Zantanna’s voice had that cadence to it. Faintly strangled. Forcibly calm. Her rising blood pressure and rapidly approaching limit for his special brand of excitement evident in every single letter of his name.
Felt like old times.
“Z.” He said, smoke curling out of his mouth and billowing towards the dreary grey sky above. The one nice thing about Gotham, it had the same gloomy dark ambience of ol’ London town. “Long time no see. How’s show biz been treating you?”
He saw the faintest of twitches at the corner of her eye. Could almost hear her counting to ten in her head. He smiled at her winningly, leaning back against the damp bricks of the alleyway as he waited. More smoke drifted upward from beside him in time with a bored sigh. Patience was running out on all sides it seemed.
“That’s a child.”
“Sharp as ever.” He said, taking another drag. He nudged the child in question beside him gently with his elbow, glancing down with a sly grin. “See this is why the Justice League pay her the big bucks. Nothing gets past our Zantanna Zatara.”
He got a cloud of smoke blown directly in his face for that, little shit.
“John.”
“Z.”
“Why do you have a child? Why is the child smoking?”
“Long story.” He said with a wave of his hand.
“I learned it from watching him.” The kid said, with the same cadence as that old American commercial. All dramatic and overwrought emotion. The gremlin swooned against John's side in an imitation of collapse, hand holding the lit bifter coming up to their forhead to really sell the melodrama. He nudged his ghostly companion off, grinning at Zantanna’s slipping patience as he did.
“Don’t worry about it. Kid's fine.”
“A child wandering around with you in a dark ally in Gotham smoking cigarettes is fine?”
“I mean, I’m already dead. And short. It’s not like smoking is gonna be able to do any worse to me.”
✨🦐Behold the brilliant blue blasts of barf that best baddies in the black of the bay!🦐✨
Okay, it’s technically not barf… This vibrantly vermillion little deep-sea shrimp, Acanthephyra sp., is a savvy spewer that spits up a sparkling secretion to outsmart sneaky shrimp snackers.
That glorious glowing goo is a special fluid it creates in its hepatopancreas (kind of like an all-in-one liver-and-pancreas combo organ), which lights up upon contact with oxygen in the surrounding seawater. By blasting a predator in the face with bioluminescence, it distracts them long enough for the shrimp to make a swift escape!
🎥: Shoutout to our fronds @mbari-blog for the first three clips!
this stupid ass show's timeline is so fucked up omg
according to the wikia, the year is 132 AC, which is already stupid in and of it itself but whatever, moving on.
I think it was last episode that they say that Daeron is 16, which is fine, okay, but then you remember that according to the timeskips and the wikia, Helaena is 17 and Aemond is 17-16. Jaehaerys & Jaehaera are 4 years old, so Helaena had them at 13, which is just.... yikes. But did Alicent have three children in two years? Why is Aemond's birth so uncertain when all the other major characters have birth years?
Alicent says that Gwayne was 8 and motherless when she and Otto came to court, and yet in episode 1 of the first season, Daemon mentions that Otto's wife died recently and we see Gwayne was old enough to participate in the tourney.... are there two Gwaynes or did the writers forget that they had already introduced his character? Also, him saying that he is the oldest son and should be raised at Oldtown is so stupid, because Otto is the second son and none of his children will inherite the Hightower, not unless his brother's kids all drop dead, which we know doesnt happen in the books (though they could do that in the show, who knows).
the writers make such stupid choices in regards to the timeline. Why did they make Joffrey, Aegon III and Viserys II so young when it is going to create so many problems for the narrative later on? How is Aegon going to flee on dragonback when Stormcloud is the size of a cat? Is someone going to rescue him and leave Viserys behind? One of the reasons Aegon III was so broken is because he was forced to abandon his brother and he never forgave himself. how can that happen in the show when he doesnt even have the ability to properly eat by himself?
and now they made Hugh Saera's son, when he looks like he is the same age as Daemon, and Saera was only 14 when Daemon was born in the books? hell, when he was born she hadnt even had that whole scandal business.... not to mention that they make it see like Hugh was born in Westeros, probably the Crownlands or even King's Landing itself. Are they trying to say that Saera worked at a brothel in the city while her father was king?
No wonder Harwin started grinning when he saw Rhaenyra covered in blood, my man grew up around Alys "blood nummy licky licky" Rivers. He's used to insane women, that's exactly his type.
Having just discovered frost scorpions in the Mo' Creatures mod and had the immediate thought of "I wonder if the different scorpion variants taste different in scorpion hot pot," I've decided that Travis is MCD's version of Senshi from Dungeon Meshi.
I've recently been watching these very interesting Star Wars video essays on YouTube (yeah I know, a rare breed) and it brings up these comments Lucas has made about how he views Star Wars as almost like a silent film in terms of how important the visuals are to him in comparison to the dialogue. But this essay also points out how important Lucas finds all of the "rhyming" moments in his trilogies and the way he utilizes them to remind you of something else for emotional or thematic reasons. And there's so many of them, both in visuals and in dialogue, and it's interesting to consider how important this is to him, the repetition for a purpose as well as the storytelling through visuals above everything else and then to look at Star Wars since the Prequels came out and realize how little has really been able to match up to those ideals since then.
The ONLY thing that's come out since the Prequels that I think really hits these two things the same way is, in fact, Andor. One of the things I noticed about the way people discussed Andor as it was airing in a way I haven't really seen for any of the other shows or films was the visual SYMBOLOGY. So many times I saw people noticing the Imperial cog everywhere, from the aerial shot of Narkina 5 as the prisoners escape to the architecture of Mon Mothma's house. There were people picking up on the use of items in Luthen's shop that are familiar from other things to give this idea that Luthen is from another time, he's attempting to preserve this world he lost, that if you're not looking closely enough you won't notice what he's really saying or doing with this shop. The color choices for the different locations and people got analyzed because the people involved spoke about how they intentionally utilized color to SEND A MESSAGE about the characters and the world. We know that the people who made the costumes and sets really worked hard to treat Star Wars almost like a period drama and study the history of the franchise as if it were a real place so that the things they came up with felt like they belonged in this world everyone knows so well even if it's completely new. And of course there were all of the myriad references to things from Rogue One, the constant repetition of "climb", the sunset on the beach, etc.
Nearly EVERY SHOT in this show was created with so much intention behind it in order to say something meaningful about the characters, the world, this specific story they're in, and the overall saga of Star Wars itself. It's insane how much greater impact this show was able to achieve through the incredibly careful usage of visual symbols and thematic repetitions, much like Lucas did before them. It feels like they didn't just study the history of the galaxy far far away, but they studied the history of STAR WARS and what Lucas was trying to do and say with this story. They peeled back his onion a bit more and were able to create something that really has that same visual feel even when it's not created for a child audience. It also is experimenting with its narrative style through its structure and through Cassian's character being allowed to be somewhat more reactive than proactive, and while that didn't work for everyone, it does feel like it's following in Lucas's footsteps of experimentation through Star Wars. Push the boundaries of what Star Wars is and can be and what you can say with it.
But this only works because they peeled the onion back enough to TRULY understand all of the messages Lucas was sending with it. They got the heart of Star Wars and despite its lack of space wizards, despite the lack of most major characters in the Saga, this was a show that honestly got the message more than just about anything else Star Wars has put out since the Prequels. The choices between selflessness and selfishness, the themes about how you always HAVE to make a choice even when it feels like you don't have any (sometimes ESPECIALLY when it feels like you don't have any), and how important it is to make sure to choose the path of compassion above everything else. The themes of connection to others, the symbiotic circle and the impact even the smallest person can have on world around them, it's RIGHT THERE and it's CENTRAL to Andor's storyline.
So yes, it experiments a little with narrative structure, but it's possibly the most Star Wars thing to exist Revenge of the Sith because it honestly truly GETS what Star Wars was about, both in its themes and in its filmmaking. A lot of people said that Andor didn't feel like Star Wars to them, usually because of the lack of space wizards and the fact that it's not a story aimed at children. But to me, Andor is EXACTLY what Star Wars is and has always been. They're stretching the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, but it's saying the exact same things Star Wars has always said, it's just saying it slightly differently. This doesn't feel like fanfiction to me, not really. Unlike things like the Mandoverse or the books, Andor isn't just taking some of the toys out of the sandbox and going to play with them somewhere else. Andor is IN that sandbox. It's building a slightly different sandcastle, but it's still within the sandbox, using the same sand that Lucas did.
Another Pheonix is at the door to 43's office, holding several framed photos and souvenirs, their outfit is burnt in several places.
Is it alright if I take a moment here? I accidentally started a fire in my office, and maintenence forgot to put an extinguisher in there.
- @eodasks
[@eodasks]
[043 looks up from their paperwork, startled.]
Of course. Take all the time you need, I've done that a few times m'self.
[Their brow furrows.]
Isn't...isn't having a fire extinguisher in every single office like, a well-enforced policy? Because of the increasingly high pyromania rates in EOD Agents?
I read a fanfic years ago that starts with Bill and The Axolotl talking about making a deal for him to seek help but instead of him going to a mental hospital, he gets turned into a human and has the body of a child so he can’t do much harm while the pines family tries to rehabilitate him and why did I actually think that’s where the book was going for a second💀
Little Tommy Riley, who hears his mother and father arguing, runs to his brother Simon, who to help him takes a walkman with a cassette. Inside there are some metal or rock songs including "Blood Brothers" by Iron Maiden