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btssunnyboy · 3 years

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Deadly Protection - Choi San - PART 1

The hate he felt for his other clients, was nothing compared to how he felt about you. But maybe him liking you, isn’t the best possible outcome.

Word Count - 3,036

Warning - Progressive yandere, profanity, Chan is fucking mean, one misogynistic comment, and a sexual innuendo.

BTS , NCT , ATEEZ - Request Open

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Working with over pampered celebrities was his expertise. He knew all the in and outs of this industry, but he had too. As much as he hated the people he worked with, he was still getting paid to protect them with his life. In order to do so he needed to know every possible outcome of every possible situation. And that hatred for those other clients built a pit of anger and despair in his stomach as he walked closer to the door. The thought of meeting the shitty person behind almost made him change his mind and walk away. But that key word almost is something big that should be taken into consideration. With a deep breath, San swallowed his pride and proceeded to make his presence known to those in the room.

A few sets of eyes shifted towards his direction and the only thing he could do is bow his head. Within a second those in the room turned back to their original conversation and paid the man in the comer no mind as he stared off aimlessly through the window. It was oddly strange that no one was rushing up to him, or pointing him towards the one person he was sworn to protect. This whole ordeal was causing a pit to rise in his stomach, and his gut feelings were always right.

“She has to be on set in ten minutes! Where is she!” One of the women in the dressing room bellowed out loudly as she checked her watch for the third time. Her eyes acted as if they were gonna pop out of her skull at any given moment. And that made San’s blood run cold. Was this mystery lady about to be another pain in his ass, were you somehow even more of a spoiled, entitled bitch then he had thought? Should San give up this opportunity right here, right now.

Another lady in the room, that he assumed was an assistant, came up behind the previous woman and tried to soothe her. Small back rubs and encouraging words did not seem to do the trick, as he watched her hissy fit continue to unfold in front of him. The assistant took a shaky breath into her lungs before she spoke, “Listen, Y/n has never let you down before! I promise, it’s probably just traffic that’s keeping them.”

Ah, so his client is the famous Y/n, who is known for her more villainous roles on the silver screen. If you’re anything like you’re characters, he’s gonna take that as a big red flag. But before he could form more of an obnoxious opinion on you, the dressing room door was being pushed open. Rather harshly as it made San stumble about, before he could reach for the gun that was hidden within the confines of his jacket just as his fingertips grazed the holster, he was met with pleading eyes. That was just begging for some peace at that moment.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even realize you were standing there.” The voice was panicked as you rushed to his aid. Your eyes as wide as they’d go as you looked over his arm. Almost as if you were more worried about the built man in the corner then your own safety. As you had walked up to a complete stranger without inspecting more of your surroundings. “Are you okay, do you need anything?”

San’s curiosity spiked just by watching you interact with him, as you’ve known each other since you were kids. Your soft hands rested on his bicep as you tried to inspect for any injuries that you may have caused. And he found it quite cute when reliziation hit you, and you tried to make the distance between two of you greater. You were invading his personal space, and he appreciates you backing off. But before he could even answer your questions, the assistant from before harshly shoved her shoulder into his.

“Y/n, where the hell were you! Sasha has been panicking like crazy!” San felt his eye twitch at the high pitched voice of the assistant. They could have been nicer with this whole ordeal, it’s not that hard to ask a question. But instead this lady wanted to raise her voice and practically spit in your face, and then have the audacity to get mad when you took a few moments to answer. “You’ve got a voice, don’t you?”

“Amber I’m so sorry I was late, but traffic was terrible and random cars kept following me.” You explained as you tried to put down your purse. When you made eye contact with him, for some reason it felt nice and familiar. Even though you know for a fact you have never met this man in your life. “I promise this won’t happen again.”

“It better not, or you can kiss any letter or recommendations goodbye.” Sasha stormed out of the dressing room and dragged Amber along with her. A saddened look on her face as they simply brushed right passed you. “You have less than ten minutes to get ready for the scene.”

You harshly rubbed your hands down your face as you took in a deep breath. All these doubtful thoughts of the movie started racing in, and you wondered if this was all worth. Getting treated like trash just because you were late one time, and then threatening to trash your name up and down the boulevard. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why Amber decided to take her anger out on you.”

“You say sorry too much, besides that hit felt like nothing.” San slightly smiled as he tried to keep the conversation small. Those two were already pissed and he doesn’t want you getting into any more trouble. He cleared his throat loudly as he started towards the door. “I will just step outside and let you get ready. Just knock on the door three times and we’ll head down to the set.”

Before he could step out the door, you held out your hand. A small gesture, that he was not used to at all. He was used to getting yelled at to guard the doors and make sure no pervert is snooping through the windows. His wrinkled eyebrows gave away his confusion as he eyed your hand just a little bit longer than necessary. The small rings that glittered in the light complimented your hand nicely, everything seemed to compliment you nicely. “Just so we’re starting off on the right foot, I’m Y/n, and I’m going to guess that you’re Choi San my new bodyguard.”

It was oddly strange how the first interaction with you had San’s heart beating a little faster than normal. He was so used to being with distasteful people, that didn’t care about anyone but themselves. But truth be told everything felt different when it came to you. You apologize profusely even when things weren’t your fault, you never raise your voice and you’re always so kind. Even to some of the dumb people that over step their boundaries, but that’s his job to pay attention to those types of people. It’s his job to protect you and yet it seems like you’d lay it all on the line to protect him.

He’d never admit it to anyone, but he does feel a connection. A connection that runs deeper than a simple coworker type of relationship, but at the same time he knows this has to stay strictly in the business type of situation. But at this moment it’s not like he could act on these so-called feelings, as your manager had other plans for your own love life. Which was stupid in his opinion, as you were your own perosn and you didn’t deserve to be treated like that.

“Don’t they just look fantastic together!” Sasha gushed beside him as she looked at her new couple. You were standing there semi awkwardly as the dude proceeded to put his arm around your waist. But it started to drift lower and lower and San could feel his blood boil within. Before he could even step one foot forward, you calmly removed his arm altogether. Within a second Sasha had to put her two cents in once more. “Y/n, stop! That pose is perfect, it shows how close you two are!”

“No offense, Sasha, but Chan and I barely know each other.” You forced a tight lipped as Chan’s hand tried to rub soothing circles on your hip. This relationship is just PR for the new movie you two are, but it felt so grimy. Lying to your fans just so they’ll buy a ticket and waste their own money on you. Just because they see the two main characters getting close with one another.

“I mean you could always take me up on my offer, and go on a date with me.” Chan smiled flirtatiously at you as he twisted your body to face him. His eyes staring longingly into your while his hands began to move to your lower back. Then he leaned over to whisper in your ear so that no one could hear. “Besides, if you have a good time at dinner, maybe we can have some more fun back at my hotel room.”

You kept your mouth shut because you knew that if you opened your mouth vomit would cover him from head to toe. But it seems like that decision was already made for you, as Sasha’s eyebrows quirked up at the idea. The idea of her two leading costars getting flirty at a candle lit dinner. It would drive the press crazy which in result would drive up so much more buzz about the movie. “That’s perfect, Amber will have everything set up by tonight!”

Dread filled your entire body at the thought of having to spend a night with him. You know it’s for press, and you know it’s for the fans, but still it’s the thought is stomach turning. But beside you, Chan, was having the opposite reaction. One of his eyebrows were cocked in and he wore a sly smirk. You could tell that his stomach was filled with something else than bile, like yours was. His fingertips brushed against your chin, as he pulled your face a little closer. His lips barely brushed against yours, as he softly spoke. “I’ll see you tonight sweetheart.”

You watched him walk away as you tried to keep your composure, but it was hard. Dealing with a guy like him was terrible. They never took social cues, or read the room in any way. The only thing that filled their blown up head of getting laid. Quickly slipping away you tried to make it back to the dressing room without anyone noticing, but you knew that you’d always have a shadow.

“Why can’t they have his girlfriend in the show go on a date with him! I’m his rival, what good is gonna come from this.” You huffed lightly as you turned to face the man that followed you. “I’m sorry you probably don’t wanna hear all my complaining.”

“Talking helps, and it’s obvious you need someone to listen.” San shrugged his shoulders as he took a seat on the plush couch, but he tried to keep a respectable distance between the two of you. “And I’m your bodyguard. I'm here to help with any problems you might have, so lay it on me.”

For once someone actually cared to listen to what you have to say. It felt like a wave of relief washed over you, because you felt safe having this conversation with him. You hoped that after this you two would have more conversations, because seriousness isn’t needed every second of the day. You just hoped he felt that way too.

“Let’s hope this doesn’t take long.”

“Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m all ears no matter how long it takes.”

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You lightly patted down the bottom of your dress as you started walking towards the elevator. Chan had asked you to meet him down in the lobby, because he said he has a small surprise. Even though you know you needed to focus on the man you’re about to go on a date with you couldn’t. As cliche as it sounds you couldn’t stop your mind from wandering to San. The poor guy who has his ear talked off for over an hour, just by you complaining about Chan. But he still listened, his eyes were alert with every single word that passed through your lips. You sighed heavily as the elevator dinged showing that you were now on the right floor.

“You look stunning.” Chan said, surprisingly nice. Without the hint of any sexual undertones to it. You smiled slightly as you gripped his outstretched hand. He may be acting nice now, but you know you never should let that guard down tonight. Here’s to two hours of your life that you’re never gonna get back.

“You’re not gonna be quiet the whole dinner are you?” Chan jokes as he tries to nonchalantly sip his drink. His eyes stared back into yours with curiosity swimming in them, but he waited patiently for your answer. “Hmm?”

“I’m just looking through the menu right now,” You tried to keep yourself busy as long as possible. Because no offense to him, but you could feel your brain cells deteriorating the more you spoke to him. All you wanted to do was go back to your room and go to sleep. For once sleep seems a lot more interesting than keeping a conversation going with this man. You bit back the urge to laugh as you heard him huff.

“For fifteen minutes? Damn, I didn’t realize picking a meal could be that hard.” His words made your head pulse with a headache every time he decided to speak. But the stupid look on his face made it clear that he thought his words were just conversational pieces. And it took all the willpower in your body to not chuck the wine in your glass at him. But he didn’t seem to care as he started to scroll aimlessly through his stupid phone.

The moment the waiter came over you quickly rushed your order out of your mouth. The sooner you say it the sooner it might come, and the sooner you can leave this ass in the restaurant. Throughout dinner you could feel eyes staring holes into the back of your head. But every time you tried to catch a glimpse of them, they’d always disappear. Your soul nearly left your body as a rough hand was placed upon your shoulder.

“You need to leave, right now.” San has a calm demeanor, but you could tell something was wrong by the sternness in his voice. Chan eyed him worriedly, as he watched him out his arm around your waist. Before you two even stepped one foot out of the restaurant he placed his jacket over your head. You assumed it was to protect you from the rain. “Keep your head down, and walk as fast as you can. I’ll explain everything when we’re in your hotel room.”

You listened without a second thought as you raced back to your room. Ignoring the pain in your ankles from your high heels digging into them harshly. The only thing on your mind was the way San’s hands rested protectively rested on your waist. Before you stepped into the hotel you noticed all the vans that were starting to surround the restaurant and many different people emerged from them. Paparazzi, along with fans seemed to camp out in front of the restaurant. Now you were glad to be in the safe walls of San’s hotel room.

“Chan sent a tweet exposing your location and people started to figure out the hotel you were staying at as well. So I knew I needed to get you out of there as soon as possible.” Of course that dumb ass tweeted out where you two were. But then again it doesn’t surprise you, he’s always been one who loves any type of attention that he could receive. “Maybe it’s best you stay in my room tonight, just in case any fans put two and two together.”

“I really don’t want to be a bother, and besides you have to deal with me enough.” You tried to waive off his offer, even though you knew this was a good idea. You were safer with him no matter. And the thought of someone getting into your hotel room scared the hell out of you.

“Once again, it’s my job to protect you no matter what. And besides Chan is still at the restaurant they’re gonna follow him, and I’d rather not have the thought of you alone on my mind. So please just stay.” San pleaded as he tried to fix the spare bed. Making sure it was comfortable enough for you to sleep in. He smiled slightly as you gave a quick nod, before announcing that you were going to return to your room for a change of clothes. He knew at that moment you were too nice for your own good, and he’s going to have to step up his game in order to keep you safe.

San didn’t understand what came over him that night. Watching you shake slightly under your cover was tearing him to pieces and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t understand why he’s even having these feelings all together, considering you were supposed to be a job, not anything else. But he picked Chan’s lock without a second thought and proceeded to show him why exposing your location was a bad idea. Chan’s room was unrecognizable, by the time San was down with it.

Glass shattered in every direction, piles of it littered the floor. Multiple pieces of his clothes were ripped and torn straight from the seams. His bed was turned upside down, with the sheets thrown across the room. Hopefully this gets San’s message across, but he’d be more than happy to take this straight to Chan’s face.

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volleyball-dontknowher · 4 years

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hsksjsjss can i get an emergency request? i had a super shitty week and i just kinda wanna get sucked into the earth for a while. can i have some loving kenma fluff, like he's comforting his s/o who's SUPER insecure about how they look and think they're not pretty enough for him? (you can include some nsfw too, 'cause who isn't horny when they're sad?)

Hello lovey!! I am so so so so so sorry to hear you have had a bad week, I hope that things get better for you, and if you need someone to talk to or someone to send you too many pictures of their dog I am here for you any time!! I did include a couple of things I do when I get insecure and I hope that you like it <3 and always know I love you and I think you are so beautiful and absolutely sexy as shit (in a non-harrassing way, I love you)

Insecure

Words: 2.1k

Warnings: Some NSFW and fluff

You knew that Kenma had an internet following, and a passionate one at that, you knew that he had millions of fans who would swoon over his every action and you had to know that because well, he was your boyfriend

What you didn’t know was that other people would make fun of the things that you were already insecure about

You hated how you looked and couldn’t stand the thought that others did too, you found yourself obsessing about your appearance and trying all of the dumb things to make you feel prettier even though you knew that none of it would work

Most days you could get over it and brush it aside for the sake of your mental health as well as the sake of your relationship, but this week had been so stressful and so shitty that everything had been building on top of each other causing even looking in the mirror to be agony

You had received tons of comments pointing out how your nose wasn’t right for your face and how your smile was so uneven that it made you look like a Disney villain and you couldn't help but take it to heart because that’s what you thought about yourself anyway and these strangers were just telling you facts and helping you feel as though you were useless

You knew that Kenma was going to be working late tonight, it was a launch day and he always tried to get everything done before leaving the office even though he never liked to work later than he had to away from home, but this was good for you, that meant you didn’t have to change or try to look happy about the things that were secretly crushing your insides

You spent the day laying in bed watching TV and scrolling through your social media’s as you compare yourself to the pretty girls that seemed to appear everywhere without any flaws, you ended up getting yourself more upset than before, as you let the tears run down your face and decided to take a break from your phone and just focus on the episode of Criminal minds that was on

This was good for you because well there wasn’t ever anyone crazy attractive on there and you were more focused on trying to solve the case before the detectives did

You ended up just sitting there mindlessly for several episodes before you heard the door slam shut, you couldn't help but be paranoid as you jolted upright in bed, worried that someone was now breaking into your house, before you had time to react you heard Kenma’s voice call out your name, not once but three times in a panic looking for you

You cal his name back quietly in hopes that he wouldn’t come and find you, you were wrong, of so wrong, Kenma came into the bedroom immediately and the moment he saw you his heart dropped, you were sitting there alone with tear stains down your face

This was the last thing that he ever expected to come home to and he knew that he had to say something and figure this out with you

“Hey,” he started, looking at you with but worry, as he dropped his bag and climbed into bed with you, wrapping his arms around your shoulders as he rubbed up and down your arms and placing a quick kiss to your temples, “what’s wrong love?” he whispered, lips pressed against your hair, he was trying not to panic, but seeing you so upset makes everything in him worried

You didn’t know how to answer him, opening and closing your mouth several times in an attempt to try and get the words out, instead, your eyes started welling up again instead, you couldn't help but start crying again

Kenma had no idea what was wrong and didn’t want to upset you more, “Y/N, I love you, and I know we can get through this together. You are so kind, and intelligent, and sweet, and loving and beautiful, I love you more than anything.” he said, which felt uncharacteristically unlike him, but everything he said was the truth, he really did love you with everything he had

Instead of calming you down it only made you cry harder, “I’m not pretty,” you choked out between sobs

Kenma had never disagreed with anything more in his entire life, “Y/n, how could you say that?” he questioned, pulling you closer to him

“I’m ugly, my face, my body, my weight, my everything, it’s ugly,” you cried out. This time Kenma was the one opening and closing his mouth, he had no idea why or how you felt this way and he just wanted to make you feel better and that didn’t work, he couldn’t imagine what made you feel this way, “I’m fat and I hate my face and I don’t know why you are with someone that is as ugly as me,” you continued on your tangent, unable to stop yourself

This was the last straw, Kena pushed you down onto the bed and laid on top of you, pinning you down with his hips, “Y/n, I am with you because I love you, because I think you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever set my eyes on. If you could only see yourself through my eyes then you’d see nothing but beauty and you would find yourself too gorgeous for me. I can��t imagine looking so beautiful and not seeing it, you are stunning Y/n and I want you to know that when I call you pretty I mean it with everything in my heart. You know me, and you know that I don’t lie, there’s no reason to and I could never exaggerate your beauty because there is just so much of it.” he says, never breaking eye contact with you. When he is done, he leans down and kisses your forehead, “You’re beautiful here,” then he kisses your temple, “you’re beautiful here too” then he kisses your nose, “you’re beautiful here too,” he murmurs as he goes to do the same to each of your cheeks

“Stoooop Kenma,” you try pushing him off of you but he just smacks your hands away

“Y/n, you are beautiful everywhere and if you don’t see if then I am going to show it to you,” he gives you a mischievous little smile before kissing your lips lightly and moving down to kiss your jaw and your neck, “You are gorgeous.” “You are stunning.” “I love you.” He continues as he kisses down your body, his hands roaming up your shirt as he slowly pulls it off of you

His lips make contact with one breast, then the other, gently licking and sucking on the delicate flesh, making you moan out his name

Kenma had the tiniest smile on his face as he continued kissing down your sensitive skin as he praised every part of your body, telling you all of the things he loves about you

When he reached your waistband you couldn’t help but shiver as he left open mouth kisses on your hips as his cold fingers slipped down inside the elastic and slowly pulled them off of you, his eyes glancing back up at you, pupils blown wide as he continued kissing down your hips and stopped right before your panties, he toyed with the fabric before looking up at you and sliding them off

“Fuck” he panted as he saw how exposed you are, “beautiful”

He began kissing down your hips and placing gentle little bites along your thighs, scattering little marks as his eyes stayed focused upon you, never once breaking eye contact

His head slowly shifted down between your legs as he licked one slow stripe up your throbbing core

You let out a breathy moan as your fingers went to his hair and pulled gently

“Fuck, you’re so fuck,” he moaned before going back to licking your dripping core, after a few long strokes his tongue wrapped around your clit and began flicking it quickly as his fingers began stroking your heated core before pushing two completely inside of you and curling them perfectly to hit the best spots inside of you

A whiny moan left your lips as you tried to raise your hips closer to Kenma but he wasn’t having it, he pushed your hips right back down, “don’t shy away from me, let me enjoy you,” he moaned before pulling his fingers out and replacing them with his tongue, his arms wrapping around your thighs and pulling you closer

You couldn’t help but let out a long needy moan as his tongue pulsed in and out of you, licking up all of your wetness as his fingers went to your clit and began expertly rubbing circles into it

Your hands were tugging Kenma’s hair as he switched back and forth from long deep licks to quick and shallow ones, as he held you close to his face enjoying your juices smearing down his face

Quickly your orgasm approached as Kenma replaced his tongue with his fingers and began driving three into your desperate hole as his mouth and nose pushed into your desperate clit, giving it the stimulation you needed as he hummed lightly, sending vibrations straight to your clit

You were a moaning mess at this point and couldn’t help but whine as he perfectly hit all of the spots inside of you as you felt yourself come undone beneath him, moaning his name as he continued to lick and suck you clean

When he was finished licking every part of you clean he slowly pulled back up your panties before laying down next to you

“I love you,” he whispered before pulling you on top of him, “every single part of you,” he starts, looking straight into your eyes, “you are my dream, when I would dream at night I always imagined a girl just like you, I want nothing else, you are perfect,” he sighed before kissing the top of your head

You couldn’t help but start tearing up at his kind words, “Kenma-” you started

“Shh, no but’s no if’s nothing, you are gorgeous, and I love you,” he coos as he rubs your hair, “if you ever think anything like that again, tell me, right away, okay baby, I’m gonna make you see just how beautiful you are.” he smiles before cupping your cheek in his hand and placing a quick kiss on your lips

You lay there for a while before he nudges you off of him and starts rummaging through your clothes

He pulls out an outfit for you and smiles weakly at you, “you tried this on and loved it, now you should wear it out to dinner,” he stated, smiling even bigger

You instinctively shook your head no, “Kenma, I can’t wear that out,” you stammer

“Why not?” he questions, “It looks amazing on you.”

“Kenma bab-”

“Kenma what?” he sasses you, “when you tried it on you were glowing, now put it on and let’s go get Thai, okay?” he smiled at you

You couldn’t help but feel giddy putting the outfit on, you secretly did love how it looked on you, you just got nervous about what others would think about you in it but every time you would glance around nervously at dinner Kenma grabbed your hand and said one word, “beautiful”

He even went as far as taking cute pictures of you for your Instagram and smiling at you, telling you how good you looked after every single one, not only did Kenma make you feel amazing, but he also took the most gorgeous pictures of you that you’ve ever seen, he kept smiling at you and telling you his favorite part of each picture as he scrolled, one he would complement your smile and the next he would complement your beautiful eyes, then your gorgeous pose and when you got blushy he just shrugged and sent you the pictures telling you that he said what he meant and that you really are that pretty

He even let the two of you get some cuteeee pictures together which is rare for Kenma because he prefers to not take pictures at all, but you two got the best pictures together and it ended up being both of your new screensavers, and every time you saw Kenma open his phone to a picture of you he always gave it a little smile and a pause before going on to do whatever it was he needed his phone for

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rpbetter · 3 years

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what's the nicest possible way to tell a close friend their roleplay blogs suck and if they want followers and interaction like they keep complaining about they have to actually put effort into it instead of just making blog after blog and slapping a character on it like that's they need to do. I've tried to suggest this to her before by comparing other blogs that play her muse but she just feels inadequate instead of inspired to emulate them which I understand but it's very frustrating when I suggest a million ways to make her blog better and she brushes them all off for one reason or another and I don't want to say anything because she's like a sister to me. sigh.

Unfortunately, the short answer to this is that there really isn't any way you can make her see this unless she's ready to see it.

But, I don't like giving those sorts of answers, they feel hopeless and shitty, so, let's try this...

Understanding what the problem with your friend and her connecting with this information is, is important. It might help in talking to her about the issue.

What I find in these instances, and a lot of similar ones, is that the mun is unhappy about the results but quite happy with the process. She's enjoying some part of this, it's just not the lack of interaction, obviously. It's the very things she's doing to turn people off of her muses.

I think a lot of people get kind of addicted to new muses. I mean, the entire process of having a new muse:

interest to outright fixation, no matter how short-lived, in a new, inspiring muse

who is almost certainly in a new fandom, and probably, one that is very busy and popular at the moment

"someone stop me" phase, even though they've already decided

picking the perfect URL, creating the new blog, making the graphics and batches of icons

reblogging All The Content about the new muse, at least, the visual content and maybe, a couple of "oof, right in the feels" style short meta posts

plugging the new muse on the old blogs, through friends, etc.

mass follows

new mutuals! Shiny new meme asks in the inbox! New threads!

It's about the newness, the excitement, and the irrationally promising feeling that damn it, this time, the blog and muse is going to be successful, popular even, beloved, the actual favorite iteration of the character in the RPC. Like anything exciting, it's addicting for people. And like anything addicting, it can take hitting rock bottom and going several more feet down, a few times, before they're over it and want to change.

Which is, of course, where you come in with your as-yet failed RP interventions.

What makes what you're trying to do here very difficult is that there isn't a total bottoming out she's going to reach. There will always be something new and exciting coming out with a new and exciting muse that'll fix the problem, in her mind. There will always be the option and availability to create another blog, slap another muse on it, rinse and repeat. With shampoo and conditioner that never runs out.

You definitely had the right idea by trying to get her to contrast between why what she is doing isn't working the way she wants and why what someone else is doing is working out that way. It's just, as you found out, often not the best idea, no matter how well-intentioned it is. With her blogs constantly failing for reasons she refuses to believe, it's incredibly likely she's already done some comparison in all the wrong ways, ultimately going back and forth between blaming the other iterations, finding nothing but errors in the way they write the character and set up their blogs, and feeling depressed that she's not good enough, but they are.

So, you might have unintentionally inflamed all of this! She could be in a place where she's even more likely to believe that what she's doing is great as a defense mechanism for being hard on herself.

I'd also like to say that I'm aware the "right" advice here is, "there's nothing you can do, you'll just make her feel bad, people have a right to RP however they want." But, you're also her friend, and you have to be around the complaining and upset when this just keeps happening.

Furthermore, when we have very close friends like this, we automatically keep trying to fill in the gaps for them at cost to ourselves - every time they make another blog/muse, we get roped into writing things we know are just going to be dropped, making them things we know are going to left on a deserted blog, and so on. Eventually, it makes you feel bad about yourself because your efforts aren't good enough, either. It can really ruin the hobby for you, sucking away enjoyment and creativity you could be spending elsewhere.

I don't think you're wrong in trying to help both her and yourself.

Keep being honest with her. When she complains, be honest about why this is happening. And you can, indeed, be kind and honest!

Let's say that she says something about how she wrote all these opens and no one is going for them.

You could say something like, "that sucks. I liked this one, it's the one that feels and sounds like the character to me. What were you doing when you wrote that? You should rewrite the others to be a little more like that, I think people are looking for more of the character like we saw them in the series."

You're acknowledging that she's right, it does suck, it's a shitty feeling no matter how at fault for it she is. While pointing out something she did good (and, okay, maybe she didn't, maybe they all categorically sucked lol but find one that was even a tiny bit better/that has elements you can use to both boost her confidence and show her what is right, not just wrong). Then, giving her an idea - whatever she was thinking, watching, listening to at that time, she tapped into something more like the actual character, and she could do it again. And telling her what the problem is, at least with this, that people don't want a cardboard cutout muse, they want the one they like from the fandom book/show/movie.

No need to actually compare with another active mun and muse, or tell her that it's because what she's doing is terribly and driving you nuts. Even if both are true.

If she's the one that compares herself to another blog this time, seize the opportunity!

"Well, people like that the muse is developed and like the character they know. When you interact with another canon, don't you want them to be like the character you liked? You liked -current muse- for a reason. When I've felt like that, I reminded myself of why I was drawn to the character and worked harder on writing them accurately and getting their voice down. I think this other blog has done that and you haven't yet."

It's a little harsher, but she may very well only be looking for validation from you that this other blog actually sucks and she's doing great. A lot of complaints on tumblr are that - seeking validation, not help. The entire culture of that shit is not at all helpful. You don't want to try to sort of shock her out of it by being too harsh, but you do want to make it clear that you're not going to just give ass pats and tell her what she wants to hear.

You're telling her why this other blog is more successful, that the muse comes off as the character and is enjoyable to write with. Because the mun put in the effort to make them both accurate to the character and a muse that's fun/interesting/engaging to write with in RP.*

*Not all characters transfer over well to RP, either, and this might also be some of her problem. For whatever reason, some people are deeply drawn to the worst possible choices for them. They will find the least applicable character in a whole series, one with a billion characters that spans decades of material, plenty of viable options all around, but no, it's got to be this one. The one that's impossible for them to pull off, boring or disliked by the fandom, is incredibly difficult to interact with (think manic pixie bullshit, villains that are extreme loners, incredibly quiet and reserved characters, or those who are only ever seen in their canon to be bantering with friends and enemies - people they have established relationships with, unlike someone else's muse, even if that muse is a canonical friend or enemy), or is an active turn off in RP, like an outrageously overpowered character whose entire existence is based on being OP as fuck. That's going to be what they go for. Every. Damn. Time.

If you notice she's doing this, she could be compensating without even realizing it by turning the string of muses into identical and empty clichés she thinks people want to interact with, but that she can still handle writing. And unfortunately, your job is even harder, OP, because everyone has a character type...and your bestie's is Fucking Impossible to RP for 90% of the RPC Population Type lmao I'm...I'm so sorry.

Maybe if this is the case, you can get her to try out a different character that has some of the traits you've noticed she seems to always be drawn to, but without the complications. Work smarter, not harder, though! Propose this as you desperately wanting your muse to interact with x. Some people react very badly to being told "you'd write a great -muse name," others are flattered by it. If you don't know for certain that she'd be flattered, or at least not offended, that she doesn't hate this character or anything, do not say this. Just tell her that you love this character, you think she could handle them as a NPC in a thread, could she please try?

And make that the single most interesting thread in the history of threads. Specifically, for her. Give her tons of engagement with this NPC of the sort she tends to want the most. It might stick and reset some of her perspective on the types of characters she keeps choosing.

You're reminding her that she's a RPer, too, which sounds like a crazy thing to have to remind a RPer, but we do weirdly lose track of this. We get very invested in what we're putting out more than what we've successfully been given, especially when we're not being given much of what we want. So, you're prodding her to recall that there are two parts of this equation, she's been on the side of it - she's wanted to interact specifically with a canon muse because she loved the character/ship with hers/whatever, and has, as we all have, experienced both the disappointment of running through a ton of them who just are not that character and also finding the version that very much is.

This helps to put other people back into perspective in a way that isn't just "interactions." (Read as "desired attention." Which isn't a slam, it's true. It's also not a problem, we all are here to interact, we all enjoy having devoted mutuals and such. It's only a problem when we stop seeing them as anything other than a means to an end for ourselves.) She might be able to relate to them, thus, why they don't like her muses, if she can put herself back into their shoes.

You stick with that and transition it into why she picked the current muse. It's the same deal, there was something about the muse that sparked interest, creativity, etc. What was it? Something that isn't there, or there enough, in her writing. In all the excitement of muse-creation, she's probably let whatever it was slide right out the door. If you can get her to recall that feeling of interest and identify for herself what all triggered it, she might be able to stick with it.

And you've encouraged her again to give people what they want if she wants interactions by developing her muses. You've also done so, if it all applicable and true, by using yourself here, making it feel like not just a common problem, but one experienced and overcome by someone she cares about and trusts.

She might have an issue with needing a lot of high-interest, high-reward scenarios, too.

This is a high-effort, minimum reward situation for her. A lot of us in the RPC have shit like ADHD that can really make this difficult once we're experiencing it in this way, but even those who don't absolutely fall into it as well. So, you'll need ways to make it fun, but...I think if you can sort of kindly trick her into experiencing the effort as its own reward, it'd go a long, long way.

I can't really say what I do, having this problem with high-effort, minimal reward because I don't tend to experience that in RP. The writing is the reward for me, as much as I lose it utterly with happiness every time a writing partner is loving what I've given them. My reward system is set up around the writing and exploring characters. Hers seems to be set up around the reaction to it and amount of engagement with it. You need to try to use the latter to give her some of the former.

If she likes Halloween or Christmas, Fall or Winter, this could be your way into doing it!

Get her hyped about a seasonal prompt list you're doing. This does, yeah, mean you will have to do it, too lol but in the end, any time you aren't able to produce something daily like these lists usually are set up for, you're showing her that it isn't a job she's got to fulfill - the rules are only as strict as she wants to make them for herself. And if you keep yours short and fun, she'll feel like it's perfectly fine and good to do it this way as well. That it doesn't need to be a damn masterpiece or anything, just fun, something different to show off her muse.

While what she's actually doing, in addition to that, is getting in touch with and developing her muse. Importantly, when we write in a way that is just for ourselves like this, we tend to kind of...bond, for lack of a less weird sounding way of putting it, with a muse. It makes them stick with us longer, raising their importance and easier availability to us.

Let her know you're doing this, pick one out you genuinely like, and don't expect her to be down with it immediately. It's work with no foreseeable reward. Except, it's very hard to listen to our friends be excited, proud of themselves, enjoying themselves without wanting to join in. It'll be especially helpful, though, if you think people you interact with will like the posts and comment on them, or even try to turn them into threads if you include their muses (with their consent, of course, and no pressure). If she sees that, it might make it even more interesting to her. You might also have to pose this as her helping you out, that you don't think you'll get more than two done if she isn't doing it as well, as a sort of a challenge she can hold you to.

Whatever you think might work best for engaging her, you know her well, you can do it!

Be there to help her out with ideas if she goes for it. Throw out some easy, fun suggestions you think she might like, that even give her some opportunity to write something with her muse that she doesn't get a chance to. Pull from the muse's canon, is there something in their canon that goes with the prompt word "snow," for instance? Is it something she enjoyed about the canon story? Suggest it. Thinking about both the muse and your friend, is there something else that came to mind about that prompt you could suggest? Do it!

Again, whatever she's most into, it's an angle. Humor? Her serious muse is forced into a ridiculous, funny situation that involves the snow. Angst? A sad memory associated with the snow. Shipping? A romantic, fluffy scene (or steamy one). And so on.

Be there to express interest and encouragement while she's doing it. Don't do things that are going to come off as pressuring or helicopter moming her, of course! Like, asking how much she's gotten done, did she start working on it yet? That's a bad idea, unless she enjoys that sort of thing. Instead, tell her how much you can't wait to see this, ask about how it's going, tell her about yours to encourage her to talk about it.

And be there to be her audience when she posts it. This really seems to be her highest reward, so give it to her. Like the post, comment on the post, tell her in messages. Not individually, all of those things. If you can find a way to that doesn't mess up what you've got going on with your blog, mutuals, other friends, etc., mention it on your blog.

At this point, people might be both aware of her RP habits and wary of engaging with her, but someone might bite if you're enthused and go like the post. If it's applicable, make some jokes about it on the dash, turn it into a moment of inside joke-like crack for people to see. Mention that she wrote this and you loved it, link it or outright reblog her post. Hell, mention that you and her are doing such and such prompts for whatever holiday or season before the fact, that way, it doesn't come out of nowhere to your mutuals, either. Again, if applicable, you can ask to turn it into a thread.

The point, at this juncture, isn't to attract people to her blog and posts, it's to demonstrate to her that this is fun and rewarding. If you can get people to go like the posts, great, but you can only count on yourself to do it at first.

Most people enjoy those sorts of prompts on their dash from mutuals, though. You're always going to have some who feel like it's annoying because it wasn't strictly a RP reply, but whatever, they're not the majority in most fandoms anymore, thankfully. Point is, it's literally showing her mutuals that she's capable of thinking as her muse and working on her muse. It's showing off good things and making her muse more interesting and uniquely hers in a good way. And it's totally possible that she's going to organically generate likes, people wanting to use this as a plot with her for RP, and mutuals who are increasingly following along with every post made.

The hope is that she experiences the beginnings of more interest in the muse than she does making muses, gain some confidence in doing this with the enjoyment of it, and stick with a muse longer than five seconds so that she can actually end up with the interactions she wants.

There are definitely other ways of doing this, the prompt thing just came to mind because it's major prompt season. You've got a prompt list floating around for literally every popular point of interest right now, from whump to extreme fluff to horror to humor. And it's going to keep going until January. It's also something that can be as short as a paragraph or as long as several thousand words, and that a hell of a lot of people don't do all of. So, it's easy, so long as she's got a reason to find it interesting and stay on course with it even a little bit.

You could also try getting her into doing something like moodboards for her muse but with little additions of writing that go along with them. Nothing major, just things like a quote from her muse or a sentence from a starter, thread, whatever.

So long as you can get her to start refocusing on RP being enjoyable from the inside and not just the outside, it's valid as hell to try it! She seems to be experiencing RP as instant gratification and basing that gratification on things she can't control, like popularity.

Right now, even giving her the sober truth that one can write the best version of a canon muse there is to be found, be someone enjoyable and interesting in OOC interactions, and be an amazing writer without that being enough to garner popularity, or even the plots that are wanted. That being a very popular RPer and having more interactions than you know what to do with (honestly sucks ass) isn't a set of absolute values, but rather, variables that are always in flux and often, totally mysterious. It's usually a mixture of total luck, visual appeal, and both mun being on point with what people want to see right this second and muse being the mixture of fanon that is desirable, also, right at this exact second. It is seriously not within anyone's control, no matter how much effort, quality, or even outright bullshit they have to put out there.

If she's ever going to stick to a muse and not find herself envious, upset, and bored it's absolutely got to come from herself. She's got to be popular with herself, enjoying herself regardless of what others are seemingly achieving or want to give her. It's not going to be recognized no matter how harsh or sweet you are about the problem, unless she's capable of really looking at those problems as problems, and I don't think she's going to get to that point through negatively bottoming out. She might get there through the opposite, though!

It's...just going to take a lot of effort and patience from you, with no expectation of reward yourself.

Because it's still likely as hell it's just not going to happen. And while it seems like you are the kind of friend who would find the effort worth it because you care and are invested in her, please know that there's no shame in merely contemplating this and noping right out.

You've got a life and are trying to enjoy the hobby as well! And if it seems like something that could sour your friendship? It's not worth it. You're better off just accepting that she'll inevitably tire of doing this and move on to another hobby, maybe decide to do fandom blogs or something instead that you can support her in.

It's definitely an unenviable and frustrating position you're in. All you can really do is try not to let this negatively impact the friendship, to keep refraining from just outright telling her things she'd find hurtful, and try your best to show her that it's rewarding to develop the muse and stick with it, not a task. That there are improvements she can make to her blog, and that it isn't a negative reflection on her that they can be made. You can try all the compassionate trickery in the world to lead her there, but it's ultimately up to her whether she brushes this off as well, don't let it hurt your feelings or exasperate you too much!

Also, it's totally possible that even if you met through RP and/or it has been a big part of the friendship, you might have grown in different directions in the hobby.

Growing within the hobby is inherent to any hobby you stick to for long enough, especially if you started out in it young. Some people seamlessly just keep growing to things that make them happy, others experience a lot of growing pains along the way as they're maybe ready for change, but only in select areas they have to discover for themselves. Still others grow in a way that doesn't make them very happy, but they're both not ready (or willing) to approach why and what they can do, and also still too attached to the good times they had to reassess whether it's still something they want to do, or if it's something better moved away from into something else.

That's always very difficult as a friend. Difficult in watching your friends not go the same directions as you anymore, even in something as comparatively silly as a hobby, in seeing them not enjoying themselves, and in the possibility that it could signal the end of enjoying the hobby with them. It's sad and frustrating, and can feel lonely, but if you're close enough friends, you've got so many other things to still be good friends over, so keep that in mind!

She might need to keep doing this with her blog and muse situation until she comes not to the realization that she needs to change how she's RPing to get what she wants, but rather, that she wants to stop RPing. That could be the burnout that happens here eventually, but again, not only can you still be great friends, if it makes her happier, it's good.

#answered #anonymous #rp problems #rp advice

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and-other-savory-things · 4 years

Note

Hey sorry I don't know your OCs but I'll ask slaughter, buried and desolation (my favourites, obviously ;) -S

Thank you so much for the ask!! I only have about 2 OCs actually written right now, so I’m gonna answer these about my baby Phillip.

⚰ the buried - when had your character felt the most trapped? How well do they handle confinement?

Phillip isn’t a very… careful superhero, and so after a few years on the job, he’s made a lot of enemies. He’s been captured a half dozen times, and he honestly finds it exhilarating. Taunting his captors, coming up with a way to escape at just the right moment, relishing the look of outrage on their faces.

But if he’s actually cooped up somewhere with no way out, he goes batshit crazy. He was under house arrest for a bit when he was 19, for something that was “not my fault, c’mon guys, I’m the good guy here-” and he almost tore the house down. He can fly, and doesn’t handle being grounded very well.

🔪the slaughter - what’s the most violent thing your character has ever done? how did they feel about it? have they ever killed anyone? what would/does it take to get them to act violently, or take a life?

🔥 the desolation - what’s the most precious thing your character has ever lost?

(went on a little drabble here combining these two because I felt like being extra…)

Phillip doesn’t lose control very often. Normally, when he’s fighting the assortment of villains that kept cropping up in his city, he was cool, collected, and, he’ll admit, a pain in the ass. It was fun, driving them crazy, shooting a few fireballs out of his hands here and there. But sometimes he couldn’t help it.

He used to have an older brother. Damien. Still did, he supposed. It wasn’t like he died or anything. He just… left. Left Phillip alone with his shitty dad and messed up life and now this wannabe wimp-of-a-villain thought it was a good idea to bring that up in the middle of a fight he was clearly losing and Phillip was angry.

“‌I heard your brother left ya, didn’t he?” Phillip closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. It didn’t matter what this weasel said. There were three people on the job he was stopping- Schmidt and Evans, who were often a pair, and weasel rat man that Phillip never put in the effort to learn the name of. He just needed to finish this and then he could go home and-

“Yeah, I used to know him. Damien, was it? The pushover used to join me on our little arson runs. I had a good time, and he was too much of a coward to say no. You must’ve been pretty horrible to make him decide to leave, I never thought he’d’ve had enough of a backbone to do anything on his own.”

Phillip looked up. His eyes glowed white, but all he saw was red.

The next thing he was aware of was smoke everywhere. The weasel was no where to be seen, but kneeling in the middle of a large circle of charred ground and debris was Schmidt. He was hunched over a prone figure lying in his arms. Evans. Unconscious, or-

Phillip took an unsteady step backwards. No. He never meant to…

Schmidt looked up at the young superhero, and the flash of terror in his eyes was burned into Phillip’s mind as he took off into the night.

#thank you so much for the ask!!#this was so much fun #my writing #oc phillip #oc schmidt #phillip and schmidt

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xanadontit · 5 years

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The full run down, for those so inclined.

MIL: Let’s just start here because sure. About .5 seconds after we walked in the door, she asked if Santa was bringing me a new car. Apparently E told her mine is kind of dying and I’ve been looking (Side note: I have asked him not to share stuff like this with her because then she fixates and will have opinions on how I’m spending MY money. Also plz don’t @ me, yes I own a car and will trade it in and get another one. Everyone hates car people until they need a ride!). By Santa she means if E is surprising me and I joked that Santa isn’t bringing me one, but I plan to test drive a few in January and hopefully pull the trigger soon; I also said something about it being my money because I’m a jerk and I hate that I make almost as much as E and she assumes everything I have is because he’s my benefactor. Then she launched into a story about how my FIL somehow led her to believe he was getting her a car for Christmas and then didn’t and then she cried when she realized he was messing with her and he thought it was funny. No idea why those crazy kids couldn’t make it work. Like, how do you even respond to something like this that happened well over 25 years ago?

While playing game and just kind of making polite conversation, MIL turns to me and says, “You didn’t have to stay at a hotel.” I was thrown because this came out of nowhere and said, “Well, we are and it’s fine!” cheerfully as she then launched into why it wasn’t OK and the plan she had laid out (which involved Niece 1 staying 30 minutes away at her boyfriend’s house - her plan was to kick her granddaughter out of her room/home so she could take her room and have E and me sleep in MIL’s room). I looked at E to jump in and he said, “We’re staying at a hotel. No one is giving up a room. It’s done.” No setting his mom straight that this wasn’t my evil plot or scheme. That’s when I got a “You hurt my feelings.”

MIL is very critical of her only sister who is an absolute train wreck, sure, but not terribly different from MIL - just more husbands. MIL said something about her sister always needing a man and declared that she has no desire to date and all she needs now are her children. I pointed out to E that means she’s relying on him and SIL to provide her emotional support because she’s alienated all of her friends when she was with her garbage ex. Have fun with that, guys!

While opening gifts she reiterated she doesn’t care what I think or if I am hurt, and she’ll do whatever she likes when it comes to her kids, even if that means I’m left out. I lost it and looked at my nieces and said, “Well, if I ever die mysteriously we know who did it.” MIL laughed. She also told me if I don’t want the perfume she gave me then SIL will take it. Uh, ok?

She likes the cop and thinks Niece 1 seems really happy. Ugh. Get better taste in men.

SIL: The stress of living with her mom is real and while I feel for her, I’m pissed that she just lets her walk around saying awful shit to her and her daughters and that her attitude toward me is “Suck it up.” There’s just zero desire to have an honest conversation and say “This is hurtful” and give MIL a chance to apologize or think about how her words affect people. It’s super fucked up. And E told me last night that when he called her to let her know we’d stay at a hotel her response was a “What did I do wrong?” So she’s turning into her mom. Good work.

Niece 1: Wasn’t quite as sulky as our last visit but Jesus she and Mashed Potatoes (my nickname for the cop) are so fucking loud. It’s just constant hollering and there’s never a sincere conversation. The best way I can describe it is like a Disney kids’ tv show where everyone is constantly speaking in sarcastic tones and trying to be funny but it isn’t. At all. It’s exhausting.

Mashed Potatoes: He shaved the mustache so he looks slightly less creepy but he’s a cop so I don’t care if he’s Chris Evans’ doppelganger: not a fan!

Niece 2: Jesus Christ with this one. I texted @amaraaaaaaaaaaa about the sin I committed of showing interest in her life which resulted in her storming off during Christmas Eve dinner. Apparently any talk of the future is stressing her out and I wasn’t supposed to ask about graduation, her thoughts on a credential program and/or master’s program, or mention the idea of her eventually moving out. MIL is visibly distressed Niece 2 isn’t seriously dating anyone and has encouraged her to settle with any guy who owns a house. This is her standard for a quality man: owns a house. Sure.

E: Swears up and down that he told his mom about the hotel and explained it was for everyone’s comfort. I told him I need him to explicitly tell his mom that he wants to stay at a hotel, too, and not leave room for her to speak to me in a shitty way. It’s unfair that I am painted as a villain because one of her children dared to grow up and doesn’t want to pretend he’s 8 and stay with mommy. He agrees she’s completely out of line and was feeling pretty done but that doesn’t help. I expect us to be a united front and a team. Sitting there while she’s obnoxious, then agreeing with me privately isn’t helpful.

Thanks to all of you for the support and snark - it’s nice to know someone somewhere out there likes me!

#marry an orphaned only child or stay single #families

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fictionz · 4 years

Text

New Fiction 2020 - July

“Sadie When She Died” by Ed McBain (1972)

I didn’t mean for July to turn out the way it did. This first short story has all the elements--murder, mistaken identity, revenge, cops, procedure. It’s crime fiction the way that most of what I experienced this month is crime fiction. But this particular story gets to the heart of something. What is love? How is love expressed, and when is it too much or the wrong way to love? I get swooped up in the romanticism as much as anyone, but I can’t help but agree with Sheena Melwani’s dad.

The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes (1959)

Love gets even more twisted in this one. Love for a spouse, for god, for a community. The elements that drive us to commit the unspeakable. The focus on Harlem as a living place with real people strikes me as a huge shift for the time.

The Dark-Adapted Eye by Ruth Rendell (1986)

Back to the English countryside for this one, albeit with a more modern eye on events that unfold across a century. Tracing a line from family member to family member, looking for the missed signs and secret connections. I come from a large extended family as well and as I wander further away from them, I wonder what am I losing, what have I gained?

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

A story about taboos in more ways than one. Repression as a catalyst for deviant behavior feels like a subject I can’t comment on with confidence, but we’ve all seen it enough in fiction. Considering the date on this one, this has to be one of the earlier mainstream depictions of two men who are drawn together by the unstoppable force of unfulfilled longing. Something is missing and they want desperately to find it. It has some Hannibal vibes, which I will get to shortly.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)

To be accepted for all of one’s disgusting mediocrity, to be bound to the one we deserve. I’m not sure what Flynn intends with Nick, the shitty husband character. He sucks. To hear his thoughts in the novel, I’d think he shouldn’t be with anyone. But I’ll admit some projection on my part when I read about this guy. The “villain” of the story is feels more natural, following one’s nature to the inevitable conclusion.

Prehistoric Isle in 1930 dev. SNK (1989)

I needed a break. This game was just fun and short and goofy as fuck. The player is a biplane flying across an exotic landscape and shooting all manner of dinosaurs and cave men and mutants. Games of this vintage aren’t known for interesting endings but holy shit, this was a good finale.

CARRION dev. Phobia Game Studio (2020)

If you ever wanted the perspective of the thing in The Thing, you could read “The Things,” or play this game. They absolutely nailed the fluidity of being an imagined tentacled biosmass with a case of vagina dentata and bottomless appetite. The Metroidvania aspects works really well in the context of being a lost and hungry predatory alien, although there were times when I wish I had a map. But the blind exploration makes this out to be more Another World than Castlevania. It’s a cool contrast to be a kind of laser-focused being without the kinds of ulterior motives as all the other murderers in this month’s stories.

Night of the Hunter dir. Charles Laughton (1955)

This movie is wild for the first two thirds or so. It starts off like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, then starts dipping into some dark German expressionism and stageplay drama, along with a creepy whistleman lurking around some kids. Then they pull a Hays Code and ruin the ending. Still an interesting movie given the time in which it was released.

In the Mouth of Madness dir. John Carpenter (1994)

This is, by far, the most Lovecraft movie I’ve ever seen. It hits all the notes and and even has the kind of dour finale you usually get in HP’s work. Throw in some Lynchian quaintness and it comes around to some slow but satisfying burn.

Sorcerer dir. William Friedkin (1977)

My dad would be into this. That’s the first thing that came to mind. It’s the kind of gritty macho adventure story we used to watch together in the eighties and nineties. Predator, Indiana Jones, etc. The tension is off the charts. And you don’t see the core events of the movie coming, with even the title remaining a mystery until far into the runtime. Friedkin apparently followed up The Exorcist with this one and didn’t land it at the box office, although it’s now considered an important work.

Paperhouse dir. Bernard Rose (1988)

Hey check that out, more German expressionism. I originally thought it looked distinctly Tim Burtonesque but found out that it goes much further back. There are odd angles, sets that look distinctly like warped stageplay displays. It’s a fitting movie for the time--dark fantasy aimed at children. The director went on to helm Candyman, another connection to notable horror in this very bloody month.

Strangers on a Train dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1951)

The movie’s not as good as the novel, leaving out the tension that builds between the main characters and completely altering the ending. But then the ending in the novel isn’t as dramatic as Hitchcock’s signature stellar finale, but has a lot more to say. I suppose the medium dictates the message.

Gone Girl dir. David Fincher (2014)

The other book-to-movie combo that I checked out this month, and another of many duos who are bound together in their disdain and obsession. Affleck didn’t match Nick’s literary strain from the novel, though he certainly makes for a mediocre husband type. On the other hand, Pike did great work in the role of Amy. She harnesses all the qualities and voice of the character.

What We Do in the Shadows - Seasons 1-2 (2019-2020)

My favorite television show this year? I can’t believe it’s this good. Everyone is fantastic and hilarious, and I have a crush on Natasia Demetriou’s character that is solely a nostalgic throwback to my affection for weird goth girls in high school. Guillermo, holy shit he’s great! He and Nandor form another interesting pair. Jackie Daytona shows us the way.

Hannibal - Seasons 1-3 (2013-2015)

I participate in a Slack channel about Mads Mikkelsen. That’s it, just Mads. I joined because he has the excellent “Mister Doctor” dialogue in Doctor Strange and people seemed to be really into him. I didn’t quite get it until watching Hannibal. The three season dance between the two main characters is some of the most intricate courtship I’ve ever watched. But it’s also Hannibal, so you know, there’s murder and blood and dismembered bodies displayed in all sorts of creative ways. It’s a wonder this lasted as long as it did on network television. Now I want season 4 gotdangit.

The Last of Us Part II dev. Naughty Dog (2020)

This one’s under the cut because I have extensive and spoiler-filled scattered thoughts on this video game.

I played and completed this in a marathon two-day session. Do not play this way. You will long for the end, and perhaps this isn’t a game meant to be experienced all at once. It’s crushing.

My first and strongest reaction was, “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.” I played three days in Seattle as Ellie. It is DONE. But then Abby reenters the picture, and they reset the clock to the beginning of the excursion in Seattle from her perspective. I must concur that video games are too long. The pacing is off, the Abby section drops in and completely kills the momentum. This should have been DLC or a separate release. I mean, Christ, the player has to experience the same three days again. Most of Abby's three days was a real slog with just a few highlights in the action and fights she experiences. It all seems designed to consider all sides at a time when that isn’t working out so well.

Naughty Dog abuses the cut to black. It has weight and meaning in TLOU because it is seldom used, but in this game they go nuts with it and just confuse the player about when the game is actually over.

Santa Barbara was fucking amazing. I mean in the sense that it is so excruciatingly designed and rendered that it made me sick. Why was it so fucking good? Why? The events that took place there were secondary to just walking along in that suburb as Abby. I wondered if Ellie might find some California wine as she made her way through the Spanish style villas. I’m tempted to go back and replay those scenes just to dwell in that space.

They repeat the climactic fight between Abby and Ellie, perhaps to show when each has moved on, but it feels redundant and frustrating to go through it again. It’s too much, man.

I wonder about this game without the combat encounters. A walkthrough mode. Just walk through desolate, beautiful spaces.

#new fiction #ed mcbain #chester himes #ruth rendell #patricia highsmith #gillian flynn #snk #carrion #charles laughton #john carpenter #william friedkin #bernard rose #alfred hitchcock #david fincher #what we do in the shadows #hannibal #the last of us

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stardustizuku · 6 years

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well i guess we’re doing this

@skating-jellyfish @scintillant-h @quasargirl

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

The Westernization of Magical Girl Genre

By StardustIzuku aka me

AKA the 2k magical girl essay people wanted me to talk about.

A lot of people were asking about this, wow.

Magical girls. Glitter, cutesy names, stuffed animals, and puns. What is there not to love about them?

It was only bound to happen for it to be tried in the west. Much like transformers, which were a westernization of gundam, Magical Girls are going through their rocky paths to that idolized version of Magic targeted towards small girls.

There are a few shows that are borrowing these themes today in children’s cartoon, so I wanted to talk about them. How they managed to miss the mark with some fans, and why their following is significantly smaller of the likes of Sailor Moon.

Here you have today:

The Westernization of Magical Girl Genre

The thing about Magical Girls is that the plot is often very predictable. It, quite frequently, does not have that much of a great romance, and its villains are basic to the core.

So, why do we like them if they’re, supposedly, so shitty?

Well…The answer is

Two Things:

The feeling.

The message.

This is the core of the Magical Girl’s success. If it has a nice feeling but no good message, you get things like kamichama Karin. If it has a bad feeling but a good message, you get things like Madoka.

(Which are in my opinion the two worst things that could have happened to Magical Girl genre)

And having said this, there’s two shows I wanna talk about today. One is SVTFOE and the other is Miraculous Ladybug. Two westernized versions of the Magical Girl genre…And both fail to recreate the very specific beauty of Magical Girls. As they struggle with its own voice, they get something that feels genuine but ultimately disassociated from the genre.

I will first start with the easiest to tackle.

Miraculous Ladybug;

It does everything right in the regard of plot, romance and villains. It’s a real classic of Magical Girl storyline that could be easy to get behind.

And while I do watch it, I do not feel the love I know I could for it.

The reason is simple: because of the feeling it gives off.

I think the biggest mistake Miraculous did was making it 3D. This means it’s technically easier to make, yes. But it also deteriorates the very particular aesthetics Magical Girls have. And this makes it drop quality.

It feels less magical, and more real. Less sparkles, more concrete. And taking into a count the fact that it’s set in Paris? This show should be looking ethereal. But instead it looks very plain. It feels…wrong even.

There’s also a very key aspect that I think it’s missing: the team. It’s taking them way too long to form the team. Time that could have been spent making the team -Ayla, Chloe etc- feel closer and work through their difference is instead focused on them individually.

And that’s good, since it has a “Monster of the Week” narrative. But it lessens the impact. We are two seasons in, and we have a very lacklustre incomplete team.

By episode 43 -the time im writing this- Sailor Moon was already meeting Sailor Venus -the last Sailor Scout- and heading to the final battle. Sakura was friends with Meilin and biding goodbye and saying thanks for the memories. In Tokyo Mew Mew Zakuro and Mint -the closest girls on the team- were having one of the most emotional fallouts in anime history. Even Amu had finally unlocked her god damn Amulet Diamond and was essentially already friends with the “evil” Utau.

But 43 episodes in Miraculous ladybug and we have three out of the supposedly five characters of the team, queen bee is loosely alluded to, and we haven’t seen Ayla interact with them as superheroes that much.

Its strange, if you ask me, for a team to be presented this way. When are we going to see them start trusting each other? When are we going to see them work together? Ladybug and Chat are good, but how could the team as a whole even remotely begin to feel so close?

Ladybug has the heart and the intention to be a good Magical Girl adaptation…but it simply lacks the resources to make it actually work. It’s wasting so much time in stuff that does not advance the plot, or round up the characters. It has more useless filler than sailor moon.

And that’s not even kidding, because by this point, may I remind you, Sailor Moon is like two episodes away from ending its first season.

Over all, it just feels a bit plastic and stiff.

However, credit where credit is due.

They nailed the romance.

When it comes to romance in MG it falls under two categories:

1.- The straight forward plot with pinning girl. (eg. Sailor Moon, Mermaid Melody)

2.- The dreaded love triangle between the bad guy and the nice guy. (open a shoujo manga)

And Miraculous Ladybug did a pretty interesting thing, fusing the “bad guy” with the “good guy”, in chat and Adrien.

It’s like telling you Ikuto and Takase are the same person. Or Kishu and Masaru are the same guy.

Pretty crazy, if you ask me.

It also solves the “who will she chose” narrative that drives everyone insane. Instead it’s replaced with a slow burn that makes you keep watching. You know they’ll end up together, but you want to know how.

It also keeps the “he’s in love with my alter ego” trope that to this day is a MUST in any magical girl, just because its super fun and never gets old.

So Miraculous Ladybug is very close to becoming the true magical girl adaption we all wanted. I would say it could be better, but there’s a reason why it has a large following.

It did many, many, things right. It just needs a push. I’d rank it number two in Magical Girl Goodness.

Now, let’s jump to a more difficult thing to tackle.

Star Vs The Forces Of Evil;

At first glance, you’d think SVTFOE is a love letter to classical Magical Girls. And while it does borrow a lot of aspects from animes like Sailor Moon and Sakura Card Captor... The more I look into it, the more I see it as faulty westernization of it.

As I said before there are a few things that make a Magical Girl show shine.

The feeling, and the message.

And while Star certainly has the feeling, making it feel crazy but fun and cutesy, the message is…

Very different.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think SVTFOE has a bad message. On the contrary, it’s a pretty damn good one…But the thing is…It’s not one MG often have.

Magical Girls messages are one of two things -although they sometimes mix:

Finding yourself, and the power of girl’s friendship.

Messages that are really cliché, but they thrive because in a society where girls are shamed for being who they are, Magical Girls encourage them to be brave. To seek solace and friendship in one another.

SVTFOE is…different.

Something that really pisses me off, is how Star’s only female friend is Ponyhead, someone who doesn’t really give emotional support.

Girlfrienship is being thrown away, shown as toxic. While Marco and Star’s relationship is put in a high pedestal. Despite being clearly a romance.

Star’s message is nice in a superficial level. Fight racism and stand your ground.

But, it’s also about doing it alone. That no other girl will support you, and that even your mother sometimes will leave you alone. In recent episodes, even Eclipsa left Star.

This is teaching girls to be brave on their own.

The antithesis of typical Magical Girls.

But, we as girl are stronger together. We are not alone, we shouldn’t have to fight alone.

It also shows that fists are more powerful than kindness. It’s kind sad, from my point of view.

The message in SVTFOE is ultimately flawed.

There’s no team. It’s just Star and Marco.

Which brings me to another point:

The plot is good, the romance is the worst I have seen in my life, and the villains are very complex.

Nothing like a sample MG anime.

The romance specially, has jumped through a lot of stages. First being the straight forward pinning girl narrative, then switching to the bad guy vs nice guy (tom vs marco), then switching the roles of the good guy vs the bad guy…And honestly who knows what comes next.

SVTFOE has thrown away any pretence of being a magical girl adaptation long ago. Nothing it has comes remotely close to what a magical girl storyline is. For fucks sake, she doesn’t even have a stick now.

WHEN HAVE YOU SEEN A MAGICAL GIRL WITHOUT A STICK THINGY.

It’s, overall, a very individualistic tale. As a westernization of the genre…it speaks more about the culture we live in than the concept.

I’d place it right below Miraculous Ladybug as an adaptation, maybe 3rd place.

But there is one cartoon that is a neo Magical Girl I love.

The first seasons of Steven Universe;

It has everything, from the healthy girl’s friendship message, to the aesthetics, the kindness on its core, to the monster of the week formula.

Early seasons of steven universe did this phenomenally. Capturing the true essence of Magical Girl. And even then, I would not be able to tell you when exactly it stops being a westenazation, to when it is its own thing.

The actual lesbian romance is without a doubt the best adaptation they could have done, since there’s obvious subtext in early magical girl’s.

But even in episode that are relatively new, you see the contrast. Escalating villains, healed with compassion and offering a hand (Blue and Yellow Diamond), and a Big Bad Villain (white diamond) that needs to be stopped. Not to mention Rose being the Pink One™ and having an alter ego, which was the one Greg fell in love with.

There’s an ethereal beauty that followed Steven Universe during its earliest seasons and that’s why I do think it’s the best westernazation of Magical Girls so far.

#idk what you were expecting #2k magical girl essay #magical girls #star vs the forces of evil #svtfoe #miraculous ladybug #ml #steven universe #su #magical girl

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whitherwanderer · 6 years

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3! [Muse Inspiration Asks]

3— Does your muse exist in other settings? Other fictional universes, or alternate universes? If not, what other universes could they fit into? What would they be like in the real world?

It’s long, I’m v sorry.

Sif’s got a couple AUs that I’ve explained before, but might as well throw everything into one post, now.

“OH BOY, time to open THIS can of worms. This has been answered for Sawyer, so it’s Sif’s turn. @shroudandsands and I have two, kinda.

So… one of my tags seems a bit misplaced on an FFXIV blog, and that’s the Perpetual Shitty Roadtrip tag.

That’s Sif & Dug’s “modern day” AU. It takes place in a vaguely 70′s-80′-ish America, where Dug’s still an ex-assassin, still horribly addicted to dangerous substances, and Sif is still a dysfunctional alcoholic folk singer-songwriter. Only now, they have his shitty station wagon (affectionately named Tess) that’s held together with “duct tape and epoxy” and wander cross-country on old state highways, chasing Sif’s dream of fame and fortune in the music industry while he dodges his past. He drives, she drinks, they sass each other mercilessly, and occasionally they stop over in towns to get their respective fixes, gas up, do laundry, steal snacks and necessities off convenience store shelves, and trash motel rooms. There might be some occasional drabbles about it here, who knows.

The other, less-developed-but-talked-about AU they’re in is on the other end of the fictional spectrum: sci-fi. Specifically, they fit all too well into the epitome of the “space western” genre… the Firefly/Serenity ‘Verse.

Same character concepts, but Sif stows away on Tess, now a spaceship that’s barely space-worthy, piloted by Dugald, who is slowly losing his lucidity after being subjected to experiments with an Alliance prototype drug, and seems to exhibit periods of violent, psychotic behavior more and more frequently. A slightly more “functional” alcoholic, this iteration of Sif takes on small bounty hunting jobs for backwater city clients that can pay. She keeps Dug locked away when he’s having a crazy episode— and rumors crop up all over the border planets of bandit camps that have been torn apart by a wry blonde and her pet reaver.

Honestly, as long as there’s an opportunity for a darker side of whatever government exists, and a place for people that are essentially impoverished, but still able to drift, there’s probably a place for Sif & Dug in that universe.“

Nex, being heavily involved with Sif & Dug’s story (on account of being their villain), is getting thrown in directly after Sif because of her role in the AUs.

She makes little to no mention or appearance in them, actually! Mostly because I don’t really know what it’s like to be in charge of an experimental special operations team for a government agency.

She is there in both AUs, however, she simply has bigger things to worry about than two morons, and her role is more catered to an origin story.

I had previously said that Sawyer had no AUs, and then me and @shroudandsands promptly began to mull over one that turned out being kind of hilariously fun for she and Amesha.

It’s basically your run-of-the-mill modern day roommates AU, wherein Sawyer ends up splitting her apartment with a blind roommate service. It’s like a blind date, except they’re your roommate. Also, her roommate turns out to actually be blind.

Sawyer is a mechanic who blows off steam at the local firing range, and her roommate’s hobbies include pestering (and getting banned from) all the local herb shops and practicing new age healing arts. She will often accuse Sawyer of coming home with too much negative energy and proceed to douse her in various lavender oils or smack her with a bundle of herbs. In return, Sawyer will sometimes take time out of her day to move all the furniture a few inches out of their usual places or something to that effect…

It’s fun. Occasionally kind of adorable, slice of life-y, and we occasionally go “WE SHOULD RP/PLOT THIS…..”

#thanalansunglow #[ the longest road ]#[ memes; sif ]#[ the steel hawk ]#[ memes; sawyer ]#[ the blackroot rose ]#[ memes; nex ]

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emilywatchescursedshow · 3 years

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Ep 15 - The Benders

Director: Peter Ellis Writers: Eric Kripke, John Shiban

Oh man. Ok so to be honest this was another rough episode for me, but I’m going to try to focus on the stuff that I liked before I get to my one big gripe with the story.

I loved the performance of the cop in this episode. I think that actress did a really good job. In general I liked her story and that she got resolution for her brother’s death by killing the main villain. I liked the way she interacted with Dean. I also liked that there was zero sexual tension between them, which was an interesting and sort of new dynamic for Dean to have with another character. I feel very comfortable chalking this lack up to the fact that she was a brunette, but it was still nice to see her boss Dean and have him not flirt with her in return. I do think it’s sort of hilarious how often they have the Third Character on the show be a lady, but I guess that’s what needs to happen when you have two (supposedly) het hotboi protags. Anyway, we stan anyone who puts Dean in handcuffs.

We get some good Dean moments of trying to navigate being a human person interacting with another human person which he is very bad at. I enjoyed watching him stretch across the hood of the car to try to get the antennae to use to pick the handcuffs. Don’t read too much into that.

I also liked that this episode had a lot more Action throughout the episode. The past couple have primarily been a lot of backstory to explain the events. This episode was just them Investigating The Weird Thing which was more entertaining because we get to watch the events actually play out. I thought the characterizations of the children were pretty well done, even with the minimal dialogue they had. One of them had a weird laugh that I thought fit well with the spirit of the episode, and I thought the actress who played the little girl did a good job also. Honestly if you told me when I was 12 that I would get to roll around in dirt, behave absolutely feral, and stab some dude in the leg with a knife with little provocation I would also be having the time of my life.

That being said, I think the events of this episode are very stupid. First of all, this episode is supposed to be weird because there’s no supernatural element. Dean has at least two lines to the effect that “well normal people just are crazy I guess” which I hate. In so many of the past 14 episodes, the antagonist has been essentially a human, and I don’t think the supernatural element of those stories really affected the person’s motivations. The motivation for these villains is just that they like killing people. They say like “humans are the ultimate game” but the humans they capture make fucking awful hunting targets and get murdered very easily, so that part doesn’t really make that much sense either but whatever.

As much as I don’t want it to, this episode reminds me a lot of the X-Files episode “Home,” which is a pretty infamous episode and has similar themes of “isolated country family goes sort of nuts.” I don’t know which episode is most successful in carrying through with these themes, but I don’t like “Home” either so maybe the conclusion is just that the point of this theme is very unclear.

Anyway, moment to moment thoughts: - Guy gets scared and disappears under car - Oh good we don’t have to go thru any intro rigamarole before getting the bros in these police uniforms - This bar is named Kugels Keg - Oh noooo Dean playing darts oh nooooooooo - Dean wants to have ~fun~ - Uhoh Sam vs motorcycles,, will Sam get snatched? - Lmao the audio work on that cat scratch and hiss was really, uh, something. Then some weird chime just looking at Sam’s feet. Uhoh Sam's gone - "like the rifle?" gross - Dean is gay for himself - The police officer knows something - Uhoh Sammy's pov in a cage - Amber alert namedrop - Oh my god the car just fucking drives by at that exact moment?? - It's the guy from the beginning "smells like the country" "we're in the middle of nowhere" from the guy in the cage who doesn’t know where they are - SHOW ME THE MONSTER oh they're just people LMAO - Yasss tug that pipe Sam - Uhoh Dean got caught "that Michael Jackson skin *smnthn*" .. uhoh there writers, maybe don’t do this - Dean trying to guilt his way into this officer's graces "I have to take you in" yeah no shit oh she's down I guess - "it’s a bracket" - This guy is gonna die ugly - Are they like feeding a monster or something? - There are a lot of shitty cars on this property - Is he being hunted? Thats what it looks like - Ok he just got stabbed to death - "your luck is so pressed" - The actress for the police officer is doing a really good job - Dean's promises are worth nothing lol she locked him to the car good for her - Oh creepy girl why is this officer being referred to by her first name - Officer down - Stretch Dean STRETCH - The giggle boys - They took her hair down? - Food service? No it's Dean. But this doesn't feel right. - What the hell is this episode - Turns flashlight on directly into eyes - Specimens from victims.. brains?? - Yes they're being hunted those are big game photos - Human bone rattle while presumably human butchering is happening. Also weird plinky music for atmosphere love the horror game vibes - Teeth - Creepy daughter stabs Dean - Knocking people out from behind seems like the mo - Are they out of cages? - Is the best hunt human? It seems pretty lame - "you're a sick puppy" - The girl is evil - Oh they're scared of cops - No don't burn deans eye out - He's opening the door? - Dean you're literally tied to a chair - Uhoh cop lady on his back - Classic shot guy behind other guy - Literally kill him. Or knock him out. Or cage him. I don't want this scene with the cop lady - Oh she just murdered him cool I was really worried with where that was going - The girl?? - What the FUCK was this episode - Luck pressed - This actress is killing it

So yeah, I have mixed feelings about this episode. I think if I just accept the conceit of the weird murder family the rest is actually pretty well well done. The pacing and tension in the episode is pretty good, and the supporting actors (except maybe the dad, who’s a bit too much and not enough at the same time) do a good job. I had fun watching it, which is the most important thing.

#spn s1e15 #spn #supernatural liveblog #supernatural

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sulietsexual · 6 years

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Its been a while since I asked you meta related things so I just had a random idea - top 5 characters which you just dont understand, top 5 ch which are well writen but you cant connect or like, top 5 ch storylines you would like to alter, top 5 traits of your disliked chracters that you like, top 5 traits of your loved characters you dislike, top 5 ways your disliked characters contributed to the main storyline that youre fine with. For males and females separately so theres room for thought :)

Top 5 Characters I Don’t Understand

Male

Wesley Wyndam Pryce - okay, so this is only from mid-Season 3 onward, but I cannot fathom Wesley’s actions in stealing Connor, consulting with Holtz and doubting/not believing in Angel to the point where he didn’t realise that Angel would do everything in his power to protect Connor. Then his self-righteous attitude post-kidnap is appalling, the fact that he acts like the wronged party and refuses to acknowledge his own wrongdoings and never apologises for his actions all drive me crazy. Just can’t.

Luke Danes, I mean, buddy, pull it together. You say you want Lorelai, yet never make a move and then bitch about her boyfriends and act like a jerk. You say you’re “all in” and then you run at the first sign of trouble and make Lorelai feel like she did something wrong. You tell Lorelai you want her to be honest with you and then you hide your daughter from her for two freakin’ months. You say you want to spend your life with her, yet you shut her out of it. Like, wtf??

Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III, omg, why is he such an abusive asshole? Why does he treat every woman he’s with like crap? Why does he treat Mellie as if she’s insignificant and stupid? Why does he act entitled to everyone’s time and affections? Why does he continually try to give up the most powerful position in America? Why doesn’t he have any ambition? Why does he resent anyone who does??? I don’t understand.

John Winchester. Dude’s always going on about how he “did the best that he could”. Nope. The best he could would have been to raise his boys in a stable freakin’ environment, not push adult responsibility onto his eldest, not treat his youngest like an outcast/freak for wanting a better life and actually being an adult and being there for his boys. How does he justify the way he treated his sons? Don’t get it.

Finn Collins. Dude, you cheat on your girlfriend, neglect to tell the girl you’re cheating with that you even have a girlfriend, don’t tell your girlfriend you cheated on her and expect both girls to still want you? Plus the whole massacring eighteen unarmed people and then ignoring their bodies as the girl you want walks in horrified and look at her as if she’ll love you for your actions? Yikes.

Female

Lorelai Gilmore, she constantly puts her mother down for her privilege and sense of entitlement, yet displays the exact same behaviour. She rejected Chris, then bitches about how he “wasn’t ready”. She thinks all her behaviour is cute but it’s actually really annoying. And she honestly seems to believe that her parents were the absolute worst parents in the world, when it reality they were really good to her and always try to be a part of her life. Pull it together, woman!

Octavia Blake, why does she blame her brother for everything? Why is her solution always violence? Why does she proudly cannibalize people? Why does she think she knows more about a culture she’s been a part of for two seconds than the people actually raised in said culture?

Nancy Wheeler. Why does she want Jonathan so badly? Why does she screw over Steve? What makes her neglect her brother and run off with the guy she just banged? Why doesn’t she think through the consequences of her actions? Why did she offer her brother zero comfort when his friend “died”? What made her think it was okay to chase down Jonathan while he was picking out a coffin for his brother’s funeral to talk about Barb? Girl drives me bonkers.

Joey Potter, so many of her actions make no sense. She pines after Dawson for years and then breaks up with him for literally no reason. She blames him for telling her the truth about her father, after repeatedly saying they need to be honest with one another. She can’t decide between two guys for years. She constantly rejects Pacey yet picks him in the end. She believes she’s entitled to be a bitch to people just because she’s had a tough life.

Aria Montgomery, if your creepy-ass relationship really so important to you that you would lie to your friends and family, threaten your parents, risk your partner going to jail, threaten to walk out on your family and basically cease to exist outside of your boyfriend? Yikes.

Going to put the rest under the cut, otherwise we’re going to end up with a post a mile long.

Top 5 Characters Who Are Well-writen But I Can’t Connect To or Like

Male

John Locke, a great-written character who drives me up the wall with his over-zealousness and delusions of grandeur.

Spike, he really does have a great character arc and characterisation but his over-exposure and the fandom’s adulation of him drive me crazy, plus I hate how his narrative overtakes Buffy’s.

Jack Shepherd, such a great arc, such an amazing journey but his douchey behaviour and the way he treats certain characters means I just can’t like him.

Perry Cox, I find him amusing and do occasionally like him but his lack of self-awareness and overall mean attitude and sexism bugs me.

Dean Winchester, so well-written with a great arc but also abusive, violent, self-righteous, sexist and overall annoying as hell.

Female

Regina Mills, her redemption arc is sloppy but her characterisation was always strong and she’s a fantastic villain, which is why I love to hate her.

Robin Scherbatsky, very well-written with a great arc (until the finale) but I just cannot like her, probably due to her arrogance and meanness.

Rachel Green, now, I don’t hate Rachel or anything but she’s one of my least-favourite Friends characters and I’ve never been able to connect with her.

Katniss Everdeen, a great-written character whose personality I find very hard to reconcile and who I just cannot connect with.

Kate Austin, great arc, great characterisation, full of traits I can’t stand and makes choices that make me want to throttle her.

Top 5 Characters Storylines I Would Like To Alter

Male

Neal Cassidy, he was done so dirty by that damn show!

August Booth, another one screwed over by OUAT and there was so much left to explore with his character!

Dean Forrester, I really hate how much Gilmore Girls dumbled down and assassinated his character.

Boyd Langton, Dollhouse’s weird out-of-nowhere reveal that he was the bad guy completely changed his character and he didn’t deserve that.

Jake Ballard, he deserves better than being second-choice for Olivia Pope.

Female

Laurel Lance, who deserved the fucking world and got nothing, I would change so much about her storyline and eventual fate.

Mellie Grant who, like Laurel, deserved so much and got shit.

Emma Swan, who was character assassinated in order to box her into a toxic ship which decimated everything about her.

Juliet Burke, who should have lived and had a happy life and finally made it off that damn Island!

Effy Stonem, who deserved better than to be sandwiched between two guys who treated her like a prize and blamed her for their rivalry, not to mention the shitty “friends” who used her as their scapegoat.

Top 5 Traits Of My Disliked Characters That I Like (I’m not going to pick my absolute most disliked characters for this, but just 5 characters I dislike in general. Also, probably can’t come up with five for each, so I’ll go with as many as I can list).

Male

Going with Wesley again - love his intelligence, his surprising confidence when he allows himself to show it, his thirst for knowledge and his goofiness.

Spike - I like his bravado, his confidence and his loyalty.

Dean Winchester - similarly to Spike, his bravado, his loyalty and his confidence, as well as his humour and love of fun.

Luke Danes - I like that he’s good at the big gestures, I like his snark and his homebody nature.

Jess Mariano - I like intelligence, his snark and the fact that he sorts himself out later on in life.

Female

Anya Jenkins - love her work ethic and the fact that she handles money well and knows how to budget, save and invest.

Betty Cooper - she’s got gumption, I’ll give her that and she is intelligent and hardworking.

Felicity Smoak - like Betty, she’s intelligent and has gumption.

Cassie from the Animorphs series - she’s compassionate and does try to understand people, which I like.She also has a lot of empathy.

Alison DiLaurentis - she is ruthless and strategic and highly intelligent, all of which I admire, even if her actions are truly sociopathic.

Top 5 Traits Of My Loved Characters I Dislike (again, this may not reach five but I’ll do my best)

Male

Angel - his tendency to make decisions for others, his jealousy, the way he can completely cut off those he cares about.

James Ford - the way he lets his self-hatred affect others, his self-centredness, the way he can be deliberately cruel at times.

August Booth - he lies way too much, his self-hatred, his selfishness.

Neal Cassidy ………….. nope, I love Neal too much, can’t think of any traits I dislike.

Charles Gunn - the way he diminishes himself for others.

Female

Prue Halliwell - that damn pride, her self-righteousness, her judgmental streak.

Juliet Burke ……………. nope, as with Neal, love her way too much to dislike anything about her.

Lana Lang - her Mary Sue traits (this lies more on the writing of her character than her), her tendency to project her own feelings onto others.

Lilah Morgan - well, she’s an evil bitch, but you’re supposed to hate her for that, so I more hate her actions than her herself, such as when she gives Cordy the visions which almost kill her or when she sends people to drill into Lorn’s head.

Jo March - her lack of propriety at times, her judgemental streak, her refusal to adhere to convention (at times)

Top 5 Ways My Disliked Characters Contributed To The Main Storyline That I’m Fine With (I am running out of steam and not sure if I can come up with 5 males and 5 females, so gonna combine them for this last one and again might not make it to Top 5)

Alison DiLaurentis - I like her as a villain, her murder kicks off the whole series which worked well, and I liked that she works as a foil for all the girls, in particular Hanna and Mona.

Spike - love him as a villain in Season 2, love that he works as a foil for Angel in AtS Season 5, liked him stirring things up in Lovers Walk in Season 3.

Regina Mills - love her as a villain, love her as the Curse Caster, liked her dynamic with Emma, liked her as a foil for Snow and Emma.

……. I actually might be out, as usually when I hate a character it’s because of the way in which they negatively impact the storyline.

Whew, I’m knackered. Hope you enjoy my answers, even if they’re not 100% what you asked for!

#psychoticdelena #answered

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sixmorningsafter · 7 years

Text

How Gabi Ruined Me: A SMA Review of Ch. 15

GUESS WHO’S BACK AND READY TO REVIEW THE EFF OUT OF THIS CHAPTER BECAUSE OMG THIS IS STRAIGHT GOLD.

It’s me, hi Gabi, you’re a blessing.

REPLY:

Hi Cassie, it’s me, you’re hysterical. Also, I’m going to start indenting my parts instead of y’alls parts because I’ve realized that’s way easier and I’m dumb.

Overall, I really like this “episode” style you’ve got going on. I know it’s problematic word-count-wise (it’s actually not a problem at all, I have no idea where you got that from, but if you say so). And your style is really unique, so it’s always a delight to see what you’ve created.

REPLY:

lmaoooo I’m glad you benefit from my misery. (No but real talk, this format’s new for me so I’m super happy it’s working for you, man.)

Steroline Sex

Nice. But also, unrelated to the actual sex, how you wrote it without being cringey or too graphic is a great feat. Like good job dude. And forget the sex again, but the intimacy was also nice. Like nice. Like, in the carnality of it, I find it interesting that in this moment, you read Stefan for who he is—the guy who looks for intimacy over physicality, the guy who craves the relational over the carnal. Like, nice, dude, A+ with extra credit. It’s hard to pull off, I think, but it so mirrors what the real world is like? Also your writing style, again, is some really great stuff. Like, maybe you should quit your day job?

REPLY:

LMAO idk why but every time you say nice I just imagine you doing this dude bro nod and the 👌 emoji and I love it. Tyler approves. But also, GIRL, writing smut was friggin’ uncharted adventure time for me so you don’t even know how happy this feedback makes me. I’ve been pulled right out of stories before because things suddenly take a really porny turn (and I start laughing because I’m an infant), so I really wanted to avoid that without skimping out too much on details. And gah, all of your notes on Stefan and his instinctive search for something deeper (even in the face of a sex contract and hot girl on his lap) are so perfect, and I’m happy as hell that’s what came across because that’s definitely what I was aiming for. And AW, girl, psh - right back at you re: writing style! Like I’m pretty sure this review is funnier and better written than the fic itself but whaaaaatever.

Beginning of the Bonkaimon (is this the right ship name???) Date

Kai’s apartment: lol, much like Damon, I was no expecting this Christmas wonderland (horror) either. But also, LOL at what Damon was expecting lol.

REPLY:

lololol I sat in Starbucks and stared blankly into space for like 20 minutes to come up with all the things someone might expect from Kai’s apartment, and I’m pretty sure I terrified at least three people because I’d just suddenly start villain cackling. Imagining a room full of nothing but shelves of blinking furbies made me laugh for like five minutes.

Kai + Pinterest: not a big factor, but I find it hilarious that he was even on it??? Like could imagine, between gutting a swan, he’s casually scrolling through DIY Christmas décor?

REPLY:

‘between gutting a swan, he enjoys casually scrolling through DIY Christmas décor’ is totally on his online dating profile somewhere

The Bamon back-and-forth is too much. Like way too much, in the best way possible. They are literally children. Bonnie’s “villian origin story” quip is literally my fav. Damon’s “our thing” is sooooooooooooo like him what the heck, you pegged it; Damon saying “Like I know we have a thing and all, but—“ just made me laugh so hard.

REPLY:

Aren’t they the dumbest? So happy you enjoyed that part because it was fun as hell to write. If writing was just zippy dialogue I’d have finished this fic 200 years ago.

KAI’S FREAK OUT ABOUT THE COATS: dude you did a good job with that. Like a really good job. You can really see the distraught.

Kai’s “the stuffed mushrooms are fluffy and delicious… just like me” bit was very cute, like too cute for a psychopath.

The chit-chat: yes, it was a sneak peek, no, it didn’t affect the hilarity of it within the chapter at all.

Sniper love, I kind of love it. Like that Kai has a date at all? Like how did he even manage that? Omg and is his date just as crazy as him? Idk if you watch B99, but Holt and Kevin lol, that’s what I’m imagining.

REPLY:

HOLT AND KEVIN YEEEESSS. Love that. I think in this case, Kai’s pretending to be breezy and confident about his date in front of Bonnie and Damon, like ‘happens all the time just another Saturday in Kai-town’, but he actually has literally no idea what he’s doing and is a little panicky about it, lololol. He was probably just at work looking all cute and brilliant and some hotshot sniper made the mistake of thinking he was just a quirky nerd instead of a legitimate threat to the planet. I have a plan for Kai in terms of romantic entanglements down the road that I think’ll show just how painfully awkward he is in those situations, loooool. Should be fun for sure.

Bonnie’s true self coming through, and Damon noticing? Damon noticing in general? My heart can’t handle it. You know bamon is my main ship, main otp, main everything? But like, this part is everything (and another part later). I like Bonnie’s true self tbh. Like yeah, she made some mistakes with it, but it’s also a little more interesting than the self she created.

REPLY:

Bonnie’s such a messy tangle of flaws and virtues, and I think her problem is that she’s spent so much of her life living in extremes. Like she’s either pure light or a total eclipse - she’s never actually let herself exist as a collage of light and shadow, or rather, doesn’t realize she even can. I think a lot of that has to do with the degree to which she indulged in her darkness during that teen rebel phase, like her anger and hurt were so all-consuming (and the people she surrounded herself with were so intent on stoking the flames of it) that she feels like she can’t let any part of that in without it taking over. She’s afraid of that darkness being all that she really is, and that’s why her mom left, that’s why her dad was a checked out alcoholic - they somehow saw that in her and it’s only a matter of time before everyone else does, too. I think where Damon comes to play is that he’s an instinctive observer of people, and he’s obviously taken an interest in Bonnie and making sense of her. So far, he’s picked up on the light (brave, empathetic, optimistic, kind, a fierce instinct to help) and he’s picked up on the dark (angry, self-sabotaging, competitive, a taste for danger) and at first glance, the two seem so wildly different that he’s like ‘which one’s real’. But I think what I’m really trying to build toward with Bonnie is that she’s not one or the other, she’s both. In harmony. And that ultimately, letting in her ‘dark side’ wouldn’t take anything away from her compassion and optimism and impassioned drive to make the world a better place - if anything, it’d just make her light side shine even brighter, you know?

And likewise, Damon’s a character with a similar but inverted complex - he’s somehow grown up with the idea that he’s not a good guy and doesn’t care about anything, but he’s actually done some pretty heroic shit? Like, he turned in his own parents because of the things they were doing to people - parents who grown ass hardened criminals were terrified of. And he was ten. He went through foster home after foster home of neglect and abuse, all of which calcified his alleged numbness to the world, and yet couldn’t help himself from becoming a constant buffer between Tyler and his abusive dad. He was more in love with Katherine than she ever was with him and yet his awareness of that never stopped him from being there for her, even when he kind of hated her, because the weight of their shitty lives mattered more than the weight of his feelings. When he accidentally pushed Bonnie into a spiral, he dove in to deal with it, in large part because it was his fault, but also because he knew he was the best option for her, and he didn’t want to see Caroline and Stefan take that on. And there’s more hero-revealing things ahead for him in the story, which kind of begs the question, ‘why are you so convinced you’re this hedonist who doesn’t care when you actually do more good than a lot of people who do care?’ And Bonnie is absolutely starting to piece this all together, so it’s a similar dynamic on either side. Anyway, that’s my dissertation on how to go into an entirely unsolicited rambling meta in response to wonderful and pertinent feedback.

Kai’s “you two must have a crazy sex life”, I think it’s funny ‘cause he could have left it at that and gotten away with it, but continuing with details just killed those chances (and it also killed me).

REPLY:

looool right? Kai’s one of those characters that’s always right on the cusp of having a normal moment and then nope, never mind, hail mary throw to loony land right at the last second.

Caroline’s Freakout

I love how chaotic you write Caroline’s internal struggle. Because, like she realizes, she’s being irrational, and that’s exactly how her thoughts come across. Excellent work with that. “Everything about him was a goddamn error,” superb line, dude. That’s how exactly how I pegged the sma Steroline relationship (and the sma Bamon one, but on the side of Bonnie being the error anomaly to Damon). Like, honestly, when Caroline’s like “he’d known what he was doing”, I’m like,” y’all were having sex? You must’ve looked like you were liking it???” Caroline frustrates me sometimes, but like, she’s frustrating herself (and Stefan), so that makes sense and also kudos.

And then she lashes out at Stefan, and Stefan’s like, “I know”. Yikes.com. And I like how she realizes the physicality of what they did isn’t much different from what she and other guys did. It’s just him that’s different. And oh man, I love how Stefan’s like, “I didn’t mean to hurt you”, and she’s like “dude wait stop you’re not supposed to apologize for this”.

So many emotions dude. Mainly ‘cause I can relate to avoidance thing (yikes), but also ‘cause you can tell she’s trying to figure herself out, trying to correct her behavior (kinda), but then she reverts. A+.

REPLY:

Gaaah, all of that makes me so happy because that’s exactly what I was going for. You’re frustrated with her, but you know you’re supposed to be frustrated with her ‘cause even she’s frustrated with herself, you know? I’ve always found that I’m really forgiving of flawed characters when they’re aware of their flaws (and when other people are allowed to get fed up with their shit), so going into that scene, that’s what I tried to keep in mind - she’s going to be irrational and defensive and I need to make sure everyone knows that I know that this isn’t cool. It isn’t intriguing or exciting. It’s frustrating and repetitive and I know it, Caroline knows it, and Stefan knows it, and because of that, it’ll be confronted, you know? And yeah, that ‘he knew what he was doing’ line was exactly for that reason - Caroline clearly played a role in what happened, like it takes two to tango gurl, so I hoped that would hammer in how unreliable her narration was in that second. That, and the fact that when he starts apologizing, like you said, she’s like ‘stop’ because obviously he really didn’t do anything that bad and she knows that. Super, super stoked that the scene played out for you the way it did, man. Best feedback ever. Eloquent af. A+ goes to you.

Bamon’s first trip to Wine Cellar

Touching + promixity + commentary = horny Bonnie + smug Damon + heaps of hilarity

REPLY:

They’re like X-rated toddlers.

“You’ve been in love?” conversation was really good. I mean it was short, but I loved it. Like, called out much?

REPLY:

I literally had no idea I was going to write that until it just showed up on the word doc, but it ended up being one of my fave exchanges, so I’m so happy you liked it, too!

And then the “earthworm” argument: LOL.

“Like your entire face is rebelling against it—you look like you’re about to have a stroke.” LOLOLOLOLOLOL. What’s even funnier is I imagine Damon coming back with a doctor comment lol.

REPLY:

‘Uh-oh, better give me a full physical.’

The kiss/attack. Kai’s probably right, their sex life is will probably be crazy.

REPLY:

Definitely won’t get bored.

Bonnie’s flashback. Gotta know more dude. Like, in theory, you wrote it out a bit, but more more more.

REPLY:

More ahead! I have an ask about it that I’m going to answer but more’s coming in the actual fic, too. I think. So excited you want to know more, though!

“Merriam Webster” lol

OKAY HERE’S THE OTHER LIFE-GIVING PART: “Are you worried about me?” and “She turned around to leave and he caught her wrist again./’Seriously. Anything at all.’” YOU’RE MURDERING ME GABI HOW DARE YOU (please keep it coming).

Jesus Crisco lololololololol

REPLY:

Soon-to-Be Ms. Cuddles

It’s kind of scary how much of myself I see in Caroline lol (that’s kind of fucked up right?) especially when her eyes are shut because the cat is near her omg.

REPLY:

lmaoooo a little scary but she turns out alright so *bonnie voice* there’s hope for you.

My heart at “none of it was worth it”. At first, I was like Caroline’s not worth it? But then he’s like Caroline’s fear/hurt isn’t worth it, and I’m like, Stefan you IDIOT STOP HURTING ME.

REPLY:

LMAO ISN’T HE THE WORST.

And then him realizing what the real issue is with “Like maybe that contract hadn’t just been for him”.

But then him fucking it up with “something stupidly, recklessly hopeful”. BOY BYE WITH THIS DISNEY PRINCE-NESS.

REPLY:

Disney Prince-tervention. 8 o’ clock. Scott McCall can come too.

“It means is there anything on the planet you don’t avoid dealing with?” YIKES STEFAN DO YOU LIKE PLAYING WITH YOUR LIFE LIKE THIS OR

REPLY:

LOLOLOL I laughed when I wrote that line. I was like eating Smart Pop and going ‘BOY’ as if I wasn’t the one writing it, it was all super sane.

Avoiding!Caroline #relatable dude.

“Easy to mistake for serial killers” LOL STEFAN AGAIN ARE YOU READY TO DIE OR

REPLY:

Danger Zone Stefan.

The part with the cat coming near her, lol, is so damsel-in-distress, and it makes me laugh so much at how cliched/tropey this is, but I also love it, and I tried to imagine her with either Bonnie or Damon in the same situation, and Bonnie being similar to Stefan but taking her out of her misery, but Damon being a shithead about it. Ah yes.

REPLY:

LMAO that scene is pure, unadulterated, damsel-ly TROPENESS and I love forcing Caroline I’m a Force to be Reckoned With and Need No One Forbes into those scenes because she tries so hard not to be that way and like, for what? Girl, be afraid of the dark. Run away from cats. Be jumpy and hide behind people. None of that means you can’t singlehandedly take down the Emory football administration, you know? You can run away from spider-rat hybrids in the same stilettos you slam into the toes of drunk dudes harassing girls on the subway. Do you. And LOOOL to Bonnie and Damon in Stefan’s place - Bonnie would definitely let it go but would be subtly trolly about it, like putting the cat on her bed when she’s in the shower or buying it a bunch of costumes to wear around the apartment. Damon would probs be every inch as insufferable as you’d imagine.

The Not-All-Animals conversation. You don’t have to answer this, but is this supposed to be a foreshadowing, because the window was wide open for you (or Stefan) to state it clearly. And lol I cried when he says “there’s a cuddly little fur ball who seems really interested in getting to know you” and I’m imagining him talking about himself *dies of laughter*

“You’re going to love this cat”. Subtle, Stefan. Subtle.

REPLY:

CAN YOU IMAGINE HIM CALLING HIMSELF A CUDDLE LITTLE FUR BALL ON PURPOSE #BYE. I mean, it’s true, but still. I did the parallel on purpose, which I’m sure you know by now because I take forever to reply and have answered tat a few times, but I think it was more subconscious on Stefan’s part. Like his dedication to getting her to open up to the cat was definitely motivated by his own frustrations with her in that department, but I don’t think he saw the direct parallel or anything. Muahaha. I kind of want him to now though because CUDDLY LITTLE FUR BALL. That’s his street name.

Bonkai/Damon’s return from the cellar

Kai flirting

Bonnie feeling bad for Kai for not having any friends. (can I just note that Kai doesn’t seem bothered that he doesn’t really have friends—or rather, he seems the type not to mind it. Like I’m sure there’ll be a part when Kai says something ‘jeez Bon, stop being so obsessed with me’ when she tries to be his friend)

AKA ME now feeling bad for Kai, just in general (or that might be the copious amounts of Bonkai fics I’ve been reading recently…)

Bonnie teaching Kai to “flirt” AKA just be a human being

REPLY:

lololol Kai’s just a dude doing his best impersonation of humaning and failing miserably and not being too bothered about it.

“Maybe a little less… carnivorous” lol

Damon calling Kai “bud” (like, him actually picking up on the fact Kai enjoyed that). Too sweet.

REPLY:

I didn’t get a chance to get too into it in 15, but if all goes according to plan, Kai x Damon should be a pretty unexpectedly adorable brotp, so I’m super happy you picked up on that!

Bamon kiss #3 : “his stare was dark, humming, glinting with a hint of self-satisfaction” hehehehehe

“but I feel like maybe I should’ve asked you instead. Cool move.” lmfao Kai is a cutie pie (I know what I said, I’m not taking it back).

“Honestly, he could go back to the murder cellar now” lolololol. You’ve got a lot of golden lines in this one.

Almost Bamon kiss #4: nice

“She exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the buried, messy part of her that was turned on by the idea, that buzzed from the risk of it all.” Same, Bon.

Bless Bonnie’s insane self-control.

REPLY:

Damon’s a smug little shit. There’s just no getting around it, tbh. And YAY for cutie pie Kai (it even rhymes! Destiny.) - definitely trying to hone in on the more delightful sides of him from canon. And lmao, Bonnie must be so tired.

Caroline vs. the Cat

Obsessive Caroline is something familiar and safe to all. I like obsessive Caroline a lot lol.

Okay, unrelated, but can you expand a little bit on the Maroline situation again because, from what you’ve already explained (sorry if this is ruining the story, you obviously don’t have to explain if it is) Matt was sweet when it suited him, not sweet when he was angry or whatever. So, like, Stefan has none of these telltale features, like not even lowkey. I mean, he gets mad at her that one time, but it’s not malicious, you know? But it also triggered her to breakdown, but I read that as she’s already dealing with internal shit, so the internal is being external, and has very little to do with Stefan. So, I guess my question is, why is she not realizing Stefan is a Disney prince and he’ll always be one? Or is it just the overwhelming fear that’s clouding her judgement? I’m rambling.

REPLY:

GIRL, join the club. Rambling is a way of life. Re: Matt, I think a key thing I haven’t gotten to in the fic yet is that Matt started off as a bit of a Disney Prince, too. He was this humble, small-town star quarterback who was a little shy around girls and didn’t know what to do with all the attention on him, and when he met/got to know Caroline, he fell hard. Like haaaard. She was this confident, brash, outgoing ray of light that drew him in and made him laugh and added so much joy to his life, and he was just totally smitten. Built her things, wrote her crappy love letters that made her smile, etc., and for a year or so, they were this fairytale of a couple that everyone in town loved. And then Vicky got into drugs and his family situation went from not great to really bad - his mom was constantly off with some new guy, so a lot of the responsibility fell on him - and things just slowly started changing. He was angrier. Stressed out all the time, and he wasn’t someone who did well under pressure. He started checking out from school more and more because he didn’t see it as a priority. And in that context, larger-than-life Caroline with her sunny optimism and big ambitions went from endearing and inspiring to naive and a lowkey reminder of everything he didn’t have the luxury of being. Resentment started creeping in, and it’d come in the form of him being snide or putting her down, and it just kind of spiraled from there. Like you said, it wasn’t all the time, he could still be every inch as sweet and loving as he was when she first met him, but the bad moments started cropping up more and more often, and Caroline was just kind of frozen because they had years of magical history to indicate that this wasn’t the real him, and she just needed to wait it out and be supportive. And if she’d only done that to a certain degree, I think she would’ve been okay, but she stayed for way, way longer than she ever thought she would’ve. And she started coming up with insane ways to justify everything because their relationship meant so much to her. And all in all, that’s the real damage for her - the fact that she can’t trust herself to one: see people for they are when she has feelings for them, and two: know when to get out of something. Not when she’s in love. Any other context, sure, deuces, bye, but she doesn’t trust herself in love. So that’s why Stefan, without really showing any real Matt-like flaws, is scaring the hell out of her, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKING OF RAMBLING HI HELLO YES WHERE IS THE SUPPORT GROUP

Caroline and the cat is really cute. We don’t see many soft moments of Caroline, except the baroline apology scene, so it’s cute to see her just calm down a little bit. Calm in the storm.

And her being like “You’re lucky Stefan’s here.” Oh, dude, that really got me. Like, before she goes into the physicality of him/them, I read that line as like, “he’ll take care of you, he’ll be good for you” and that struck me.

REPLY:

So happy you liked that softer side of Caroline! Definitely going to be seeing more of that now that she’s gotten most of the defensiveness out of her system (in large part because I’m just tired of writing it, lmaaaaaoooooo #authoroftheyear). And yeah, that’s exactly how she meant that line, which I think shows just how much her opinion has changed of him over these past few days. Progress!

“And it was terrifying, because for that brief glitter of a moment, for better or for worse, she’d been Caroline Forbes in all her complete, defenseless, messy glory”: nice.

REPLY:

👌

“And closed hearts, apparently”, awwwwwwww. You know my general feels about steroline, but this fic, man. Well played, Gabi, well played.

REPLY:

lmao you know mine too. thanks, boo.

Bamon Snooping

Initial and overarching reaction: LOL

Damon saving Bonnie’s life: *heart eyes*

“I’m not talking to you”/”Why ‘cause I didn’t feel you up in the kitchen?” LOL Damon knooooooows, Damon’s got you cornered (you’d like that wouldn’t you, Bonnie) (but also, same)

REPLY:

#READ

Like this idiot really thinks she’s fooling anyone? She’d totally like that. Let’s make another support group.

The flamingo tarts LOL

AND AND AND “Stefan’s not even going to be able to look at yo—“ crying

Kai going to hunt swan. Again.

REPLY:

So rude, pulling the judgy Stefan card. And yeah, Kai’s really into casual evening strolls with crossbows.

The snooping. Okay, so first, Bonnie’s reaction of “yeeeeeeeeee” and Damon’s reaction of “k let’s do it”. I love it so so so much. This is a moment I can see Matt Daddario being Damon (I started watching Shadowhunters, pardon me). But also the things they find??? Like, if this were a tv show (where’s the petition, my pen is ready), then this would be that one weird/sci-fi episode. Like a musical episode, but sci-fi-y.

Damon “how much you want to bet one of these opens a hidden passageway”/I’m a big nerd too Fell/Whitmore (who tf is this guy)

REPLY:

LMAO coming up with the things they find was another case of me staring dead-eyed into space for 20 minutes and cackling at random, so I’m glad it was entertaining. And yessss, I can totally see Matt pulling off that line. I see him as a slightly sleepier Damon, like his blithe charm goes from obnoxious to a little slyer and lowkey, and he has more of a playful laziness about him. It’s a really fun/unique fit, especially since some of the other actors I’ve imagined as Damon have more of a brash/sharp quality to them that would enhance the showman aspect instead of downplaying it.

Bamon talking about Damon’s job: real bonding about real things!

REPLY:

WOOT. More of that ahead :)

Steroline Avoiding

“He could navigate picky eaters like a pro”: I love that you made him this way, and that you made her that way, and that their ways are like puzzle pieces.

REPLY:

Ahhh, I love that you put it that way. That’s their new tag line.

And also for this beaut: “the Human Grimace” lmfao.

“I feel annoyed”/”Why?”/”I don’t know.” – is that their tag line or?

REPLY:

JK that’s definitely their tag line.

Steroline bonding in general, bless.

“I can’t do this”: yikes. At first, I thought this was going to be a repeat of every sexytimez moment these two had before the ultimate one

but I really like how you placed that bit about Elena in there. Nice. Like how he can’t handle not knowing, and that’s very Caroline of him, and he could just tell her this please that’d help everyone???? I’m not ranting.

REPLY:

IF EVERYONE COULD JUST TALK IN THIS GODFORSAKEN FIC IT WOULD’VE ENDED TEN CHAPTERS AGO AND MADE MY LIFE SO MUCH EASIER. lmao but I’m glad you liked the Elena nuance - I’m trying to build their experiences in bits and pieces so that when they finally talk about everything re: the exes, it’s not too much of an information dump.

Damon’s Panic Attack

Jesus Christ, Gabi. Right in the heart, dude. Like chill out. His avoidance of the very inevitable killed me. And Bonnie not picking up on the signs. Omg and Damon’s “I’m fine”, parallel to Caroline’s, and the whole “I can do this, I can get through this, I’ve only had myself before, and I only need myself now”, but Bonnie’s there and she’s all “I got you, you can do this, we’ll get through this together” and she’s talking him through, but he’s doesn’t want to even talk and she’s just trying to bring him out of him successfully, but ultimately fails and goes with the distracting that is an old Stefonnie story. BUT THEN, her fourth-grade poem reminded me of The Punisher’s “one batch, two batch, penny and dime” in Daredevil (you watched that right?) and I was like oh shoot, you right. What you were right about, not sure, but it worked, and Bonnie did a good job (but also YOU), and Damon’s “she was a ridiculous person./Tangled and dark and simple and light.” And my heart wept. “He let himself stay”. Oh my poor baby. You wrecked me, Gabi, you really did.

REPLY:

‘and I was like oh shoot, you right. What you were right about, not sure, but it worked’ - LMAOOOOOO, dead. Like 50% of my excitement for posting this review is just people reading it and realizing how hilarious you are and then going to check out B&B. (GO AND CHECK OUT B&B). For real though, gaaaaah, everything about this is making my friggin’ day because this is always the toughest stuff to write for me. I never know if I’m building it well or if the emotions are transitioning fluidly and it makes me want to break my laptop (jk it’s already broken JOKE’S ON ME), so I’M SO HAPPY I WRECKED YOU. All of your observations are perfect. I didn’t even think about The Punisher but shoot, YOU RIGHT, that’s such a great parallel. I’ve always found that angsty situations are super unpredictable in real life, like the things you expect to happen seldom do and it’s always the most random thing that ends up shifting the mood, so I tried to translate that into this scene. Like Bonnie’s pulling out all the stops, all the things she’s trained to do, but what ends up cutting through the air is a random ass poem from fourth grade. And it’s just thoughtful and spastic enough to grab his attention, especially once he realizes why she went for poetry, and suddenly, the situation’s quelling. So I’m super, super happy that it worked for you, and that the ‘tangler and dark and simple and light’ stood out. I think that’s one of the first instances of him starting to realize she’s not one or the other, she’s both at the same time, so yeah, this feedback is all wonderful and now you’re wrecking me so we’re even.

Steroline Confronting

Is Caroline… confronting the problem? Is Caroline… actually fixing this? Is Caroline… actually being a person? Nice, good job, I’m proud of you, girl. Slay.

REPLY:

LOOK AT HER GOOOOO.

I like how she gets how fucked up the whole thing is. Like, she knows she’s being irrational, and that he shouldn’t have to put up with this mess, and damn, I feel for her.

REPLY:

Yesssss, totally what I was going for. Like the person most done with her shit is herself, and she’s likely going to be way harder on herself about it than you or me or Stefan or anyone else, really. So happy that came across.

“Would it make you feel better if I told you that wasn’t the first time that’s happened to me?”

“What did you do? Actually—don’t tell me now.”/“I’m not telling you ever.”

”Tell me when it doesn’t hit so close to home.”/”Or never.”

”It’s still too soon.”/”It’ll always be too soon.”

These are gems.

REPLY:

Gotta sneak some fluff into every scene you know how I roll.

Oh goodness, but Stefan wanting to know her as a person. Ughhhhhh.

And the ruse of “for the sake of Bonnie.” I’m calling bullshit.

“Who was he, Nicholas Sparks?” Lol, I mean, it worked out, though, dude.

REPLY:

Stefan’s a lost cause.

As always, my friend, you’ve done a phenomenal job. Your writing style is so unique and fabulous, and it just adds to the storyline itself, like, it’s own entity in this whole thing. Bless. So excited for the next chapter. Did I hear more sexytimez for the bamon babes?

REPLY:

GIRL I COULD SAY THE SAME DAMN THING ABOUT YOURS. Like even in this review alone - hysterical and eloquent af. I know you probably know this, but no one ever thinks that of their own writing (or at least I don’t think they do lmao, if they do LEMME HAVE A HIT OF THAT CONFIDENCE BOO ‘cause I didn’t even know I had a style), so it’s legit amazing to hear that the style stands out to you, and know that I’m boomeranging that comment right back atcha. Next chapter is sloooowly chugging along, by which I mean I’m writing at a regular pace but I’m trying to cram a legitimately concerning/insane amount of scenes into it. Like 15. LMAO. RIP Gabi. But hopefully it won’t take me too long! Also, it’s the last of the intensely emotional chapters for a while (just a lot of big moments I need to get right), so even if this takes forever, the rest should be a little faster. I feel like I say this after every chapter and nothing changes, looooool. BUT ANYWAY, you’re a marvel, this review is everything, I’m feelsy, you’re hilarious, write a book, bye.

#reply #six mornings after #review #15 #sma bamon #sma maroline #sma steroline #sma matt #sma bonnie #sma damon #sma caroline #lmao I have to tag so much because I launched into so many unnecessary metas #I must be stopped #anyway this is glorious and cassie's glorious it's fine #also this took me no joke two hours to respond to #like my laptop started lagging behind my typing in protest #I DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SO SLOW GUYS BUT I'M TRYING #submission

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eggheadsguidetorunning · 6 years

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The Worse Movies I saw in 2018 Part I

I prefer to do this list a little late to get some of the worst movies that came out in December a chance for me to see and hate them, at least that is the excuse I’m using.

10. Ready Player One

So, I am cheating a bit here because I mainly hated the book, but the movie wasn’t any good either. I guess the best way to compare the two is by comparing the amount of pandering they do. The movie multiplies the amount pandering by ten but then you divide it by a hundred because it has a bigger audience because of this the pandering is more bearable in the movie then it is in the book.

Another good way to show the differences is to show the differences is through well the actual changes from book to movie. One of the biggest changes are the challenges. The first challenge in the book is to make it through the tomb of horrors, which the main character does by himself at level 1. Then to beat the lich at the end of the tomb in a game of arcade Joust. The movie isn’t better but instead of basing the challenge in the movie around sucking the dick of nerd culture the first challenge is just well dumb. In the movie the main character needs to drive backwards to win a race. Now consider that video games have people who test them for a living to make sure these games work there is a huge group of people who the first thing they do when they play a game is see if they can go backwards just to test the game. By the way in the movie it took someone seven years to solve this puzzle too.

It may be silly to contain a movie on my top 10 worst movies I saw simply because the book was bad but screw it this is my list, and Ready Player One the movie is mediocre in comparison to the shitty book but it’s still a bad movie.

9. Jurassic World Lost Kingdom

Originally, I wasn’t planning on putting this movie on the list since it’s easy to pick on movie that is designed to be a corporate sell out. Then realized there would be a bunch of movies I would have to remove from this list on that philosophy, so decide this movie deserves a spot here. Spielberg should be laughing at the fact that someone managed to make a Jurassic Park movie worse than Lost World. A Jurassic Park movie in which the good guys justify letting loose a bunch of ferocious dinosaurs on society because the dinosaurs have a right to live too. Just forget the fact that they will massacre a huge number of people who also have the right to live. How do we know the dino’s have a right to live? Well because the girl who is a genetic clone sees herself in them because the dinosaurs are also clones. Like they aren’t trying to even hide that the reason why they can’t kill the dinosaurs is because they need to make sequels.

The bad guys are super irredeemably stupid and of course they then die in humiliating ways, and I can’t honestly believe that some of them don’t see their death coming. In what must be the dumbest black-market auction idea ever the bad guys have a bunch of villainous people come over to their mansion in which the murderous dinosaurs are stored to be sold to these people. Like hey guys come over to my mansion full of killer dinosaurs we will a party while we sell them to you. I think if they thought about it there was a safer way to do this sale of killer dinosaurs. I don’t know maybe they could have done it all online like most black-market sales do?

And who still thinks the Weyland Yutani idea of owning the most highly evolved killing machine, that is uncontrollable, is smart idea and while I’m at it who thinks Umbrella Corp ideas are any good as well. Well I invite you to go dumber than them. See, while these two evil corporations that constantly make or try to control evil and super strong next phase of evolution kill everything virus, aliens, or monster then try to make these things into weapons and somehow don’t see how this could bite them in the ass. They are at least super corporation and using that structure of a giant corporation to contain their abominations. In Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom a dude decides to make a super raptor in his mansion and sell it. This ends badly and nobody in the audience will ever be surprised by this ending badly even the kids know this is a bad idea. Don’t watch this movie you have already seen this movie done better.

8. Death Wish (2018)

Bruce Willis is the only good part about this movie, but of course he isn’t the only part of the movie and he isn’t even always great in it. This was may be the most confusing movie I saw this year not because it was a hard plot to follow but because I don’t know why this movie exist or what it was trying to accomplish. Why did they decide to remake Death Wish? Was there supposed to be some sort of political statement was there not supposed to be political commentary? Was this supposed to be high drama or high action movie? What was the point of this movie why does it exist, I just don’t understand! It felt like the director was unsure of his own wok, but at the same time he seemed overly confidant in his poor choices in making this movie.

When you remake a movie that was beloved in its time you should be trying to improve the original concept or give it a different outlook. This movie is just a worse version of Death Wish and doesn’t really do anything interesting. In fact, I wonder why this movie had to be a Death Wish remake or even have the same title as Death Wish. I would enjoy this movie more if it was Die Hard 6 or something instead. That would be so much easier to justify and maybe even make it easier for it to be more fun and stupid. As it stands this movie was a boring mess. I really don’t have much more to say than that.

7.Truth or Dare

I actually love this movie which is why it isn’t higher on the list. There is nothing scary about this scary movie and the attempts they make to scare you are only made funnier by their horrible filter Instagram face effects. I really want to know who saw that effect and said yeah that’s creepy make a movie about it. I want that person to make more “horror” movies.

What’ better than the horrible effects is when this movie write itself into a corner and then tries to somehow miraculously get out of it without any though on how this miracle comprise the movie. Like how a character will be dared to kill the main character because I don’t know, no reasons given, so for the main character live some side character jumps, or stumbles, in front of the gun and gets shot instead. Then because character with a gun failed to shoot the main character she instantly gets possessed and kills herself.

Yes, she gets possessed you read that right. What, I failed to mention is that the reason any of this happens is because a demon possessed a game of truth or dare and will force people to play. Don’t play you die fail the dare or don’t tell the truth and you die. To make matters worse some genius thought the game would be more fun if there were moments when you were forced to take a dare, so now sometimes someone has to choose dare instead of truth.

To make matters worse (or from my personal view better) near the end of the movie they are about to exercise the demon, and someone choose to take a dare and then refuse to do the dare. This should mean game is over since now the demon has to kill this person and let the exorcism be completed. Thus, say the rules the demon has followed. What happens, and spoilers by the way, is the demon possess the guy who didn’t take the dare and leaps the person needed for the exorcism and then kills the mcguffin character and finally kills the person who refused the dare, thus the demon breaks his own rules. Now consider the scenario above in which a person is dared to kill the main character and fails so the demon takes over and kills the person failed the dare. Now the question is raised if the demon wanted to kill the main character then why should the demon have not just shot the main character then the person who failed the dare? There was nothing stopping the demon from doing this. In conclusion, this a really poorly written movie and its only number seven because it is a funny poorly written movie.

6. Clover Field Paradox

I feel everyone forgot about this movie because of Bright, but I didn’t forget, and I didn’t watch Bright. So, let’s have a movie with an almost cosmic horror-set up but then do nothing with this build-up of humanity seeking for knowledge that we shouldn’t have. Then let’s have a Hadron Collider make a tear in dimensions to release a bunch of nightmarish monsters that we never get to see until the very end of the movie. Don’t worry though, to make things interesting we will have the crew just jump to a different reality through the tear, but instead of going somewhere interesting we have them simply go to an almost completely similar reality except they failed to get the Hadron Collider to work. We could have them go literally anywhere else the possibilities are endless, but no. At one point though the movie even seems to try to do something cool by doing some crazy Event Horizon shit. By having the ship seem to be attacking the crew but instead of focusing on this the movie just kind of forgets about this. Also, there is no reason for the ship attacking and killing the crew.

The main villain, in fact, ends up being a crew member from the alternate dimension not an alien or cool monster just some lady with a gun she arguably shouldn’t have. This is because this movie isn’t about cool sci-fi monster but is about a poor political subtext on the doom of humanity if we cannot work together to get a better fuel resource and we end up running out of gas. That subtext is the main conflict for the whole movie. Why are we up in space? Because gas. Why did the alternative dimension team fail? Because wars over gas. Why are there monster in Cloverfield? Because Hadron Collider.

The balls of this movie to have such freedom to do such an interesting thing with dimension hopping in space and monsters from another dimension, yet what they decide to do is the most boring thing they could have done with this set up. When they decide to through in a tie in to the Cloverfield monsters at the end of the movie and using one line at the beginning of the movie to justify this it becomes obvious that this movie is just lazy. Welcome to this list Cloverfield Paradox. Hopefully, you ended this Cloverfield movie franchise thing, so we don’t get something worse from Cloverfield later.

5.The Darkest Minds

Hahahahahahahahahahahah. This movie is great. It’s the ultimate young adult (YA) cash grab movie of the year. It even has a sorting system like Harry Potter, but that sorting system is allegory for racism and involves mutant kids in concentration camps. You know all the things YA novels need… right? These mutant kids are like x-men mutants, but more boring because they all kind of have the same powers. One group of kids is super smart, another use electricity and a third group control’s the world. References to Harry Potter and Star Wars are also used to help the audience know that the directors/characters are hip to current pop culture. As well as there being a forced romantic relationship between a girl whose only personality trait is that she lacks self-esteem and a guy who is kind of, but not really, edgy. Fuck, this movie even has a shopping montage in it.

We need go back a bit and tackle one of the dumber points. I earlier mentioned how you would get a house assigning thing applied to you but instead of a sorting hat this sorting method gives you a color and is supposed to be allegory to racism, thus it being a color. To explain how this system works you would be assigned a color based on your super power so if you were super smart you would be green for example. They would then sort you in the not concentration camp (but its totally a concentration camp) by your color. Allegory is ham fisted here but it at least works. Once you get outside the concentration camp everyone will call you a green or ask what your color is, and you will answer that it is green. Now this could be allegory for how racial discrimination can come to define others, and how labels that are given never truly go away. Unfortunately, that’s not how the movie handles it. The movie seems to look at it like kids would say I’m a green just like they would say I’m a Ravenclaw, I’m a member of district 9, I’m part of the Athena’s house, or I’m whatever Divergent was. So, this allegory for racism is also supposed to be like house sorting in the positive pop culture connotation. Which is idiotic because those two things don’t really mesh, and it feels like the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Then again this could also be commentary on how schools label the gifted and thus limit them, but it runs it the same problem of the kids labeling themselves and embrace the labels even when they have the freedom not to.

Not to mention all the hammy acting plot lines that disappear or go nowhere. The fact that a 17-year-old girl kills a woman in a horrifying fashion but that is fine because the woman who was killed was evil. There is also a final fight that is so over the top stupid it bounces back to being kind of cool.

Despite this being a bad movie I suggest watching it with a lot of friends and a lot of alcohol.

#cloverfield paradox #cloverfield #worst movies of the year #Death Wish (2018)#The Darkest Minds #ready player one #Truth or dare #bad movies #jurassic park #jurassic world fallen kingdom #so bad

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diamondscribbles · 7 years

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For you,

You know who you are. I don’t think I need to mention your name or anything like that. How have you been? It’s been around three weeks more or less since we last spoke. That’s almost a month! Isn’t it crazy to think about? I’m doing well - California is an absolutely gorgeous place. I don’t think you care for it and that’s fine. I came to terms that we just didn’t have the same vision for the future. I am still getting adjusted - I actually have been having a hard time staying awake in the meetings and such. Its terrible but I’m excited regardless.

Ummm, other than that, I like the apartment and I like how everything is so close by. I don’t think that’s the point of this letter though. I guess I got to actually try to communicate with you now - the thing that we honestly suck at. I wanted to tell you that I still think of you every so often. My mind would zone out and I would think of memories of us. I would think of the good times and the bad times. To be honest, the memories of the good times are the ones that hurts most. It’s okay though. Every time I see your name and I see pictures of us, I don’t feel that strong sense of hurt and pain anymore.

Time has helped with this recovery process. I mean, I think we weren’t really good for each other. I was too jealous and too controlling because I couldn’t trust you and I didn’t know my place in your life. I couldn’t communicate with you properly either and I was too impatient and I had my own fair share of issues. I don’t know how to really treat someone who has been mistreated and stuff in their life. I always thought I was the most empathetic person, but I guess I was wrong. I’m sorry for all my shortcomings. I tried to abandon you so many times too - I was scared of commitment and I was also so unsure of us. But each time, you came back, but the last time, you didn’t come back. I like to thank you for not coming back. I needed that. We needed that.

I blamed you a lot in the beginning. I made you out to be this giant villain who took my innocence and was cold and cruel. But I don’t think so. I remember your wonton soup. I remember you going to Target to get my Alexa. I remember you calling me up and demanding me to come back to you. I remember you taking those late night drives with me. I remember how you tried to tell me how I needed to get closer to my mother. I remember you helping me wash my car and I remember you wanting to go on all these adventures with me. I remember all these things and I think even though you never really said it, you cared and I thank you for that. I needed that. I was in a lonely environment and you were there for me. You helped me in a lot of ways.

I think we lost our way. Somewhere along the line, I became more unhappy and more stressed and more paranoid and more anxious with you than in the beginning. In the beginning, it was fun and it was spontaneous and we wanted to be with each other every single day. Then, everything went downhill. Sometimes, I think to myself is there anything I could have done differently? Could I have fixed us? I think the answer to that would have to be no. I made my decisions and I have to live with them. Even though this relationship was relatively short, I had fun. I loved having you around and I loved you.

Even though we don’t talk anymore, I hope you’re doing well. There’s many moments where I think to myself - watch, I’m going to make her feel shitty about leaving me. I’m going to make her regret it. But I don’t think that’s right. I hope you honestly find what you’re looking for even if it’s not with me. I hope you repair the relationships you have with the people around you. I hope you don’t take solace in people who just want to use you and throw you away. I hope you keep pursuing higher education and I hope you don’t get off track. I hope you get into Georgia Tech and own your own firm one day. I hope you find a good guy to love you properly. I hope you and your sister take care of yourselves. I hope you don’t sell or do drugs anymore. What I wanted was to be the one that helped you change your life around. I wanted to hold your hand and pull you into this new chapter of your life. I wanted to do all these impractical and idealistic things.

You taught me that you can’t change people, they must want to change themselves. You taught me that you can’t force someone to love you - they either do or they don’t. You taught me that life hits you in the craziest ways and you never know who you’re going to meet. There are many moments when I wished I hadn’t met you or we never took it further than a mentor-mentee relationship. However, I’m glad we had this. I’m glad we share these moments. I will tuck them in the corner of my heart and I will remember them fondly. You made me happy and I hope you were happy as well. Other than that, you taught me a lot - I took a lot out of this and more than I ever really expected.

Also, in terms of you as a person, my perspective has definitely changed. I thought you were just young and reckless and beautiful all at once. I thought you were exciting and I knew you weren’t good news in the beginning. I was just too caught up in the moment. Now, I realized that I was correct, but I realized that there’s darker forces at play. You had a lot of issues that just intermingled and dating you was like taking on an extra 40 pounds of baggage on top of everything I had to handle on my own. I looked at your decisions as if they were my own and your issues as if they were own. That takes a lot out of a person. I don’t think I have it in me to do that anymore - I was too emotionally invested. I was too emotionally, mentally, and physically drained.

I had to give you up. This relationship had an unspoken expiration date and that was the end of the spring semester whether we liked it or not. We tried to prolong it but I only ended up hurt. I think it’s better like this. I think we made the right decisions no matter how much it hurts. I will write to you more later on. I’m tired now. I think I’m going to take a break.

Your x.

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misstopsyturvy · 7 years

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So I went to go see Beauty and the Beast again, this time on my own so I wouldn’t be distracted by chatty family members like the first time.

There was a reasonable amount of people who went when I did this time, I guess they’re the people who are either rewatching it like me or they’re the people who have normal lives and can watch a film a few weeks after it comes out and are perfectly okay with that. Either way, it was a nice set of people.

There was one group of women who had I think three young kids who would say something adorable at the best moments, the one that cracked me up the most was when after the the wolf scene, one of the kids said “This is too adult for me, this turned into a adult one, Mummy.” She says this when it went really quiet too so everyone in the screen laughed.

But that one group got annoying later on.

Specifically one of the Mother’s.

Here’s the thing. When you go see a movie that has well known songs, it’s common decency to NOT sing along loudly with the film. And yet, this is what happened during the dancing scene. And it’s pretty obvious why singing along is rude because I was sitting there trying to focus on the movie, and yet I kept on getting distracted because this Mum was singing along and encouraging the kids to do the same.

I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was just the kids singing, they’re kids and obviously they knew the song and being kids, they’re gonna sing along and they have no idea that singing along is distracting for others. No, my problem was with the Mum who started it and continued on. Her voice was also very grating so again, it was annoying hearing her from the side of me while I’m trying to bask in this film’s prettiness.

But anyway, I enjoyed myself more on my 2nd watch, I found myself smiling so big at Be Our Guest and Gaston which was surprising since before, I didn’t really think much of those two scenes, but this time I really enjoyed it.

Despite how many people hated Emma’s autotune, I’m just really indifferent to it? I mean, I went through a Nightcore phase a few years back, so maybe I’m more accepting when it’s used. I honestly liked Emma’s singing in this, autotune be damned. Some people need it and there’s no fucking shame in that. I know people are pissed because ‘Oh but there are probably SO MANY girls out there who COULD sing and didn’t get the part!’ And all I hear are whiny bitches who are really saying ‘I hate Emma Watson and I should’ve been Belle!’ To each their own opinions, but the general hate I’ve seen on Emma is so petty. Emma was the perfect Belle and I liked her better than the animated Belle to be quite honest. Whoops I said it.

DAN STEVENS. GOD DAMN DAN. He was one of the main reasons why I wanted to watch the movie a second time on the big screen. The CGI is incredible! Before I saw the movie the first time, I was a tiny bit worried about that aspect since I’d heard people say it can be distracting, but I thought it was very well done. I mean, I’ve seen some very shitty CGI in both movies and tv shows, but this film did a perfect job.

I think people forget that we all know CGI is created to make something look real, but we all really know it isn’t. CGI can’t really trick us since we KNOW it’s not real, and yet it’s nitpicked when it doesn’t meet many people’s standards. It’s annoying especially when this film did a great job creating a Beast that Dan was able to act through brilliantly. The fact that they made the Beast with Dan on stilts and his facial expressions captured. It’s just fascinating to me.

So when I came for a 2nd watch, I focused all my attention onto the Beast when he was on screen, I didn’t want to miss a MOMENT of that perfection.

(Also before I forget to mention, one thing that really annoyed me was when they did that swooping shot of Belle’s room when she first goes in, and when she went into the West Wing. I don’t know what they did, but those shots are very blurry when in motion when they try to show us the rooms in it’s entirety. They could’ve been very beautiful shots and yet they were really blurred and that really annoyed me.)

I loved all the other characters. To be honest though, I come to watch this movie because I like the story of Belle and the Beast developing together and seeing them fall in love. I liked the supporting characters sure, but I’d rather focus on the leading characters.

Being a part of the LGBTQ community AND READING THE NOVELISATION BEFORE I SAW THE FILM, I knew I liked how LeFou turned out. And this was before the shitstorm happened after Disney announced LeFou was gay. I knew this before that announcemnet since it was pretty freaking obvious in the novel that he was, so it was REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING WHEN PEOPLE IN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY STARTED TO JUMP TO THE WORST CASE SCENARIOS

I was honestly so tempted to spoil his character development to the whiners. And yet I didn’t and just blocked a bunch of stupid people on this site. SO MANY PEOPLE. Ugh.

Anyway, I was pleased how he turned out in the film. I know people say Disney is just giving them scraps, but honestly guys? This wasn’t LeFou’s movie. It was Beauty and the Beast. Focusing on LeFou and his sexuality wasn’t supposed to be the movie no matter how much you wished he’d gotten more screentime, he’s a supporting character who eases people into realising that gay people are real and it’s normal to be so.

Hopefully one day Disney will create a movie with a leading gay character, but Beauty and the Beast isn’t it. It’s nice to even HAVE a gay character and have it be confirmed before it came out. I’m not saying we should accept the little things. I’m saying we can be happy Disney is stepping in the right direction, especially since they refused to let countries cut and air the film because of the gay aspects. The day will come when we get a LGBTQ lead hero/heroine. Just gotta be patient guys. It will happen when more of the general audience becomes more accepting of the gay characters that BY THE WAY BECAME REFORMED. LeFou had good character development, we need that. We just have to encourage it instead of bitching that it’s not enough. Bitching isn’t going to make Disney make more gay characters, it’s going to make them stop trying altogether and then we’re back to square one. Just chill and hang in there.

I loved Gaston too. But love as in he was a great villain to hate. I know people think he’s more sympathetic in this one, but I’ve got to disagree with that one. In the book, he’s basically the same, but his inner thoughts are all about him trying to fill this hole he has after the war and that Belle is what he needs to fill it.

And I just hate that so much because he’s basically just stuck onto her and he thinks she should just go along with it because why not? He has a hole, so Belle needs to fill it, despite how she feels. And I’ve noticed that the inevitable happened and people started to say Belle was mean for turning him down beCAUSE POOR BABY IS FEELING LIKE HE’S MISSING SOMETHING AND OBVIOUSLY BELLE HAS TO TAKE HIS FEELINGS INTO ACCOUNT JUST BECAUSE-

and oh my god I hate when this happens. When people start to make excuses for the villains because THEY’RE SNOWFLAKES

No. Gaston is still an asshole, he just has a reason to pursue to Belle now instead of her just being beautiful.

I’ve also seen people vilify Maurice for denying Gaston Belle’s hand. In the book it’s much the same, but it’s more descriptive on what Maurice is thinking about how Gaston is losing his temper and this is basically what drives Maurice to say that Gaston would never marry his daughter. Maurice sees how bad Gaston’s temper can get, so do people really think it’s bad of him to say no to this man marrying his daughter? What parent would see that scene and go ‘SURE YOU CAN MARRY MY KID’

No, Maurice obviously saw that Gaston got unstable when he wasn’t getting what he wanted. And he was like ‘HECK NO YOU AIN’T MARRYING MY DAUGHTER, YOU’D PROBABLY BLOW UP ON HER LIKE YOU ARE NOW WITH ME AT SOME POINT AND I AM NOT HAVING THAT’ Maurice is a wonderful parent. But since he said ‘No’ to Snowflake Gaston, people got pissed and defensive.

That can honestly ruin a good villain by the way. Trying to humanize him and sweeping his bad traits and crimes under the rug so he’ll look better so you can feel better about fawning over him more. Wait, there you go. Those types of people can be called the Bimbettes since they fawn over him the whole movie, even when he’s being a dick TO THEM.

Moving on, I said I liked the supporting characters. I didn’t think Mrs Potts was nightmare inducing like other people thought. I think the design is actually very pretty and it fits with the theme of the castle and the century. I recently read that the reason her mouth wasn’t under the spout was because she’d look like a demented pig, so I’m glad they made her this way.

I love Lumiere and Plumette! I like that Lumiere is more devoted to one woman rather than him seeming like a playboy. Didn’t really care about Cogsworth. I mean he’s there and it’s nice and seeing Lumiere aggravate him is fun to watch, but otherwise from that, I don’t care.

Garderobe and Candanza (did I spell them right?) were nice additions. It’s also good to have more than one interracial couple that is perfectly healthy and happy looking! When they said goodbye to one another and he says ‘Don’t leave me!’ and he’s forcing himself to keep playing and then his lights go out. THAT. THAT WAS HEARTBREAKING. Also the score of that scene made it even more so. Damn and bless you, Alan Menken!

The last scene is always my favourite. I WISH we could’ve had more Prince Adam! I ship Adam and Belle so hard right now AND THAT GROWL

(Side note: I loved Evermore so much that I sing it in public, very off key, to my Mum who looks at me like I went crazy, but also knows what I’m singing from so just bears through the pain!)

My thoughts on the news of a possible prequel or spinoff? I don’t want either. I want this movie to stay it’s own thing. I’m okay with the idea that these live action remakes are basically cashgrabs and I’m really okay with that since I like these remakes. But it’s a bit to much for me when a film does so good that a follow up movie ends up being in the works and ultimately flops in the creative aspect. See most Disney animated sequels. I like some of those because I watched them as a kid, but I know they aren’t great.

Also the rumour going around that Disney may make the live action a whole universe like Marvel and DC do with their movies...Nah. Nope. Don’t Want.

Look. I’ve followed Once Upon A Time for 4 years now. That show has ruined intertwined Disney characters for me forever. I have a love/hate relationship with that show. And I know having the character have ‘squad’ films will only ruin the whole thing. It’s just a stupid idea.

Anyway that’s my review of Beauty and the Beast (my real one since I never did one for my first watch)

BTW MULAN NEEDS IT’S MUSIC NUMBERS OTHERWISE THE MOVIE ISN’T GOING TO BE AS SUCCESSFUL

DISNEY BATB IS DOING SO WELL MAINLY FOR THE MUSIC, DON’T BE STUPID AND REALIZE YOU ARE MAKING MONEY BECAUSE DISNEY MUSIC DRAWS PEOPLE IN

night

#that was so fucking long #i had more to say than i thought #lucy for ts

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