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traveler-at-heart · 10 months

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What we were - Chapter 4

Posting because I’m fed up with the discussion of should Nat be forgiven blah blah, that’s the way the story is, it’s not that deep 🥹 I’m deleting all chapters at the end of the week so I’m just posting for the people who were curious about how the story ends.

The Avengers assembled.

Steve and Bucky haven’t aged, but as you look around, you notice some wrinkles around Wanda’s eyes. Tony has gray hair and a disgruntled look on his face.

Sam is the only one enjoying himself, apparently.

“Cheer up” you say, standing in front of the group.

“Sorry, last time we were all together was to put someone six feet under” Tony mutters. “Yes, well... We have some news about that. Nat?”

The redhead stands next to you, looking at the projected images.

“Helios is an international terrorist organization led by French mercenary Soizic Paire. They have targeted some major cities in the Middle East and Africa. Quickly expanding to Europe and North America”

“Eleanor Bishop has been working with them to cover their operations, setting up fake companies that look like legit businesses”

“So you think Kate was just following her mother?” Wanda says.

“Yes, and Clint tagged along as backup. They didn’t know about Helios until they found Eleanor”

“The Avengers are retired, though” Steve points out. “I’m trying to figure out what we could do about this”

“I spoke to Secretary Renfield” you announce. Tony smirks. “We have clearance to take care of this”

“Who is we?” Tony asks you to clarify.

“Everyone in this room. You’re free to go. Or not. I just thought you’d like to know that we’re doing this. I know we all have lives now and families, so there’s nothing wrong with sitting this one out”

“Well, I’m going,” Bucky says.

“I’m going too,” Wanda nods. Steve and Sam step forward as well.

“Stark?”

“Do you have an ugly beard convention or something on your schedule?” you push him, annoyed.

“Damn, when did she get so mean?” Sam mutters to Natasha.

“I think it’s hot”

Tony snickers and shrugs his shoulders.

“Oh, what the hell. For old time’s sake. But you’re explaining this to Pepper” --

Steve is leading an intense training for everyone. It’s been a while since you spar and the pain in your leg only reminds you that you’re not a 20 something agent on the field.

Still, Natasha is patient and knows how to get you back in shape. Everyone shares a sense of urgency to get on with this. Maybe it’s because Helios could go into hiding if they suspect someone is after them. Part of it is also because you all want to go back to your lives.

Yelena is happy to stay over while you focus entirely on this mission. She’s given herself the title of “cool aunt to the rescue”.

“I’m exhausted” you complain when the first week of training ends.

“Steve was a little pushy today,” Natasha agrees. You’re back home, laying on the couch while Natasha massages your feet.

“Want to relax for a bit?”

“Do we have time?” she smiles and you nod, moving to straddle her lap. You kiss her slowly, her hands cupping your ass as you run yours through her hair.

“We brought pizza-aaaah” Yelena screams. “No, Anya, don’t look!”

“You should knock,” Natasha complains.

“There” Yelena punches the door and you grimace. Bucky just replaced it. “Сучка”

“Aww, aunt Yelena, you should have let me walk in on them. That way I could guilt them into buying me a new laptop”

“Maybe next time, sweetheart” you pat Anya’s shoulder. --

The second week of training is coming to an end, and you think the team might be ready to execute the mission in a couple of days.

You’re reviewing floor plans with Natasha when a video call from Maria comes in. “Director Hill”

“Agent Romanoff... and Romanoff. I have some intel that you’ll want to review. Helios is planning an attack at Oslo”

“This is the first time they target an European city” Natasha looks at you, concerned. “How long do we have, Maria?”

“I’d say a day at most”

You sigh.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., call everyone. We leave in an hour”

“Good luck, Avengers” Maria disconnects the call. You walk away, thinking about getting changed and prepare the Quinjet.

“Hold on” Natasha asks, pulling you back to the room.

“Nat, can’t this wait?”

“I need... I need to apologize. For everything. I never did”

“You’ll do it when the mission is over” you try to get away from the conversation but she insists.

“I can’t let you leave without telling you that I love you. That you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And that... thing with Carol didn’t mean anything. It was just a fucked up way to deal with grief. But it’s still not an excuse. I’m sorry for hurting you”

“Thank you”

“You know, after I moved out I started therapy. For real. And I’m working on everything. I don’t want our family to be apart anymore”

“I’m glad to hear that. Now all you have to do is promise me that you’re not going to risk your life on this mission. Anya needs you and so do I”

“Promise” she nods, resting her forehead against yours.

“Chop, chop” Tony walks in, clapping excitedly. “We got butts to kick”

As everyone gathers around, you look at the empty seat on the Quinjet. Clint loved flying this thing.

Then you remember the archery lessons he gave Anya, the Christmases at the farm with all the kids. Maybe, worrying about Natasha was also a way of not facing your own loss.

A look around the room tells you everyone is thinking about Clint.

“We’ll divide in three” you begin, projecting a scan of the location where Helios is hiding. It’s an abandoned mansion on the border between Norway and Russia. “Tony will disable the communication between the guards on the gates and the towers. Once that happens, Wanda and Sam will disarm them”

“Natasha, Steve, Bucky and I will access via an old tunnel. We’ll wait for you to finish with the outside group. Then, Steve and Natasha will go to retrieve intelligence and locate Soizic while Buck and I deal with the second group of guards”

“We’re not splitting up” Natasha complains.

“Yes, we are. You and Steve work great together. And with my leg, I’m gonna need backup”

Bucky smiles at Natasha but you nudge him.

“Not now, children. By the time Steve and Natasha find Soizic, we should all be able to meet there and deal with him. Questions?”

Tony raises his hand.

“Would anyone like some shawarma after? Or is this more of a pizza type of mission?” “Shawarma’s for alien invasions. This will be a piece of cake” Sam winks at you.

Piece of cake, my ass.

You’ve been here for 10 minutes and everything’s going to shit.

Bucky and you had to split up when a group of Helios’ soldiers found you. You’ve been fighting for fifteen minutes, and although you’ve managed to knock down ten of their people, there are still three guards. One of them is swinging a chain, so you duck and he hits his partner.

This time, he swings to the ground, thinking you’ll go low again. Instead, you throw a punch to the other soldier, and by the time the chain man lifts his arms, it hits the other man in the balls.

“Ouch”

You almost feel sorry for him.

With only chain man left, you prepare your last widow bite. He swings the chain, distracting you from his other hand, and he throws a knife that lands straight to your stomach.

Well, shit.

Ignoring the sting, you push through the pain and wait for his attack to grab one of the guns from his fallen mates. You throw the widow bite to distract him and when he thinks he has you, you shoot him three times.

Down.

“We have a problem” Tony announces over the comms.

“Join the club” you take the knife out, grunting.

“Y/N?” Natasha speaks.

“I’m fine” you lie. “Tony?”

“There’s a record of a device that can launch a missile to Oslo, remotely. And it’s traveling, almost at the edge of the property, isn’t that right, F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Yes, Mr. Stark”

“Probably through the tunnel we came in. I’m the one closest to it. I’ll track it” you say. “Sending Red Wing to guide you” Sam announces.

As you run through the tunnel, the robot joins you, and stops next to a wall.

“Sam, you’re thing is broken” “That can’t be”

“Unless there’s a secret... door” you push the stone and sure enough, it gives in. You walk into a garage full of motorcycles, SUVs and sports cars. There’s a man loading up a small briefcase. You lock eyes and he raises his gun.

“Shit”

As you find cover, Red Wing shoots back.

“Guys, I found Soizic” you inform the team as he drives away. “He’s on a white BMW. I’m in pursuit” you instruct them, finding a motorcycle with the keys still attached.

“We cut their power, so he must be looking for a network to connect and launch the missile. You have to get to him before that” Tony instructs.

“No pressure, right?” you rev the engine, and a second later, the cold air hits you. It feels like tiny needles digging on the skin of your face and exposed knuckles.

Soizic is having trouble with the car, as the roads seem to be frozen. You increase the speed, knowing one wrong turn could be fatal.

“Can this thing knock down trees?” you ask Sam.

“Only once”

“Then make sure it gets it right. Block the road with a tree. That way I can intercept Soizic”

“Copy, Romanoff”

“Me?” Natasha jumps in.

“The other Romanoff” Sam clarifies. “Ten years and we still can’t come up with a system to avoid this”

Red Wing flies past you and Soizic. There’s a curve ahead, with a cliff on the other side. As the tree falls, he realizes there’s nowhere to go so he stops the car, swirling.

You are face to face with the man that killed Clint.

“He could still launch it from your position, Y/N. I’m working on blocking his signal”

“That looks bad” the mercenary points at the bleeding in your abdomen.

“You a doctor?”

“Just a killer. You want this? Is that why you’re here?” He pulls the briefcase close to him. “Are you done?” you make time, asking Tony.

“Not even a little” the man in front of you replies.

“I’m trying,” Tony says.

“We’re on our way as backup” Natasha announces.

It will be too late. You have to get to that briefcase now.

“Just like old times” you mutter, running towards the man. He throws a punch to your stab wound and you double in pain. Before he can make a run for the briefcase, you pull him by the shirt, and he falls to the ground. You bash his head against the car door.

This is your chance.

But the blood loss is making you dizzy.

Soizic laughs, still on the ground.

“You should have retired. Like your friend, Barton” “I’m going to kill you”

“That’s what he said”

Come on, move. Reach for it. Run.

Soizic sprints forward at the same time you do. Instead of racing him for the briefcase, you throw yourself at him. The man realizes a second too late what you’re doing, as you both fall over the cliff on the other side of the road.

The snow softens some of the blows, but you can still feel your ribs breaking and a shooting pain in your arm.

It feels like an eternity until you land, rolling to a frozen surface.

Come on. You can do it.

Detka

Is Nat here? You listen to her voice, she’s so close.

A cracking sound on your back wakes you up.

Natasha is on the comms, asking for your location.

“Down the cliff” you drag yourself, aware that the ice is breaking due to the force of your fall. You will not be able to swim like this.

She asks you something else, but you can’t focus on her words as you feel someone pulling you back.

Fuck, why won’t he die?

Soizic punches you, and you land on your back. His own face is covered in blood and the right arm is twisted in a weird angle.

With the left arm, he’s holding a knife. You stop him mid attack, each one struggling with one arm. The ice keeps cracking, so you begin to kick it. You’d rather risk your chances on the frozen water than let him stab you.

The surface finally gives in and you both fall.

Soizic lets go of the knife as he struggles to swim. Barely floating, you know this will only give you a second to get away.

“For f-fuck’s sake” you stutter as he peaks his head. Just when you think he’s going to drown you, an arrow goes through his head.

What?

You follow the direction of the shot. Natasha.

Smiling weakly, for a second you forget you’re on the brink of freezing to death. She looks at Bucky.

“Hurry up and bring her over”

“Ah, jeez” Bucky complains, diving.

A second later, Wanda lands next to Natasha and envelopes you with her magic, floating out of the water wrapped in red threads.

“Seriously, Romanoff?” Bucky barks, but sprints out of the lake and catches you in the air, carrying you over. “You’re bleeding”

“And freezing” Natasha moves some of the hair on your forehead. She feels so warm even though she’s probably cold as well.

“Let’s get you back to the Quinjet”

“Who taught you to shoot like that?” you ask Natasha. Sam is landing the Quinjet, Red Wing by his side.

“Clint,” she smiles. “They kept his bow and arrow stored away”

“Idiots” Bucky mutters and Natasha laughs. The corner of his mouth does a thing that kind of looks like a smile.

“Hey, the funniest thing happened, Miss Day asked about you” Natasha comments and his smile fades away.

“You told her” he accuses, looking at you. “I promise I didn’t”

“All the Romanoffs are a pain in my ass” “That we are”

“Knock knooock” Yelena calls softly, peeking around the hospital room.

“Now you knock” Natasha opens the door, hugging her daughter. You were rushed to the OR the minute the Quinjet landed and are waking up from the anesthesia, a dopey look in your eyes.

“How are you feeling, seestra?” Yelena approaches the side of the bed. “These drugs are top notch, Yel”

“I can see that. Anya’s here, though, so we might not call drugs a good thing”

“Pfff, it’s fine. Come here, sweetheart” you wave and Anya kisses your cheek. She’s never seen you like this, mainly because you retired from missions when she was six. “Your mom killed a bad guy, it was so cool”

“Hey, we’ll be right back, Anya” Yelena says, dragging Natasha out of the room.

“What’s wrong?” Natasha says.

“So, are you done? Can you move on with your life now?” Yelena scolds her. This is the first time in months that both sisters are alone. “Because you were pretty determined to screw up everything and you wouldn’t let us help, Natalia”

“I’m done. It won’t happen again”

“No, it won’t. Because next time I’m gonna kick your ass. And don’t forget how lucky you are because Y/N forgave everything”

“You knew about...?”

“Barnes told me. We made a group chat to call you mean names” Yelena shrugs her shoulders.

“It’s not a group chat if it’s only the two of you” Natasha grumbles.

“Whatever” the blonde waves, coming back inside.

Your eyes are closed, but you’re still talking, half asleep.

“The first night your Mom and I spent together, I thought she got me pregnant. That’s how good it was, Anya”

The redhead turns around and looks at Natasha with a smile.

“I’m so getting a new laptop now”

“Not so fast, we still have to tell them about the cat” Yelena scratches her neck.

“You adopted a cat?” Natasha yells whispers as you go back to sleep.

“Momma, she is so cute. She’s a black cat and Aunt Yelena named her Liho. Please, we have to keep her”

“A cat would be nice” you mumble, and then start to snore. Natasha can’t help but smile. “It would be nice”, she agrees.

Six months later

Flowers are blooming.

Time keeps passing.

There are days where grief takes over. Healing isn’t linear. But you’re getting there. Natasha looks happy, helping Laura set everything up for the barbecue.

It might seem strange to throw a party instead of a service after a year of Clint’s death. But Laura thought it would be better. To have all of their friends. It was his favorite thing to do once spring came in full swing.

“Hey” Bucky sits down next to you and you move over to make space on the bench. “Fancy meeting you here. Miss Day keeping you busy?”

“Yeah” he blushes, peeling the label off his beer bottle. “I’m meeting Melissa’s parents next week”

“Wow, I’m impressed”

“How’s the leg?” he changes the subject, nodding towards the scar on your thigh.

“Better than ever. What? Jealous you’re not the only one with vibranium in their body?”

“I’ll ask them to attach a machine gun to my arm and that will show you”

“Melissa’s parents will be delighted”

“So is that why you’ve been picking me up from school so much lately?” Anya appears behind you.

“Stop sneaking around” you both say at the same time.

“Hey, come on now” Natasha steps up, hugging Anya. You realize your daughter is getting taller. “She’s a natural”

“Wait until she starts sneaking around to go to parties and see if that’s still fun” you comment and Bucky chuckles.

“Your wife is right”

“She always is” Natasha agrees and you smile.

“Ugh, I’m gonna be sick” Anya walks away and Bucky is quick to follow. “I’ll race you to the house” he says, knowing she’ll never catch up.

“You ok?” you say, as Natasha sits by your side. Part of you has been dreading this day. Even if Natasha has been better and present in your lives, it’s still hard for her to deal with the absence of Clint.

It’s simply not something you get over in a day.

“I miss him” she admits in a shaky voice. You’re happy she’s honest with you.

“I miss him too”

“He’d kick my ass if he could. For all the mistakes I made. The pain I caused you”

“Yeah, he would. And then he’d ask you to make it right and appreciate what you have. And you’ve done that ”

“I love you” she rests her head against your shoulder and you kiss her temple.

“I love you too”

It wasn’t perfect, the life you had. But there was love. And that would be enough

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cowardlybean · 6 months

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Hey. The Times They Are A Changin’ by @bandtrees and @tigsbitties amiright (muffled face down on the floor)

more (some unsettling things) beneath the cut :3

(Image 3 is my favorite sequence from an animation for TTTAAAC I’ve been working on, so here it is just in case I never finish </3, image 4 is me thinking about Mob’s house. If. That makes sense.)

OH MAN. OH MAN OH MAN. this fic has altered my brain chemistry in a way that has doctors baffled and leaves tragedy in its wake!!!!!!!!! Absolutely a masterpiece I’ve reread it 3 times now and every time I notice a new detail, there’s just SO MUCH CARE put into it. I think I could write an essay about every page of this fic LMAO it honestly blows me away, huge kudos to everyone who was a part of the project!!!!

Especially the multimedia aspects, they were so much fun to find and in some cases decode (Scared the SHIT outta myself with Breathe I think it’s one of my favorites). the youtube videos were so cool as well

Realizing a third of the way in that things will never get better was such a gut wrenching experience, and by the time I realized just how deep the hole Mob dug himself into was it was absolutely too late for anything to happen (the end of act 1 was horrific in the most amazing way. So many things stuck with me: the state Reigen was left in compared to how he was, Ritsu’s “surgery”, Dimple losing his best friend, Shou’s report to the police, Minori’s conversation (if you can call it that) with Mob?? Bone. Chilling.

One of the parts that has been sitting in my gut is Reigen’s fall, where he starts to ramble through fragments of old times. I genuinely thought he was calling out to Mob until just as the same time Mob did I recognized the words and it hit me like a HAMMER. I don’t know how to put it into words but Reigen rambling on like a broken record tore me apart, and then it gets WORSE. I only realized on my second read that the intro of the fic. (Correct me if I’m wrong) IS REIGENS PERSPECTIVE OF MOB SEVERING HIS TENDONS???? Holy fuck. Holy FUCK. The vague semblance of consciousness written there is so deeply unsettling I’m absolutely OBSESSED with it. ESPECIALLY THE FACT THAT EVEN IN THAT STATE HE STILL WANTS MOB TO BE HAPPY (the cheer ^^ mob bit) and idk if I’m interpreting right (this is gonna be so embarrassing if I’m not) but him recognizing the filthy jacket as well. Taking me OUT. AND. AND THE FACT REIGEN NEVER SPEAKS AGAIN AFTER THAT?????? (I could be wrong oops)

The mental states of every character in the fic are written so chillingly well. I can understand how Mob spirals, the anger and grief Tome feels, Shou's spite and anger, Teruki's conflict, Dimple's loss of his best friend, Serizawa's waning optimism, I can't name every character in this fic but they are ALL characterized so well. There's no needless conflict that make them OOC, there's a reason behind every little tragedy building upon themselves and creating a giant disaster that deeply affects the entire cast. Not to mention how its not just the loss of Reigen and Ritsu, but the loss of Mob too. If they were to have died on impact, its unsettling to think that things may have turned out better than this.

There’s a lot of things I wanna say that would basically be restating the fic (dimple losing his best friend, teru shaving, and the irony of ritsu’s powers being taken away by mob) so instead of writing 20 more paragraphs I’ll ask some questions I’ve been mulling over (ofc yall don’t have to answer if it’s revealing too much or smth)

Does Mob actually end up getting investigated or arrested? The formatting of the social media posts and texts makes them seem as if they're evidence and so does the ongoing "interview?" with Shou throughout the fic

In the party, is Reigen saying he doesn't like citrus a reference to the lemon sour :eyes:

I'm probably missing something but im curious about the metaphor around Reigen and a stray cat (hair clinging to Mob's clothes, comparing him to a stray cat finding a place to die, comparing him to a cat outside Serizawa's door)

If I'm not wrong and the "glitchy" sections at the beginning and end of the fic are Reigen and Ritsu's povs respectively, is their mind constantly like that or is it just in the specific circumstances where they have a small burst of consciousness?

last (thats a lie im definitely drawing more fanart in the future) but not least, some notes from when I was re-reading

#sorry for hiding literally everything below the cut i dont wanna jumpscare people #BUT ANWAY.#holy fuck. a masterpiece.#literally tried drawing vase scene (as ive dubbed it for convenience lmao) 3 times its SO HARD to get right #i doubt i was able to truly do this fic justice its so amazing #mp100 #tw blood #tw body horror #(not really but the animation is close enough)#TTTAAAC #mob psycho 100 #shigeo kageyama #ritsu kageyama #reigen arataka #teruki hanazawa #dimple mp100 #so many thoughts about this fic #sorry for my damn essay oh my god #< biggest TTTAAAC fan

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oddishblossom · 9 months

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Hey I have a question? How do you produce such high-quality gifs. It's so cool and I've been trying but it usually just doesn't come out well

Thanks! I’ve been making gifs for about 2 years, so I’m by no means a pro. Sometimes it feels like I’m just throwing things at the video until it looks the way I want it to look.

I didn’t use any guides, so it took a lot of trial and error to learn. Just to compare, here’s the first gif I ever made!

My advice for starting to get into gif-making is, you gotta really choose a media or character you love because the process is time consuming and it can be frustrating if it doesn't end up the way you wanted right away. Plus, you’re gonna stare at the same picture for like a loooong time. Over time, I’ve gotten a lot faster at making sets. Like that killua x start over gifset only took me an hour to make, but I barely edited that one. I normally spend a few days on each set.

I still don’t completely get photoshop, so I don’t feel like I can give a tutorial for it. But I do make a lot of gifs on my phone so here’s a more in depth look at that.

For starters, I always get video footage in 1080P. Either download or record the footage you want to turn into gifs. I’m gonna use Killua as an example. Here’s a picture of what the clip looks like before I’ve done anything.

I find that the shorter the clip, the easier it is to make it smooth and crisp. This clip is only 5 seconds long. I try to keep my clips 5 seconds or shorter. I can do longer clips, but then I’d have to shorten the frames used and the speed of the gif (frames per second), which I don’t like doing. Next, I crop it. You want to crop before you start editing.

After that, I can start recoloring. There’s a couple good apps I like using for this. VideoDay and InShot are pretty good, but they’re pay to use. The free one Apple provides in the photos app is good, too. I’ve got a different coloring style for most of my sets. But I mainly focus on making dark colors darker, making colors more saturated so they pop, and brightening the video. On VideoDay & Inshot you can find this setting under Filter. Then go to Adjust. This is what it looks like after boosting up the contrast, saturation, brightness, shadows, and definition. Mess around with different settings until you come up with something you like.

Now, I recolor it a second time with filters. Sometimes I use Inshot or VideoDay, but I mostly use the app ImgPlay. ImgPlay is what I’ll be using to actually turn this video into a gif. I use different filters depending on what colors I want to stand out. CL2 and HW3 are a couple favorites. For this set I use HW3. Then I added more contrast, saturation, and sharpened it as high as it could go.

Now that it looks pretty, time to make it move smoothly. Through a lot of trial and error, I’ve found that these settings work okay. I have it set to 90 frames for this clip. For frames, I usually try to keep it within 80-90 frames (or 30-80 if it’s a shorter clip). If I push it past that, like say 100 frames, it’ll start to look blurry once I condense it.

For speed, I either use .04 seconds or .05 seconds. For frames per second, I always go with 20 FPS at least. This will push up the frame count, so you’ll need to make the clip shorter. You can do that by using the slide bar or that little area with 9 squares in the top right corner.

Now it’s time to export! Just click on save and GIF size. Set the loop to infinity and size to 10 MB. Tumblr has a limit on GIF size, so it needs to be 10MB or under. You can also click on GIF dithering to make the colors blend a bit more.

And we’re done! Hope it wasn’t too confusing and that I explained myself clearly! There’s a lot more cool effects you can do once you get the hang of video editing. This is by no means a strict guide or anything! Heck, even I don’t follow this exactly and I try changing things around, seeing what works and what doesn’t. Gif-making can be super fun, so I hope you keep at it! 😊💖

#asks #lucy answers #hope this made sense!#i tried to explain myself as best as i could 😅#now you all know how long my process is (and why i get so angry when someone reposts my stuff acting like they made it)#i don’t follow these rules exactly like i have a whole different setup for live action gifs #plus i try different settings all the time #but this is the gist of it 😊#flashing tw #flashing

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roo-bastmoon · 1 year

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BTS Tutorial: Stationhead & Renaissance

Stationhead is an app that connects to your Apple Music or Spotify account and allows you to stream music in a community so that every person’s streams count toward your artists’ chart. Supposedly this app can rival radio (it’s early days; we will see).

Apple Music and Spotify both work on Stationhead's web player.

If a host is playing their songs from Apple Music, and you only subscribe to Spotify, the matching track from Spotify will play through your streaming account. In the same way, a host using Spotify to play music will have songs matched for Apple Music listeners. So it's a great cross-platform tool.

It can be kind of fun to know you’re streaming with hundreds if not thousands of other ARMYs, especially when you are targeting milestones for certain songs and you don't want to think too deeply about how to build a playlist... but it’s not necessary if you want to just stream on your own accounts.

You need to listen to at least 30 seconds of a song on Stationhead for it to count toward charts.

Here’s a short tutorial about how to set up a Stationhead account, but in my case, I will search for BTS and Jimin on Station head instead of Stray Kids (sorry, Stray Kids—I think you’re cool but I’m a loyal hoe.)

After you download the app and set up your profile, I recommend you search for the following communities on Stationhead and join them:

JIMINCHARTSPH

JIMINGLOBAL

JIMINRECORD13

When a live streaming party is about to start, you’ll get a little notification on your phone and you can decide to join. Then you listen to streams. To maximize your time in the first 24 hours of a release, maybe have Apple Music play on one laptop, YouTube play on a tablet, and Stationhead or Renaissance app going on your phone (tethered to your Spotify). It’s free and it doesn’t spam you, it just takes a few moments to set up accounts on these apps.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s a review from a music professional that gets into the details:

youtube

Similar to Stationhead, Renaissance is an app that connects to your Spotify account. If you follow streaming accounts on twitter, they will sometimes throw streaming parties on Renaissance and it can be fun to join in and gather collective streams to achieve certain goals.

You download Renaissance from the app store, sign in (I use my gmail account and connect to my premium Spotify). Once logged in, you can search for Jimin, and there you’ll see various streaming parties going on. You click to join, it’ll open your Spotify account, and you can play that playlist along with hundreds and sometimes thousands of others.

It's simply a great way to find playlists and help meet benchmarks with the community, but don't feel pressure. It's just nice if you're engaging in streaming battles on Twitter; gets everyone psyched up.

Some people prefer Renaissance because you can be in control of your playlist (when to stop and start, the ability to count your streams), whereas Stationhead is more like radio, where the host is a DJ and they are in charge. Really it just all comes down to what you prefer and if you're part of communities that enjoy group streaming.

After our artists land on the charts, it's important to keep streaming so their songs have longevity and aren't just flash-in-the-pan, one-hit-wonders. Using streaming apps is a great way to let your accounts count for streams, without having to curate and manage playlists all day long. (But remember, 20 streams of a song, then login to a different Spotify account for it it count.)

Stream on, stream on, stream until your streams come true!

DISCLAIMER:

I am a Dope Old Person and have been ARMY since January 2022. So I still have a lot to learn.

I’m making mini-tutorials for people like me who are comfy with technology but totally new to voting, streaming, and buying Kpop stuff.

If you know of better, more up-to-date information, please comment or DM me so I can make sure I’m not spreading misinfo. Please be polite about it, though—we are on the same team!

Feel free to apply whatever you learn here to other BTS members and other artists; I’m Jimin-biased so I am focused on helping Jimin at this moment in time, but I’m OT7 so rest assured I’ll put my shoulder to the wheel for all our members!

#BTS_Tutorials #jimin #park jimin #face by jimin #jikook #stationhead #renaissance #Youtube

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rainydawgradioblog · 1 year

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boyGENIUS!!!!

boygenius, a superstar trio of indie artists including phoebe bridgers, julien baker, and lucy dacus, recently released their debut album, and it is truly nothing short of genius. in a moment that was about as culturally significant to me as the signing of the declaration of independence, these three women utterly changed the course of my life and the lives of thousands of other melodramatic girlies. this lil post, despite being a healthy 3-ish weeks after the actual release of the record, will compile some of my standout thoughts on each track of the album. hope you enjoy! ;)

1: without you without them

one thing about me, i LOVE some boygenius harmonies. in a similar manner as my beloved favorite track from their 2018 EP, ketchum ID, without you without them provokes a deep sense of peace and emotion combined. “speak to me, until your history’s no mystery to me” is the cutest cleverest little lyric. the perfect opening track.

2: $20

0:01 seconds in, any seasoned boygenius fan immediately goes “julien!!!” her signature heavier guitar and drums sets her apart from the jump and creates the catchiest hook. plus the screaming at the end?? oh my god??? (that video of phoebe recording I KNOW!!!!! YOU HAVE!!!!! 20 DOLLARS!!!!!! has actually not left my head since i saw it)

3: emily i’m sorry

i will forever be unapologetically weak in the knees for phoebe bridgers. she captures so many emotions so beautifully in this, between loving someone so much it destroys you and feeling completely out of control of your life. i love the progression between “i can feel myself becoming someone only you could want” and “i can feel myself becoming somebody i’m not, i’m not” between the two choruses.

4: true blue

more songs about platonic love!!!! PLEASE!!!! this track is devastatingly adorable. “i can’t hide from you like i hide from myself,” is the perfect lyric to make you think of that friend who will tell you that you don’t have to say “its ok” when you’re miserable over something. the bridge also makes me feel like i’m floating. i love lucy!!!!

5: cool about it

WOW. unquestionably in the top three, immediately. i’m a sucker for a boygenius song where they all have equal verses (souvenier-esque) and this one HITS. i’ve seen so many different interpretations of this one, including but not limited to: 1: the feeling of knowing an old friendship is slowly drifting apart, 2: a heartbreak that you swallow and smile through for the other person, and 3: clinging to someone that you know is bad for you because you can’t imagine yourself without them. all of them are so fitting, and i find so much beauty in the open-endedness.

6: not strong enough

LUCY AT THE END. LITERALLY JUST. LUCY’S PART AT THE END.

makes me go actually crazy every time. they ate this one up. a depressing song in an upbeat major key melody is an incredible combination. sneaks up on ya.

7: revolution 0

this is such a genuinely beautiful song. another one where they just nailed the harmonies. “i used to think if i’d just close my eyes, i will disappear” reminds me so much of “i used to think you could hear the ocean in a seashell, what a childish thing” in phoebe’s single “sidelines.” definitely a lie on the floor and ponder existence while tracing the cracks in your ceiling type jam.

8: leonard cohen

i love a short little song. and this is a fantastic one. “i am not an old man having an existential crisis at a buddhist monastery, writing horny poetry, but i agree” is incredibly boygenius-coded. their tendency towards the occasional silly little lyric is something i can always get behind. my favorite fact about this one is that the story at the beginning is 100% true-and that phoebe was the one driving the car.

9: satanist

as the text that my best friend sent to me at the release of the album reads, “satanist BANGS” and it’s true. satanist does in fact, bang. another distinct julien standout, it provides a sick little head-bangy intermission to all the introspective, staring-at-the-ceiling pondering. “will you be a nihilist with me? if nothing matters, man that’s a relief” has got to be the realest thing i’ve heard in a minute.

10: we’re in love

dunno if this song has too much of a tinge of sadness to be my first dance song at my wedding…..but i certainly want it to be. i’d have to claim this one as my favorite from the album. everything about it is just stunning, from the lyrics and the story they convey to the vocals and simple instrumental backing. the verse about finding each other in the next life actually made me tear up in the public record store where i first heard the album. “i can’t imagine you without the same smile in your eyes, there is something about you that i will always recognize” ARE YOU KIDDING?!! so heart-stoppingly beautiful.

11: anti-curse

i’d love to drive down an empty highway with this song playing. there’s something so magical about a song that has a dramatic build-up, and there’s nobody that does a dramatic build-up better than these three right here (shout out not strong enough again). the instrumental swells at “i guess i did alright considering” and “i’m swimmin back” feel like such a true release of emotion, you can’t help but feel it alongside the band.

12: letter to an old poet

INSANE. easily a standout track, between the parallel to the past “me and my dog,” from the band’s debut EP, to the gut-wrenching lyricism delivered in phoebe’s smooth vocals, it’s seriously unforgettable-especially for old fans of the band. “and i love you, i don’t know why, i just do” is a poignantly simple capture of a feeling we’ve all faced at one point or another. the combination of love, hurt, and rage is such an intriguing combination and draws the listener in from the first moment. also a BIG fan of “you don’t get to tell me to calm down.” remember to never let anyone invalidate how you feel, my friends. and also remember to…

STAY COOL!!!!!

K-MURPH

listen here:

#Spotify

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yvette-tal · 11 months

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My beautiful boy Dethanial through his brother’s eyes~

I’m making a video about two of my ocs who are twins and their stories and characters are very closely intertwined(?) this is 1/20 pictures total and I’ve split the videos up so I’m only doing Rubi’s(Demi’s brother) half first then Dethanial’s second and I’ve very excited to finish it because I think I did a good job writing everything out and it’ll be so cool when I finish all the pictures~

My yt channel is https://www.youtube.com/@princehavoc5978 for whenever I post more videos (hopefully that link works lmao)

ok thanks for listening to my silly lil art rant about my ocs that I love so so much and totally haven’t made sad AT ALL. :)))

#character rant #oc rant #so excited #original character #digital art #csp

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that-bitch-kat3 · 2 years

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actively freaking out over my first listen of midnights:

my active thoughts::

lavendar haze: so queer, obsessed with the harmony, ‘damned if i do give a damn what people say’, sounds purple if that makes sense. i like but i don’t think it’ll be my favorite

maroon: track twos always go hard so expectations are high. liek the intro good vibes. its giving 1989 shit, (wolfstar?!?!!?) obsessed!!!!!!!!!! “the rust that grew between telephones” goes SO HARD

Anti-hero: SHUT UP I LOVE IT!! GIMME IT! “when my depression works the graveyard shift” (mood) “i’m the problem it’s me” this one has so much tiktok audio potentional. my new crying shit. this is my song. this is my favorite on this album (i’m deciding this after only hearing these 3) “i wake up screaming from dreaming” i need a music video for this. love all of it. literally amazing

snow on the beach: a bit nervous because lana can be problematic. “stars by the pocketfull” im into it more lana than i was expecting but a crying song bitch, giving folklore energy, not my fav but pretty good

you’re on your own kid: i already liek this better, aww friends to lovers?!? CHILDHOOD friends to lovers?!? bye. i’m gonna be in so much shit when i fall in love with one of my friends again. “i okay my songs in the parking lot” dude. wait. i lived this. okay nvm just besties. oh no. i’m crying. “sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes” okay im crying.

midnight rain: oh she’s GIVING! oh good so i’m crying about childhood shit again. “all the love we unravel” (jegulus?!?) “i wanted that pain” oh okay so me too.

question…?: “a color i have searched for since” oh im feeling it. (jily) absolutely heartbreaking. okay sothat’s so cool that she’s writing about my life. oh the beat drop. it’s so good.

vigilante shit: WHAT A START!!! ITS GIVING REPUTATION!!! MY NEXT ERA IS THIS. “latelu i’ve been dressing for revenge” oh shit hell fucking yeah. im shivering. it’s so good. “don’t get sad get even” “he was doing lines and crossing all of mine” bye. it’s giving cal. it’s giving who i want to be. about to hit my vigilantes era.

bejeweled: oh damn tell ‘em that you are the main bitch. the harmony is SO GOOD! “i miss you but i miss sparkling” oh no i have also lost myself in another person so i’m obbsessed. “some guy said my auras moonstone just because he’s high” holy shit this is one of my top 5

labyrinth: uh oh two winners in a row. scared. oh no im crying. “breathe in breathe through breathe deep breathe out.” oh no. this is me. im gonna fall in love. fuck. this is what i want more than anything. damn i also cannot move on from people. “oh no im falling in love again” crying pissing shitting. absolutely a mess. kill me.

karma: WHAT WE HAVE ALL WAITED FOR!! shut up. it’s so good. 20 seconds in and im obbsessed. oh im fucking hard with this. “karma is a god” “karma is a relaxing thought” you know what this makes me feel better about some of the shit. “im still HEREREEEE” (my favorite line) losing my shit. it’s perfect. i will never move on.

sweet nothing: based on the title i will be crying. ph that’s is the life i want to live. (jily.) oh no i want to be in love again. SOMEONE MARRY ME RIGHT FUCKING NOW OR I WILL DIE ON THE SPOT!! “to you i can admit that i’m just too soft for all of it”

mastermind: self title that’s bold. WHAT A FIRST LINE SHITTING MYSELF!!! every fucking line is so good! oh my god. im not okay. im actually in love with this song. “every lovers game” “the dominos cascaded in a line” i am GOING FERAL! i want to bite someone. this is in my top 5. “you knew the entire time.” KILL ME IM NOT OKAY!! LOSING MY SHIT RN

#ts10 #ts10 midnights #midnights initial thoughts #midnights review #i am crying #taylor swift is a mastermind #marauders #marauders era #taylor swift #tswift

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jaydonsjam · 1 year

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Fables I

Fables #1-5: “Legends In Exile”

Fables #1-5 - writer: Bill Willingham | penciler: Lan Medina | inker: Steve Leialoha

Before I get into my thoughts on the comic I wanted to give some context on my experience with Fables. So, this is my first time reading through this series and before I finished this first arc, my only knowledge of this world comes from Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us which is one of my all-time favorite video games. I’ve been interested in reading this book ever since I played that game back in 2014 but there’s so many issues and I have never had the chance or time to collect all the trades but there is a wonderful app called DC Universe Infinite which if you subscribe to, you can pretty much read most of the DC and it’s other imprints’ library including Fables (obviously not sponsored by DC just a recommendation for DC fans). I also didn’t know that The Wolf Among Us is a prequel to the comic which honestly got me even more excited to start reading. I didn’t know if the game was an adaptation of the first arc of the comic so I was pleased to learn that it’s 20 years before the first issue.

The comic, like the game, follows Bigby Wolf who is the fairy tale character, Big Bad Wolf investigating a mysterious murder of Snow White’s sister, Rose Red. We meet many fairy tale characters like Jack (Beanstalk), Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio etc living in exile because their lands were taken over by a demonic being called “The Adversary”. What I love about this world so much is how Bill Willingham infuses different genres like noir detective with fantasy and also this book is really funny. There’s a quick scene with Pinocchio at a party explaining his disdain for the Blue Fairy (see panels below) and it was genuinely hilarious.

Bigby Wolf works as a sheriff for Snow White and honestly the best part of this comic is the scenes between Bigby and Snow. I could not put this comic down and I enjoyed every second of it. There’s even a cool twist when the “Parlour” chapter in issue five happens where we get the reveal with what happened to Rose Red. I don’t want to ruin the twist just in case people are interested in checking Fables out for the first time. For me though, I didn’t see the twist coming and I loved it. It’s a simple detective story when you really boil it down but it was fantastic. I’m so interested in the backstory and I can’t wait to see what happens with The Adversary and if the Fables will get their lands back. Also before I finish I have to mention the art which was penciled by Lan Medina. It really fits the storybook/fairy tale aesthetic and blends the noir real world setting brilliantly. I love the way they drew Snow White especially. So yeah, a great beginning arc to a comic that I can’t wait to continue reading.

#dc comics #dc #vertigo #vertigo comics #fables #fables comics #sheriff bigby #bigby wolf #snow white

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a-chaotically-small-lunta · 7 months

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I had a dream where I was playing this wild game. It was a fighting/racing/adventure type game but it had literally every video game character in history. I’m talking every single one, even just straight up cars. The game wants you to do the story where you start out by picking one of the oldest video game characters, which are the only ones unlocked at this point. They are in their original style so they’re all pixels. As you progress through the game’s story, you go through the years of gaming. You watch as the graphics change, characters get updated looks, and more characters are added to the roster. The cool thing is that older characters with multiple designs would be given the option of which design you wanted to play as. Want to play as Mario but specifically Mario from Mario 64 or The NES era? You got it! The game had different arenas for fighting from every year and series of games, same goes for the race tracks. Imagine fighting as the Hollow Knight against tf2’s solider, GTA: San Andreas’ Big Smoke, as well as Q*bert. Personally the races were the funniest part because you could be racing on rainbow road from the wii, while driving a car from a for a game, racing against a fucking bus from a frogger game. Shit was wild. The story was kinda neat too in how it worked. You could make a team of 20 different characters to help you get through levels, they could help defeat enemies, pull levers or solve puzzles, etc etc. Al though if you were looking at the map and decided to travel somewhere different and one of your teammates ran into a enemy on the map, you were forced to play as said character and defeat the enemy in either a race or fight. According to the dream the story mode was infinite and supposedly told the future of gaming, the further along the game you got the more you would learn about games that aren’t released yet, let alone have been thought of yet. But the game gets more and more difficult as you progress so it’s extremely hard to pass the current year’s level, almost impossible. Either way it was a very chaotic game that in my dream was a Wii game for some reason, and I absolutely loved playing it. Until my brother decided to eject the CD while I was playing because “it’s a boring game and he wanted to watch a movie” which is when I yelled at him that he can’t just eject someone’s game while their gaming. He gets all pissed off and starts bad mouthing me and the game and I punch him square in the face, only to wake up seconds afterward. But damn that game was wild and absolutely beautiful with the blending of every different game graphic over the years.

#dreams #dream I had #video game dream #it was fucking wild and I wish it was real but damn that game gonna have a shitload of data and info to hold #when I said every video game character I really did mean EVERY character with EVERY iteration of them

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dapperstein · 2 years

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Hero Work Is Hard, Dating Is Harder

JBM x Reader :) enjoy :)

Using dating apps wasn't a new experience for you, nor a new part of your daily routine. It was a while ago when you realised you were getting lonely and wanted to try and find someone to bring into your life, and had downloaded a couple of apps to see which ones fit your style, and after a bit more time only one made the cut.

It had a simple user interface and perfectly customisable profiles, and most of it could be used for free, so you kept it. You made a couple of connections and met a couple of weirdos, but most everything had fallen through and you stopped using it for a while.

But now you were redownloading it and were ready for a fresh start and new people, and that's where and when you meet…

Jackie Boyman.

The profile was normal enough. Not too much information to process, mostly just the basics, and a few cute pictures of the man.

He had slightly long on top, curly brown hair with faded green ends. It fell in his eyes just so, just barely touching the top edge of his grey ombré glasses. A red turtleneck covered the bottom half of his face in the first picture, whereas in the others it was pulled down to reveal a thin, dark beard and moustache.

His eyes were a golden honey colour and he was making silly faces between the pictures.

The writing on the profile said he was 26 and was good with doing basically anything for a date. He talked about some of his hobbies (parkour and drawing as a combination seemed… interesting) and his job as a computer technician.

And best of all he lived nearby according to his location. Overall, he looked perfect.

You sent him a quick wave and upon realising you matched, sent a hello message and decided to get ready for the night.

You’d been planning to go to a local pub for no particular reason other than it was something to do and tonight was the night. Even if you didn’t drink anything, the atmosphere was always nice and you hadn’t been in a while.

As you slipped your top over your head about 20 minutes later (following a nice, warm shower) you heard a ding come from your phone and picked it up to a message from Jackie. A smile slipped onto your face.

7:48 pm

You > Jackie: Good eve sir :)

8:25 pm

Jackie > You: Oh, hello! I’m happy to see we matched; what drew you to the button?

You > Jackie: Good question you’ve got there, I’m really not sure! Your job and hobbies both seem interesting, I suppose! What about me?

Jackie > You: I’m not sure this makes sense but your vibes? I came across your profile some time ago and went, “Woah, you seem cool.”

Jackie > You: Haven’t stopped thinking about you since, even though it looked like you were inactive. Thought I’d lost my chance lol

Heat rose into your face and you had to put your phone down to finish getting dressed until you got outside and pulled it back out.

The air was almost cool enough for gloves so you had a pair in your pocket, but otherwise were just wearing a warm jacket over your normal clothes with no extra layers.

A new text from Jackie lit up your screen through the darkness.

Jackie > You: If it’s not too early (or late), would you want to meet tonight, maybe?

You > Jackie: I’m already on my way to a nearby pub for a couple of drinks, I’ll give you the address and you can meet me there :)

Shit, you’d only just started talking and didn’t even have proof he was the man he said he was. What if it was too good to be true? Were you really ready to meet him already? You’d already sent the message-

Jackie > You: Sure, I’ll give you my number so we can video call. Hang on, I’ve got to find where I’ve written it down…

A laugh escaped you as you walked down the street. So that problem was settled. He sent his phone number less than a minute later and you breathed out a cold breath as you clicked it to call him.

His face popped up another few seconds later, lit up from directly in front of him until he backed away from the camera and did a spin.

“Well? Like what you see?” He posed and laughed at the same time you did. “Sorry, that was cringy.”

“Just a little,” you continued laughing. He was cute so far. He was only wearing a red cropped tank top and a pair of black skinny jeans. His hips were curvy but the jeans sat nicely on them and his stomach and waist weren’t too small, probably from his parkour hobby. “What’s with the tank top? Kind of cold, isn’t it?”

Jackie tilted his head and looked down at himself. “Oh, this? It’s called a binder. I’ll explain more when we meet, it’d be a ton easier! I have a shirt to wear over it, though, don’t worry!”

You nodded and breathed out a puff of air. “All right, so I’m going to Randy’s, I’m not sure if you know it but I can help if you get lost now.”

His face lit up. “Oh, I know Randy’s. He and I are old friends, and it’s right near my place, too!” He smiled and leaned out of frame to grab something, coming back with a big, white sweatshirt in his hands that he easily put over his head. He combed his hair out with his fingers and put his glasses on. “Cool, meet you there in, like, 10 minutes?”

“It’s a date," you told him as you walked into the pub.

=some time later=

You were just finishing your first drink when the door to the pub opened. The place had been quiet thus far with only a few older couples sitting around for middle-of-the-week dates (how cute!) so you immediately turned around to see who had come in.

Jackie had hung up the call a couple of minutes after you arrived so he could “get there quicker”—his words—and now here he was, standing just a bit away from you.

He looked around and caught your eye, smiling widely and approaching, seemingly out of breath.

"Hey! Wow, what luck that we live so close to one another, huh?" You introduced yourself and motioned for him to sit across from you, sliding him the drink you'd surprise ordered for him.

"I'm actually just visiting right now, but I think I might stay longer! I move around and travel… a lot." He took a sip of the drink and his eyes blew wide. "Holy shit! There'd better be more dates so you can order this for me again!"

"I think we can manage that seeing how tonight's already going." You took a second to look around while he kept at his drink. “Somehow this all still feels too good to be true. I feel like I’m dreaming.”

Jackie chewed on his straw for a second, hoping to catch your eyes but it seemed like you were avoiding him now. "I can assure you you’re not. What makes you say that, though?”

“Ugh, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the interests, no guy is really that varied, you feel fake.” You glanced back to see him smiling around his straw. “What?”

“Nothing; nothing, I just like to keep busy. Tonight was the first night I’ve had off in a while, to be honest. Do you want a couple more fun facts about me?”

Couldn’t hurt. You turned and smiled back. “Sure, go for it.”

“Right, well, I’m transgender, hence the binder. The drawing I do is actually graffiti, and the whole parkour thing is my second job.”

“Second job? Are you an instructor?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want anybody to even attempt to do what I do!” He paused to take another swig of his drink and sighed. “But enough about that, I want to know more about you now.”

Despite your growing curiosity, you gave in. If this was a dream, Jackie was a damn good piece from your imagination. But then again, brains can only show you faces they’ve seen before…

An hour later you were paying for your drinks and getting ready to leave. You could see Jackie shivering even with his thick, white, wool sweater on, but figured since he didn’t live far that you would just walk him home and hope he could find something warmer (and take the damn binder off—he told you he’d already been wearing it way past the safe limit).

As it turns out, his place is much more than the 10 minutes he’d claimed it would take him when you were first meeting. In fact, it was almost double, yet he still made it within the time he’d set. What did he do, fly?

He lived in a small building on the third floor and you walked him right into his home when invited. Immediately he took off his sweater and walked into a room down the hall, leaving you to fend for yourself. You looked around, but the place seemed pretty normal, if not a bit quirky.

There were shelves upon shelves of comic books, graphic novels, random knick-knacks and hero memorabilia, a tattered grey couch against a wall of framed fanart portraits of a superhero--a superhero you felt like you recognised but didn't at the same time--and the small, boxy television he had was sitting on top of crates filled with CDs and DVDs, a clunky old radio beside it.

A door down the hall closed and you turned back around from looking at the pieces of fanart, most of which looked like they'd been drawn by a child. Jackie smiled as he walked over wearing a pair of blue pyjama bottoms and an oversized red t-shirt.

"It was nice of you to walk home with me." He took one of his hands out of his pocket and looked at a watch he wasn't wearing before. "Oh, it's quite late, sorry about that. Did you want to… stay over, or something? I have extra blankets and snacks and the couch folds out into a bed-"

You nodded, effectively cutting him off. "That would be great, thanks."

Jackie took a big breath. "Okay, I'll fix the bed for you if you want to look in my clothes drawers. They're in the big, white chest as soon as you go in my room, second door on the left."

You nodded again, feeling slightly awkward, but, hey, he was just being nice and… you strangely felt like you could trust him with your life, even though he hadn't done anything to prove that. "Thanks," you said again, walking off to find something to change into.

Soon you were in a pair of grey drawstring sweatpants and a matching t-shirt; not much to it but it was comfortable. The pull-out bed was ready by the time you went back out to Jackie and now there was just a small lamp on in the corner, but Jackie was nowhere to be seen until you heard him yawn from the kitchen.

He suddenly came out with a glass of some sort of hot drink, taking a big gulp of it before he noticed you. He pointed at the bed, covered with about a dozen blankets, then started walking past you back to his bedroom.

"Well, this was a lot of fun. I hope you have a good night out here. Feel free to come and get me if you need anything, and I mean anything. I'm happy to help out." He smiled and waited until you sat and fixed the bed to your liking before turning off the hallway light and leaving you with just the lamp that you decided to keep on.

Sleepiness was steadily overtaking you and you figured it was time to just lie down and go to sleep in comfortable silence.

Despite how comfortable the bed was, you still woke up to footsteps a few feet away from you. You opened your eyes slightly, just to see if you could see anything in the lamplight.

"Jackie…?" you called, making him turn around. "Where are you going?"

He stopped in his tracks the moment his hand hit the front door knob. "Just gotta hop outside for a moment. I didn't mean to wake you. Please, try to get back to sleep."

You couldn't argue. Though you had many questions, sleepiness can be hard to fight. You lay back down and the next time you woke it was bright out the windows.

Nothing that had happened was a dream considering you were still here in this strange place.

You accepted your fate and sat up in the couch bed, then cleared your eyes before gathering your clothes from the night before and heading to the bathroom. The house was quiet but the birds outside were merciless as you walked around, hoping for any sign of life from your date. You didn’t recall him even coming back in and were starting to get worried.

Before long while, as you sat there on your phone, the front door opened again and Jackie walked in, stretching his arms high above his head.

He was wearing a familiar outfit, one you’d seen the local vigilante in several times around town—and the same one the hero in all the fanart on the wall was wearing—and you only recognised it as Jackie because the eye mask he usually wore was instead in a bunch in his hand.

When he pulled his arms down you could see how surprised he was to see you still here, though now looking even more confused and curious than you had been. He sighed, “Give me a second to change and I’ll answer everything you want to know.”

You could see a cut on his forehead that wasn’t there before, already looking like it was closing over. “If anything I just want to know that you’re okay.” You stood up and approached, feeling at the cut which he didn’t even respond to other than looking away with shame. “You’re a superhero?”

Jackie took a deep breath and sat on the floor. “Yeah, I know that’s gotta be a lot of information for you process but all I want is to find happiness, too. I’m sorry if that’s too much for you to deal with.”

Shock and sadness rippled through you at his words. “What? No, it’s not. It’s your life, you can choose how you live it so long as you do so safely.” Jackie kept his head down in shame and you could see tears dripping from his eyes as you dropped down in front of him to give him a long hug.

The two of you sat there for what felt like hours, and if it really was that long then you weren’t mad, until Jackie finally broke free. “Well, that’s not how I expected my first date with you to go,” he admitted quietly, a lighthearted joke amongst his tears. “I’m… happy, that you can accept this part of me.”

A small smile crawled onto his face. “Do you want breakfast? My treat,” he offered. “Then I can tell you all the cool shit I do as a superhero!”

“I’d like that a lot,” you smiled back, pulling yourselves to your feet to sit in the kitchen.

#jackieboy man x reader #jackieboyman x reader #jse ego x reader #dapperstein writes

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nicotinzwei · 1 year

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February

Hello, February was stressful but okay. The last months I picked a song to listen to parallel to reading but I literally didn’t listent to new songs this month.

Book

Krabat from 1971 is a short novel by Otfried Preußler based on an old sorbian story. It describes 3 years in Krabats life in which he originally wants a summer job at a mill but then accidentally does dark magic. The audio book is only 3 hours long, one for each year, and is on youtube for free. It’s narrated by the author who describes scary or fantastical moments is such a casual manner that sometimes makes me want to scream at him, but also really adds to the mood of the books and Krabats seemingly dead-end situation. After finishing I found out that they built some sort of themed area in the place the story is set. There you can find all sorts of fun attractions for kids like a haunted mill, places of deaths of the characters, a sunken carriage and a graveyard. You can also rent the location for company events or weddings so you already know what I’m gonna do.

Movie

This month I went to my first cult movie screening. I saw a very cleaned up version of Rocky Horror as a play before which was also filled with audience participation but seeing The Room in a small old Viennese theatre with drunk students for its 20th anniversary was just so much better. I love the concept of audience participation and am kind of sad so few movies got the cult status needed for it. For this movie there are a bunch of callbacks pointing out weird details, famous lines you can quote, props like spoons or footballs you can throw or you can just scream at the characters for being so fucking stupid. Some people even came in a suit. I think after like two decades of going to the cinema this was my favorite experience. In an age of Netflix I really think this is how you keep cinema and communal watching alive.

Game and Videos

A double feature category! I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons again. I already had like 300 hours in this game and thought I was through with it, but then I started watching the Amanda Files and she got me hooked. The first video of her I saw she visited some horror themed island and described the plot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 in her valley girl voice and it’s the funniest thing I ever heard. She could talk about literally anything for 2 hours and I would listen to her while playing animal crossing.

Website

I didn’t know what to call the category because it’s not really about the website but more about the concept of buying second hand directly from people. The vintage fashion thing got so big over the last few years that especially in Vienna second hand stores are selling the stuff so overpriced that even if you only do it for environmental reasons you just can’t afford it anymore. But after I got two harmonicas second hand earlier this year I really started looking through willhaben religiously. This month I picked up a table only like 4 minutes away for 20€ and two days later I sold my old one for the same amount. If you live in an area where a lot of people are using it and you have a friend to carry stuff this is such a cool opportunity to basically just swap your stuff for free if you play your cards right. Now every few weeks on my lunch break I go somewhere, pick up a picture for 3€ and get in a little walk. Highly recommend it!

#february #february favorites #krabat #otfired preußler #the room #tommy wiseau #cult cinema #animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #second hand #neue deutsche welle

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tranquil-turbulence · 2 years

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SasuSaku Month ‘22 Day 21

Day 20 | Day 22

Day 21 Prompt: Overrated

-Youtuber AU-

"Hey, check it out," Tenten said one day as she scrolled through social media. Turning the phone, she showed the younger girl her screen. "That Shuriken guy spiked in subscribers again."

Sakura paused mid-sip of her drink, eyes following her friend's thumb as she scrolled down.

"Cool," was all she said before going back to gulping down her water bottle.

"I'll say." She huffed a laugh. "He really knows his stuff. Thanks to his videos, I found like two new topics for my report on medieval weaponry."

She didn't pay much attention when the brunette started to ramble. It'd been like this for the past two weeks, and she was beyond caring about whatever some guy on the internet had to say about kunai knives from 600 AD.

She'd checked out his videos before, but weaponry wasn't a sphere of interest and his bland, no-frills way of speaking completely lost her not even a minute in the first video recommended.

She hummed here and there, giving non-committal "Wow"s and "No way"s, if only to humor her friend. Tenten was the only person she knew in her martial arts class, and it would suck to lose her favorite sparring partner.

"--and yeah," Tenten was finishing, brushing her bangs out of her face as she put her phone away and got into position to stretch. "You should check him out sometime. He hits on some pretty interesting topics."

"I'll... think about it," she said carefully, setting the bottle down. "To be honest, I got a video of his in my recommended once and I was so bored I couldn't even watch half of it."

"Whoa, seriously?" The brunette actually looked surprised, slowly lifting her right leg into the air and holding position. "I'd never peg you for that type. You're practically a human supercomputer - since when does something uncommon bore you?"

"Just not into weapons, I guess," Sakura mumbled, helping her into the next position.

Nearby, one of the other students shot them an annoyed glance. One of the more experienced among them, Sasuke was quiet and methodical. Sakura had never beaten him in a spar, practice or otherwise.

Something about him was annoying, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

She held her legs in place for several seconds before letting go, and Tenten slowly rolled backwards until she was sitting on her knees.

"Well," the older woman grunted, getting up from the ground. "How's your studies going? Aren't you at midterms?"

"Almost at midterms," corrected Sakura with a heavy sigh. "I've still got a whole chapter left to take notes on. Then I've gotta start studying for real. I'm gonna die."

Tenten let out a sympathetic noise and patted her back. "If anyone can do it, you can do it. You aced the MCAT, after all."

"Yeah, well," she huffed, adjusting her ponytail. "Knowledge is half the battle."

Sasuke half-listened in, half-focused on his katas. The conversation from the beginning had been so dull he'd almost tuned them out, but then their senpai had mentioned his YouTube channel and his attention was turned.

Something warm filled his chest when Tenten mentioned liking his videos. He knew his content wasn't for everyone but it felt different hearing someone else talk about his work in such a positive light.

"Look, Sakura," Tenten was saying, pulling her in. "You sure you don't wanna watch Top Ten Worst Medieval Weapons By Design? It's literally his best video."

"Tenten," the pinkette's voice was flat, "no offense, but I honestly think he's overrated. His videos aren't that good."

Ouch.

Overrated? Not that good?

Yeah, well, his mind retorted, and he narrowed his eyes as he turned away, I'd like to see you do better. He'd been making videos since middle school; who was she to call him overrated? He only had a million subscribers; relatively small considering how long he'd been active.

"Sakura!" Tenten gasped sharply. "Sacrilege!"

"Sorry I don't like hearing someone drone on and on about a boring topic for sixteen minutes."

Double ouch.

It was hard keeping his cool and resisting the urge to whirl around and tell her to mind her own business if she hated them that much. Instead he took a deep breath through and out of his nose and shifted into his next kata.

How did she know what quality was? She probably didn't even make videos of her own.

"But you literally made a whole trilogy about passing the MCAT!"

Oh.

Eyes narrowed, Sasuke ventured a peek at the two older students. Sakura's face was pinched in annoyance and Tenten's eyes were wide as she raised her arms in exasperation.

"That's solid, helpful information that people deserve to know," she said coolly. "Besides, I'm not looking for fame. All I did was make a step-by-step process that I wish I'd had when I was studying to get into medical school."

Pulling out his phone, he began typing. Now he was curious.

The first result was "So, You Wanna Get Into Medical School", parts one through three.

The thumbnail was the same pink-haired girl with an unimpressed look on her face, gesturing towards a whiteboard labeled "MCAT: Dos and Don'ts".

"Ugh, whatever," he heard her sigh. "Thanks for sparring with me today. I need to get home and study."

"Good luck on your exams," Tenten replied quietly. There was a hint of bitterness in her tone. "If anyone can do it, you can."

He popped in a wireless earbud and began watching the first video as the two parted ways. He glanced up when he felt her walk by, air brushing by his shoulder with the short pink hair gathering about her shoulders.

"So," her voice greeted his ears as he turned his attention back to the video, "you decided to get into medical school." The Sakura in the video paused before continuing, "Let me tell you right now: this will either be the biggest mistake of your life, or the best thing you've ever thought of."

She wasn't as animated as he assumed she would be - her intro was short and to-the-point, and her voice naturally dipped and rose as she began to explain the topic in length. She certainly wasn't boring to listen to, as he'd spitefully thought; to his irritation, he actually enjoyed the video.

"Oh," Tenten's voice piped up, and he turned to see her with a lopsided smile on her face. "I didn't know you watched Sakura's videos."

He shrugged, pausing the video. "Never had a reason to," he murmured. His voice was quiet enough that she apparently didn’t recognize it, because she kept talking.

"Well, I'll be the first to say she really knows what she's talking about." The brunette gave a short laugh as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder. "Hell, she makes me think I can retry the MCAT myself. I've probably watched this about twenty times."

Humming, he turned his attention back to the video, barely acknowledging her pat on his shoulder.

As annoying as it was to have someone trash his work... he wouldn't stoop to her level. He'd have to watch every video before he made his judgement.

#sasusaku month 2022 #sasusaku #youtuber au #modern au

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invalidtumbls · 1 year

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De-rezzed in the Second Act

So, I have this weird habit: I am fascinated not by perfect stories, but those that start well and fall apart for no particularly good reason. I remember seeing Atlantis: The Lost Empire in the theater and being carried away by the efficient setup in the first 20 minutes, only to hit a point when things slow down and thinking “wait, when did this suddenly start to suck?”

I hear ya Vinny. I’m bored too.

The problem, as story theorists know, is second act trouble. It’s that problem of the long middle of the story where initial enthusiasm fades, attention drifts, and momentum fails.

Well, that’s what it does when you’ve got second act trouble, anyways. Obviously, some movies/games/shows don’t have this problem, because they don’t have a defective second act. Nobody in 1977 came out of Star Wars saying “man, that stuff on board the Death Star went on way too long.”

Anyways, let’s define our terms. Three-act structure splits the story into three parts:

Setup — Introduce the characters and the situation. An inciting incident gets the ball rolling, ultimately leading to the first plot point, where an irreversible change occurs and the conflict begins.

Conflict — The protagonist attempts to achieve their goal, dealing with a progression of complications that arise naturally from each of their actions along the way. Eventually, this leads to the second plot point, at which the back-and-forth of the main conflict cannot continue, and a conclusion (for good or ill) must be reached.

Resolution — A new, final conflict ends the story, with the protagonist succeeding or failing (or, sometimes, a combination of both, like discovering the thing they originally wanted and have now attained isn’t what they actually need).

Thing is, these aren’t divvied up in tidy one-third portions. In practice, the acts are in more of a 25%-50%-25% split, or 20-50-30 if you go by the Scriptnotes podcast’s t-shirt. Author K. M. Weiland has an extraordinary site for story theorists that breaks all the key moments (or beats) of this structure into blogs, podcasts, and compilation books.

So, after seeing YouTube videos of the cool new Tron roller coaster at Disney World, I was reminded of 2010's Tron Legacy, the would-be franchise-relaunching, torch-passing, sci-fi film that basically did none of those things. It's another film that I remember deflates about halfway through, so I thought it would be worth a rewatch to see where it goes wrong.

This being a sequel to 1982’s Tron, you’d figure some the audience would need a reminder of the first film, since it had been been 28 years. You could just watch the first movie, but… surprise… Disney let it quietly go out of print in the year or two prior to the debut of Tron Legacy. Corporate incompetence? I’d argue quite the opposite: whatever you think of the original Tron, it’s not as good as you remember. To modern eyes, it’s clunky, talky, and slow, and certainly can’t coast on the power of its dated special effects. Chance are, if 2010 audiences could have gone back to watch Tron, they’d have been less likely to get tickets to Tron Legacy. Which is why I think Disney drained the retail market of Tron DVDs on purpose. After all, they were perfectly happy to issue a Blu-Ray of "Tron: The Original Classic" once Legacy had finished its theatrical run and got its home media release.

Come for the space frisbees, stay for the Wendy Carlos soundtrack that you remember from the arcade game.

So, instead, Tron Legacy opens with a scene of a digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges — well, a digitally de-aged back of Jeff Bridges’ head — reprising the character of Kevin Flynn, the protagonist of the first movie, a coder who went inside the computer called “The Grid” to defeat evil programs. He tells his son about how he fought alongside the heroic program “Tron”, and created another program named “Clu” to care for The Grid in Flynn’s absence. That’s basically everything you need to know from the first movie. All the other details — Sark, the MCP, Yori, Dumont — none of it matters. See how much time you saved by not rewatching it?

Next scene: info-dump. A news story reports Kevin Flynn’s disappearance, as it plays out over footage of the lonely, and increasingly troubled young Sam Flynn. It moves fast enough, and it’s fine for what it is.

Now, though, we are six minutes into the movie and don’t really know the protagonist. A 10-minute action sequence takes care of that. With an implicit timeskip, we see the young adult Sam speeding on his motorcycle, escaping the police, and breaking into the corporate tower of his father’s former company, which is having a board meeting to announce their new operating system. This is one of the already-dated bits of Tron Legacy: the now-evil version of ENCOM is a pretty obvious expy for Microsoft, as it prepares to launch its new operating system with a high new price tag and no new features.

When Apple did this, they called it “Snow Leopard” and everyone thought it was great. Shouldn’t we cut ENCOM a break?

I don’t think this bit lands today like it did just 13 years ago. People under 35 don’t recall Microsoft’s cutthroat monopoly days and mostly just know Microsoft as the Xbox company, not that different from Sony or Nintendo. An evil computer company today would probably be portrayed as directly creeping on its users, like Google or Facebook, or perhaps an Apple-style aesthetic dictatorship. Maybe with an Elon Musk caricature because, man, that dude is creepy.

As the board meeting continues, Sam sneaks into a server room and starts hacking, narrowly avoiding a security guard. As the board goes to launch their new OS, Sam’s hack reveals itself as a looping video of a barking dog, despite the “world-class security” claimed by the company. Better yet, Flynn’s last remaining loyalist at the company, Alan (the creator of the original “Tron” program), discovers that Sam’s hack has released the OS for free on the web.

At the top of the building, the security guard reaches Sam as he stands atop a crane. Sam, as the main shareholder in the company, justifies his hack as stealing from himself… then jumps off the building. Halfway down, he opens a parachute to complete his daring escape… except that he gets caught in a traffic light on the way down and the cops catch him.

Fifteen minutes into the film and Garret Hedlund is almost effortlessly charming. Pity it doesn’t last.

After bailing out of jail, Sam returns to his home — a makeshift bachelor pad built of stacked shipping containers — to find Alan waiting for him with news: Alan received an alert from a pager left to him by Kevin Flynn 20 years ago. From a long-since disconnected number.

Bruce Boxleitner has such a low-key charm, it’s a shame we didn’t see him in more stuff. Although now I’m sure you’re all going to tell me to watch Babylon 5, aren’t you?

Sam laughs off the idea that his father is waiting for him at the old arcade, but eventually rides over to check it out. Finding a secret room behind the “Tron” machine, Sam discovers Kevin’s office, and after a few ill-considered commands at the terminal, he gets zapped into The Grid.

So, in 20 minutes, there’s Act I. The essentials, from a story perspective:

Protagonist: Sam Flynn, genius hacker, prankster, lost-boy-without-a-father-figure trope.

The hook: Can Sam figure out what happened to Kevin Flynn all those years ago, and find him? And could doing so set things right both with Sam and the company?

The inciting event: Alan receives a page from Flynn’s pager, and lets Sam know.

First plot point: Sam is zapped into The Grid, the world inside the computer.

All told, this is really good. The movie efficiently gets us on board with a fun, exciting protagonist, and gives him a compelling purpose. You’d figure we’re in for a good time at this point.

(Reader, we are not in for a good time.)

OK, so Act II. There’s lots to do in the second act — it’s half the running time after all — so it’s helpful to break it down more granularly. Weiland writes, “[the] first half of the second act is where your characters find the time and space to react to the first major plot point.” Since the plot point was getting zapped into The Grid, it makes sense that the reaction — Sam’s first order of business — is figuring out where he is and what do to do. So we start with a five-minute sequence of Sam immediately being captured by the authorities, outfitted with his Tron-land uniform and identity disc, and brought to the game grid.

I hadn’t realized until this rewatch that Sam being pinned down by the Recognizer’s searchlight is a callback to when the police helicopter gets him back in Act I.

From here, we go into what everyone expects from the Tron movies: the videogame stuff. Sam immediately ends up in “Disc Wars”, the gladiatorial death frisbee from the first movie, albeit with updated effects. Using his innate athleticism and cleverness, he survives to a faceoff with the champion Rinzler, who wounds Sam and realizes from a blood drop that Sam is not a program, but a user. A mysterious figure lording over the games demands that Sam be brought to him.

As Sam is ferried up to the throne room, the mysterious figure reveals himself as the spitting image of the 35-year-old Kevin Flynn. Sam greets his dad and insists they go home, only to be told the leader isn’t Kevin Flynn after all. Sam realizes that this is Clu, a program that Flynn created (owing to the Tron convention that programs resemble the person who created them).

The convention of programs resembling their “users” also speaks to the mainframe-era idioms of the original Tron, when a user and programmer were one and the same, typically someone who wrote a program to solve computational problems for themselves.

Clu sends Sam back out to the game grid, presumably to die in combat in the lightcycle game. So, shut off your brain, we get another zippy five-minute action sequence. It’s playing out just like the original Tron at this point in the second act, arguably better because Act I established Sam’s motorcycle skills, so the lightcycle action sequence and his success in it is actually motivated by his character.

40 minutes in and he’s still charming. If only it had lasted.

Despite being outgunned by opponents with better equipment, Sam leads his team and puts up a solid fight. Eventually though, dirty tricks kill off his compatriots, leaving Sam with a wrecked bike and facing certain doom at the edge of Clu's outstretched disc. Suddenly, a four-wheeler bursts onto the grid and rescues Sam. The driver wrecks most of the pursuing lightcycles, then blasts a hole in the arena to escape to a barren outland beyond the grid, where the pursuers’ vehicles can’t operate. Removing her helmet, the driver introduces herself as Quorra, promising that Sam’s questions will be answered in due course.

Things slow down as the car weaves its way through hidden passages to a secret lair. Quorra brings Sam inside an elegant home, where a solitary figure resides in a seated meditation.

For those of you keeping track, the Blu-Ray is at 48 minutes, 30 seconds, and the movie is about to fall apart, though we don’t know it yet.

We’re now approaching the midpoint of the second act, and thus, the midpoint of the movie itself. This is a separate phase of the second act, one that is uniquely situated to keep the story from flagging. That is, if you actually do something with it. As Weiland writes:

The midpoint is what keeps your second act from dragging. It’s what caps the reactions in the first half of the book and sets up the chain of actions that will lead the characters into the climax. In many ways, the midpoint is like a second inciting event. Like the first inciting event, it directly influences the plot. It changes the paradigm of the story. And it requires a definitive and story-altering response from the characters.

So, a good story probably wants to do something big at the midpoint, something that changes the stakes, changes the conflict, and forces the protagonist to act. Revelations! Betrayal! Explosions! The good stuff!

Tron Legacy, by comparison, sits down to have dinner.

What’s wrong, Quorra? You haven’t had any of your uncannily realistic roast pig.

The reunion scenes with Sam and (Kevin) Flynn stretch out for about 15 minutes… a full one-eighth of the movie. It’s all dialogue, much of it while seated. That’s already tough to make dramatic. What’s even harder to chew through is a staggering amount of info-dumping:

Sam insists they leave the Grid together, but Flynn says it’s impossible.

Awkwardly, Sam and Flynn try to catch up over the lost years, but it turns to why Flynn didn’t return. Flynn explains the discovery of the “Isos”, isomorphic algorithms, a spontaneously-generated digital life form that could change the world.

As Flynn's story turns to flashback, Clu sees the Isos as a corruption of the perfect system Flynn created him to build, and stages a coup against Flynn. Tron (apparently) dies defending Flynn, who flees into exile to escape. With no one left to stop him, Clu commits genocide against the Isos, wiping them out in one stroke.

The portal between The Grid and the real world closes, trapping Flynn within. It can only be opened from the outside, meaning Sam’s entry has opened it.

Flynn suspects that Clu is organizing something, and that he wants the power of Flynn’s identity disc. Flynn reveals that he didn’t send the page to Alan, meaning that Clu must have done so, as a means of laying a trap to lure out Flynn.

Yeah yeah, I was around in the 80s. I remember “War Games” too.

It’s kind of a chore to get through all of this material. It’s good for the story to breathe after the action of the game grid, but 15 minutes is probably too much. And to be fair, this does meet one of the requirements of the midpoint: it changes the protagonist’s goals and actions. Sam realizes he can’t convince Flynn to come with him to the portal. Instead, as he explains to Quorra, if he can just get to the portal himself, then out in the real world he can delete Clu with just a keystroke. Quorra thinks about it, then gives him the contact information for “Zuse”, a program who can get anyone to anywhere. Sam takes this information, steals Flynn’s old lightcycle, and heads back into the Grid.

We are now at one hour, five minutes into the movie, and believe it or not, this is the last time in the movie that our protagonist will take action entirely on his own. But more on that later.

Sam meets a female program who takes him to the End of the Line Club to meet Zuse, through an intermediary named Castor. Meanwhile, Clu's forces find the lightcycle and trace it back to Flynn’s hidden lair. Sam negotiates with Castor (who turns out to be Zuse himself) for transport to the portal, but is betrayed when it all turns out to have been a trap and Clu’s forces crash in from above. This kicks off a big bar fight sequence — the first action in nearly a half-hour at this point — with Quorra arriving to help protect Sam.

The Daft Punk cameo is a cute touch, since the soundtrack they created is quite likely the most enduring and best thing about the film. It’s a pity the Blu-Ray doesn’t have a music-only audio track, because then you could turn the entire movie into a two-hour Daft Punk music video.

The fight goes badly, with Sam overwhelmed and Quorra losing an arm to one of Clu’s goons before Flynn arrives to use his convenient god-like powers to turn the tide of the fight. He urges Sam to escape with the wounded Quorra to the elevator, but as they leave, one of Clu’s minions steals Flynn’s identity disc: exactly what Flynn has tried to prevent all these years.

Flynn and Sam steal a solar sailer and set off, Flynn reluctantly agreeing to Sam’s plan to make a rush to the portal. With the in-flight downtime, Flynn starts to use his magical user power to start healing Quorra. As Sam watches Flynn work, he realizes the truth: Quorra is an Iso, in fact, the last surviving Iso.

And this pause gives us an opportunity to bring up something about Tron Legacy: what is the point of this entire exercise? Ideally, a good story should have a theme that it expresses. The title gives us a hint: "legacy", things left behind by previous generations.

There's a really interesting idea when you think about it: Flynn basically has three children in this story:

Sam, his biological human son.

Clu, the program he created literally in his own image.

Quorra, his adoptive Iso daughter.

…and it doesn’t really do anything with that idea. Clu is motivated not by his resentment of Sam (or Quorra, if he’s even aware of her), but by his political ambitions to create a perfect world. Sam arrives to see Quorra living with Flynn and doesn’t for a second consider the idea he’s been effectively replaced by her in his father’s concerns and affections. If anything, the movie wants us to see a spark of romantic interest between Sam and Quorra, and if years of watching anime on Crunchyroll has taught me anything, it’s to never fuck your sister, even if you’re not blood-related.

(Looks up suddenly, taps earpiece.) Uh, Wolf, I’m getting word that what anime actually says is to always fuck your sister. Back to you in Atlanta.

The scene of Flynn magically healing Quorra’s disintegrated arm also brings up what a missed opportunity this is. Between these three characters, they chose the least interesting option. To wit, could Sam heal Quorra? We’ve seen he’s got 1337 4ax0r 5k1llz back in Act I; does that give him magical abilities inside The Matrix The Grid? Do all users have that, or is it just Flynn?

Turn it around another way: what if it’s Flynn or Sam who gets injured. Can Quorra heal them? Flynn tells us that the Isos are these fascinating creatures who are going to reshape the real world, but we never see anything like that. Quorra is at best a quality Action Girl, but nothing she does in the story appears to have any relevance to her identity as an Iso. It’s another failure to “show, don’t tell”, in a movie that does an heck of a lot of telling to begin with.

Moreover, this sequence is taking us to the end of Act II. Citing Weiland again, this post-midpoint section is supposed to set up the protagonist for his or her final actions in Act III.

Because the second half of the second act will lead right into the slugfest of the climax, this is the author’s last chance to get all his playing pieces into position. We have to set up the line of dominoes that will knock into the final major plot point at the 75% mark, and we do that by creating a series of actions from the main character. Although he’s not likely to be in control of the situation, he’s at least moving forward and calling a few shots of his own, instead of taking it and taking it from the antagonistic force.

Tron Legacy has an even worse problem than the protagonist sitting back and taking it. Over the course of the last 10 minutes or so, Sam has been all but replaced as the protagonist by Flynn. Following the fiasco at the club, Flynn is the one driving the action (stopping the falling elevator in the escape from the club, healing Quorra) and providing all the information to drive us to the third act. Sam has been just going along with it, suddenly demoted to damn near sidekick status in the The Jeff Bridges Show Starring Jeff Bridges, with Special Guest Star Digitally De-Aged Jeff Bridges. Also appearing: Garret Hedlund and Olivia Wilde. And it's only going to get worse in Act III.

But before we get to Act III, there are two completely unnecessary scenes that drag even more momentum from a story that’s already at a virtual standstill:

Back at the End of Line Club, Castor/Zuse negotiates with Clu over Flynn’s identity disc. Clu coerces him into handing it over, then his minions bomb the club, killing Zuse inside. It’s now been almost 15 minutes since the breakout from the club, and the lead characters are long gone. Why should we care about Zuze? And if the point is to remind us that Clu is a cold-blooded murderer… um, I think we got that when he exterminated all the Isos.

On the solar sailer, Quorra tells Sam the story of how Flynn rescued her from The Purge that killed the Isos. She asks Sam what a sunrise is like, and he describes it in romantic terms as he briefly looks into her eyes. This could be a charming moment that lets the story breathe, if it weren’t for the fact that this whole second act has been largely sitting on its ass for nearly an hour.

No. Just no, OK? Don’t even think it, Sam Flynn.

At one hour, thirty two minutes into the film, we now head into Act III. The solar sailer arrives unexpectedly at an industrial facility, rather than the portal. The trio finds barges of kidnapped, zombified programs, who they realize are being amassed into an army by Clu. As they skulk about the facility, Quorra gives her disc to Flynn and makes a run for it. While she's easily captured by Rinzler, her distraction allows Flynn and Sam to further infiltrate the facility.

Plot point two, in screenplay theory, puts an end to the the conflict of Act II and forces the conclusion that will play out in Act III. Here, it comes in the form of Clu’s speech to his army, in which he reveals his plan: he will use the army he has created and take it through the portal, using Flynn’s identity disc, to conquer the real world.

Straight-up Triumph of the Will here, because Hitler Is Bad is the easiest point in the world to make.

The conflict of the second act was Sam trying to get back to the real world, preferably with Flynn in tow. Now that they know Clu’s plan, they can’t just run away. They have a new goal: Clu must be stopped here, on The Grid. That’s what takes us into Act III.

Well, for what it’s worth of course. We burned an hour in Act II not doing very much action-wise, not doing anything thematically, and spending just a staggering amount of time in flashback info-dumps. The momentum has fizzled, and this movie wouldn't be saved by Act III even if it were great.

As it is, Sam and Flynn split up, with Flynn getting an escape ship ready while Sam makes an all-too-easy trip up to the throne room to recover Quorra and the disc. Seriously, Flynn’s disc is the most important thing in the world and you’ve got like three guards? It’s a pretty rote action scene that takes less than three minutes of screen time, and that’s with intercutting to Clu finishing his speech and reacting to an alarm when the disc goes missing.

As the trio take off in a stolen lightplane — with Quorra driving, Sam shooting, and Flynn calling the shots (because he’s all but the protagonist at this point) — they get chased by Clu, Rinzler, and their goons, basically replaying the lightcycle sequence, but now it’s flying.

And the thing about this is, the action doesn’t really lean on anything specific to Sam or Quorra that’s been established earlier in the movie. There’s one line about how Sam’s glider-assisted escape from the throne ship tower is a trick he learned a few nights prior at ENCOM Tower. But there’s nothing really thematically about Sam, who he is, what he values, how he solves problems — no “use the Force, Luke” moment — because the prior two acts never really set any of that up. So what’s left now is pew-pew CGI light show.

At least they should have gotten a good PS4 game out of this, right?

Dispatching the pursuers — including Rinzler, who turns out to be the corrupted Tron in a subplot that feels like it just barely escaped being left on the cutting room floor — the trio reaches the portal, only to find Clu waiting to confront them. So now, with Clu standing between them and their goal, does Sam take the role of the protagonist and vanquish the antagonist once and for all? Does he deliver the thematic truth, proving the righteousness of his world-view, and putting a bow on the whole point of the story?

What, are you kidding? No, of course not. Because this is Tron Legacy. Flynn does it instead.

If you squint, you can just barely see the putative protagonist, out of focus in the background.

Flynn offers a reconciliation; Clu rejects it Because Evil. After a brief fight, Clu retakes Flynn's disc, only to discover he's been tricked by a switcheroo and is holding Quorra's disc, while Sam and Quorra make their escape with the real disc. Clu attempts to stop them, forcing Flynn to use his Magical User Power to merge with Clu, seemingly killing them both, or at least reducing them to a little glowing light, which match-dissolves to Sam back in the real world, saving something (possibly Flynn’s data) to a USB stick.

After this climax, there’s just wrap-up bits of falling action in the real world to whip through before the credits. Sam finds Alan at the arcade, telling him to meet tomorrow morning at ENCOM Tower to retake the company. And we end with a cute shot — even if so much of the film doesn’t work, it is a lovely note to end on — of Sam on his motorcycle giving a now-human Quorra a ride and showing her the sunrise.

For the last time, Sam, do not bang your de facto stepsister.

So, what have we learned? I’d argue that the problems of the second act that doom the film aren’t just that not enough happens. That kind of audience-gets-bored-easily thinking is what gets us more dumb, loud movies. I think the problem of the second act is that it loses track of what the story was supposed to be about, if it ever had a point at all. The story raises a question of what would happen if the son ever finds his long-lost father inside the computer, but never settled on a good answer before they started banging out pages. And with no point to the whole exercise, there’s no natural pull of where the story should go. Perhaps it’s inevitable that Flynn ends up stealing the movie from Sam, because there’s no answer, no conclusion, that Sam’s story is working towards.

Still, the movie got one thing right: ORIGINAL MUSIC BY DAFT PUNK.

It’s a widely acknowledged truth that the Tron Legacy soundtrack is the best coding music ever created. As a software engineer, I can confirm.

#tron legacy #second act trouble #three act structure

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