gymnastics, chemistry, calculus CT (senior) - varsity volleyball, art, chemistry, algebra 2 Maine (senior) - wrestling, art, algebra 2, physics Indiana (junior) - cheerleader, gymnastics, art, chemistry, algebra California (junior) - band (saxophone), algebra, chemistry Nevada (senior) - band (flute), business math, physics Nebraska (junior) - theater, algebra, chemistry Ohio (junior) - cheerleader, art, chemistry, algebra Idaho (junior) - home economics/cooking, chemistry, algebra, Spanish Iowa (junior) - home economics/cooking, chemistry, algebra, French Missouri (junior) - cheerleader, algebra, chemistry, art Vermont (senior) - varsity football, physics, algebra 2, Spanish Niner (senior) - track, mechanics, calculus, physics Piper (junior) - mechanics, art, algebra 2, physics

Chorus Kimball (junior) - track, speech, algebra, biology Doyle (junior) - AP English, French, trigonometry, physics Dr. Grey (junior) - health/nursing, geometry, cheerleader, art Dr. Lana (junior) - health/nursing, algebra, band (clarinet) Palomo (freshman) - junior varsity volleyball, chemistry, pre-algebra, speech Jensen (freshman) - biology, mechanics, pre-algebra Bitters (freshman) - band (drums), pre-algebra, biology Andersmith (freshman) - junior varsity football, biology, pre-algebra, art Matthews (freshman) - theater, pre-algebra, biology Volleyball (freshman) - junior varsity volleyball, Spanish, pre-algebra, biology Val (freshman) - track, art, biology, pre-algebra Davies (freshman) - art, biology, pre-algebra Fleming (freshman) - robotics, biology, pre-algebra Miley (freshman) - biology, pre-algebra, art B. Munch (freshman) - creative writing, art, pre-algebra, biology Cassidy (freshman) - Spanish, pre-algebra, biology Kipp (freshman) - robotics, pre-algebra, biology Nova (freshman) - French, pre-algebra, biology A. Munch (sophomore) - chemistry, algebra, band (trumpet) Mercer (sophomore) - band (clarinet), geometry, chemistry Duff (sophomore) - theater, geometry, health/nursing Colling (sophomore) - ap biology, algebra, speech Jennings (sophomore) - creative writing, junior varsity volleyball, speech, geometry, ap biology Febo (freshman) - French, pre-algebra, biology Bridgers (freshman) - art, pre-algebra, biology Hayes (junior) - track, cheerleader, chemistry, business math Drossel (freshman) - biology, theater, pre-algebra Byrne (freshman) - geography, pre-algebra, biology, creative writing, Spanish

Mercs Felix (junior) - wrestling, speech, algebra, chemistry Locus (junior) - AP English, wrestling, Spanish student aid, art, algebra, chemistry Siris (senior) - mechanics, physics, calculus, track Sharkface (senior) - home economics/cooking student aid, chemistry, wrestling, art, calculus

Blues and Reds (juniors) Temple - speech, chemistry, algebra Buckey - French, chemistry, algebra Loco - mechanics, chemistry, algebra Gene - robotics, ap chemistry, geometry Surge - mechanics, wrestling, chemistry, algebra Cronut - theater, art, algebra, chemistry

Others Kai (freshman) - theater, pre-algebra, gymnastics, biology Jones (junior) - theater (directing assistant?), algebra, chemistry Andrews (senior) - student journalism(?), calculus, physics, Spanish One (junior) - track, chemistry, algebra, art East (junior) - track, chemistry, geometry, art Raymond (junior) - robotics, algebra, chemistry Tiny (junior) - mechanics, wrestling, algebra, chemistry Zero (senior) - speech, algebra 2, physics Phase (junior) - varsity volleyball, robotics, algebra, chemistry Diesel (senior) - mechanics, wrestling, algebra 2, physics

Teachers and Their Classes

Andy the bomb - chemistry Wyoming - English Illinois - geography Lopez - Spanish, mechanics/engineering (old) Sheila - regular P.E., volleyball coach miller - varsity football coach Genkins - trigonometry Jenkins - pre-algebra, algebra Chrovos (Ms. C) - physics Lemons - band Jones - track Johannes - junior varsity football coach Mickey - home economics/cooking VIC - theater Delta - precalculus, calculus, algebra 2 Sigma - French Theta - art Gamma - speech Epsilon - history Eta - cheerleading coach, gymnastics coach Iota - creative writing Omega/O'Malley - business math Tau - biology Santa - robotics West - wrestling coach Axel - mechanics/engineering (new) Utah - health/nursing

And that's what I have for my high school AU so far! I'm really excited to work on this one more and see where I can take it. If anyone has suggestions about this or any of the other AUs I will be posting about, don't be afraid to send an ask or discuss it in the posts!

Tagged: @queerchorus (if anyone else wants to be tagged in my AU posts, just tell me!)

[dastardlydandelion]

big ol’ borderline stream of consciousness ramble abt the karate soap opera

for awhile i couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that *rly* bothered me abt ck s4 and now by george, i think i’ve got it. ck s4 is the show i had expected cobra kai to be when i first came across it: flashy nostalgia bait centering style over substance.

and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. i think errbody has their own brand of preferred schlock, whether that be cheesy romcoms, goofy b-horror, slapstick comedy, etc. but the thing abt cobra kai is that it began (imo, anyway) better than it had to be to get an audience and now it’s...not.

more rambling under the cut:

i don’t want to be all negative. actually it’s kinda hard to reconcile my mixed feelings abt s4 bc like, the things that i did like?? i REALLY liked! and i’m gonna lead with what i liked rn so i don’t sound like some stabby crabby cranky pants. 🦀🔪

i greatly enjoyed the subplot with amanda and tory. i am so relieved the show finally acknowledged just how much strain tory is under being a teenage girl with head of household responsibilities struggling against poverty in one of the most expensive places to live in the usa. i love that amanda had this huge change of heart when she realized just how much tory was dealing with, that she went from wanting to put her in jail to offering her hand.

i actually thought it was well-written too. amanda doesn’t let tory off the hook for breaking into her house and terrorizing her daughter, she still calls her out on that, but she also realizes the depth of the factors motivating that behavior. she realizes outright charity (buying tory the groceries) is NOT the way to go with tory, so she changes tactics. amanda tells tory the help is there if she needs it, offering her support but putting the ball in tory’s court. this is good for tory, it respects her agency (she clearly has a lot of pride, pained pride tho it is, wrapped up in her status as provider/caregiver) and also challenges her, in a way, to have to be the one responsible for her choice to reach out.

i appreciated amanda having smth to do outside of being daniel’s wife or sam’s mom. i liked the insight into the backstory that she shared with daniel, that she relates to tory’s very helpless kind of anger bc she too lashed out when she was young and angry to no avail. amanda smashing up her tutor’s car didn’t change the outcome with of her parents’ divorce. tory can hurt sam all she wants, and it won’t make her circumstances any less unfair. 

ik there were some complaints that this storyline was more tellling-than-showing but on this point, i’m personally satisfied. i’m fine with having amanda encourage tory to get therapy but not actually seeing tory in the therapist’s office bc imho, the impact was shown. we see tory change as a character. she becomes determined to win the avt to prove she can rather than any desire to maim someone, and she genuinely wanted to win it fairly. the tory of s2 and s3 wouldn’t have hesitated to elbow sam in the face on purpose, and she definitely wouldn’t have cared abt sam's welfare after the match.

on that note, i actually liked the way tory and sam’s rivalry was depicted, for the most part? ngl i’m not a big fan that the tory/robby romance actually happened. i can admit i’m biased on that point bc i don’t particularly care for romance in general and i’m irritated that for female characters in media specifically it feels like there always *has* to be an obligatory hetero romance, that male writers don’t know what to do with female characters if they aren’t prioritizing males or being with males, this idea that girls and women are supposed to care abt romance, that romance *must* be important for them, that their stories *must* include it, etc...but then it also, just. for me it feels cheap to keep pairing tory off with sam’s exes. as if that’s somehow necessary to stoke the coals between them. 🙄

but having said that, the tory/robby thing wasn’t nearly as obnoxious as i expected it to be. it wasn’t rushed. it wasn’t the driving force behind sam and tory’s tension. tory wasn’t reduced to arm candy in this scenario, like i worried she was going to be, she still had a story and development outside of him.

i’ve seen some ppl unhappy with sam’s behavior toward tory this season and declaring it ooc but tbh i understand it. does that make it okay? fuck no. but does it make sense for sam? uh, yeah?

tory left scars in her arm. the s3 finale had tory not only breaking into her home but attacking sam when she was on the floor, non-combative, visibly terrified. sam’s never tried to understand tory as a person so she just views her as this raging obstacle she needs to overcome. sam doesn’t truly understand that tory is in pain so she doesn’t have any sympathy for her. because of her privilege, sam doesn’t understand why tory NEEDS her job. sam doesn’t comprehend the potential consequences of tory losing her job, therefore she has no issue instigating conflict with her while she’s on the clock. from sam’s pov, tory is hardly a person, just this horrible thing that happened to her, so she has no problem treating her like that-- just some horrible thing. and as awful as that all is, it makes sense for sam!!

i don’t hate her for it, while i don’t approve of her behavior, i 100% understand where it’s coming from. sam hates tory and johnny’s influence-- with his encouraging sam’s aggression this season --emboldened her to strike first. and i actually enjoyed the way the final fight went between sam and tory. 

sam was genuinely shocked (and from her pov, ofc she was) that tory asked if she was okay after the match. i’m hoping this might lead to them mending fences come s5, altho i don’t ever expect them to be besties.

uh...am i getting off topic? where was i?

oh, the parts that i liked. yeah! yeah, actually, i was happily surprised by the route tory and sam’s rivalry went this season and while i wasn’t thrilled with the tory/robby romance, i was relieved it didn’t drive that rivalry or eclipse tory as a character.

i wish i could say i liked sam’s solo development as much as tory’s, bc i did like the beats of it. on paper i could enjoy that sam’s development was a rocky one with some of her being a big jerk as she learns (under johnny’s tutelage) to nourish her aggression and eventually comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t have to fight exactly the way her dad does, but. the execution of that development left much to be desired bc of some of this season’s more obnoxious flaws, but right now i’m rambling abt what i did like, so that brings us to...

kenny payne!!!

omfg, i love him sm. he instantly became one of my faves. i would kill anthony larusso for this precious dorky sunbeam. ik some ppl were frustrated with the introduction of new characters this season and the focus it took away from the main characters. and that’s fair. but imo the subplot with kenny suited the overreaching themes of ck. and he’s so much fun as a character. i love that he’s shawn’s brother! i love that we got to see shawn again even tho it was only for like, ten seconds. robby also going into big brother mode for kenny was so cute? 

as a horror fan, i freaking loved that kenny went into g-rated slasher mode in that library. strategically separating his bullies and taking them down one by one by utilizing his environment and popping outta the shadows?? that was so fun.

i adore kenny, that was great, my second fave storyline after the amanda + tory storyline.

what other storylines did i like?

um, ykw, i actually appreciated miguel’s. i think i’m in the minority on that one, at least as far as the engaged fandom goes. but i did. i liked watching him expand his skillset training with daniel. i felt his and daniel’s bonding was sweet and genuine. i’m not hugely surprised johnny began to let him down, nor what that accumulated in. xolo’s a phenomenal actor, i think scenes that easily could’ve been stupid (the fish scene comes to mind) or sappy (episode 8 comes to mind) never actually crossed that line bc the guy gives such a good performance.

i actually thought miggy’s struggles, while quieter and less dynamic than the karate war, were thoughtfully depicted and some of the better writing this season. he feels awkward having dinner with his gf’s rich family, at their fancy encino place. he doesn’t come from money and doesn’t have the security of college guaranteed the way she does. he loves johnny and he wants his mom to be happy so he doesn’t outright object to them dating even though he’s dubious abt the changes this will undoubtedly introduce into his life. he’s still grappling in the aftermath of a serious injury and while it’s not addressed as much as it should be, granted, we do see it impacting his behavior.

miguel tricking cobra kai into going to the baseball diamond to get sprayed with sprinklers in lieu of having a brawl, wasn’t just prompted by his taking daniel’s teachings to heart. it’s also bc he’s intimately aware of how bad a fight can get when there are no mats to fall on, no ref there to step in. more than anyone, miguel understands that all it takes is *one* poorly timed kick to result in grave consequences.

ik there’s much disappointment surrounding miggy choosing to opt out of the avt and even more ppl rolling their eyes at his sudden soapy departure to find his long lost dad but tbvh, i don’t think it’s bad storytelling in context. i think he made the right choice for himself opting out the fight, prioritizing his health despite the pressure johnny was putting on him to get back in there. i think miguel realized he was being used, it made him feel like shit, and he said, ‘no, not today.’ taking off outta the country to go find his dad is defo a soap opera move but rly, errything he wrote in his letter makes sense and a dramatic exit is hardly the wildest thing that’s ever happened on ck...

is there anything else that i liked??

ik i’m getting kinda off topic bc i started this with the realization of what it was that bothered me so much abt s4, but like i said, i didn’t want to be totally negative. bc there were defo things i enjoyed abt s4 and i didn’t hate it...but ig i’ve said all the positive things i had to say, so. 😔

let’s get my first big disappointment outta the way. and a lot of this is more subjective on my part (albeit, i’ll work my way to the more objective stuff), but. here we are.

MARKETING TEAM OVER-HYPED TF OUTTA TERRY SILVER.

i waited months for this psychotic, cartoonishly evil motherfucker and that was all i got??

ahjgsajhgfjhgfhjgf. the trailer! they released that dramatic af trailer where terry just stands there, back to the screen, with his monologue from tkk3 playing as he menacingly cracks his neck. at the end of the trailer, the threat right there in the font boasts, “now the real pain begins.”

what a fucking crock!!! you assholes!! false advertisement! false advertisement i say, false advertisement, there was no pain for anyone but stingray and it didn’t even happen until the end of the season!

okay, okay, this is defo more subjective on my part but u guys see where i’m at, right? the team leaned so hard into marketing terry’s return but come s4 he didn’t rly do all that much until the end. it was a letdown.

but there were things that bothered me abt terry’s return, not just as a viewer let down by my own personal expectations, but from a writing standpoint.

uh. mm. they’re. they’re doing the kreese redemption arc. jfc, they’re rly gonna do it. they’re setting it up. the most they used terry this season was to help set it up. 🤢

i am not the first person to point this out. there are plenty of fans who have already pointed this out. there are plenty of fans who have already eloquently and thoroughly delved into why 1) a kreese redemption arc is not a great idea to begin with and 2) the how and now of it makes it worse. so i’m not going to rant a whole lot abt it, but i will summarize some of my thoughts on it.

personally? i think it’s a betrayal to the karate kid franchise to have a redemption arc for kreese at all. i didn’t mind s2 fleshing out a bit more of his personality since he was so one-dimensional in the karate kid movies. and i didn’t even mind making him a tad sympathetic bc even pos ppl can fall on hard times and it’s human nature to empathize, but. i think it’s important that kreese was the character that he was: a militant, merciless, manipulative macho-man bully who molded students to create violent conflict bc that’s what he knew and what he liked. he was supposed to be that foil to mr. miyagi, a protective, kind, nurturing handyman who kept his medals hidden and stowed away bc war was the worst part of his life. 

the means in which they’re setting up the redemption arc for kreese that shouldn’t be happening are nonsensical and just plain repetitive. in order to set up that redemption, not only have we effectively retconned who kreese was supposed to be in the movies, but we’ve retconned the dynamics of his and terry’s relationship. not once in tkk3 did kreese ever hold vietnam over terry’s head. terry was the one who invited him in, terry was the one who brought up kreese saving him in the war, and bringing it up didn’t bother terry a bit.

i don’t rly mind that in ck s4 we get the reveal that terry was all coked up throughout tkk3. i mean. it was the 80s. and it would defo explain his, uh, energy, lmao. no, the part that i mind is that, like...ck is trying to pin all of terry’s insane behavior on the cocaine. bruh. no. i’m sorry, but no, lmfao. plenty of ppl snort blow without dumping toxic waste in borneo and strategically preying upon teenage boys to force them into karate tournaments.

...tkk3 sure was a trip, huh?

uh, shit, am i getting off track again? no, no, i got it. okay, so in s2 kreese is the big bad behind cobra kai. johnny is misguided and flawed, but well-intentioned, and kreese keeps encouraging increasingly aggressive and violent behavior in the cobra kai kids. johnny is weak for kreese bc at the end of the day, he loves him, and there are the lingering power dynamics between them, johnny having spent his formative yrs as kreese’s pupil and looking up to kreese as a father figure as well as mentor. s2 ends in kreese stealing the dojo out from under johnny.

in s4, terry re-joins cobra kai. he is shown being the big bad behind kreese, who is bad but not as good at it as terry, psychologically intimidating daniel in one of the few scenes we get where their dynamic is explicitly acknowledged, nearly attacking a bratty robby at the avt, bribing the ref at the avt, and beating a guy half to death. s4 ends in terry stealing the dojo out from under kreese.

it’s the same story!! literally. this happened before. what should i expect in the s5 finale, mike barnes to come back to be the bigger bad behind terry and steal the dojo from terry? is that gonna be the s5 finale?

and speaking of finales, the gravity of the s3 finale is never grappled with in s4 and that is just terrible writing, honestly. kreese tried to KILL johnny. like, he srsly tried to KILL him and we aren’t talking abt that, bc???

uh? idfk! that was pretty important, u figure we would’ve addressed that and yet, no??

it is beyond me that it was just swept under the rug so casually. attempted murder is serious? u shouldn’t bring something like that into ur story if ur not willing to write the ramifications. why was that even in the s3 if it was smth that was never going to be brought up again, let alone dealt with? it makes kreese’s poorly set up redemption arc which shouldn’t be happening feel like an afterthought as well as a betrayal of the source material. like, kreese almost killing johnny in the s3 finale was smth they’re trying to walk back for the purpose of setting the foundation for this redemption no one wanted. 

speaking of johnny, why is he getting stupider? ik he was always kinda dumb, but jfc. is it the accumulation of concussions or smth??

or it’s not just johnny, ig, it’s like, this season felt so extrodinarily stupid in so many ways?

i’m not gonna pretend this show was ever an intellectual masterpiece, but good lord. this season they’re actually acting like cobra kai/eagle fang students and miyagi-do students only learn offense and defensive respectively? we’re pretending that johnny doesn’t know how to block and daniel never taught strikes??

that was so fucking stupid, watching it felt like getting my own concussion. once again, other fans have already pointed this out and delved into it more thoroughly than i will now. but i’m going to touch on it anyway because this was such a low point in the show that i simply cannot revisit s4 without addressing it.

KARATE IS KARATE. and yeah, for sure, there are different ways to approach a match utilizing offense/defense, more aggressive and less aggressive styles, but. it’s not like one dojo exclusively practiced offensive moves and the other exclusively practiced defense. for fuck’s sake, the very first thing daniel ever taught robby was how to throw a proper punch!!

speaking of daniel and robby, what happened to that relationship? it practically dissolved into thin air and that’s disappointing, to say the least. daniel used to care abt this kid so much he trained him, took him in, paid for his mother’s rehab, teamed up with someone he loathed to find him when he went on the run, but this season, he didn’t even try for him? daniel had exactly one meaningful interaction with robby where he warned him abt terry and that was it?

idk. it feels wrong to me. actually, i’m frustrated that ck just breezed over errything that transpired in tkk3. daniel was stalked, manipulated, and terrorized by terry for months. his relationship with mr. miyagi suffered for it and he became someone he didn’t want to be, and that’s important bc all of it informs how he responds to terry. and yet. viewers who have only seen ck are never privy to that context, bc besides the *brief* conversation with robby, none of that is ever addressed at all. ur audience should understand the motivations of ur main characters. by failing to address any of this, it sucks the context out of daniel’s behavior.

and i’m all the more frustrated having read some of the writers’ commentary abt the one scene where terry was “apologizing,” to daniel bc, uh. according to these asshats writers daniel’s refusal to accept this half-baked apology from terry is somehow a mistake on his part, yet also the the trigger for terry’s intensified hostility. i’m not even joking, they’re framing daniel as being at fault for not accepting this “apology” even tho it rly wasn’t an earnest apology IF it set terry off. which they also said in the same breath. i’m??

that’s. that’s fucked up. i don’t know else to put it.

what’s also fucked up is that yes, according to the writers, daniel scaring anthony into submission was meant to be portrayed as a good thing. it was meant to portray daniel accepting johnny’s aggressive approach to problems as a good thing. daniel silencing his son and breaking his ipad to scare him into obedience is supposed to be appreciated by us viewers. 

this is not only a frightening, but frankly baffling choice to me. portraying a parent achieving the desired outcome thru violent behavior (breaking things is violence, breaking things is a coercive tactic meant to intimidate and instill fear, always) is bad enough, but for this to be a scene meant to demonstrate daniel embracing johnny’s approach? in the context of parenting??

WTAF. BBY!ROBBY ONLY KNEW JOHNNY EXISTED BC OF A FUCKING VHS TAPE. JOHNNY IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM A GOOD PARENT.

the more i think abt it, the more this scene bothers me. it’s nonsensical bc johnny is a shit parent and daniel should not be modeling his behavior when it comes to fatherhood. and that we’re meant to take away satisfaction from this scene-- from a parent intimidating their child into obedience thru a display of violence --makes me so uncomfortable. and that it’s daniel?? well this just...is it dramatic to say it breaks my heart?

because it kind of does. 😢

cobra kai has steadily been erasing daniel’s gentleness or outright mocking it and i hate it so much. in season 3, they chose to cut out the scenes of daniel worrying abt robby and daniel dancing with kumiko. they’re good scenes! they’re important scenes! how could they cut that?

daniel was a beloved character in the karate kid bc of his gentleness. bc he gave an old dog a bowl of water in the summer heat. bc he was sweet to ali and covered his bruises just to spare his mother stress. bc he tended to bonsai trees and put his drunken sensei to bed on a bad night, gingerly tucked him in.

even in earlier seasons of ck where he’s defo grown up to be smth of a prick and a class traitor, daniel’s gentleness is why viewers sympathized with him in spite of it. he took a troubled kid under his wing with sensitivity and good humor, imparted the most important lessons he himself was ever taught. didn’t push robby to finish in the 2018 avt when he was injured (like johnny just did to miggy), told robby it was okay to bow out, encouraged him to let go of his anger toward johnny. we had flashbacks of daniel and bby!sam, so excited to share his karate with her, hugging her with enthusiasm and love. daniel comforting sam when she begins having panic attacks, daniel learning to have patience with demetri thru his relentless neuroticism, and now??

now daniel’s tenderness is mocked like it’s a weakness not just by johnny, but by the narrative. so much so, the audience is actually meant to take away that the version of daniel who breaks his son’s things is superior??

i genuinely hate this. it leaves the worst taste in my mouth.

since i’ve covered the daniel of s4, ig it’s only sensible that we talk abt johnny next. uh. ykw, ngl, i’ve never particularly cared for this character. he’s amusing, yeah, and his relationship with miguel was so genuinely heartfelt that i actually wanted to root for him even tho he makes it so hard. but it is hard. and the fact that the little character development he did have just up and vanished makes it that much harder??

like, it did vanish, right?? in s1 and s2 i feel like there was some tangible growth for johnny. even tho it was subtle, quiet, it was there. then in s3, he kinda stagnated?? he helped miguel along the road to recovery, that was good, but?? did we rly get any growth from him beyond that? nothing sticks out in my mind. but even a lil bit of stagnation wasn’t rly a dealbreaker for me with this character, that’s how it is irl most of the time. growth is slow. meaningful change most often takes time.

but in s4, it’s like we’re completely back to square one with johnny. dare i say he’s even worse? the misogyny (and borderline homophobia) was dripping from his fucking pores. i can’t believe episode 6 was smth i actually had to sit thru. i can’t believe i was supposed to find it funny. and he made no effort for robby whatsoever??

like, he knew robby was with kreese and daniel presumably told him who terry was (offscreen, so good luck ck-only fans who haven’t seen tkk3 tryna figure that one out) and he?? never checked on him? like at least in prior seasons he made a minimal effort here and there. it was never enough and it was aggravating that johnny continually had the audacity to act like his teenage son was in the wrong for not embracing him with open arms after yrs of neglect, but like!! at least he tried here and there. johnny wanted robby to move in with him at one point. he opened his door for robby when sam was drunk af and bought him some school supplies. in s4 his son is living with two war criminals (one of which tried to KILL him last season) and he does not shit abt it??

okay. then, like, the one thing that johnny has been doing a consistently good (or at least decent) job at-- his relationship with miguel --he just fucking flushed down the toilet. he made little missteps all thru s4, but the finale??

jfc. miguel got hurt and he cried out for johnny, spooked and in pain, and mere minutes later johnny’s putting the pressure on there to get back out and win? not just putting pressure on him, he tried to manipulate him. miguel sat there and dead ass listened to johnny try to pull a kreese on him. and all of this happened after miggy put his drunken ass to bed and told him he loved him just hear, “i love you too, robby.”

and this is where i go back to actually appreciating miguel’s arc this season. even if he had felt up to competing physically, i wouldn’t have wanted him to. not after that. good for miguel for prioritizing himself the moment he realized he was being used...but that’s wherein johnny’s development really just sped back in reverse, for me.

the one thing i could consistently appreciate abt this drunk, stupid asshole of a character was how much he cared abt miguel and how much he tried to learn from his mistakes for miguel’s sake. and then he tried to use him. he actually put the stupid karate war above miguel’s welfare.

and all of that? all of the above, johnny’s backtracking? i could’ve dealt with it if the narrative didn’t reward him for it. sometimes character development is negative instead of positive. that’s not necessarily bad storytelling. but what i feel is bad storytelling is when the character development is negative and the character in question is rewarded as if it had been positive. we’re not supposed to find johnny’s misogyny and obsession with hypermasculinity off-putting, no, we’re supposed to be amused by it. sam isn’t offended, she tacitly consents, offering a smile. we aren’t supposed to find fault with johnny for being a negligent father all season, oh no, bc robby shows up at the end to tearfully embrace him anyway!

btw, this is smth else the writers had stupid shit to say abt. bruh, they did some interview or whatevs (i don’t feel like digging up the links right now, bc i’m just venting, but maybe i’ll go pull ‘em up later) where they more or less put the onus of mending that relationship on robby. some nonsense abt his being able to empathize with the trials of mentoring bc of kenny and understanding johnny better now. bc that makes sense, right?? it’s the teenager’s job to go comfort his father bc he understands that mentoring kids is hard. ajhsgfjhgfjshdgfjs. christ. 

okay, so that brings us to robby...robby...what do i have to say abt robby?

anything else positive before i’m ranting like a stab crab?? already touched on him playing big bro for kenny, that was cute. oh, uh, ykw, i actually liked the fight with hawk! for the most part, anyway.

for starters, i liked that it was robby vs hawk, the elusive rematch pushed to the backburner for the most part, in the face of more overt rivalries. robby and his “dO yOu WaNt tO fIgHt HiM?” snark at terry when the match started to drag out, oof. terry’s brief moment of homicidal rage might’ve been his best moment all season (second to him kicking the shit outta johnny). so that confirmed what i’ve suspected since the kid picked up a cobra with his bare hands, robby rly does have no sense of self-preservation. 😂

i’m glad that hawk won!!! unlike a lot of fans, i didn’t rly mind hawk joining miyagi-do conceptually. i 100% believe the execution was poor, rushed, and left much to be desired, so it fell somewhat flat for me, but i don’t hate the idea of it. i wish it would’ve been better executed but i was still happy that he got his win. i just...don’t understand why they took their tops off. omfg, that was so silly. i did laugh. if they wanted me to take the fight seriously, bad job, but. it was funny, at least. nonetheless hawk’s win would’ve felt more satisfying if his arc wasn’t rushed and he wasn’t more or less pressured into miyagi-do by demetri.

bc that’s what happened. and that was shitty. ‘mi showed up at his house all like, “well we need a male champion and ur the only one with a shot, lol.” which is, um. that was a choice.

actually the more i linger on this, the more i’m thinking abt it, the more it’s bothering me? that could’ve been a rly good storyline, a rly solid arc for hawk if it was set up the right way. but it wasn’t. i find it dumb that daniel, of all ppl, who has been so staunchly anti-bullying barely bat an eye at what happened to him, so that rly puts a cloud over hawk joining miyagi-do for me, even tho on paper this could’ve been smth i could’ve rly dug.

uh, ig i ranted more abt hawk than i was gonna rant abt robby, not that i have too much to rant abt. the things i find fault with in his story weren’t rly bc of him, per se like my aforementioned beef abt johnny being narratively rewarded by their reunion when he did not shit all season. i personally don’t find it ooc that robby sought him out, like i’ve seen some fans express. i don’t think johnny earned that reunion at all, but robby is a teenage boy starved for attention, so. it still makes sense from his perspective to go follow his dad when he was feeling particularly low after the avt. if anything was ooc it could’ve been robby verbally throwing the school fight in miguel’s face even tho he’d clearly been disturbed by what he did, and was remorseful at the start of s3.

BUT kreese has been in his ear since then, so imo it's not wild to think he would’ve changed his mindset around the fight. that’s what kreese did with tory, too-- she was feeling guilty for starting the fight bc of how it ended but then kreese wormed his way in and gave her an out from the guilt, pushed her to redirect her blame and focus more on the unfairness of her punishment. i’m just gonna go ahead and assume he did the same with robby, he was already starting to when he visited robby in juvie. i can fill in the blanks on that one, so i don’t particularly consider it ooc even tho i understand where the sentiment comes from-- it is certainly a sharp turn from the stupefied look on robby’s face after miguel fell.

but on that note, there is smth else i have an issue with. the telling instead of showing with robby’s living situation. i wouldn’t have mined if it wasn’t important to the story, but it was, okay, like. he was living at the dojo. it was important that he was living at the dojo, bc it set the stage for him to join cobra kai and left him especially vulnerable to kreese’s manipulation. we, as an audience, should’ve been SHOWN what happened with shannon and robby’s new living situation.

that too, like?? when tf did shannon get out of rehab?? why weren’t we shown her reunion with her son? did she go looking for him at daniel’s place? did she ever learn he was more or less homeless, sleeping at the dojo?? is she actually prioritizing robby now that she’s been thru treatment? what’s his perspective on any of this? does he forgive her? are they building trust again? or is he just staying with her bc it’s better than sleeping at the dojo?

we’re told but NOT shown that terry is paying for shannon’s living expenses. how. when. why. terry always has an angle, how’d he hook shannon?

this is so frustrating bc it actually should’ve been important with the way the story had been set up, and yet, it felt like an afterthought. thrown together.

speaking of relationships gone unacknowledged, i’m. mm. okay how much more do i rly need to talk abt daniel and robby?? i already ranted abt that, but the seeming dissolution of the existence of that relationship makes robby’s scene with anthony at the avt bittersweet. this scene acknowledges that robby had a relationship with the larussos! it takes him aback to learn that anthony is kenny’s bully. he was concerned for both kenny and anthony, he wanted to talk to him. yes, good!! good, but it also makes me want to pull my hair out bc the rest of the season p much played out as if robby had never lived with the larussos at all. 

so here i am now gonna rant abt another scene that was so bittersweet and frustrating for me. sam’s scene with aisha. on the one hand i don’t hate that aisha gave sam a pep talk conceptually bc 1) they were childhood friends and 2) it paralleled sam giving aisha a pep talk at the 2018 avt. no, what i hate is that this talk completely forgot the existence of aisha and tory’s friendship and even worse than that, IT WAS THE ONLY THING AISHA WAS HERE FOR. 😡

that’s so shitty and maddening. and tbh it feels racist that the writers brought back a fan-favorite black character just to uplift her white friend. that was aisha’s only purpose for the three minutes we had her back, to give sam encouragement. it feels like an especially glaring flaw when opening up the girls’ division would’ve been a PERFECT opportunity to bring aisha back as a character!!

i’m still pissed off they wrote her out in the first place. the actress was told the writers couldn’t think of anything for aisha to do and that’s why she was written out, and i’m not over it, i’ll never be over it. i have no fucking clue how they came to that decision to begin with considering aisha was cobrai kai’s second student, but nonetheless, s4 presented a golden opportunity to rectify that stupid ass decision-- johnny wanting to find a female champion.

frankly, re-recruiting aisha for eagle-fang would’ve been better writing than johnny trying to recruit new girls who had no karate experience whatsoever. it also would’ve saved us the godawful secondhand embarrassment that was episode six. don’t get me wrong, i adore devon, but it’s just ridiculous that she was training for only six wks and able to compete against experienced, seasoned students in the avt.

and it’s not like ck has never been ridiculous, nor that it’s neccessarily bad when it’s ridiculous. but there’s a difference between fun ridiculousness and just plain stupid ridiculousness.

there was some just straight up stupid shit this season, and this is where i finally get to my point. johnny training kids by having them jump off buildings is very stylish. it’s flashy. it feels like insanity considering that miguel was left in a coma and literally had to re-learn to walk after being kicked two stories down. there was so much of that this season: style. the sheer badassery of robby taking down erry ck student without anyone (barring tory) able to land a single hit. the fight at the prom, synchronized couples kicking ass in fancy suits and pretty dresses. the opulant entrance of terry silver, ever a ham even if under-utilized to the nth. the avt, students showing off their skills in slow-mo, each one-on-one match like smth outta wwe payperview. daniel using the mystical pressure point technique in his rematch with johnny. that rematch was purely smth this season also had no shortage of: nostalgia. daniel and johnny on the mat once more. the flashbacks to the og movies. strong classic rock soundtrack. terry’s very entry into the story. chozen’s second return at mr. miyagi’s gravesite.

this season felt like it was just...full of that. fun stuff. and the fun stuff was fun, don’t get me wrong. but what i truly, wholeheartedly enjoyed abt cobra kai when i first started it??

that it was more than the fun stuff. that there was actually something meaty there, miguel being a parallel to daniel and robby being one to johnny, then the two of them swapping roles bc the sweet, even-tempered boy gets trained ‘STRIKE FIRST STRIKE HARD NO MERCY’ and the troubled truant gets trained ‘karate can help u achieve balance and inner peace, if ur going to fight, then fight honorably.’

there was smth more there, in the way johnny had to confront his past as a bully seeing miguel bloodied and broken and limp, the same way he’d once left daniel larusso. in the way johnny had to see the toxicity of kreese’s teachings play out at the avt, watching his son get massacred by cheap tactics and poor sportsmanship at the hands of his own students, getting swatted off by robby when he went to him bc good intentions aren’t enough anymore, not after 16 yrs.

then season two came along and it was just as good imho, there was character development, the relationship between johnny and kreese felt very realistic whilse remaining true to the og movies. daniel was trying way too hard to be mr. miyagi and it was annoying, but we understood why. my favorite character was introduced and ofc she would latch onto cobra kai’s teachings, the world has been nothing but merciless toward her, why wouldn’t she embrace the dojo that promises her she can be just as merciless?? that she can strike back, strike first?? altho the subtext of class relations between tory and sam wasn’t explored as thoroughly as it could’ve been, it was still compelling in the way it shaped their rivalry. there was much to read between the lines there.

the first two seasons felt more thematic. like we were actually consistently engaging with these things beneath the surface, that intergenational trauma errbody is so sick of hearing abt, the culture of bullying kids sturggle against, the potential for competitive violence to be taken too far, the trappings of hypermasculinity, the lifelong impact our mentors (good or bad) can have, etc. and it was still goof. hell, it was ridiculous. but it was ridiculous with these moments of brilliance and underlying depth. neither the nostalgia nor the style ever eclipsed the show.

s3 felt rly plot-driven. very dynamic finale. i had my issues with it, but. it still felt like a continuation of the first two seasons for the most part, still had underlying depth. there were tangible consquences from the s2 finale (stark contrast of how the s3 finale had no fallout or lasting consequences). robby on the run. miggy in a coma. tory on probation. sam with ptsd, also suffering ostracization from her peers bc she isn’t percieved as cool or tough like the boys in the brawl, she’s percieved as crazy. this season leaned a little too hard into the “three sides to every story,” angle for me. and ofc no season of any show is going to be flawless, but this bothered me particularly bc this is where it felt like the narrative truly began to push the idea that johnny and daniel were equally at fault for the events of the karate kid. uh. no, just no. daniel was ganged up on and assaulted several times. johnny targetted him just for talking to ali, ali who johnny also put in a scary lose-lose situation wherein her boundaries were violated and she was coerced into interacting with him bc otherwise, daniel’s safety was at stake. all actions on daniel’s part were retaliatory.

now here in s4, it seemed like the style/nostalgia/fun elements in cobra kai prioritized over *almost* errything that had previously been compelling (i maintain that the high points of s4 were indeed high points). cobra kai was always a stupid karate show, but at least it used to be a stupid karate show with strong heart. now it’s a stupid karate show with an arrythmia.

[olivcrfm]

hello! this is my stupid naive child with a heart of gold oliver !  i’m very excited to about him, so pls give me all of your affection & plots 🥺  i wrote like a whole novel under the cut because i had this man for like a year now, so please bare with me

chicago’s very own oliver park-davies has been spotted on madison avenue driving a maroon jeep wrangler , welcome ! your resemblance to charles melton is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty fourth birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re withdrawn, but being empathetic might help you . i think being a cancer explains that . 3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be lazy mornings in bed, getting the job done at the last minute, & a soft voice  . ( i stole the test answers for my college finals to impress my parents ) & ( cis male & he/him) + ( hailey , 19 , she/her, cst)

— “ basics ! ’ 〉

full name. oliver park-davies.

nicknames. oli, ollie, park, davies obviously lmao.

age. twenty-four.

date of birth. june 26.

occupation. singer/songwriter.

sexual orientation. bisexual.

birthplace. new york.

zodiac. cancer.

spoken languages. fluent in too many languages thank you.

— “ backstory! ’ 〉

oliver park-davies was born in chicago to two extremely loving parents, and his seven other siblings of which he was the oldest, they were this gigantic loving family, and everybody wanted to be like them

okay well when i say loving i mean that’s how they appeared on the outside, his family was very broken, his parents constantly on the edge of divorce, him and his siblings didn’t get along at all, and in the park-davies house there was always something to argue about

the park-davies were billionaires, this was due to their extremely successful business endeavors, and knew when and where to invest their money they had enough money to buy whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, they never looked at the price tag, to quote ariana grande, “they want it, they got it.” their business headquarters is in texas! and oliver’s parents constantly just left him n his siblings in chicago while they went to texas

but he spent his summers their and it’s basically home away from home

his parents often tried to basically bribe their kids to love them because they were honestly the worst, they often emotionally abused their children, and neglected them, and the only time that their parents did want anything to do with them is when they needed to make a public appearance

was very much the rich kid that raised by nannies and butlers rather than his actual parents, and in a weird way he sorta became this surrogate parent for his siblings, he was the one they looked up to and came to for advice that sorta thing

oliver,,,just needed something anything to take his mind of it, so immediately he threw himself into studying and books, and to quote matilda, “the books gave him a comforting message...you are not alone.”

his parents ended up figuring out that their son was smart, like hella smart, by 10 he’d mastered latin, and by 11 he was already reading at college level

bUT despite being able to graduate college by 12 at the rate he was going he wanted as normal of a childhood as possible, and so he continued with his regular grade level, and tried his best to be ‘normal’

honestly his love of books got to the point that his room essentially turned into a small library of it’s own, it got to the point where his parents reluctantly gave him his own room to house all of his books

books weren’t the only thing that oliver found his passion for, when he enrolled in his school’s choir, he realized his love for singing

he wanted to share his music with people without having the recognition, so he uploaded a lot of his music to soundcloud under an alias ( vc: conan gray / cavetown i can’t decide yet lmao rip )

he gained a massive following, that not even he expected, which would seem like a great thing if he wasn’t expected by his parents to take on the family business

one day his parents sat him down and he saw it a good a time as ever to tell his parents about the success he hoped to gain from singing, his parents cut him off immediately and told him that his father was suffering from cancer

due to his revelation his parents ostracized him more than they did before, and slowly but surely he began to be iced out, no longer showing up in appearances, and just avoiding any press altogether

as his father got increasingly more sick, oliver began to realize the mistake that he made, and on his death bed oliver promised his father that he would do as both of his parents wished and take over the family business

oliver had the scores to get to any school that he wanted and decided on business school at columbia, where his father was an alumni, the agreement that he had with his mother was that once he graduated he’d begin shadowing his mother to learn to run the company

the school and the city itself was immediately overwhelming to my boy who came from not so humble beginnings in his small town, and he was unsure of where he belonged in this huge school

until!!!!! he found friends!!!! and they made him feel accepted!!! and it was great!!!!

once his friends heard his voice and of his dreams they encouraged him to join the university’s men’s choir, and was prompted by the director to join the university’s theatre department, where he appeared in a overwhelming majority of the school’s plays and musicals

he was discovered one night at this open mic thing he went to and it was great! he was signed to a record deal with a label! and my bby’s dreams were finally coming true!!!

lmao but the one condition that he did have for his label was that he had to graduate school first, and it was accepted

he graduated early! because of course he did only because he stole the test answers because his grades were sorta declining and finals were coming up sooo

his mom was expecting him to come back to texas and maintain the family business, but he pulled a whole uno reverse card, and ended up disappearing from whatever world it is that him mom lived in

he became pretty successful in the music industry, coming from this cool indie artist that only about a few hundred people knew about to this seemingly overnight sensation

my bb is still v e r y unused to the attention, mostly because his parents never gave it to him and he was like, adoration???? attention??? care??? what’s that

has recently started a band! consisting of people he met a columbia, so him, a guy friend, and olivia dkfsjdkj guy friend remains unnamed because it’s a wc

— “ personality / headcanons ! ’ 〉

is a huge dork that just loves to make people smile and when he sees people genuinely happy his heart melts a little bit inside

is very much the shoulder to cry on for people, and even if he doesn’t know you he’ll sit and listen to your whole life story and just try to cheer you up because that’s just in his nature?

has started his acting career! first it was just cute small little cameos in movies and tv shows, but now it’s turned into him getting his own show!!! he couldn’t be more excited tbh

remember how i said that he’d sit and listen to a stranger cry? if he shows even the slightest bit of emotion that isn’t happiness he starts malfunctioning and just trying to make the people around him happy

he’s honestly probably said, “alright i have to go back to being funny again.” to himself so many times before??? he’s so broken on the inside but has just put up so many barriers

despite the many walls he has to protect himself from other people, he’s just the nicest purest soul, he treats everyone like his family, and just has the insatiable need to be liked dkkfkdkd, pls be fragile with my boy thanks

ollie is left-handed

loves singing show tunes and has gone to too many shows on broadway????

has a special room for playbills because he likes getting them signed and they’re very important to him

hates talking about his family and will probably cry if you make him bring them up lmao

he’s such a himbo ... just kind , beefy , and stupid

he often just dumbs himself down, not because he thinks he’s better than other or something weird like that, buuuut he feels like people will judge him and make fun of him like others did when he was younger

— “ wanted plots ! ’ 〉

some potential wc i’m terrible at thinking of these so please don’t feel limited by this list!

best friends!!!!

roommates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! think this, this, this, this

guys he can hang out with sdksdflfkj idk a close knit group i’m thinking of ross, chandler, and joey or smth he’d be joey obvi

romantic plots can fuck me up any day of the week

i’m a slut for a good exes plot

unrequited crush, it can be that he has feelings for someone way out of his league, or someone has a crush on him and he’s just oblivious 

someone who broke his heart n inspired his music

band members!!!! would’ve had to attended columbia 

someone who he’s a good influence on

bad influence, he’s too good corrupt him do it cowards

former / current hookups 

ex friends 

straight up enemies

smth like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen

[glorybcrn]

hihi everybody !! i’m kelly ( eighteen , she/her , mst ) and uh h ... i haven’t been in the roleplaying game for a hot minute but i’m really excited to be here n get back into it ! this is my garbage son gabriel who is technically an old muse ?? ngl i’ve dragged this poor binch to hell n back so if this intro kinda funky ... that why ....... also i may or may not be running on 3 hrs of sleep jfifjnck

◟ * ◊ ─ jason bateman + cismale + he/him » * believe it or not gabriel dombrova is working for the lothario family. they are forty seven years of age and are known to usually spend their time around city hall. the mayor, who has been a part of the alliance for sixteen years, has been living in victoria for forty seven years. the people closest to them describe the bisexual + capricorn to be driven and astute as well as reserved and unforgiving » 

background

— born and raised in victoria, despite not being a founding family, gabriel’s family still had relatively deep roots within the city; it was said that his great grandfather had moved here from massachusetts looking for the american dream. the patriarchal dombrova came from humble beginnings, building the family business ( a local inn ) from the ground up and over the decades it only got bigger and bigger until it had turned into the respectable hotel that it is known as today and now has multiple locations across the state of florida. naturally, his father inherited this business and his mother, on the other hand, is your typical southern belle, moved here from a small town in texas. she was a corporate lawyer ( it’s how she met gabriel’s father ) but since becoming a mother she really has had no interests in any other occupation other than trophy wife and socialite.

— to say that gabriel’s parents were old school would be putting it lightly. basically, both of his parents were deeply religious republicans and were very aware of their image as a family. they were harsh parents, extremely controlling when it came to their children’s lives but at the same time were also really emotionally absent. to this day they still believe that it was all in the name of tough love but obviously it was just emotional abuse. his father was especially hard on gabriel, he was a strong believer in physical discipline and thought gabriel to be too “soft”. he was always berating him, punishing him for petty offences, and pretty much just fostering your typical environment of toxic masculinity. though he never laid a hand on gabriel’s sister as she was what he called, “a lady” and his “pride and joy.”

— but gabriel was a good kid, he was obedient aside from stupid mistakes that kids are bound to make. he was your typical golden boy, a jack of all trades of sorts. not exceptionally good at one thing, but averagely good at a multitude of things. he was a quick learner and dedicated, anything he took a crack at, he eventually excelled in. throughout high school, he mostly kept to himself, choosing to focus on his education and after graduating valedictorian, he went to harvard where he earned his business degree. the plan was to come back to victoria, work for his father, and make his way up until he was ready to inherit the business himself.

— but while away at university, he met abigail. it was your typical whirlwind of a first love where it felt like it was just the two of you against the world. with her, gabriel experienced a sense of normalcy and sincere, unconditional love. for someone who severely lacked both up until then, maybe it wasn’t so crazy that the two decided to marry as soon as they graduated. together, they moved back to victoria to start their lives. to an outsider, gabriel’s life had seemingly always been perfect, envy-worthy. with a renowned and respected family, a successful business, the perfect wife, and now, a baby on the way too, it’s no wonder he’d been chosen by the lothario’s to be their candidate as mayor.

— his connection with the alliance started out small; the hotel business had been in a rough spot for a couple of years and out of nowhere, they seemed to have just come in at the right time, saving the day. he could be on their payroll all for the price of a few, teensy favours. favours such as his hotel being used as refuge for some of their men, a place of business when needed, and gabriel refusing to be a failure, especially in his father’s eyes, easily succumbed to their offer. 

— of course, gabriel’s family has no idea about the real root of his sudden interest in politics, much less how the family business has managed to be so successful still despite his now even busier schedule. and as a result, his relationship with his wife and children have deteriorated over the years. it began as a defense mechanism, intentionally distancing himself from his loved ones as a way to protect them. and while his children maybe the one last soft spot gabriel has left, his sudden absence as a father has definitely put a strain on his relationship with them. however his relationship with his wife seemed to suffer even more, things between the two of them are definitely not how they once used to be. they’re cold to one another and see each other more so as strangers rather than husband and wife. unfortunately, a divorce doesn’t exactly fit into the white picket-fence image gabriel had so carefully curated over the years. 

personality

— after decades of playing different facades, gabriel’s definitely lost a sense of his true self, or maybe it’s just fully gone. he used to be this really compassionate and benevolent person who always prioritized family over anything. it’s why ( at least this is what he tells himself ) he initially risked getting into business with the alliance in the first place, but now, he really only pretends to be those things to get the people to like him. he can be incredibly charming when he wants to be but it’s all just so .. hollow ? if that makes sense. like, nowadays there’s rarely an ounce of honesty or sincerity in him. he’s just so consumed with being a part of the alliance, it’s all he really knows at this point.

— extremely driven and cunning, if there’s something gabriel wants, he’ll get it. even as a child, he was an over achiever and so he’s known to always come through when it’s requested of him. he’s not exactly evil .. ? but he is loyal to the lotharios. i think there’s a small part of him that hates them, hates himself, and hates what he’s doing but idk he kinda just tells that it to shut up lmao. having had to learn it as a child, he’s very good at compartmentalizing which is probably why he can play all these different roles so well without going insane dnkjds

— really reserved, tries ( and succeeds ) to put out this strait-laced and conservative image. has the ability to remain calm in any sort of situation and twist things to his advantage. like honestly ?? gabriel is probably a pr manager’s wet dream .. he just comes across as this very charming and kind man, he’s the type of politician that’ll say hi to your baby and sign its head idk

but ugh idk it’s hard to explain gabriel’s personality since he’s such an emotional mess, i would just end up rambling about the same thing over and over again if i tried to keep going so i’m gonna .. stop right now.

connections

— personal assistant ?? someone incredibly organized and competent. this plot can range from really basic like .. yeah book my doctor’s appointment thnx to someone he’s actually pretty close to ? maybe he doesn’t even realize it, idk. like we can literally do wtvr w this, so !

— other members of the alliance, could be just someone he’s acquainted with or knows well and works pretty close with.

— if you have any muses involved with politics or managing ? his campaign manager or just anyone who worked on his campaign. like w the personal assistant we can .. go basic or brazy w this.

— love interests ? doesn’t have to be ~romantic~ per se .. but idk like affairs ig ?? cause .. gabe’s not perfect, rip. but he is careful so it wldn’t be like .. smth messy or if it was he’d prob make certain measurements after. idk what that means exactly dnjsnsdjk just tryna not get caught uk … or even something as small as flirtationships !

ok these all suck bc gabe is….. emotionally dead inside cnjdsnksnjd but ! obv tht can change per circumstance n whatever so pls .. feel free to mssg me whenever if u have any ideas !!

[all-hail-the-witcher]

I came back to you

look at that yall, your eyes do not deceive you, I actually did write something.

this is part two to this horrific angst mess

also uhhh shouts to mikey for describing a kiss to me (wink wonk) and doin the plan and shouts to fizz for being fizz and scalping me for making a Terrible Mistake

_______

genre: happy floofy make up stuff (I almost wrote angst ha lol)

ship: ralbert off and also married blush cause We Stan

warnings: hmm al is still paralyzed, race’s shoulder is still fucked, I think someone mentions depression or anti depressants or smth, fighting, screaming, I think thats it

editing: lkdfjghlkaghj

words: 3000 something

______

Mush ran full force down the hallway straight into his husband.

“Whoa, Mushy,” Blink said grabbing his shoulders so he didn’t topple over. “What’s going on? Is hell chasing you?”

“Sorta,” Mush said before toning down him voice. “We need to talk. Right now.”

Blink raised his eyebrows. “Is everything okay?”

“Depends on your definition of okay,” Mush said. “Can you spare ten minutes?”

“Now?” Blink’s eyebrows knitted together.

Mush nodded and grabbed Blink’s hand, dragging him down several twisting hallways to a storage closet. He looked around for several seconds before yanking open the door and unceremoniously pushing Blink inside.

Mush flicked on the old light, casting a faint yellow glow on him and Blink. “We need to get Race and Albert back together.”

Blink stared at him for several long seconds before shrieking “What?”

“They’re totally miserable!” Mush groaned dramatically. “Race is convinced that Albert is paralyzed because of him, and Albert is convinced that Race doesn’t want him anymore and it’s driving me insane. Do you know how many of Albert’s check ups consist of him asking about how Race is? Every. Single. One. I can’t take it anymore. And it’s not just that, it’s making it harder for him. He was supposed to be all healed like three months ago. He was finally cleared last week. It’s not supposed to take six months to heal from a shattered pelvis! Three to four maybe, but six is insane. And don’t even get me started on Race, that kid is a disaster. He’s come to see me four whole times about his- babe, why are you laughing?” Mush cut himself off when he noticed Blink’s hysterics.

“Babe, I thought that you were hurt or we were about to be attacked,” Blink said as he fought to compose himself. “I wasn’t expecting you to lecture me on Albert and Race’s well-being.”

“But it’s truuueee!” Mush exclaimed, flailing his arms around dramatically. “For the safety of their health and wellbeing we have to get them back together.”

“Are you sure about this?” Blink asked. “They might not want to get back together and we don’t want to make it worse.”

“Blink, I’m their doctor and it’s affecting their mental health. I’d much rather try than have to prescribe them antidepressants,” Mush said.

“Alright,” Blink sighed poking Mush’s chest. “But if this backfires, I don’t know you.”

“Babe,” Mush sounded confused. “We’re married.”

“Then I’m printing divorce papers,” Blink said with an air of sarcasm.

Mush fake gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh I would, Race is very scary when he's angry.”

“Yeah,” Mush agreed, “but he’s a stick. Albert is way more intimidating.”

“Yes,” Blink agreed. “But albert is also paralyzed, I doubt he’d be able to beat me up.”

Mush lightly slapped Blink upside the head. “Now now,” he scolded in his best doctor voice, “don't be ableist.”

Blink rolled his eyes. “When was the last time you saw him get in a fight?”

Mush considered for a minute. “Ah, yesterday actually. Romeo took his cookie at lunch.” He smirked mischievously. “See? Your point is invalidated.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Blink scowled.

Mush popped his foot, smiled over his shoulder and batted his eyelashes playfully at Blink who groaned again before opening the door to the hallway.

“I think Race is scheduled for lookout tower duty today with Buttons, but Buttons already told me he has to call off for some reason so if you really want I can put Albert on with him,” Blink said as they headed down the hall back to central command.

“Depends,” Mush said. “Can we watch them make up on the security cameras?”

Blink looked at him incredulously. “Is that even a question?”

Mush jumped up and down and clapped his hands together. “I’ll get the popcorn!”

•••

Albert wheeled himself out of the rickety elevator and over to the door of the lookout tower. Why Blink has decided to put him on lookout tower duty at the last minute was beyond him - he knew it was a pain in the ass for him to get to.

He knocked loudly on the heavy wooden door. He hadn’t quite caught who he was on duty with so he was slightly horrified when a sadly familiar mop of blonde hair peeked out.

“Hey,” he tried to say casually. “Blink put me on duty with you last second, Buttons had a thing.”

Race merely nodded and opened the door, staring at the floor the entire time. He closed it behind Albert and wordlessly went back to his seat in front of the binoculars.

Albert sighed, not looking forward to nearly three hours of this, and wheeled himself over to the other chair - which was much too close to Race for his liking. With practiced ease, he maneuvered himself from his wheelchair into the other chair so that he could use the binoculars. He didn’t miss how Race kept his eyes averted the entire time.

“Who are you covering?” Albert asked almost reluctantly. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear Race’s voice yet.

Thankfully though, Race apparently wasn’t ready to talk yet and he pointed to three moving dots on the computer screen that was built into the tabletop. Race was watching JoJo and Henry, Smalls and Checks, and Finch and Spot, leaving Albert with Specs and Sniper and Mike and Ike.

Lookout tower duty essentially meant that you sat in the tower and kept tabs on the scouts who were out on patrol. They all had trackers on them - a new improvement since Albert’s accident - which transmitted their location to the digitized map on in the table. The scouts could send up a distress signal if they were in range and it was the people in the lookout tower who were responsible for sending them backup or medical assistance. Lookout tower duty also involved keeping tabs on the enemy and alerting the scouts if they got within range. It wasn’t a hard job, but it was generally improved by conversation.

•••

“This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” Mush groaned, slamming his head down on the table.

“That’s cause it’s not a movie,” Blink said, checking over some papers. “It’s real life.”

Mush groaned again and flopped onto Blinks shoulder. They had been watching Albert and Race on the security cameras for almost an hour but so far Albert had only said a few sentences and Race hadn’t said anything at all. For once in their lives they were actually doing their work, and merely sitting stiffly and sneaking glances at the other every few minutes. It was enough to make Mush’s head explode.

“Blinkkk,” Mush whined, “why couldn’t you have given them a job where they actually have to interaccttttttt?”

“Look, I told you not to meddle in their love lives,” Blink reminded him. “And this was what Race had. Albert hasn’t really been cleared yet to do stuff that involves interaction.” He paused. “Which you would know, because you’re his doctor.”

Mush whacked him on the arm with his badge.

“Besides,” Blink continued, “this is usually a job that requires talking, I’m surprised they haven’t said anything to each other yet.”

Mush stared at the array of buttons on Blink’s control panel. “Well,” he began sheepishly, “maybe we could contact one of the scout groups and have them send up a distress signal, surely that would get them to talk?’

Blink spun his chair around and gave Mush a cold, hard stare. “No,” he emphasized. “Distress calls are complicated and take a lot of people to answer, and they’re also dangerous. I am not risking the security of this entire operation just so our friends can talk.”

“You’re no fun,” Mush grumbled, shifting in his chair and looking back at the monitor that was displaying the security camera footage. Much to his surprise, Albert was turned slightly toward Race and it appeared that he was about to say something.

Mush leaned over and cranked up the sound. “Finally,” he sighed happily. “Babe, pass the popcorn, its finally getting interesting.”

“We don't have any?”

“Then go grab some. We’re gonna need it.”

•••

It felt like he had been sitting in silence for hours when finally Mike and Ike moved to a different location on the map. Albert reached for his pen to make note, only to discover that it had run out of ink. He groaned internally upon seeing that the pen cup was on Race’s side of the table.

“Hey, uh-”

Race jumped at the sound of Albert’s voice and Albert gave him an expressionless smile.

“Sorry. Could you just, uh, pass me a pen? Mine’s outta ink.”

Race nodded and wordlessly passed him one. Albert couldn’t help but notice the stiff robotic movements he was using - his shoulder was bothering him, and by the looks of it he hadn’t done anything to help it.

Albert opened his mouth, he couldn’t just let Race suffer in silence. Even after he had dumped him, he just couldn’t sit by and watch while he was in pain, it just wasn’t in his nature.

“Race?” Albert asked gently.

Race paused his writing but said nothing.

“Is your shoulder bothering you?” When Race didn’t respond, Albert took it as an invitation to proceed. “You’re holding it weird, and it looks painful. Have you been taking your meds? Do you want me to rub it for you?”

Race sighed, throwing his pen down onto the table and rubbing his temples with his hands. “You shouldn’t still care this much about me, not when I did- I did that to you.” He pointed at Albert’s wheelchair.

“Is that why you left me?” Albert felt anger bubbling up inside him. “You couldn’t own up to your mistakes?”

“No, I-”

“Then why else did you break up with me over a note?” Albert was furious now. “You could have at least done it in person!”

“No you don’t understand! I couldn’t bear to see you like that!” Race’s voice was scratchy - almost as if he hadn’t used it in awhile - and it cracked as he began to yell.

“You didn’t want me because I was disabled?”

“Al I didn’t want it to happen that way, you have to believe me!” Race begged.

“Then why didn’t you ever come see me? I was in the hospital for over a month and you couldn’t drag your sorry ass there to at least pay me a visit!”

“Albert I-”

“No, face it, you didn’t want me because I’m broken now! I’m not good enough for you because I can’t walk anymore, right! Well I’m still the same person, Race! It’s still me! And I still love you, even if you don’t love me!” Albert angrily turned back to his work, blocking out Race’s attempts at an apology.

•••

“MUSH!” Blink shrieked. “Stop this nonsense right now, can’t you see they’re fighting!”

Mush stood, transfixed as he watched Albert and Race scream at each other on the cameras. This had been a bad, bad idea.

“Mush!” Blink yelled again, shaking his arm. “We have to do something here before this gets bad!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m thinking okay?” Mush rubbed his hand across his forehead.

“Well think harder! I don’t wanna deal with blood later!”

Mush sighed, “Blink would you just-”

“Hey Blink could you run- oh hey Mush, what are you guys doing?”

The two of them looked up, utterly startled to see Jack standing in front of them, leaving through a folder of papers.

“Uh, paperwork,” Blink said immediately, picking up the stack of paper closest to him and looking it over casually. Mush followed suit, picking up another stack of paper, only to realize he was holding it upside down.

“Yeah….o kay,” Jack said uncertainly. “I can come back later...alright? I don’t wanna get caught in the middle of your married weirdness.” He backed up a few steps before running down the hallway.

“Paperwork?” Mush asked. “Really?”

Blink rolled his eyes. “Thank me later, let’s just get back to making sure that they don’t kill each other, okay?”

Mush looked at the screen again, and then looked twice. Albert and Race seemed to be, talking? Not screaming?

“Blink wait-” he said. “I think they’re doing it themselves.”

•••

After several long minutes of Race profusely apologizing, Albert had had enough. He had to face the facts: he was still very much in love with the idiot in front of him and he’d be damned if he didn't take this opportunity to make things right.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” Albert spoke softly, anxiously twirling his pen in his fingers. “It’s just...I’m tired of there not being an us anymore. Ever since my accident I’ve been so alone. I….fucking hell, I need you Racer.”

“Albie,” Race sighed, staring down at his map, “I need you too. It’s been so painful not being around you. But I don't want to hurt you any more that I already have.”

“Listen, I’m not pointing any fingers because I know that this could have happened to anyone, okay?” Race nodded limply. “You leaving me in the dust like that though? That hurt more than the actual injury, or the surgeries, or the pt.” “Al, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, physically or emotionally, I just-”

“Oh would you shut up and get over here?” Al interrupted, suddenly very much aware that there was far too much space between them. “I need to hold you.”

Race got up and moved slowly toward Albert, frowning when he patted his lap. “Aren’t I going to hurt you?”

“If you were I wouldn’t be able to feel it,” Albert shrugged. “I can’t feel anything from my hips down.”

“Al, I-”

“Don't you dare say ‘I’m sorry’ it’s not your fault, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good,” Albert smiled, pulling Race onto his lap and sighing in content as he wound his arms around his shoulders.

“God, I missed you so much,” Race sounded close to tears as he nuzzled his face into Albert’s shoulder, breathing in deeply.

“Never leave me again, okay?” Albert whispered, his breath tickling Race’s ear as they melted further into each other.

“Kiss?” Race blushed as he pulled away from Albert slightly.

Albert smiled and pressed a soft kiss onto Race’s lips which he returned, gentle and slow. When their lips broke Race snuggled back into Albert’s shoulder. “Did I kiss it better?” he asked, reaching up to play with the ends of Albert’s hair.

Albert could only describe the emotion that overcame him as love. “Yes,” he breathed contentedly, “yes you did.”

•••

“TAKE THAT!” Mush screamed in excitement, throwing a fist full of popcorn at Blink. “I TOLD YOU MY PLAN WOULD WORK!” He continued his victory dance around his husband as Race and Albert held each other tightly on the cameras.

“Yes, yes,” Blink sighed, picking pieces of popcorn off of his precarious stacks of paperwork. “I’m very proud of you.” “Proud enough for a kiss?” Mush came to a stop in front of Blink, batting his eyelashes dramatically.

“Proud enough for a kiss,” Blink reluctantly agreed, squeaking in surprise when Mush dramatically dipped him, but enjoying his husband’s breathy laughter against his lips.

“Ew.”

The two of them looked up startled to see Romeo, Jack, and Davey staring at them with mixed expressions of disgust painted on their faces. The end of shift bell must have rung without them noticing.

“What are you two up to?” Jack asked suspiciously. “You were being weird when I was over here before too.”

“We got Race and Albert back together!” Mush exclaimed, clapping his hands together excitedly. Three sets of eyes widened. “Look!” Mush said, pointing to the cameras where Race was standing by awkwardly as Albert maneuvered himself back into his chair. The group watched with bated breath as Race leaned down to mush his lips against Albert’s before they exited the watchtower.

“HOW DID YOU MANAGE THAT?!” Romeo screeched, jumping up and down as he accosted Mush with questions. “I’ve been trying for weeks and it hasn’t worked!”

“I think we should just be happy that they did it,” Davey said, leaning against the wall. “Those two were driving all of us insane.”

“Tell me about it,” Jack sighed. “If i had to hear Race ask one more time how Albert was doing I was gonna punt him off the roof without a second thought.”

Davey glared at him sideways.

“Well, maybe there would have been some second thoughts,” Jack said quickly, trying to backtrack. “You know what? Just forget I said anything.”

“I still can’t believe you managed to get the two of them back together,” Romeo repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “Those two are more stubborn than a pair of yaks who-”

“AL SLOW DOWN!”

Romeo was interrupted by Albert speeding into command in his wheelchair with Race seated on his lap. The two of them crashed into a wall, sending them flying in a heap of giggles.

“Ah, back to normal already I see,” Davey mused, stepping over the heap of woefully in love boyfriends. “On behalf of us all, may I say: ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME!”

“Jeez Davey,” Race said, pulling himself up to his feet and righting Albert’s chair. “You don't have to be so blunt about it.” He turned to help Albert, who was in the process of trying to get himself up by doing a terribly executed kick up before giving in and accepting Race’s assistance.

“Yes I do,” Davey said, gesturing to Blink and Mush. “If it weren’t for the co captains of romance here, you two would still be hopeless depressed disasters.”

��I’m right here!” Romeo whined.

“Oh no,” Blink said, ignoring Romeo. “It was all Mush, I had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh was it now?” Race said, marching over to Mush with a devilish glint in his eye. “We will be having words later, Dr. Medding In His Patient's Love Lives.”

Mush shrank back in fear.

“C’mon Race,” Albert said, wheeling over. “Leave the man alone, he was just trying to help us. I, for one, am incredibly grateful.”

“See, someone appreciates my efforts,” Mush scowled.

Race shrugged indifferently. “This is still not acceptable. Meet me tonight, three am, behind the supply closet. We’ll settle this the old fashioned way.” He cracked his knuckles for extra emphasis.

Mush scoffed and turned back to Blink as the two of them made their way down the hallway. “Did you see that, babe?” Mush said. “As if they could have gotten back together without my efforts. They’re so- wait, what's this?”

Blink had thrust a few sheets of paper at him while he had been rambling.

“Divorce papers,” he said simply, turning on his heel and walking off down the opposite hallway. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

Mush stared at the papers in his hands for a few long seconds before taking off after his husband.

“LOUIS GET YOUR SORRY ASS BACK HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”

______

ah yes yes what good kiddos

feedback is always appreciated hmu to be on the tag list

actually if you dont wanna be on my tag list any more could you let me know cause some of you dont interact with my fics and its a pain in the ass to put the whole thing on 

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[wydojun]

hello wsup uwu i’m xen / 21, s/her, kst (if you didn’t see in the discord already) !! here is my Big Baby lee dojun and yea i know my damn bio was slipshod i’m SORRY okay but i’m so fckn . excited shut up?? askjhdjjd statistics are here, excerpt is here, and the rest is written as a tldr under the cut! 

tw death, car accidents, memory loss (ya that’s his whole life story . congrats)

so like dojun was born in seoul w/ an older brother but shuttled to and fro seoul and wonyang as a kid because his parents were divorced and his dad lived in wonyang, eventually dojun began studying here and got into wyu when he was older

grew up quiet, withdrawn, but overall a good boy w a good heart. before the accident he was a much more turned down version of who he is now

around six months ago though he got into a fatal car accident while his dad was driving and he died upon impact. dojun got away with milder injuries BUT a pretty severe head trauma > resulting in post traumatic amnesia, p much 

THUS he’s kinda forgotten a lot of people in his life and everyone seems like strangers to him, everyday is a constant battle within himself bc he’s just trying really hard to cope and find who he is again

trying to pick up the pieces of his life, insistent on living independently w/o his family and trying his best to start anew as though everything is normal

he had to take a semester off school bc of the accident, so now he’s still in his second year

v outgoing and friendly, a social butterfly and now everyone is like wtf since when did u become like this who tf r u

dojun is incredibly sweet!! now he’s a lot more vulnerable in terms of the fact that he pretty much has to trust the people around him about who he was and who they are, and he’s very naive/innocent in that aspect

very clingy and affectionate, knows no boundaries when it comes to personal space

feels vvvvvv bad when he doesn’t remember something/someone important, and gets very apologetic 

always tries to see the best in people to the point that it’s unrealistic, super bubbly and energetic and always tries to bring the mood up

will always try to defend his friends and stand up for them but is literally barely able to do so for himself

#positivityking basically, still has a very optimistic outlook on life despite everything!

sometimes a little slow. u might spot him going to the coffee machine and halting for a bit, before going like ..... hahha.... how do i use this again

king of boyfriend aesthetics

just wants everyone’s happiness although he’s struggling to really rediscover his life before the accident and settle back into who he was again. is just very sorry to the people that matter to him that he’s taking so long and he really wishes from the bottom of his heart that he could remember who they were to him and regain all his prev feelings/relationships & go back to the way things were bc he doesn’t wanna hurt them any more than he has

doesn’t seem to understand that it’s not ok to go around dropping random kisses on people and proclaiming his love for them all the time

kind of tries to put on a front that everything is a-ok when it isn’t rly, sometimes he cracks from all the pressure and he feels so lost bc he doesn’t rly /rly/ know who he actually is

HIS BABY JACK RUSSELL TERRIER MOCHA IS THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

loves animals, loves children, loves food, loves sleep, loves people

always willing to take the first initiative and always tries to reach out to ppl bc what has he got to lose, right

v caring and snuggly, loyal to a fault, would give the moon to the ones that he loves w/o a second thought

PLOT IDEAS MAYBE !

ok so basically since half of this town has seen him running around as a kid, imagine them bumping into dojun one day and they’re like omg hi! how have u been yadda yadda and he’s just there... sheepishly...... i’m sorry but i don’t know who you are

best friends of dojun who he had a hard time remembering and there’s just a lot of sad but they’re slowly rebuilding their fs and they keep reminding him of the memories they made and tell him wild stories and stuff

angst...... bc maybe before his accident dojun and this person had a thing going, maybe they were both invested (be it a crush or a relationship or smth yknow?) but then one day he goes from looking at them like they’re his whole world to not knowing who they are and it hurts

and from there maybe they try to rekindle it but it’s not the same, or dojun ends up liking someone else, or they try and it just doesn’t work out and they’re both unhappy . u nvr Know

OR LIKE people that take advantage of dojun’s kindness or smth and like use it against him... somehow 

that being said people who make use of the fact that he doesn’t know any better and lie to him about their past r/s and other stuff be it for good or bad

u see him breaking down and u have absolutely no idea what to do bc this is ur first time EVER seeing him sad

chants ROOMMATES at wyu thank u

idk!! these are just some pre est relationships but i’m forever down for new stuff and i’m def looking for some chara dev so hmu!

[youtiaoshutiao]

gotd season 2 rambles

I finished GOTD two/three weeks back but then was immediately swamped with real life work after that. Finally had time over the weekend to pen down all the thoughts swirling around my head!! I was thinking about whether to make this post or not but no one I know irl has watched this and I kind of want to remember what I felt about the drama so well. Here goes nothing!!

[Though… 慎入！！Beware of entering, for I just finished writing this post and I’m boggled at how utterly long + incoherent + messy this post is]

- I was rather worried about how Jingyao would play into the whole picture marrying into 楚王府. But in the end I guess it wasn’t thaaaaat bad (minus uhm, her poisoning Li Chu to force Zhenzhu to leave.) I can deal with drama like external factors forcing my OTP apart but what I can’t deal with is if the OTP itself fractures apart. So (at least in my pov) even though the director did all that annoying slow-mo spinning around in circles thing with Jingyao, my intepretation of Li Chu’s 眼神 wasn’t one of 动心/暧昧 and instead was just concern/maintaining a distance so I guess I wasn’t that mad about it….???

- OTP~~ OTP!! Jing Tian is so beautiful with her hair down :3

- TBH i enjoyed watching Li Chu and Zhenzhu in the battlefield and all that pining and stuff but I found the way they ended up there kind of… contrived. Though what Jingyao says does have its element of truth, but really?!?! Poisoning?!?! Internal drama?! Couldn’t it have been a more… dramatic reason? Like maybe a political maneuvre making Zhenzhu realise that Li Chu will be ‘burdened’ with her around or smth, then maybe Jingyao coming in to stir the pot, then Zhenzhu making the choice to leave. I just felt that the whole poisoning thing was kind of loophole-y. If Moyan Chou can research and link it back to Jingyao, shouldn’t Li Chu be perfectly capable of doing so too? Yet in those two years he never suspected anything. Though maybe it could be explained by him being too blinded with anger and disappointment at Zhenzhu that he just focused on his princely work in those years rather than sparing any thought on his love life. And I’m not sure how this whole matter ended up being resolved? When Li Chu found out and confronted Zhenzhu about it, she was still all ‘I can’t return back to you because you might come to harm if I break the oath I swore’… But in the end they just kind of ignored it? (after confronting Jingyao). Hm or maybe I missed something hahaha.

- still the whole arc with them on the battlefield/her becoming the Empress of Yan was still quite entertaining hehe. Pining! Fraught looks! Tears! Angst! I must say that Mao Zi Jun was much better in S2 than S1. In S1 his acting just seemed to be glaring and sticking out his eyeballs hahaha. I guess his forte is in all the emotionally charged scenes… Though I still don’t really care for An Qingxu. Also Zhenzhu’s outfit in the Yan empire was quite pretty too :3

- On a really random note, lives if you are not a main character in this drama (though actually who am I kidding… you don’t escape from death being a main character here *coughing fit*) are so worthless. I swear there are people dropping dead like flies in every episode… TBH back in the Uyghur ‘you-killed-my-father-prepare-to-die’ arc of the first season, I kind of couldn’t deal with how so many of Li Chu’s men died along the way of Li Chu searching for Zhenzhu because Li Chu refused to rest/take a chill pill when weather conditions sucked.

- It’s really a pity that they had to resort to excessive greenscreen and body doubles in the last Uyghur arc because it was really quite obvious and kind of affected immersion in the story. I’m guessing Jing Tian couldn’t make it for that filming period? Or maybe they were rushing and had to be split up across filming groups. Like… it was quite jarring to have everyone else in the scene then bam! Switch over to Zhenzhu awkwardly greenscreened in. Or some scenes where it was obvious that Allen wasn’t even interacting with Jingtian but rather a body double.

- Moyan Chou x Li Chu. Ouchhhhhh (especially since cracks kind of appeared in their friendship with Li Chu marrying Dugu and Zhenzhu using Moyan Chou to get a divorce from Li Chu). I’m really impressed by Allen’s acting ;_; like of course he’s still kind of raw in places but like wow there’s a 灵气 to his acting and he is exceptional considering how it’s his second time playing male lead. Of a 92 episode drama, no less. In the scene where Moyan Chou and Li Chu drink together for the last time, his tears just kept on flowing non stop! Idk if anyone who reads this has the same experience of using the cliche phrase ‘他的眼泪像断了线的珍珠纷纷落下’ (his tears flowed down like a broken string of pearls) in chinese compositions in primary school but that’s the first thing that popped to my mind when I saw this scene hahaha.

- anyway, compared to this drama’s standard death bgm 荣耀, it was a nice touch to change it up to 为江山 which fit perfectly with the setting and nature of Moyan Chou’s death. It was pretty goosebump inducing when the music crashed over the speakers as he slumped down and the entire congregation of people at that intersection of stones (?!?!) began kneeling and wailing.

- again props to Jing Tian’s and Allen’s acting. Though Jing Tian wasn’t that consistent in all the crying scenes (though she has so many it’s kind of hard to be hahaha) but i really think they handled the growth and development of their characters quite well. The Zhenzhu and Li Chu you see at the end of s2 are tangibly different from them at the start. Even if they banter with each other, it’s very different in vibes from the early days - more measured and serious. And the change happened quite subtly? imo at least :3 

- personally felt the whole way the showdown with Empress Zhang took place was kind of… anticlimatic… but I guess that’s kind of how it went down in history hahaha oh wells.

- hints of how even though Li Chu became emperor, there’s still trouble looming in the distance with Li Fuguo still maintaining power etc. was kind of disturbed reading real history because the image of Daizong having to pander to eunuchs and all that kind of isn’t really aligned with the capable Li Chu we see in the drama (oh the woes of dramatisation of historical characters - i felt the same reading commentary about 14th prince back in the day after watching/reading bbjx) but i was thinking about it and i realised that i can kind of accept that! because there were quite a few scenes throughout the drama where Li Chu was lamenting about how he feels so helpless because he can’t do anything about the political situation/corruption/etc, how even though he has the acumen to perceive and see what all the parties are doing to procure power for themselves he cannot do anything about it. so taking this aspect of Li Chu into context - how he definitely is smart and capable, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t susceptible or is invincible given how the entire tang court is deeply mired in politics and power play, i guess it’s not that far of a stretch to link this Li Chu to the Daizong in history books (who wasn’t a baaad emperor too anyway)

- the whole Zhenzhu being 油尽灯枯 at the end was also kind of… random and a little contrived imho but given her life circumstances i guess it can be justified and is a logical way to end things, since they do ultimately have to adhere to the historical ending of Zhenzhu going missing and Daizong never electing an empress during his rule. (I have to say, my favourite arc in this entire drama was probably the 10+ eps of separation when the Anshi rebellion kicked in, because the conflict felt very real and organic and the stakes felt really high, so the senses of urgency/loss/anxiety/despair were really heightened.)

contrived as it may be to me, that didn’t stop me from feeling deeeeeep despair and sorrow through the last few eps ;_; him making longevity noodles for her; them being in the same space that holds so much meaning to both of them, the little wooden hut where she professed her love for him, yet both of them lost in their own separate thoughts; them weeping their own separate tears; him holding her as she takes an afternoon nap, knowing that this is probably one of the last times he can do so…

and his coronation ceremony/the day she leaves for good from his life. their last hug - he was the very definition of 依依不舍 ): Him walking down the aisle (HAHA is that what it’s called) of the Tang courts, dressed in stately regal emperor garb, the world is his yet he is so utterly alone. 所谓“高处不胜寒”! (haha though this line was not yet in existence during Tang)

and the ending was so poetic in all its tragedy and hit all my buttons hahaha. Him dressing as a cart driver to send her off for the last time → !!!, her stopping at 醉仙楼 and coming out of the carriage to take a look at the place where her and her Donglang first met → !!!!!! (I think this really got to me because I have a huge fondness for their entire first meeting haha. And this + how she hallucinated Dong Lang in that red outfit when she was semi-conscious to me kind of shows how ultimately she loves Dong Lang for who he is as an adult, and not because he is her 太湖公子 from her childhood, which is very important to me?!) And lastly Li Chu riding on his horse, surveying the mountains and landscape that Zhenzhu disappeared into, the 江山 that he owns… aka really ‘一人一马一江湖’, as the drama oh so helpfully foreshadowed for us in the first few episodes.

- Since I’ve mentioned 为江山, as I’ve said before, I really love the OSTs in the drama! But while previously the bigger ‘hits’ (in a sense) like 夙念 and 荣耀 were stuck in my head, these past two weeks, I can’t help but keep on replaying 素颜 and 唐韵 on loop. (though I still enjoy all the songs - except maybe the Jike Junyi one which is still not bad but just doesn’t get to me like all the other songs do… maybe because it was never played in any scene throughout the drama? (except the ending credits of s2. which I skipped everytime.) (speaking of which, s2′s opening theme song became 荣耀 but they didn’t correspondingly change the opening sequence which was so nicely timed to 为江山, which is also more regal and had more oomph more befitting of an opening track!! that was quite sad ):))

And especially for 素颜 (Unadorned Beauty), omgggg the lyrics nearly killed me when I sat down to properly read it at the end of the drama. It’s played twice in the drama - once in the beginning when Zhenzhu and Lin Zhi were sitting for the consort selection tests and once in the end when Zhenzhu leaves the palace (and Donglang) permanently for good. And omg the lyrics really fit perfectly?!?!

→ The verse/first part of the song: “你是春的使节 让残雪融解 / 染成青黛的天 等著细雨停歇 / 你素颜 裹着云烟 诗意了远方 湿润了心  / 闭上眼 姹紫嫣红都不觉甜 只为你的容颜” - basically just really beautiful lyrics about how you are the envoy of spring melting the remnants of snow and how your bare-faced/unadorned beauty bundled in mist lends poetic flavour to the distance and how all the beautiful flowers pale in comparison to your beauty blablabla. The first half of the chorus too: “豁然间 春光如练 / 渲染了 你的出现 / 最留恋 不是云巅 / 是千万里朝颜和暮雪” The whole song just describes Zhenzhu to me, and in these particular lyrics I think about Zhenzhu in the early episodes, fresh and dewy-faced, dressed in pale pinks and whites. I’m just imagining the verse + first chorus being Li Chu’s inner monologue about Zhenzhu and my heart feels all squishy kyaaaaaaaaa

→ The second half of the chorus: “梦回间 春光流泻 /  归去在 落花时节 / 待离别 青空绵绵 / 你会成山水间那一点 如烟” basically talking about how as time passes, she will leave when the flowers fall, and become a dot in the landscape like a wisp of smoke… how apt ;_; and okay here I’m just babbling nonsense but like all the terms like “青空” “山水” “如烟” really fits her costuming in the last few eps which had 水墨/ink wash painting vibes 

(↑ i’m probably overthinking this way too much ahaha)

[on another note, some other particular lines in some of the other songs that I just really liked (i have random feels for sentences that I think are really poetic. though it may only be me who thinks so hahaha)

为江山：“挥手时飞扬飘零的黄沙 蜿蜒于驰骋豪情的天下” and “铿锵的温柔 忠义的绵绸 此情动我幽幽” like all the juxtaposition between toughness and softness… (uhhh it made more sense in my head). this entire song is Li Chu’s life ;_;

唐韵：okay no I went to search up the lyrics again and I want to copy the entire thing over HAHA. I love how the lyrics, true to the setting of the drama and the name of the song (how do you translate 韵 properly? it’s such a nice word haha), incorporate elements of Tang inside it. “釉烧出 多色绚丽的斑斓” or “浸润出 三彩交融的璀璨” - mentions of pottery/sancai glaze that flourished during Early Tang. Or “昔繁华 已苍芜” - befitting the backdrop of the drama - Tang the flourishing golden dynasty at the precipice of its dwindling. And for some reason I just love phrases like “静谧千年的思念” and the whole of the second half of the chorus: “愿你记得 穿梭人浪中一瞥 / 临摹也不能复刻你容颜 / 墨浓映画眉 / 朱红落点唇 / 只盼伴来生共偎”

为你成全：my favourite line is “锦绣长安夜 / 似昙花惊艳”!! 

i think i just really like imagery in lyrics hahaha. i like 荣耀’s lyrics a lot too. in comparison i actually think the lyrics of 夙念 and some parts of 为你成全 are pretty standard drama ost fare… though they still serve their purpose well in inducing appropriate feels in various scenes.

–

This series of bloopers/original voice clips released by one of the production companies attached to this show is like a soothing balm to an injured heart after watching the ending. And the last video in this series - aww the entire team really put in so much effort to film this show, and it shows in the acting, the props, the sets, the costuming, the music (excluding awkward greenscreen and s2 editing). ANDDD watch from 13:52 onwards!!! A small Easter egg - Allen’s original soft soft voice going “珍珠，你总算回来了……” welp I’m gone

s2 was ultimately a lot weaker in many aspects than s1, and tbh the entire plot of GOTD is riddled with well trodden tropes. But I still have so much fondness and love and feels for this 92 episode drama I mainlined in three weeks (and then promptly regretted because real life came cascading down on me soon after that) :3 It’s definitely an engaging drama that had quite a lot of effort put into its making, and with it’s length there’s something for everyone - (1) an otp that will make you squee (2) endless angst, tears and misery (3) palace politics that are relatively quite complex for it’s 古言 status (4) some harem-esque drama for 后宫戏 fans (5) battle scenes, war tearing apart otp bringing about more angst… et cetera. Considering how I quit dramas at a drop of a hat, I’m pretty impressed that I managed to complete this haha xD

shall end off with a short 花痴楼！

《帅帅的殿下SHOWTIME!》

虽然在跟别的女人转圈圈但仍非常帅气的殿下！

微醺醺的新郎装殿下！

睹物思人的殿下！

穿上盔甲，眼带杀气的殿下！

闭着眼，姹紫嫣红都不觉甜的殿下！

超级无敌苏的殿下！

化身为大厨的殿下！

I wanted to take more screenshots but I shall just end here, because I scrolled up and got a huge shock seeing exactly just how much babble I spouted. I’m kind of horrified?! Omg anyone who reads this to the end, I’m sorry for all my incoherent rambling :3