#I said this many times but amy is not the only badly written character in the Sonic franchise

[rubywolf0201]

To follow up on @gritsandbrits talk on misogyny and sexism in the Sonic fandom, I want post an unfriendly reminder that Amy Rose, the lead female of the Sonic franchise, is and still gets hate from the venomous clowns. From using terms like stalker to express their dislike of her, slutshaming her, want the other Sonic characters AKA her own friends and allies to murder her for no reason but the fanfic author having a hateboner for Amy (therefore throwing away their canon morality save for Eggman and the other villains), being demonized not just for shipping but also to paint her in a bad light to even wanting SEGA to retire her whole entire character completely!

[daegutowns]

svt as brooklyn 99 characters

tags: b99 au, i am obsessed, i’ve been rewatching this series for the 600th time now, only 80% accurate, i stretched it a little bit

thank you to alice (koogyv on twt) for the amazing thread that i highly interacted with as inspiration. there are many similarities. i expanded upon it more.

this is my take: 

det. jake peralta 

hoshi 

“i wasn’t hurt that badly. the doctor said all my bleeding was internal. that’s where the blood’s supposed to be!” 

arguably, this is the best pairing made. he’s silly, hard-working, creative, and most of all -- he’s gunsta think about the turtles. even as a jokes-first seriousness-second type of person, jake is a thoughtful and caring person who would put himself down to save others. he’s sharp, perceptive, and great at deduction, but often discredits himself with his great delusion, playfulness, and childish nature. he’s a trendsetter and loves to joke around, and when he has a great thought, he’s going to put it into action. (“yeah, that’s right. i’m about to monologue, son.”) his favorite movie is die hard (hoshi as a shawol), is canonically broke (hoshi’s constant money loss due to him spoiling everything), and tries to annoy suspects into confessing their crimes. 

men can have duality. they can be serious and also put orange soda in their cereal. hoshi, as a Super Gemini™ knows all about it. he’s playful but knows when to be serious and takes his line of work very seriously. sure, he has some growing up to do and can immerse himself in a different role (horanghae <3) very easily, but he plays to his strengths and that of others with his determination and persistence. 

capt. raymond holt 

seungcheol  

“wait a minute. this isn’t the championship cummerbund. this is some common cummerbund. and, you’re not cheddar. you’re just some common bitch!” 

“this bitch? please. watch.” (to the dog, ‘some common bitch’) “shake… shake! psshh. idiot.” 

this is probably the most obvious and predictable choice after jake=hoshi. a born leader, full of wisdom, and no-nonsense… well, some nonsense is okay. captain holt is ambitious and looks after his squad with both care for their goals and their personalities. even though he may seem a little unapproachable or stoic, he’s actually a really funny and goofy guy. he laughs when he eats marshmallows (“a marshed mallow? don’t mind if i do.”) he’s very adamant about his passions (like john phillip sousa being the skrillrex of his day) and his a very consistent guy (ref. rock painting no. 367). he is sassy to the max and will tell you things exactly as he finds them. and he does NOT mess around when it comes to his dog. 

cheol, most of all, is the ultimate dog dad -- just like holt. cheddar is to holt like kkuma is to cheol. he spoils his dog, and he is proud of it. he’s someone who caters to the learning style that each person needs: stricter but with jokes for jake (hoshi), encouraging for rosa (woozi), detailed with a binder and written formalities for amy (seungkwan), and with actions (ref. the croque monsieur) for charles (dk). he’s attentive, thoughful, and silly at heart. 

det. amy santiago 

seungkwan  

“gross, rosa! those are our dads! i mean, that’s not what i think. captain dad is just my boss. never mind, i’m teaching father the math. whatever, rosa!” 

super badass, but also a teacher’s pet, know it all, and scrapbooking expert. may come off as super uptight or a buzzkill, but genuinely cares about the other detectives on the squad. when you have hella big aspirations, it’s not that unreasonable to see why competitiveness, sharpness, and intellect are his best traits. under all of the work-oriented personality, there’s someone who is ambitious, thoughtful, clever, and protective of the people he loves. it’s hard to not be so uptight and to let loose (as opposed to some totally scheduled fun!), and don’t make fun of him if he sucks and is horrible at it. (title of his sex tape.) 

seungkwan was my top choice, mainly because of his competitiveness with hoshi (jake) as svt’s most famous frenemy pair. there’s a lot of responsibility and workload that seungkwan carries and continues to put on his shoulders, which his members love and appreciate (just how the squad appreciates and acknowledges amy’s dedication to being a detective). things can get wild and crazy sometimes, which is why seungkwan just needs to recharge sometimes. 

det. charles boyle 

dokyeom 

“i got this low tag performance polo with moisture wicking technology. kept me dry all morning. and a dry boy is a smart boy.” 

if you’re looking for a supportive best friend who will always cheer you on, this is him. he’s a major foodie, he loves jake (hoshi), and his arch nemesis is sergeant peanut butter, who is a horse. he’s possessive and jealous almost as much as he is a superb friend, which is obvious by the way he instantly is suspicious of every other best friend jake (hoshi) can make in his life. (“don’t make any new best friends! haha… maybe you shouldn’t go…”) he gets jealous of many, like old beat cop partner stevie schillens, brian (?) from camp, and even cannibal jail cellmate caleb. also definitely dresses up as people from halloween that no one but him can understand. he is just someone that is the embodiment of living life according to his passions. very caring, thoughtful, and funny. 

dk was a good choice for boyle for me since he is super clingy and also is a supportive friend. even if he knows it’s silly or mischievous, he will play along. dk is relatively less prone to disgusting and gross sexual innuendos than charles, but is still super excited to share his jokes and hobbies. has a lot of holiday cheer and his down to be friends even after being turned down. 

det. rosa diaz 

woozi 

“plans are plans. i’m a badass, not an anarchist.” 

mysterious, a little scary, but reasonable and thoughtful. rosa is a character that’s easy to stereotype, though also arguably one of the more complex characters in this show. hard working is an understatement, and even though he may not be the most outwardly affectionate at first glance, rosa is super thoughtful. work comes first, but through the many trials and tribulations that life throws, business remains separate from personal… except the friendships. rosa went through the academy with jake (hoshi), so they’re really close. as much as jake jokes around and everything, they still trust each other and work with each other really well. (“diaz has been chuckin’ d-holes into my mouth since the academy.”) on top of that, is a bicon (bi icon). 

woozi was my go-to choice on this one. his demeaner seems a little intimidating (especially because of all his muscles now too!), but he means good. he gives off mysterious vibes, but he’s just figuring it out. now he is truly no-nonsense, and he makes sure others know this. he’s still down for the different personas and everything, but he lives his life by a strict set of rules. his neighbors think he’s emily goldfinch (woozi)… his coworkers think his name is rosa diaz (wooahae)… wait. what? 

sgt. terry jeffords 

mingyu  

“terry loves yogurt.” 

literally just a big softie that looks scary/big/muscular but is actually so babygirl. he’s so caring and loves the squad to death, always making sure that they have all the resources they need to survive. even when other captains come and go, terry is always there. terry loves yogurt, terry loves love, and terry loves foreign films.  kind of has a rivalry with boyle (seungkwan) for strange reasons instigated by boyle himself, but is supportive nonetheless. (“hey, people like the way i look.” “sure they do, big guy.) he’s actually very well-educated (studied abroad in japan), is a great dad, and is always down to help others work out the right way.

this was such an obvious choice for me (with the only other option being cheol). mingyu is an inherently kindhearted person like terry, but also knows how to draw boundaries. he is someone who is worried about the safety of the people around him because he’s a family man, but also someone who loves to get down as vacation terry. also talks in the third person, but it’s okay since he’s hot. 

gina linetti 

myungho  

“aren’t you forgetting something?” [...] “no! pay your bill! damn, who raised you?” 

the human form of the 100 emoji. would be the perfect human president, based upon his skillset, dance ability, and bloodlust. he is the paris of people. has been jake (hoshi)’s childhood friend and went through high school with him. cares enough to steer jake (hoshi) on the right track (ref. brandon bliss) but to also enable him in their own goofy shenanigans (the DDC + the lacroix siblings). super smart and well-versed in the people around him because only gina would suggest savant (vernon), the hacker, to become their new IT guy. iconic entrepreneur. 

i know that hao is super humble, and gina says that being humble is her best trait. despite this, there is no one else who would love to not be involved with all this police nonsense (bc gina “does not listen to a lot of things you all [the detectives] say”) but also be relevant. she’s actually very street-smart, great at comebacks, and the ceo of her own company that she literally just made up. 

dr. kevin cozner 

wonwoo  

“that’s the oompiest oomph you’ll get.” 

prim, proper, and unhinged. he loves raymond (cheol) but most of all, allows love to prevail. works as a classics professor at a university, spends a sabbatical in france to enrich his teaching experience, and loves a good croque monsieur. would absolutely go off on jake (hoshi) if he gatekept a nicolas cage movie that's a period piece set in greece based on some dumb book. despite his no-nonsense attitude sometimes, he is still down to dress like a pervert to go to the library with jake (hoshi). also, super badass because he runs over seamus murphy with a car. 

i was kind of going for wonwoo’s quieter but more serious and studious vibes. i think super knowledgeable, especially about gaming and editing, while kevin is knowledgeable about classics like boetheus and the odyssey. both are super smart, sassy, and protective people. 

doug judy 

jeonghan 

“i sold a guy a fake pekinese. twas a cat.” 

he’s in and he’s out! he is there for the vibes and the elaborate schemes. he will outsmart everyone in the NYPD and get away with it. one of jake (hoshi)’s best criminal friends but would still betray him every time. he would definitely lie and tell his family that he owns an architecture firm instead of being the pontiac bandit, and jake (hoshi) is his assistant mangy carl, whom he saved from a life of living on the streets selling his body. goofy and silly, but don’t underestimate him. you’ll always be one step behind him. 

i think jeonghan is definitely slick and goofy enough to be doug judy. above all else, jeonghan’s mind works harder than anyone else in mafia. just like how he immerses himself in different roles (and often makes them up) in don’t lie and bad clue, doug judy has transformed into many different roles in his life (cruise ship singer, architect, etc.) 

capt. jason stentley (CJ) 

jun 

“okay muchachos, let’s roll up on these muchachos!” 

great start, and love the double use of muchachos, jun. became a captain due to his extreme luck. he is just always in the right place at the right time. showed up to his first day in grey sweatpants because he “totally biffed it” and spilled hot cocoa on himself. introduced himself as ‘captain stentley’ but didn’t like how formal that sounded. ‘captain jason’ wasn’t it either, so CJ was the move. numbers are so crazy, and overall so, very supportive. he just wants to help. 

i was just thinking of someone a little silly and laidback. will be strict if you ask him to, but he’s honestly more there for the vibes. he can be a little clumsy, but i was mainly just going for the slightly airheadedness vibes and the lovable nature. 

det. adrian pimento

joshua 

“whoo… haha… hey chuck! it’s pimento.” 

just a little bit insane. it’s a side effect of being undercover for 12 years for jimmy “the butcher” figgis, but i digress. he sometimes still calls himself paul sneed due to being extremely traumatized. overall just a funny and great character. used to be boyle (dk)’s roommate and just found himself in his son’s closet at some point in time… got mistaken as a closet monster… just normal human things. (but he was also screaming with dk and his son.) has a very riveting, intense, and sexy relationship with rosa (woozi). 

this one was a little more of a stretch, but only because pimento is actually insane. all the years of ptsd has made him into a very strange person. josh is a little strange, and maybe he could be pimento if pimento was watered down into a lacroix. (like, the flavor is barely there.) there’s a distinct slight insanity that josh has (ref. gose episode the8 and the 12 shadows) that is hard to replicate. 

fire marshal boone  

dino  

“your only move is passing the ball to jeffords and running across the field.” “i’d like to see you try!” 

so done with the entire police department. will always be down for a rivalry or argument but genuinely a softie. just generally suspicious of jake (hoshi) and charles (dk) due to their antics and strong adherence to the rivalry. demands an apology because this is the fire department’s jurisdiction! all of that comes crumbling down though, when jake (hoshi) reveals his sad past with sal’s pizza…. but he still competes with jake (hoshi) on arresting the criminal in the end. some things never change.

i was honestly looking for someone who would love nothing more than to call out hoshi and dk on their BS and tomfoolery without enabling it and thought of dino. boone is a pretty lovable character for someone who is supposed to be a villain of some sorts, and it fits in pretty well with dino. plus, he’s the head of the fire department, kind of like how dino had to choose being the maknae of svt versus being the leader of a younger group. (kind of.) 

! vernon

okay i was genuinely very torn about who should be vernon, because i genuinely had a lot of different options. 

corey park (savant) 

hacked into a police precinct’s computer system just because he could. (he only exposed everyone’s search history.)  “it was like taking candy from a baby.” he was turned in by his mom, but fortunately now has a job -- courtesy of gina (hao). very intelligent and laid back

i saw vernon here because he definitely has a mischievous side. while his pranks and jokes are on the mild side, he’s definitely still a troublemaker. he’s down to work for the greater good. 

cheddar the dog  

“this isn’t cheddar, this is just some common bitch.” a very special someone. definitely is seungcheol and wonwoo’s child. loves wedding cake and is very well-behaved. extremely intelligent and loves participating in halloween heists. does not like being jake (hoshi)’s dog bra :// 

this was based on alice’s thread and was so funny. if cheddar were a human, vernon would be cheddar. the sass and intellect can only be matched by Thee hansol vernon chwe. 

other fun character pairings that i thought of: 

kkuma as cheddar the dog: two words -- so spoiled. also would be cheol (captain holt)’s baby. i digress. 

jun & dino as young hitchcock and scully: just two people motivated by helping the city. kind-hearted and brave people, who may or may not have gotten addicted to wing sluts while checking in on a witness that their captain screwed over by not putting in the witness protection program. outstanding people who became a lot more interesting, to say the least…. 

josh as madeline wuntsch: strangely tense relations with holt (cheol) due to their rivalry, but overall an outstanding cop. ½ of svt’s evil twins so you know he’s down for some evilness. oh raymond, i notice you haven’t done your time as a beat cop…. (if josh is here, who’s guarding hades???) may be a cheuksin, a korean toilet ghost who--

jun as mlepclaynos (the clay is silent): opens the door, is questioned by detectives, takes the picture of the suspect. he’s from neokrakagovia and celebrates dogs losing their virginity. jun definitely would! less because he’s weird and more so because he’s so kind and willing to go with the flow that it just happens. later says he’s not mlepnos. did you sell him horse blood? would you like to buy horse blood? he plays the violin beautifully. “guitar.” (ref. some day morning)

[daisylikesmedia]

Series 5 Episodes 4 & 5: The Time of Angels & Flesh and Stone

Yoo they brought the Weeping Angels AND River Song back in the same episode? Damn this has gotta be awesome everyone strap yourselves in let’s gooo.

So the first question I’ve gotta ask is should the Weeping Angels have even come back in the first place? I’m very much on the no side of this argument and I think the cracks are already starting to show for them in this story, because they make the Angels bonkers strong. The whole “image of an Angel is an Angel” thing is bad enough, as now you could theoretically the Angels could just make an infinite Angel generator by holding someone hostage and getting them to draw them or smth. With the old Angels this wouldn’t have been the case, but oh now they can TALK. And not just through a radio, at the climax of the story they speak telepathically(?) with The Doctor, so they could easily execute the above plan and then it’s gg the world. Also wait this would probably make for a cool story copyright Daisy on this one I’m calling it “The Artist and her Angels” that’s a fire title. ANYWAYS to add on to all of this turns out if you stare an Angel in the eye for too long an Angel gets imprinted onto your mind? And you can’t ever open your eyes again? Why didn’t this happen to the Blink gang? Idk how this problem even got fixed but the Weeping Angels are soo overpowered in this story. It feels like there’s just too many additions to their power and it makes it so that now we have to rely on Deus Ex Machinas everything they’re on screen in order for the story to be solved. Alongside this seeing the Angels move kinda demystifies them for me, as a lot of these things do. The less known about the Weeping Angels, the better their stories are for it.

OKAY Angel rant over now let’s talk about River Song’s return and it’s… ok? She’s not a badly written character in this story per se, I think particularly in Flesh and Stone she shines quite well and she sprinkles in some very nice dialogue/mysteries that I enjoy. My issue is more the first episode where her intro is just soo overdone I feel. It takes us 8 MINUTES to land on the planet that’s nuts. But ye as I said, she’s v strong in the 2nd ep so I’ll let it slide. Saying that I think there’s something really off about the pacing in these episodes. In the first episode it feels like one big threat and then a cliffhanger, with lots of characters filling in the background, whereas the second episode just refuses to stop and let the viewer breathe. It just feels a bit too imbalanced in my opinion.

Also wow Amy’s character in these two episodes is… badddd. She’s made into the damsel in distress for pretty much the entire runtime, with both the TV Angel and the eye Angel plaguing her time here, and then she sexually assaults The Doctor at the end??? Like cmonn Moffat some shows are suited to exploring sexual assault but not Doctor Who. I’ve not watched Vampires in Venice for a while but iirc it’s just, not touched on at all in that story and that bothers me a lot if you’re putting something this heavy into your show’s series arc. Tho I do think Moffat in general struggles to write women well in the 11th Doctor’s era, but I imagine we’ll talk a lot more about that in future episodes.

TL:DR/Overview: Wow I did not like this episode as much as I thought I did at all. The Weeping Angels are warped into a different kind of villain that is just too strong for the world of Doctor Who, the pacing of these episodes is all over the place, and Amy’s character is written horrifically. I’m trying to think of a reason not to put this in D tier and the only arguments I have against that is that it’s kinda fun still, and I think Matt Smith as always is doing a good job. But unlike Victory of the Daleks where his performance is absolutely outstanding, I don’t think it’s so good I can bump this story up into C tier. God I need to go hide under a rock this is gonna be my most controversial review yet aaa sdlkjg. It’s D tier for me, tho I’m happy lots of other people can find enjoyment in this episode <3.

[millylouedward]

The Very Worst Books of 2023

I've shared with the world my favorite books from this year, so it only feels fair for me to release my diss track and spit all over some of the worst literature my eyes have ever seen.

When you read more than 50 books in a single year, there are bound to be some baddies. And I don't mean the kind that slay. I'm talking about the kind you want to drop kick into a dumpster fire where it belongs.

Let's discuss my criteria for the title of Worst Book. I'm not one to shame a book without valid reason. I don't think that's fair to the author.

The prose is flat, one dimensional, or uncreative

The plot lacks good foundation, structure, or has unignorable holes

My suspension of disbelief was not held

I found myself disliking the author's portrayal and direction of the characters which went beyond them being unlikable or unreliable

Generally speaking, I'm a nice person. I like to praise writers for accomplishing something so huge rather than rip them apart because I didn't like their book. Frankly, it was kind of hard to pick 5 of the worst books I read simply because I don't dislike books that often. But alas, here I have the chosen ones.

5. School Spirits - Rachel Hawkins

I went on a Rachel Hawkins binge this year. I read her Hex Hall series in an effort to heal my inner child. I could distinctly recall being 12 years old and begging my mom to buy me the first Hex Hall book at Books A Million. I'd seen it on the back of a J-14 magazine and I just had to have it. But she said no. And for over 10 years, I wondered what I had missed out on.

As it turns out, not much. The story is mid. It's just another Harry Potter rip off that lacks creativity. I still had a good time reading it, but it had a lot of problems. And somehow, at the end of the series, I just couldn't let it go. Don't look at me like that, YA witch school stories are fun! So I moved on to School Spirits.

This book had Issues. First of all, it's a spinoff of the original Hex Hall books and the series got killed before Hawkins could finish it. So it ends with two major plot points completely unresolved. Along with that, there were many smaller plot holes and simple continuity errors which made me think this book as hastily thrown together after the success of the original books.

However, if I'd been 14 years old and reading this book, I probably would've ate it up and left no crumbs. It's funny at times and has a good story. The characters are likable and true to their nature. Unfortunately, it's just the unresolved ending that pushed this one to the bottom of the barrel for me.

4. The Half of It - Madison Beer

I know what you're thinking. Milly, you must be so evil to rate someone's life story so poorly. But that's just it. This ISN'T a life story. It's not a memoir in the slightest.

Most of the chapters go like this: Beer tells us something happened. She only half describes something and doesn't show us anything. Then she gets into her feelings about it for the rest of the chapter. Then the next chapter would be an "Ask Amy" style section where she offers advice to her reader. Then the next is a journal prompt for the reader. Girlypop, I'm sorry but that is not what a memoir is. The whole time I was reading this book I kept wanting so badly for her to give me something, ANYTHING. It wasn't until the very last chapter when she finally showed the reader a scene that was super well described and I realized this is what I've been wanting from her the whole time.

This "memoir" was written exclusively for her superfans who know everything about her life and just want more of her heart. That's fine. But for the casual memoir reader, this was not a good book. Miss Beer could've put all of this on a Tumblr blog and it would've sufficed.

For a young reader though, I could see some parts of this book being beneficial. She poses a lot of thought-provoking questions. She went through something really challenging that some girls would want to end their lives over, and I think her sharing how she handled it and felt about it is really powerful.

3. Magpie - Elizabeth Day

(spoilers ahead)

How would you feel if you read a book, and then half way through it you had to read it again but from a different perspective? Well, that's what Magpie is. In this book, you're following a woman (Marisa) who is pregnant and living with her husband when they invite another woman (Kate) to live in their house and pay them rent to help with pregnancy/baby costs.

Except half way through, we find out the narrator is unreliable. And then we go back in time and see everything that happened from the beginning up to the point when we learn about the unreliability from the perspective of Kate. And even then, we still don't know how the story is going to end or who the real villain is.

It really felt to me as if the author had had one idea, got half way through, and then thought, "what if I do something else instead?" and then created Magpie. I honestly would have been totally okay with an unreliable narrator if I hadn't had to see everything happen again from Kate's perspective. The story would have been a much better read to me had we not gone the route of Marisa being the crazy one and sent the plot in a different direction.

2. Girlfriend on Mars - Deborah Willis

We have taken the space shuttle past a number of dying stars, and here we arrive at the black hole.

Girlfriend on Mars was nothing like I thought it would be. I was expecting a fun, goofy reality show up on Mars. Sounds like a good enough time for me. But this book was in the same vein as My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It's about two mentally unstable people who need to go to therapy and maybe move somewhere with more sun.

Aside from the characters giving me absolutely no reason to root for them, the writing is downright atrocious. There were so many grammatical errors in the ebook version that I wanted to barf. Quotation marks are stylized differently from chapter to chapter and I couldn't find any reason for them being so. So many pop culture references are made, and I think putting pop culture in a work of literature is vile. It ages a book faster than parmigiano reggiano.

There is also a major plot hole at the end that I could not forgive.

But, I did like "Season 2" despite it only being the last 20% of the book. I liked how real shit got when the two contestants made it to Mars. I thought this was the best part of the book. It was poignant and it stuck with me. I finally felt like all that reading wasn't for nothing.

1. Ugly Love - Colleen Hoover

(spoilers ahead)

A lot of people will hate me for this but this was one of the worst books I ever read period. Like, everything that could go wrong went wrong for me.

Let me just do a bullet point list.

The writing of the characters is weak and unrealistic. No one really develops as a character and their stage direction is confusing at times. Dillon was unnecessary and so was Cap.

The male stereotypes made me cringe so hard. Colleen makes it seem like men only want sex, men feel no physical pain, men have to keep their emotions bottled up.

There was mild homophobia in Corbin repeatedly being like "Are you gay? No? I wish you were gay."

Miles' poetry-esque chapters also made me cringe and came across as creepy and weird

He did WHAT with his teen stepsister in the shower???

Tate is not a character I can root for. She has no self respect, no drive, no personality, no growth. She's immature and lets people walk all over her. She lies about what she wants and cannot be honest with herself. She needs THERAPY. Nothing about her made me like her or want to see her happy.

The biggest sin here is that Colleen chose the wrong people to write the story about. I did not care about Tate one bit, but I did think there was huge potential in the story of Miles and Rachel. If I'd seen this story in a writing workshop, I would've told her to toss Tate and keep writing their story instead. Had we been able to get into Rachel's head, witness her pain at the death of her newborn, and see her and Miles find love again after being apart and maybe even having another baby together (and NOT being step siblings, bc ew) would've been an infinitely better love story.

I almost, and I mean almost put Girlfriend on Mars as my worst book of 2023. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was absolutely nothing I liked about Ugly Love. Even the ending, which was somewhat romantic, stung for me because I didn't think these people belonged together. They're the kind of couple that will break up during a spat and then get back together 2 days later like nothing happened.

I will be giving Colleen Hoover a chance at redemption when I read Verity in 2024. Who knows, maybe she'll top the list of my Worst Books two years in a row.

[anonil88]

Malcolm and Marie live blog

I don't usually do liveblogs for movies but yea.

Spoilers ahead!!

I love that its modern timed but very 70s stylized.

A tune indeed.

When you are high and drunk on success and

How the white critic reacts is why I feel like gatekeeping my scripts. At the same time some things I do make are about race or involve.

Marie sitting on the patio smoking is a mood whenever men are talking.

So he's pretentious and unaware.

Whoever chose the music for this, I feel like we would be Spotify mutuals.

Can this nigga stop pacing.

Also can he stop talking;

Marie is so tired and unimpressed.

Also little booties matter and are to be bitten.

Oooo the tension and the jazz.

Title Card over mac and cheese.

Shitty boxes mac and cheese but still mac and cheese.

Tbh i always wonder if spouses/significant others get upset when their spouses don't acknowledge them during speeches.

John sounds so much like his dad but I really hope his acting style differs from his dad a lot.

Guilty confession?

He did not profit off of his partners backstory and then not even acknowledge her.....I.....

If that ever happened to me catch me cussing my partner out during the beginning credits, the end credits, in the car, and at home.

GASLIGHTER!

The way I'm excited for Zendaya to give me some, oooo can she work with Regina King. Please on my knees I pray.

Um no that's not your job to coddle your lead.

He's a dick and the type of dick who makes himself look like a good person around other people.

If Sam Levinson is trying to make his viewers more of misandrist, it's working.

I feel like Marie has her flaws probably a lot of them and we will surely see as this continues, but Malcolm needs to learn how to apologize sincerely.

70s vibes! 70s vibes!

Them kissing and talking about criticism and dreams makes me miss a partner. A partner that I've had and haven't had.

Women really are behind every great man.

Yea sir you fucked a happy moment.

Oh visual allegories for looking in from the outside and cat and mouse chasing and looking from the outside in.

She's saying she doesn't feel noticed by you.

Gas lighter :0 he called her an emotional support dog, bruh.

I would LOVE to co-write or take a writing class held by Sam Levinson. The fights i write are very much in this same realm of reflection and anger and monologue.

Sam.....sam.....are all the sides inside of you doing okay sir?

The ugly side of dating and being in a relationship with someone who struggles with their own demons.

Honestly I could close my eyes and listen to this script being read without seeing these characters visually. Just close my eyes and get a sense of these characters like it was a radio story.

Oh. Oh this is a new wheelhouse of Zendaya acting; a different voice is like breaking through here and her expressions aren't the same we are used to. You can literally hear another character in there....hmm.

Mans is outside really fighting with his invisible demons lmfao.

Selfish ass, how after everything she said you came out of it thinking about your own craft and self instead of how you hurt her.

So she's conditional.

Me: did sam (a white man) say nigga this many times in his script or are the actors adding their own inflections. Not just the lingo used but the topic of race and directing etc. being written by a white writer about black characters is always gonna be a critique when you're writer is a white person.

Alexa play Broken Girls by Saba

He is so hurtful.

A clown nigga a clown look in the fucking mirror you bozo head ass looking like you need some Mehron clown white and a size 16 in clown shoes.

John is doing a really swell performance and reading of these lines.

He is reading her for her insecurities by bringing up his experiences with other women and that.....is yikes.

Arguments can get messy like this in real life but it takes a lot of maturity and control to either not let it get to this point or have a healthy conversation afterwards.

This film is really shot on some very crisp lenses.

They sitting there like 🚬🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️.

Leftover Mac and Cheese and unfinished cigarettes.

The nyt etc. pay walls are so annoying, but there is a work around look at the articles on incognito or add a period at the end of the url.

He sounds like his daddy so much here, weird, this is the only part I'm eh on the dialogue it feels real but a bit out of pace in how they are bouncing off one another.

Nail scissors? So the end is not the only part he based off of Marie. 🙄

ITS A GOOD REVIEW YOU DINGUS but also its a full review they are going to critique things. She isn't wrong though he did profit off of a woman's story that was not his own to profit from.

Yes Malcolm because unfortunately all marginalized people look through a lens of life that is inherently political because of the world they live in.

He is so mad and upset and had a lot on his chest. But I think he Malcolm and Sam are talking about something thats an issue and a non issue. Being critiqued for you art is hard but also Malcolm is not super self aware. He's like a stand in figure of for example rich depop sellers who wanna be oppressed so badly they yell at others instead of examining their own personal behaviors and ethics.

Oh Marie, when you know the spark is gone and you pick fights because.

He ain't even ask her to read?

One critic I have for most of hollywood actors is they learn their cry and that is it. A change from this is Margot Robbie, I adore her fluctuations of crying being similar but the crying is carried differently for each character. If I had to say any actor that does a cry scene amazing its this woman right here (Amy Adams)

You stole her story from her and gave it away, she has a right to be upset and angry and a rubber band ball of emotions.

Citizen Kane, not the cinematography, but the story is it even that good? (Unpopular opinion but meh, maybe in my rewatch it will be better.)

But that is what people want authenticity and whatever authenticity means to them. What is real for one is false for another.

To be honest look at the criticism of Euphoria, well earned, but a lot of people were like this isn't real even though he literally wrote about his own life. People said it was inauthentic like....wtf.

Ahh the smoking is just a habit, he quit and she didn't.

CAST ZENDAYA IN A HORROR MOVIE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING. Get Lupita and Zendaya and some more black actors preferably less known ones in a horror movie. One with a interesting script and story, directed by Regina King. Please and thankyou.

I love Marie yep that was amazing.

Behind every great man is a greater woman, one that deserves her credit for how she has stood behind. I wonder the stories of those women, what they have sacrificed or not sacrificed. Their thoughts and feelings when the world is surrounding their partner and views them as a plus one. (I'd write a short script about this but I think do I have the time, can I, or am I equipped ?)

He is a shitty person for bringing up his exes, like she even said I don't wanna know any of that.

Imagine being on anti depressents and rarely having a sex drive and then when you do your partner starts talking about their exes and tearing you apart for all your faults.

I love when you see peaks of Zendaya's cadence in roles.

Tension, what if's and he didn't even bring her up in his speech.

Marie to herself and the audience:

He is not afraid that he will loose her but as my character says in my unreleased story, "i can't wait til you give me a fucking reason to leave your ass." Malcolm expects everything in order for not even doing the bare minimum and she is only asking him for something as simple as consideration. She just wants him to be considerate. He wants to get married and considers their relationship like rolling down a hill at full speed and he cannot apologize, he cannot be considerate, and he cannot admit his wrongs. He can only offer her I love yous that he probably does mean but he does not back up outside of what he's done for her in the past. The past which was more of her experience than his and he sees his part in it as a burden. He doesn't use his own vantage point of the past to further his career he uses her. He does all of these things without a real apology or thankyou because he is not afraid to loose her.

The restrictions of quarantine and the panorama have made Sam's writing very no frills. I wonder how other films from other directors and writers that are filmed in small contained crews like this will be structured. But this was a very good movie gonna add to my letter box 3.3-3.5

Oh shit this is my song,

Ratings/overall thoughts:

Script is like a C+, B- : I could go into my heavier big brain thoughts on the script but I don't feel like it. You catch hints of it above it centers conversation on race and privilege, mainly the writers and questions i have that won't be answered but Sam did make me grow disdain for Malcolm over a short time. Which is sometimes hard to do because im one sympathetic person but the sympathy i have for Malcolm is at 0. Maybe a 2 at some scenes but then it quickly goes back to 0. Some parts of the dialogue miss the mark or hit the are off balanced. While some of it like Malcolm's bathroom speech albeit mean is really strong or their conversation when he comes back from peeing really shines for me.

Performances: B+ to A- because they carried the script further than it could of gone with less talented actors. The monologues do well to showcase their current skill levels which are already high af and leave room for anticipation in where these actors go next.

Zendaya holding a knife: A+ with a gold star. That switch on and off and on is delectable.

John being a shitty boyfriend but following Marie like a lost puppy: B+ with a good job written at the bottom of the paper, Malcolm being nervous a frantic dialed up with more realistic nervousness would have sold me completely on Malcolm's anxious waiting.

Cinematography: A and a participation award.

The mac and cheese: A+ for the easy mac. Wish it was like Annie's or Velveeta.

Cigarettes: Participation award and their picture hung up for student of the month. Why the grill lighter? Everytime Malcolm opened up his mouth Marie was like sparks fly.

The music: A++ with a prize. Whoever picked the music probably makes good Spotify playlists.

[tardisbadwolfrose]

For the character thing, please do Rose Tyler

Ooo thats fun. I was not expecting a doctor who character. Ok. Lets go.

Why I like them: part of it is just because she was my first companion. I fell in love with Doctor Who through her. But also, theres something to be said for a perfectly normal, ordinary person with flaws and who probably doesnt think much of themselves, who is young and naive and loving, who ends up doing extraordinary things without some preternatural destiny guiding them. The only other companion who really hit on that was Bill. Donna had a bit, but there were elements of s4 that implied that it was all some sort of prophecy coming together. The DoctorDonna and all that. Rose really was so ordinary. Even Bad Wolf was born of something so ordinary, so human, this intense love and desire to protect. Rose was, in so many ways, such a perfect first companion, because from the beginning shes such an every girl. And she has so much compassion for so many. Everytime she interacts with people, especially people who work for other people, she treats them like people and like equals. Theres the mechanic in "the end of the world," gwenyth, etc. I just... Ugh. I love her. Bills still my fave, but rose is a VERY close second.

Why I don't like them: her selfishness. I dont know if its really that I dont like her because of it, because I like that she has a real, human flaw, and its a real reason that people might dislike them. It means shes well written, and feels real and human. But it still bugs me. Especially in s1, but even in parts of s2. She treats Mickey and her mother with this dissmissiveness, which is very immature. Like she thinks they only exist when shes around. She gets called on it though, and pretty early on. She never fixes it fully, especially where Jackie is concerned, but she makes an effort. But you can especially see it in school reunion, with her jealousy of sarah jane. She has a problem with the people she loves fully having lives outside of her, especially when those lives seem like a threat to the one shes creating.

Favorite Episode: the Parting of ways, fear her, turn left, or stolen earth/journeys end. Aka, im a simple girl with simple pleasures, and those pleasures are rose being a badass/saving the day. Special mention for the idiot lantern bc i must have watched it 20 times and they give me LIFE the doctor and rose in that episode.

Favorite season: 2. Shes starting to get more confident and sure of herself, but shes still human and flawed.

Favorite Line: whatever the hell she says during the christmas invasion, when shes trying to get the sycorax to leave. Its utter bull, makes zero sense, and its beautiful.

OTP: Doctor/Rose. Any doctor. Im a little desperate to see rose/thirteen. Also Rose/doctor/river. If ianto didnt exist, id say rose/jack/doctor, but alas, he does.

Favorite outfit: oh god. Either the one in the unquiet dead, the idiot lantern, the long game, or the doctor dances. There are so many more though. Her costuming was brilliant.

BroTP: rose and jack.

Headcanon: you mean besides time lord/immortal Rose? Ok here it goes.

So when Rose dropped out of high school for Jimmy Stone, she ran away. Went off on tour with Stone and his band. While on tour, she got.very close to the other band members, including the lead singer/lyricist, a very cute 20 yr old Welshman going through his rebellious phase named Ianto Jones, who helped her figure out she needed to go home and, in the process realized he needed to stop rebelling and start acting like a mature adult, leading to him eventually signing on with Torchwood. Meanwhile, Rose is stranded all the way in Paris because she won't stay on that tour bus with Jimmy, and she's terrified to call her mum, who had told her she'd never forgive her if she ran off and wasted her life on Jimmy. Penniless and desperate, walking alone in the rain, Rose thinks she's never going to make it back to London when she almost gets run over by a car after forgetting to watch where she's going and wandering into the street. The driver swerves and just barely miss her, and after pulling over, a man hops out of the car and starts admonishing her, when Rose bursts into tears. Feeling badly, the man insists on taking her home. She tells him home is in London, too far away for her to accept, but the man refuses to listen, telling her he was heading to London anyway, and here, why don't you borrow my cell phone and call your mum, I'm sure she wants you home. He's right of course, and Jackie cries from relief at hearing from her and is thrilled she's coming home. The man's name was Rory, she learned on the drive, and he was married to a wonderful woman who he loved named Amy, and they lived in Leeds but he was travelling around from work and he was heading from Paris to London because of it. It took six hours to gt back to London, and once they got there, her mum treated Rory to breakfast and he went on his way and rose never saw him again.

Yes, it was that Rory. He was with Amy and the Doctor and he got stranded in Paris in the early 2000's and he wasn't heading into London at all but he felt very bad about almost hitting the poor girl with his car and he recognized her from an old picture he found while he was wandering the Tardis and he brought it to the doctor to ask him about it and the Doctor got very sad and very quiet and walked very quickly away from the conversation and Rory figured that meant that he used to travel with her and there was a sad story in there somewhere and he was curious about the girl and how she'd inspire that kind of emotion from a man he'd rarely seen care about anything real.

Should I make this a fanfiction? I kind of want to make this an actual fic... Anyway.

Unpopular opinion: ...She is a very much not straight woman. I don't know if that's unpopular, but it isn't popular. Or at least, it isn't talked about.

A wish: That she comes back in S13 and we see a reunion. I am but a simple girl with simple pleasures and I have been WAITING WITH BATED BREATH FOR A ROSE COMEBACK FOR YEARS AND I AM O V E R D U E.

An OMG-Please-Don't-Ever-Happen: For a character that is no longer in the show there isn't much I can say. I'd be very disappointed if they brought Rose back and ruined it but that requires them to bring her back first.

5 words that best describe them: Kind, good, jealous, badass, loving

My nickname for them: I don't really have one

Give me more characters! I love this!

[ledamemangociana]

RANKING HAISUTE (or the ones i’ve seen so far)

not that anyone has asked me, but i’ve literally been so hyperfixated on these shows for MONTHS and although i’ve gotten my bestie into them now, it’s not like i can bombard them with all these deep-ish dives into these things and how much and why i love them, so i thought HEY why not just put it out into the ether coz DAMN i really wanna talk about them.

under the cut for length (HELLA LENGTH) and spoilers.

let me preface this first by saying i havent seen ALL the shows yet. i havent ever watched the first run of Itadaki No Keshiki, and i havent seen any of the new Karasuno cast shows yet, as by the time i had gotten hooked on these shows, the time to watch Strongest Challengers and Battle At The Garbage Dump on DMM.com had passed, and with my limited budget (i havent been able to work properly since literally mid-July last year), it’ll be a while before i can afford their twin pack DVD when it comes out next month. ALTHOUGH i am hoping to be able to download Fly High on DMM.com before the availability runs out in the middle of March, if i’ll actually have enough money for that.

additionally, i rank these from my least favorite to most favorite, but that does not mean that i hate or dislike any of them. in fact, i have little to zero negative things to say about any of these shows. i just happen to love some more than the others, and i think you’ll be able to tell by how long i go on about each show. i’ll TRY to keep things concise but im telling you now, i’ve already tried this once until an accidental button press erased everything i had written, and this will not be short. at all.

i’ll start first with the things i love about Haisute in general:

quite obviously, the projections. before i finally saw Haisute this year, i had only ever seen BNHA, KNY and Kuroshitsuji musicals, and while they have awesome set pieces, i had never seen video projections utilized the way Haisute does, and i think it’s so wonderful and creative, and so technically sound on everyone’s part. like, it has to be so precise with cast performance and blocking and sound and lights...like. dudes. shout-out to the tech staff of Haisute, y’all are amazing.

the acting performances in general. i dont think there’s a bad actor at all in any of these. some stiff-ish performances (Noah Ishikura as Lev, but mostly in SoE, which was his first time acting ever, so understandable), maybe, but even those actors do great when they’re having a pivotal moment, scene or dialogue. it’s hard to pick faves but somehow i do have them, lol - Kenta Suga as Hinata (obviously), Kentaro as Daichi, Hiroki Ino as Suga, Kousuke Asuma as Oikawa, literally ALL THREE BOKUTOS, literally BOTH AKAASHIS, Ami Saito as Yachi, Tatsunari Kimura as Kageyama, and my top two faves, Shori Kondo and Takato Nagata as KuroKen. for obvious reasons (see: my numerous gifsets that i still have so much to add to alkdjf).

the music is WONDERFUL. the varieties across shows, teams and characters while still maintaining the main themes are just so good. it’s easier for them to be highlighted to since there isnt any singing, and so many moments are told through the music rather than the music accompanying the moment imo.

the choreography is gold af. im sad we lose HIDALI after Tokyo Battle, but im sure the rest of the shows still keep that amazing spark. but i juST. HIDALI’s choreography is iconic. i’ll talk abt it a bit more in some of the entries in the list.

OKAY, now on to the rankings.

7. View from the Top (2nd Run) so again, I DONT HATE ANY OF THESE SHOWS. the reason this is at the bottom of my list is mostly because of what it doesnt have through no fault of its own, rather than anything that it does. i personally love watching character growth and evolution, so for the most part, the first story in anything that has multiple follow-ups tend to be my least favorite part, and i come to enjoy them more as a “look how far we’ve come” thing. that being said, i do think this was such an awesome show to kick-off what has become an iconic 2.5D franchise. so much of it feels like the transition from potential to kinetic energy. a little show that could, and then did. i do think i enjoy this more with a nostalgic sort of fondness than i do with a “look how cool this thing is!” feeling, but again, that’s coz i enjoy watching things changing rather than at the start. what definitely stands out to me here is that i came to it this as only my fourth 2.5D franchise, and the ones i’d watched before this were so different in staging and execution, and that really had me hooked. also, this franchise honestly is one of the best casting in any show i’ve ever seen in my life, like wtf, i havent seen a badly cast actor at all, even for the side characters i dont really pay that much attention to otherwise. you cant help but be sucked into the bright light that is Kenta Suga, and Kousuke Asuma has to be the most Oikawa Oikawa to ever Oikawa anything Oikawa. Tatsunari, Ryotaro and Justin absolutely jumped right out of the manga and anime and onto the stage as Kags, Tsukki and Asahi. and GAWD do i love me some Kentaro and Hiroki as DaiSuga. i went in a big fan and simp of Hiroki Ino and Sugawara, so for the first couple of watches, i was heavily focused on Ino!Suga, but by the third rewatch, Ken-chan came around a corner and smacked me in the face with a 2x4 wrapped in barbed wire. when that man smiles, i just get murdered.

6. Start of the Giant i honestly had a hard time picking between this and InK for the bottom spot, not because i hate this (AGAIN, I DONT HATE ANY OF THESE SHOWS), but because of how this show feels to me. ultimately, i picked this one to win over InK because of how much character progression is shown between these two shows. stating the obvious, KAZUMA KAWAHARA. HOO BOY. and big, BIG shout-outs to Kouhei Shiota for portraying Tanaka’s emotional roller-coaster so excellently to stride alongside Ennoshita’s big journey and Kazuma’s powerhouse performance. i also wanna spotlight how much more comfortable Tatsuya Kageyama was in his second go-around as Kags, and how well Keita Tanaka and Naoki Tanaka came in as new(old)!Daichi and new!Suga. it took me a while to get to this show because i was so sad to lose Ken-chan and Hiroki after SoE, and i thought i just would not be able to love DaiSuga the same way. turns out that that’s a good thing, because they do play similar but different DaiSugas to Kentaro and Hiroki. it possibly also helped to know that KT wasn’t entirely new, and to have known of Naoki from BNHA (with Hiroki!), although i hadnt known it was him until i started the show up at last, lol. Kentaro got to play a captain who was warm and very much one of the boys, someone who was growing into the role of a captain of a team that had a very real chance of going farther than it had in a while, while KT got to play a Daichi who, fittingly, was more established as a pillar of the group (and im sure the storytelling of this show helped with that), more of that Dadchi that we know and love. Hiroki got to play a gentle but mischeivous Suga who was all about watching over and taking care of the team, watching and waiting for his turn while understanding that Kags was their best chance, while Naoki got to play a more active, more athletic Suga who was becoming more active the closer the team got to Nationals. their performances stood out not just coz they were new, but because of the theme of this story in particular, about captains and leading, so i thought it was quite a nice way to welcome them into the fold. i also of course enjoyed Johzenji and Wakunan, maybe Johzenji more than Wakunan. i saw someone say they’re a bit like Fukurodani and Nekoma lite, and i can totally see and agree with that. this show also feels a bit like Revival lite, in that it’s got a fun first half and then a more action-packed second match with an emotional gutpunch at the end. but ultimately, this is lower on my list because, through no major fault of its own, it felt like a filler show, considering what was coming after this. it felt a bit like “lets’ get on with this story so we can get on to the last hurrah that everyone is looking forward to.” of all the side teams to have been portrayed in the Engeki story, i feel like i remember johzenji and wakunan less. again, that’s not really anyone’s fault, it’s just where this show was positioned in the timeline and what it was ultimately representing. as a parting thought tho, i just wanna shout-out the new lighting scheme they did for this show, especially coming from SoE where there was a lot of darkness or back-lighting. this show is brighter lit in general than most of the shows that came before it, and idky exactly but i do appreciate that a lot.

5. Winners And Losers objectively, this is probably one of the top 3 shows in all of Haisute’s history. but it’s lower on my list because it is the most taxing to watch and rewatch, not because it’s too slow or anything like that, but because it really just is such a tiring story, and i think that’s deliberate on the part of the writers and directors. this was Karasuno’s first major loss, and it was against an opponent they thought they knew, so of course the lead-up had to be a big deal. it’s also a story that revolves quite a bit around kageyama reaching a turning point and learning a few lessons that would ultimately change him, so the story had to also execute that change happening not just in Kageyama but around him. add to that the fact that this was Tatsunari’s goodbye performance (as well as Shohei’s as Noya, but then he doesn’t really get a big emotional moment here) and it’s just heavy on the emotions all around. the comedic distraction of ShoriTaka as Tetsuko and Kenko was honestly quite welcome, lmao. quick little shout-out to Kousuke Asuma and Allen Kohatsu as IwaOi, since they got to really show off the different sides to both those characters in this, and they just are stellar in general. that bit at the end of one of their flashbacks where Iwa-chan tells Oikawa that he’s not the only one fighting, there’s six people in that team, and Oikawa breaks into laughter as Kousuke strips off the flashback jacket, and Iwa’s like “uuuhhh did i hit you too hard, or?” UGH, i love that bit, that almost creepy laugh from Kousuke and the way he comes out of it to say “suddenly im not so upset” is just SO good. im also so happy to see Hiroki get his due as Suga when he finally gets to step up to the plate - or net, as it were - and basically pinch-hit for Kags. he plays senpai!Suga so sweetly, like you really can’t help but love him coz he’s so caring. i also did not expect to be hit right in the feels with the switch back from him to Kageyama, but that bit where he says “it’s frustrating, but hinata’s expression when he’s hitting my sets is different from when it’s yours” really got me. and then when he had to leave the court, asahi and daichi send a fist bump his way, and he gives just this tiny fist bump wave that’s both tired and disappointed and sad, and it’s juST! it hurts me everytime. and before this gets long, im gonna just spotlight the last 10-15 minutes of the show, right after Karasuno loses. Kenta absolutely nails Hinata’s expression in the manga, that wide-eyed disbelief and shock. and then when Daichi tells him not to apologize because he didn’t miss, when Daichi just walks over and hugs him, good gawd. (sidebar, but i’m so glad i got to see that bit with both Ken-chan here and KT in Strongest Team.) and the way Hinata couldn’t move after thanking the audience, not even after Ukai called him back, so Daichi had to actually go get him? my heart was in PIECES. and then the fuggin dinner scene. LORD ABOVE. like, if you dont love Kenta Suga as Hinata, this is the scene that should convince you you’re wrong.

4. The Strongest Team this is right smack dab in the middle of the list because it’s probably the best staged show of all the seven that i’ve seen, but it also hurts me so much for all the obvious reasons. this is the one i’ve rewatched the least, and everytime i rewatch it, i cry as if it’s the first time im watching it. the whole show absolutely feels like a tribute to the Karasuno cast and all the growth they’ve had and contributed to Haisute over their three years with the show, and the entire thing feels so fond, if that makes any sense. everyone on the team gets a big emotional moment, and it’s so sweet to see them each paid tribute. aside from them, i gotta AGAIN shout-out kousuke as oikawa. i like aoba josai enough, i like oikawa enough as a character, but that moment when kousuke absolutely broke down in the locker room after losing to karasuno broke my heart, even more so knowing that he absolutely felt all that gratitude because he wasnt sure he’d be able to come back to the show coz of his hip injury. i think one little moment that doesnt get as talked about as it should is just after he and Iwaizumi have that short convo of always being each other’s partners even after they’ve moved on to different schools. they do their fist bump, and then Iwa walks away, but Kousuke/Oikawa is still absolutely in tears, and as Iwa walks off, he just kind of reaches out and lets out a pained “Iwa-chan!” that’s just barely audible, and that jUST. GETS ME EVERYTIME. hell, im feeling a little heartstring pull right now just thinking about it. i also wanna shout-out Shiratorizawa because Engeki made me actually care about them. like, okay - i dont hate Shiratorizawa, at all. but watching the anime, despite having an entire season be around them, i just never really latched onto them. i like Ushiwaka enough, and i just...dont like Tendou (sue me). but Engeki Haikyuu has a habit of spotlighting other teams and characters enough to make you actually think about them and care about them, and Shiratorizawa was the biggest example of that for me. their theme is awesome, it’s this big, deep, heavy thing that feels as big and broad as the players look. and i could feel their almost militaristic teamwork when the coach is on them, and it’s so good. speaking of Coach Washijo, shout-out to that flashback scene to his younger days. Kenta looked absolutely risible in the wig and giant eyebrows, but i think it was an important touch to have the person playing Hinata be the person playing younger Washijo, because their inner conflicts are basically the same, and Washijo comes to appreciate Hinata’s efforts because of it, so i thought that was a nice touch. (still dont like Tendou tho, sue me.) i gotta end this entry coz it’s getting long, so im just gonna quickly list my favorite scenes/moments:

Yamaguchi’s pinch serve, and bringing out the spear. Kairi Miura wields that spear like he’s been doing it all his life.

Tsukki’s big “GODDAMMIT I THINK I LOVE VOLLEYBALL NOW” moment. the expression on ryotaro’s face right at the end of that scene, where he’s basically saying “it’s just a club, AND YET!” uuuggggghhhh, please i love it. also, shout-out to when Hinata pointed at him and just said “...nice.” like...that always feels like only half Hinata and Tsukki, and more half-Kenta and his best friend Ryotaro, just like the “Tsukki! that one was worth a 100 points!” line that absolutely gets Ryotaro so that on the live cam he had to turn his head away before he meant to for the next bit.

that moment in the last-ish set of the match where everyone is just DESPERATE to win, so it becomes this frantic rally and volley where everyone just starts to grunt and yell louder and louder, and people are running back and forth and jumping and diving, and it’s just this cacophony of sound and blur of movement that just seems to stretch on and on, until finally Shiratorizawa just yells “SHUT UP! WE’RE STRONGER!” and knocks all of Karasuno down. WHEW. that bit is just. WHEW. i almost always forget to breathe at that point. and then the waterworks get turned on as Ukai tearfully tells them to get back up, because volleyball is a sport where you HAVE to look up. LORDDDDD.

the bit towards the end of the match, after tsukki returns from his injury, where they absolutely acted out Ushiwaka pushing Hinata and Tsukki to the floor and holding their heads down. when i first watched it, i gasped because that is straight out of the anime and manga, and then when the rest of Karasuno came in to pull Ushi off, i just turned into a giant sobbing mess.

the graduation curtain call, obviously, but in particular, the bit that will ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL, destroy me is when Kenta says “this show was so tiring and tough sometimes, but when i look back, all i can remember are the good times, the best times.” GODDAMMIT IM TEARING UP BADLY RN JUST THINKING ABOUT THAT BIT.

3. Summer Of Evolution this is where the lines between the rankings get a little bit blurred, because i love these top three equally for the most part, but i had to choose a number two (i absolutely know what my number one is), and when i really think about it, SoE just gets edged out by my number two, but barely. i think what i love the most about this show is that this, more than any of the other shows, really portrays these characters as high school kids. and that’s not just because part of the story is set in the school and it’s actually showing the school sometimes, but coz they’re going through and portraying teenage experiences and emotions. most of the other shows portray the team in matches, so we’re seeing them more as volleyball players than teenagers or students, but we get to finally see that here, and it’s really refreshing. other than that, im gonna try to just list some of my highlights and favorites again coz i dont wanna keep going too long:

im so glad to finally have girls on the show, and not just in a “YAY FEMINISM! GIRL POWER! WHOO!” kind of way. kiyoko has always felt like an inextricable part of the team for me, so it was bittersweet to have such a great Karasuno cast but without a Kiyoko, so i was REALLY happy to finally get her here! and for a first time actor ever, Shizune was so awesome! she absolutely has that gentle strength that Kiyoko has, and the way she’s been written in absolutely does feel like she’s always been there. i do wish she got more to do with the third year boys, but all in all, it’s SO good to have an actual Kiyoko who absolutely looks like she came out of the manga.

im also just so DAMN happy about Yachi and her portrayal here. i think ami saito is so dang perfect, and yachi is such a fun addition that fits right in with the chaotic fun of Karasuno. one thing that i REALLY love, though, is how she gets to just act. before Haisute, my only experience of female characters and actors on a 2.5D stage is with Uraraka (and two or three other female students) in BNHA and Elizabeth in Kuroshitsuji, and those characters are your typical cutesy girls, and their movements and body language are so typically girly, you know what i mean, those softer arms and smaller movements, looser fingers, these little “Kyaa~” things, those things. but Kiyoko, Yachi and Saeko arent like that, so that’s not how they’re portrayed here. Ami as Yachi is just as loud and expressive and active as the Karasuno boys, bar actually playing in a match. also, her chemistry with Kenta is SO GOOD. i dont really ship YachiHina, i think they’re cute friends, but BOY DID THESE TWO MAKE ME RETHINK THAT. ami’s Yachi with Kenta’s Hinata made me think “YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THESE TWO GO ON A CHAPERONED DATE.” they’re adorable. a particular fave of mine is when hinata climbs a tree to help a baby bird back into its nest and he asks Yachi if she wants to climb up too, and also after Yachi finishes making the Hinata poster, she jumps onto the back of Hinata’s bike and they ride off-stage together. PLEASE IT’S SO CUTE.

also: SAEKO NEE-SAN PLEASE STEP ON ME.

OH HI FUKURODANI. they are such good chaos boys, i love them. i dont have much to say about them here just yet, but WOW im so glad to have them onstage at last.  

NEKOMA IS BACK THANK GAWD I LOVE NEKOMA. of all the teams portrayed, i think nekoma is the one that feels the most connected together (AHA!). like, even when they have a new character and/or cast member, the new ones never really stand out as new, they feel like they’ve always been there. this play really showcases the teams at their most casual so we dont get to see as much of their excellent teamwork and connection as we do in past and future shows, but you really get a sense of their family dynamic and just GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, and honestly dont get me started on ShoriTaka, i will literally never stop

shout-out to Tatsuya Kageyama, he had big shoes to fill not just in terms of character but also as an actor, since this is his first show ever. much like with KT and Naoki as DaiSuga, it does feel like he plays a similar enough Kageyama without just mimicing Tacchu. this is also the right Kags arc to introduce a new Kageyama actor with as well, since there’s a big change after that loss to Aoba Josai and Oikawa, so i think the writing of the show also absolutely helped Kage-chan ease into his role, and helped the audience ease into this new Kageyama. overall, i think he did an awesome job, and we’re really fortunate to have had two awesome Kageyamas before gen 1/1.5 changed to gen 2.

i also just noticed/realized that the backstage video for SoE starts with the introduction of Kage-chan and Fucchi as new cast members, and ends with the farewell to Ken-chan and Hiroki as graduating members, and i know that’s just natural coz the first time the Karasuno cast met the two new members was at the photoshoot for visuals, but also what a nice little circle of life there.

COMING INTO THE HOMESTRETCH NOW, if you’ve made it this far, thank you SO MUCH, im sorry, i really just have a tendency to ramble, and like i said, i dont really have anyone or an opportunity to talk this deep about these shows to, so thanks so much for your time.

2. Karasuno, Revival! WHEW okay, so idk if this is Unpopular Opinion or controversial coz objectively it is the best show so far, and i’ve put it only at number 2. BUT LISTEN: before i saw Tokyo Battle, this was absolutely my number 1 favorite. the Dateko match is so good and so fun to watch, and honestly, that rap battle gives me so much life im almost immortal now. i LOVE that they also got to show ikejiri (THANK YOU KENTA SUGA) and ken-chan as daichi got his moments because of it, and it gave us “katou tou shinakya, katenai!” as an iconic quote and theme for the show, we got a fantastic moment for Asahi that was paid off from the previous show, also honestly “otchita kyougo, tobenai garasu” is just gonna be stuck in your head forever for a while. we also got Kousuke and Allen’s excellent IwaOi back, bringing with them their “Iwa-chan, are you my mom” dynamic (and gawd the cackle i let out when Iwa yeets a volleyball at Oikawa, or that turn and yell that makes Oikawa yelp as he exits off stage lkasdjf), which is always a plus. but! BUT!! best thING FOR ME???? NEKOMA, BABY!! like im sorry, im biased, but i fuggin LOVE nekoma, kuroo is my favorite character in the entire series, and Haisute really gave them a fantastic story and dynamic, because again, there’s so much you can do on stage that you sometimes cant do in anime or manga, so they were really able to highlight Nekoma’s famous teamwork, especially when centered around Kenma. more on that later, but like. it was just such a JOY to watch Karasuno, still kind of scattered puzzle pieces at this point trying to figure out how to best go together to create one big picture, go up against the smooth teamwork of Nekoma, and learn and grow from it. also they honestly have the best team theme music and team dance, fite me. also thank you Haisute for making KuroDai so painfully real lakdsfj

1. Tokyo Battle okay okaY OKAY OKAY OKAY. i think there are some people who actually like this the least coz it’s just too different from the rest of the shows that came before it - no Karasuno, less projections, different music style, aesthetically different stage, etc. B U T. aside from me just being biased because Nekoma are my favorite team, i actually think many of those differences are what makes this show my favorite one. first of all, the music is LIT AF. the themes for each team are so distinct, they really help play up the animal motifs that are played up the most in this show than in any of the others. secondly, THAT CHOREOGRAPHY THO. good gawd. HIDALI said “it’s our last Haisute, let’s go out with a bang” and they really fuggin did. Fukurodani absolutely is TOKYO PARTY TIME, they got to really play up their party birds schtick and i love it. Nohebi i cannot HELP but love because i love snakes, but also, with Nohebi’s cast, you can tell the choreographers were so happy to finally have an actual technical dancer. they had yuu fukuzawa doing the most and then some in playing up the snake theme, and it’s literally so hypnotic to watch his pops, locks and isolations. he’s also just such an AWESOME daisho, and it helps that nohebi are written to be cunning and sneaky. i also love that he and Kuroo seem to actually have a lot of untold history, and i kind of wish we could get a bit more elaboration on that, coz Yuu’s and Shori’s chemistry as frenemy team captains is SO GOOD. and then of course. NEKOMA, BABY!! so okay. kenma absolutely should be the lead of this show, and he is, BUT he’s also, to a certain extent, inextricable from Kuroo and the rest of the team, so that you dont always get that feeling of Kenma being in the spotlight the same way Hinata is (for understandable reasons since Nekoma arent even really the main characters of the story as a whole), and i think that’s important because, again, Nekoma is all about that teamwork and connection. like, Kenma is the lead because he thinks for Nekoma, and Nekoma acts accordingly, instead of how it is usually where the story is showing Hinata’s perspective alone. it also feels like that in terms of the actors. like, technically Takato is zachou, and he is, but also several times in the curtain call speeches, the cast members refer to or mention both Takato and Shori together. even Takato says that when he had spoken to Kenta about how nervous he was about taking up the zachou mantle from him, Kenta had said “if it’s you and shori, you’ll be fine.” they are a unit, and it really comes across in their portrayals of Kuroo and Kenma as well, and even if you love nothing else about this show, you literally cannot help but love that about them. i think the show does a great job revolving the Nekoma team dynamic around that too without making it the ONLY thing that keeps Nekoma together. the star of the show is absolutely the theme of “connection” (more than the other theme of promises), and if you’ve seen the show and you dont cry at the “Tsunage” section as Nekoma wins the match against Nohebi, then are you really watching the show lmao.

OKAY OKAY I’VE REALLY RAMBLED ON, and if you made it all the way here, THANK YOU AND IM SORRY. but also, there’s still a lot of things i wanna talk about that i didnt talk about here coz im mostly a scatterbrain and live half my life radiating BDE - Bokuto Dumbass Energy. so if you’re also ridiculously obsessed with these shows and wanna talk about it, my inbox is open. someone come hyperfixate with me while i make SO MANY MORE GIFSETS OHMYGOD ALL THE GIFSETS geezas crust when i get to Tokyo Battle i will be insufferable.

[rown-cheese]

All the episodes of the cartoon Ratz – part 1

Like I said in my previous post about this cartoon that I really love, there is 52 episodes of it! In the French Wikipedia page, it says that there are also 3 seasons but since I have nothing that prove that, so it doesn’t matter in here. Because I love this cartoon so much, I’m going to explain to you all of the episodes, with a resume and why I love them!

Actually, it will probably be too long for only one post (52 episodes, 52 pictures…) so I’ll divide it in 9 parts! The 8 first will present 6 episodes each and the last one will present 4 episodes, so that way it will be easier for you to read it! All the parts except for the last one will talk about. Like I said, my personal order is the order of the French Wikipedia page, so it will be in that order that I will present them. Once again, don’t worry about it, you don’t have to follow that specific order but the one you want! I will also give you the French names, so in the other languages it won’t be the same but that’s the way I know the cartoon.

A last warning! There will be some spoilers to describe the episodes and the characters in it so if you don’t want to be spoil, you may as well want to come back later! However! If you’re not afraid of spoilers, you can read it, it’ll be fun (at least I hope so).

In this first part, I will present to you the following episodes: Stop, Salut ma poule ! , La nuit du gouda toxique, Le génie du fromage, Panne sèche and Un ami qui vous veut du bien.

Stop is an episode in which Razmo, after a race with Rapido, has a light accident and become paranoid about it and tries to protect Rapido and himself from the dangers of racing, speed, and accidents, acting like a cop, putting a very lot of signages everywhere in the ship and even remaking their ratboards, giving it an AI to force Rapido to drive as slow as possible to protect him, just bothering Rapido more and more.

I think it’s a really good episode to start the show! It introduces us to the main characters, Razmo and Rapido, and understand how they are, their relationship and everything. It’s not my favorite episode but it still is a good one, funny and great. Razmo’s will protect both Rapido and himself is adorable (but a little too much). And even if he is really angry at Razmo for being overprotective and paranoid, Rapido still is showed being happier when he can do anything with his little friend.

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the Captain, Steve the AI

Score: 6.5/10 (I love the demonstrations of affection between Razmo and Rapido and the fact that the episode is almost only about the two of them)

Salut ma poule (which could literally be translated by “Hello chick” I guess) is an episode in which Razmo is having a depressive episode with the beginning of the spring and after Rapido “tries” to comfort him, the little rat comfort himself by saving a chicken from the cook Benny and trying to help her flying despite Rapido explaining him how impossible this is, finally helping her to fly away from the boat and from Benny.

This episode is pretty good! It gives us another aspect of the relationship of Razmo and Rapido, were Rapido is trying, in his own bad way to comfort Razmo, badly but clearly used to Razmo’s blues. Also, it’s a really good demonstration of the heroism of Razmo, being so much into his own things that he doesn’t even notice things that are obvious (like chickens not being able to fly). Also, his way to overcome the problems by doing things more and more strange ending by a success is really awesome! Razmo is the kind of genius that really like to go extreme really fast, using science to protect himself from his different issues, which may have happened a lot because Rapido tries really hard to stop him.

Characters in that episode:  Razmo, Rapido, Benny, Marie the Chicken (she may have another name in English, I don’t know)

Score: 8.5/10 (really funny and soft, one of my favorites episodes with a good rhythm in it)

La nuit du gouda toxique (translated by The night of the toxic gouda) is an “horror-like” episode, but for children obviously, in the Halloween theme (one of the two). In this episode, while Razmo tries to scare Rapido with his pranks, the Captain of the ship accepts chemicals on his boat because he needs money. After making Rapido angry against him, Razmo runs away to prepare an other pranks with goudas but, by accident, some chemicals flow on the goudas who come to live, with the want to eat the two rats.

It’s a nice episode, not the best, but nice to watch sometimes. It screams a little too much for me maybe? This episode shows how weak and easily scared the two rats are but I do like how it describe to us the relationship between the three humans on the boat and how strong Svetlana is (we love strong & tall women here)!! It’s one of the first episodes were the side non-human characters are enemies and promise to come back (and they never do, it happens with one character only, I’ll present them later).

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the three goudas (Mo, Gory and the last one), the Captain, Svetlana, Benny

Score: 5/10 (it’s okay but that’s all)

Le génie du fromage (translated by The cheese genie) is a pretty nice episode in which Rapido and Razmo accidentally awake a genie in a lamp, having 3 wishes to make between the two of them (so one wish and an half each). Razmo then wishes to attract the cheese to himself and Rapido wishes to change everything he touches in cheese.

I love this episode!! It’s so funny and nice, Rapido and Razmo are just so great and well written! The Genie is an absolute jerk with them, playing with what they want and ask, just to give them a lesson (or maybe just to mess with them). Also, the fact Rapido is willing to give up a huge chance to have his dreams just for Razmo is a real strong good point for me. It’s one of the episodes that I just love to watch because it’s a really good episode and I love to re-watch it a lot. And it’s the only one episode with a moral! So yeah, it’s really great.

Characters in that episode: Rapido, Razmo, the Genie

Score: 9.5/10 (I won’t spoil why it lost 0.5 point but it’s because Razmo is my favorite character of this show)

Panne sèche (translated by Off fuel) is an episode where Razmo, in a really huge need of affection or something like that, break the ship, making it off fuel (see? Like the name of the episode, eheh). When another ship’ captain come to help, a weasel attacks him to obligates him to make her fly or she will kill him.

It’s not the best episode but it’s so funny!! Watching it now, there’s a lot of tendentious innuendos in Razmo’s attitude and I can’t help but smile like a dumbass every time because Razmo is needy as hell and Rapido is just used to it like if it happened a lot. And like, for someone who like Rapido, there is good content of him.

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, the Captain, Svetlana, Benny, the weasel, Captain Salami (I believe his name is translated because it makes a joke in French but I don’t know what it is)

Score: 6.5/10 (Nice, lot of adult undertones, Rapido having a bath)

And last but not least! Un ami qui vous veut du bien (translated by A friend with good intentions)! This episode presents us one of the many forgettable nemesis of the two rats, a penguin named Fred who is a thief really good with lying, manipulating Razmo really easily, but not Rapido who understands really quickly that something is wrong with that bird.

It’s not an amazing episode, just a little better in my opinion than La nuit des goudas toxiques because I like it when Razmo plays music, but that’s very personal of me. Also, it gives us some Domestic trope of Rapido and Razmo and I love it so much. And I really love when Rapido doesn’t fall for the lies of someone else because he’s himself a huge liar (but he falls for Razmo’s lies every times) so he’s very angry at everyone trying to manipulate his Razmo (I’m a huge fan of it).

Characters in that episode: Razmo, Rapido, Fred, Benny

Score: 6.5/10 (it gains point because of the jealous!Rapido thing only, yes)

So there it is for that first list! I hope you liked it! I’ll give you the next one as soon as possible!

Please watch Ratz and have a good day!

[scottspack]

my wife @got2ghost tagged me to talk about my 10 favorite ships and why!

yall know i LOVE to talk so lessgo!!!!

KIRK/SPOCK - Star Trek: I know this is a very unpopular opinion with some of my mutuals (I apologize Phoenix and Amy) but as someone who grew up watching TOS with my grandma and next gen with my parents, AOS, which came out when I was 13, was MY Star Trek. It was cool and sleek and pine/quinto were hot and at 13 years old I was like This Is Mine Now and have loved it ever since even though I fully recognize what makes it hard to love for classic trekkies! THAT BEING SAID, the reason i love spirk so much (besides the TOS version and the history and love they have) is because AOS spirk was the first pairing that i ever read fic for that was BEAUTIFUL and MOVING and GUT WRENCHING! this was the pairing that made me realize that fic could even be good! that it could not only be good but be AMAZING! even though the AOS movies fumble the spirk bag over and over and over, the things that fic writers have done with these characters and the stories they’ve created around the differences in AOS made a huge impact on me as a young teen and they still have a huge space in my heart!!!!!!!

Sterek- Teen Wolf: there is absolutely a reason that this pairing got so popular so fast and it’s because their dynamic is genuinely so GOOD and funny and there’s so much to work with!!!! Jeff Davis If Not For The Laws Of This Land I Would Have Slaughtered you, etc, etc, BUT regardless of what was done to them in canon, shipping sterek in 2012-2014 was the most fun ive had online in my entire life and i’ll love sterek forever! on this i swear!!!!!! no homo deserves a nobel peace prize!!!!!!!!!

Ruth/Idgie - Fried Green Tomatoes: i think it was phoenix who reblogged something recently about how so much historical gay rep is tragic and sad and doesn’t focus on the reality that gay people have always existed and not every single one of them lived tragic and sad lives. THAT’S WHAT MAKES RUTH/IDGIE SO IMPORTANT TO ME!!!! the importance of historical gay love that was happy! and accepted by their community! and beautiful! and romantic! they fall in love and start a business and raise a child and live in a happy home together! in 1930s alabama! their dynamic in both the book and the movie is unbelievably sweet and hot and i want to cry just thinking about the TENDER LOVE AND CARE!!!!!!!!!!!

Mulder/Scully - The X Files: they’re my parents and i love them! the skeptic/believer dynamic at it’s absolute fucking best! you want to talk about blueprints? mulder/scully is the fucking blueprint. “scully, is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on?”

Jack/Bitty - omgcp: everyone on tumblr had already moved on by the time i got into omgcp last november, so it feels like im the only one who cares about them anymore but AHHHHHHHHHH i love jack/bitty so much and jack zimmermann in particular (not surprising since spock and lan wangji are two of my other favorite characters, you can see a pattern here) ANYWAYS i think that they are such a fucking good pairing. bitty unconsciously bringing jack out of his shell and making him want to open up and be receptive to love and to be a braver person just by virtue of being apologetically bitty is SO SWEET!! I THINK ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME!!!!!! read Something Like This by emmagrant01 on ao3!!!!

Destiel - Supernatural: i mean what the fuck do you want me to say. its a man in gay love with an angel. if you’ve followed me for any length of time you’ll know two things: im gay and i love the abstract idea of christian mythology. destiel ticks all of my stupid boxes! one of my fave pastimes is going on ao3 and sorting destiel fics oldest to newest and reading all the really good super early fics when no one knew where the show was going with their angel mythology so fic writers relied on the actual bible and took angels seriously and it was GREAT!

Nick/Jess - New Girl: they’re soulmates from SEASON. ONE. EPISODE. ONE. baybee!!!!!!!! aint nothing else to say! 

Flint/Thomas - Black Sails: this is a ship i dont talk about THAT often but is extremely important to me for what it represents. ive written about 500 tag essays about how black sails is important for many reasons, one of which is that it’s a show that believes in gay joy and happy endings for gay people. the fact that flint spent a decade in mourning for thomas, burning down as much of the english empire as he could in retribution for how thomas was treated, killed all of the people who called him a monster for being in love, and then at the end of it all STILL got his happy ending? absolute catharsis. extremely close to my heart.

Larry - One Direction: [explanation redacted]

Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji - The Untamed: new comers and heavy fucking hitters WANGXIAN!!!!!!!! there was no way in hell that i was ever NOT going to be fully in love with them once i started this show. not only are they ancient chinese kirk/spock, but everything else about their dynamic is just so fucking good!!!! childhood enemies to reluctant friends to shy crushes to soulmates in pursuit of justice and Doing The Right Thing to them against the world to one of them dies and the other wears white in mourning for 16 years to one of them is resurrected and the other knows its him immediately to a stronger connection than ever to once again them! against! the! world! to LOVERS to MARRIED to DOMESTIC BLISS AND RAISING THEIR CHILD TOGETHER. its..............a lot! and its so good! 

this was super fun and im going to tag @wolfbuddy, @significationary, @curlytemple, and @nicolegendary (nicole i want to hear your essay on the gay alien cw show very badly) if you guys are interested in doing this!!!

[the-desolated-quill]

Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2019

Congratulations! You’ve made it through another year! You’ve faced many obstacles and overcome many adversaries to arrive here, at the dawn of a new decade. So as we prepare to leave the 2010s and make our way into the 2020s, lets take a look back at the challenges and hardships of 2019. And by challenges and hardships, I of course mean shitty fiction and media.

Yes, it’s time for yet another edition of Quill’s Swill, where we mark the absolute worst stories that the industry had to offer over the past year and proceed to tear them to shreds. Think of it as like voiding your bowels before the New Year.

As always remember that this is my personal, subjective opinion. If you happen to like any of the things on this list, that’s fine. More power to you. Go make your own list. Also bear in mind I haven’t seen everything 2019 has to offer due to various other commitments. So as much as I really, really want to, I can’t put Avengers Endgame on here. I know what happens. It sounds fucking terrible, but I haven’t seen the film, so it wouldn’t be fair of me to put it on the list, even though it would most definitely deserve it.

...

Seriously, read the synopsis of Endgame on Wikipedia some time. It’s like fanfic written by a nine year old. It’s truly shocking. And now it’s the highest grossing movie of all time? Give me strength.

All In A Row

Don’t you just hate it when you’re expected to parent your autistic child? Like actually show love and care and consideration to your offspring. Look at him, expecting you to treat him like a human being. Selfish bastard! If only there was a play that explored the horrors of having to be a decent person to your own flesh and blood and how objectively awful it is. If you’re one of those people, then the play All In A Row will be right up your street.

Premiering on the 14th February at Southwark Playhouse in London, All In A Row was a total shitshow to say the least. The playwright, Alex Oates, claimed to have ten years of experience working with autistic children, which you wouldn’t have believed if you saw the play as the autistic child at the centre of the play, Lawrence, seemed more like a wild animal than a person. In fact two of the main characters compare him to a dog. And if you thought this wasn’t dehumanising enough, Lawrence isn’t even a child. He’s a puppet. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.

All In A Row seems to place all of the blame for the family’s predicament on the autistic child, who’s presented as barely functional, bordering on bestial. There’s no effort to really make an emotional connection with Lawrence (how can you? He’s a puppet!) as the play instead focuses on how this kid has effectively ruined this family’s life because of his autism and aggressive behaviour. Speaking as someone on the autism spectrum, I can say quite confidently that this play is fucking despicable. Badly written, badly conceived, insulting and downright mean spirited. I wouldn’t want Oates looking after my autistic children, that’s for damn sure.

Anthem

EA is back and this time they’re dragging the critical darling that is BioWare down with them.

Anthem was a desperate attempt to jump aboard the ‘live service’ bandwagon, trying to replicate the success of other video games like Overwatch, Destiny and Warframe. They failed spectacularly. The game itself had more bugs than A Bug’s Life, loot drops were often stingy and unrewarding, loading times were farcically long, and the story and worldbuilding was fucking pitiful. Oh yeah, and if you played it on PS4, there was a good chance it could permanently damage it. Thankfully I have a uni friend with an Xbox One and they allowed me to play the game on that. It was a crushing disappointment, especially coming fresh off the heels of Mass Effect Andromeda, which didn’t exactly set the world on fire back in 2017.

It didn’t help that EA’s reputation was in tatters thanks to the lootbox controversy of Star Wars Battlefront II and having to try and win back the trust of fans, but worse still reports began to service of what went on behind the scenes at BioWare during the game’s development. Apparently the game’s story and mechanics kept changing every other day as the creative directors and writers didn’t have the faintest idea what kind of game they wanted to make, and the developers were often forced to work obscenely long work hours in abusive crunch periods to get the game finished for launch. It got so bad that, according to an article on Kotaku, some members of the team had to leave for weeks or even months at a time to recover from ‘stress casualties.’ 

To think this was the same company that gave us Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Knights Of The Old Republic. Thank God that Obsidian Entertainment is there to pick up the slack on the RPG front because I think it’s safe to assume that BioWare won’t be around for much longer at this rate.

The Lion King (2019 remake)

Here we go. Yet another live action remake of a Disney classic. Excpet it’s not live action, is it? Well... it’s live action in the sense that Dinosaur was live action (remember that film? Don’t worry if you don’t. No one does). Real locations but CGI characters. Millions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech to create photo realistic animals... and the film ends up duller than a bowl of porridge that really likes trainspotting.

It’s not just the fact that The Lion King remake is yet another soulless cash grab from the House of Mouse, it’s also the fact that it’s done really badly that upsets me. The Lion King works as an animated film. Bright colourful images, over the top song and dance sequences and vibrant character designs. As a ‘live action’ film, it just looks awkward and stilted. None of the animals are very expressive, leaving it up to the poor voice actors to carry the film, and to cap it all off the CGI isn’t even all that convincing in my opinion. At no point did I look at Simba and go ‘oh yeah, he looks like a real lion.’ It’s so obviously fake. In fact it reminds me of those early 00s movies like Cats & Dogs or Stuart Little where you see the jaws of the talking animals moving up and down like some messed up ventriloquist act or something. And here’s me thinking cinema has evolved past this.

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds

Remember Peter Harness? That guy who wrote that Doctor Who episode about the moon being an egg? Yeah, he’s back and he’s doing an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds. And guess what! It’s fucking ghastly! :D

The three part BBC mini-series was without a doubt some of the worst telly I think I’ve ever seen. It’s staggering how clueless Harness is as a writer. For starters he managed to achieve the impossible and somehow made a Martian invasion of Earth boring. I didn’t even think it was possible, but somehow he pulled it off. Then he sucks all tension out of the story by revealing the ultimate fate of the Martians at the beginning of the second episode, so now any threat or danger has been chucked out of the window because we know that the main female protagonist Amy at least would survive. And then finally he takes a massive dump over the source material by having humanity weaponise typhoid to kill the red weed rather than just having the Martians die of the common cold like in the book. Because God forbid us Brits should be presented as anything other than heroic and dignified.

So what we’re left with is a poorly realised allegory with ineffectual horror tropes full of OTT progressive posturing in a pathetic attempt to make Harness and the BBC look more liberal than they actually are. There’s no effort to really explore the themes of imperialism and colonialism outside of casual lip service, and we barely get a glimpse of the dark side of humanity. Everyone is presented as flawed, but basically awesome or, in the case of Rafe Spall’s character, utterly gormless. Our TV license fees help fund this shit, you know?!

And if you think this was bad, just wait till New Year’s Day where we’ll get to see Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ butcher Dracula. Can we stop giving these beloved literary icons to these hacks please?

Glass

I liked Split. It wasn’t an amazing movie, but it was entertaining with some good ideas, a great performance from James McAvoy and was a true return to form for M Night Shyamalan. That being said, I wasn’t keen on the idea of it taking place in the same universe as Unbreakable. I feared it would be a step too far and we’d end up having something like... well, something like Glass.

On paper, Glass isn’t a bad idea. The idea of superpowers being a delusion is legitimately intriguing and could have been a great post-modern deconstruction of the superhero genre. Except Shyamalan never actually does anything with it. The first act drags on and on with absolutely nothing happening, none of the characters really grow or change over the course of the film, Bruce Willis in particular is basically only here for an extended cameo as his character does pretty much nothing for the majority of the film, and then the entire film is undermined by that stupid Shyamalan twist. Turns out superhumans are real and there’s a big cover up. Oh great! So not only does it render the entire film pointless, it also undoes what made Unbreakable and Split so good. They’re no longer people capable of extraordinary feats via rational means. They’re just superhuman. They can do anything. Sigh.

Shyamalan... maybe it’s time to give up the director’s chair, yeah?

Cats

Oh come on! Don’t act surprised! Did you honestly think I wouldn’t put Cats on this list?!

Cats, without a doubt, is the worst film of the decade and, yes, the CGI is terrible. Not only are there these sub-human cat mutants running around, we also have mice and cockroaches with child faces, James Corden coughing up furballs, Taylor Swift trying to give the furries in the audience boners, Idris Elba looking disturbingly underdressed and Rebel Wilson being... well... Rebel Wilson. It’s a disaster of a film. And really, should we even be surprised? We all knew this was going to suck. And no it’s not because of the CGI. I thought the CGI in Pokemon: Detective Pikachu was creepy as well, but at least it had a decent script and good performances to back it up. No the reason why Cats sucked is because... it’s Cats. It’s always been that bad. No amount of ‘advanced fur technology’ was going to change that. It was still going to be a confused, plotless mess with one dimensional characters and bad songs.

The only consolation I had was that I didn’t waste money buying a ticket. A friend of mine snuck me into the premiere and we watched it in the projector room. The plan was to make fun of it and have a laugh, but we didn’t even do that because honestly there’s nothing to really make fun. There’s only so many times you can take the piss out of the CGI and honestly the film was just boring more than anything else. It doesn’t even have the distinction of being so bad it’s good like Sharknado or Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It’s just bad, period.

I just hope we don’t see something similar happen to Starlight Express. Just think. Anthropomorphic, singing trains on roller skates. Shudder.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

Finally we have yet another cynical cash grab from Disney.

I confess I didn’t exactly go into The Rise Of Skywalker with an open mind. I was never all that keen on a sequel trilogy in the first place, and neither The Force Awakens nor The Last Jedi ever convinced me otherwise. Admittedly they weren’t bad movies. Just derivative and painfully uninspired, and I was expecting more of the same for Episode IX. What I got instead was quite possibly the worst Star Wars film since Attack Of The Clones. Yes, it’s that bad.

This film is very poorly made, filled with plot contrivances and logic holes galore. I lost count of the number of times the protagonists got into a dangerous situation because of Rey constantly wandering off like a confused toddler lost in a shopping mall. Oh and we finally find out who her parents were and it was quite a twist, but only because it was really stupid. Of course we didn’t see it coming because nobody would have guessed it would be something that moronic. I feel JJ Abrams’ stupid ‘mystery box’ philosophy is to blame for this. It’s derailed countless franchises before such as Lost and Cloverfield, and now Abrams has fucked up Star Wars because he’s obsessed with mystery for the sake of mystery and Disney are so lazy that they couldn’t be bothered to plan an actual trilogy out properly beforehand. Instead they just wing it, making it up as they go along, which led to Rian Johnson ‘subverting our expectations’ and left Abrams desperately trying to pick up the pieces. 

In fact a lot of The Rise Of Skywalker seemed designed specifically to appease people of both sides of the wide chasm The Last Jedi had created. The roles of characters of colour like Finn and Rose were significantly reduced, Poe and Finn don’t end up together because of homophobia, but we do see two women kiss in the background of one two second shot that could easily be cut out when they release the film in China, Kylo Ren gets his stupid redemption even though he hasn’t fucking earned it, Lando Calrissian shows up for no fucking reason, Rey is given ‘flaws’ relating to her parentage in order to combat those accusing her of being a Mary Sue, but they’re the boring kind of flaws that don’t have any real impact on her character, and that ghastly ship Reylo is made canon even though it makes no sodding sense in the context of this movie, let alone the whole trilogy. They even go to the trouble of baiting us with a FinnRey romance before pulling the rug out from under us. Then, just to add insult to injury, the film retroactively ends up making the entire original trilogy completely pointless. All because Disney wanted more dollars to put in their Scrooge McDuck money bin.

The Rise Of Skywalker, and indeed the entire sequel trilogy, should serve as a cautionary tale against the dangers of hype and nostalgia. The reason The Force Awakens was successful wasn’t because it was a good movie (because lets be brutally honest here, it really fucking wasn’t). It was because it gave gullible Star Wars fans warm fuzzies because it reminded them of A New Hope whilst tempting them with the vague promise that things might get more interesting later on. And when that didn’t materialise, quelle surprise, the fanbase didn’t take it very well. I would love to think that this will serve as an important lesson for the future when people go and see Disney movies, but who am I kidding? I guarantee at some point we’re going to get Episodes X, XI and XII and we’ll have to go through this sorry process all over again.

So there we have it. The worst of 2019. May they rot forever in Satan’s rectum or wherever it is stories go to die. Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the other end of the spectrum. Yes it’s the Quill Seal Of Approval Awards! The best of the best! Who shall win? The suspense is killing me! Ooooh, I can’t wait! You’ll be there tomorrow, won’t you? Of course you will. How could you not?

[fayevalcntine]

Folklore anon again! Yes thank you for saying exactly how I feel about pining in the show!! Yes also to everything re Rory not being good enough etc. There are so many contradictions to Rory's character that it's just impossible to really see it as any other than as you said bad writing. Rory has always been a hard worker at anything she does, she even went full on DAR. Her reaction to the LBD I find completely uncharacteristic too! I don't see her still finding that charming ten years later.

Exactly! I find it so baffling how some seem to go back and forth between admitting that AYITL was awful in every aspect including Rory’s writing, and calling Rory these demeaning terms and saying she was always ‘awful’ in the show. Rory is of course a flawed character in the original series, but still a pretty sympathetic one as far as I could tell from it, whereas in AYITL so many of her decisions and behavior make no sense? And if you can admit that characters like Lane or Jess or even Logan of all people weren’t written well or given enough screen time, what exactly is stopping you from admitting that Rory was badly written too? We never even get proper explanations for so many things, like her affair with Logan, her relationship with Paul, why she’s suddenly become this person who doesn’t give a crap about his feelings when they’ve apparently been dating for a while (especially when you think back to Rory’s dating endeavors in Yale and how she was completely honest with Marty regarding her feelings?). Her career seems to be going nowhere though we don’t even understand why she feels directionless and seems to have no motivation or drive whatsoever while working, and the one position she kept mentioning that she was trying to get an interview for (at Conde Nast), she completely botches it because she didn’t even prepare for it? I would’ve been more than happy for the series to explore Rory becoming so aimless and lacking the passion she once had for journalism, because it would’ve been an interesting story to tackle for such a character, who in the series had everything planned out for her life. Instead we have zero clue as to why she behaves the way she does and why she doesn’t even prepare for interviews with highly ranked companies that she’s been waiting on for months. Not to mention the whole Naomi/website interview where she just feels like some incredibly entitled, oblivious person. It made zero sense and it only felt like some form of badly made satire of ‘today’s culture’ or whatever Amy tried to say through Rory, not to mention the 30-something gang in Stars Hollow behaving and being labeled as this incredibly weird group of people who.......still live in the same place they lived before? As if rent/house payments aren’t incredibly expensive nowadays and young adults still live with their parents? The whole show in general just felt a nicely polished but soulless imitation of Gilmore Girls to me, especially when it comes to Rory, Lane and Paris.  The LBD scenes were soooo incredibly dragging and boring, not to mention frustrating because instead of having a couple of college-aged guys making fools of themselves just because they can, you have these idiotic 30-something men destroying public property and acting like they can simply do whatever, including ruining other people’s fun at a dancing club. Rory never had a soft spot for any of Logan’s self-destructive friends, and either found their ‘adventures’ uninteresting or annoying, not to mention the fact that she was the only one to voice her concerns about the same trip that Logan then almost died on. I would’ve chalked up her ‘final goodbye’ to them as her being nice, but honestly the whole part of that episode made zero sense and lacked any fun. Yes it was nicely shot and lit, but I truly have no interest in these men who look like they need to use a moisturizer parading around in gorilla masks. 

[kcrabb88]

Portrayals of Masculinity in BBC Les Mis

All right, well, I woke up this morning and realized I wanted to talk about portrayals of masculinity in BBC Les Mis because WOW WOW WOW there are Some Major Problems. Andrew Davies has managed to make nearly every man in the series full of Bad Toxic Masculinity Tropes. If a man is not shouting, is he really a man?? Not in this adaptation. 

Let’s start with Valjean because god, what a fucking injustice, what a CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. I thought it was bad before, but then I watched episode 5 and it was worse! Who knew it was possible. In the end, Davies has replaced sweet, shy, awkward Valjean with this monster who manhandles and shouts at his adopted daughter, a victim of terrible childhood abuse and trauma. This is bad enough, on its face. But it’s made worse by the adaptation framing this as Valjean being ~protective~ so in the end it looks like abuse = just protecting someone, which is honestly how so many abusers justify their actions.

A lot of Les Mis is in fact ABOUT abuse. The abuse of children like Cosette, and later, Eponine, by the same set of people. Marius’ emotional abuse at the hand of his grandfather. The abuse of women pretty generally, and on many levels, like we see with Fantine. Society’s abuse of convicts with Valjean. Society abuses children by letting them live on the street like with Gavroche. The abuse of the poor. In the book, not only do we see abuse combated by love on a personal level (Valjean and Cosette and their relationship, two abused people who learn to love each other) but on a societal level also (Les Amis combating the abuse of society through revolt).You could also argue that Javert, raised by the state in what I’m sure were abusive conditions, can never even recognize the abuse for what it is, because there’s no one there to combat it. He was a poor kid who was taught to hate other poor people. Javert makes his own choices, as well! Definitely not arguing that, but there’s some abuse at the core of that, too. 

ANYWAY. BBC Valjean excuses his violence and emotional abuse toward his daughter by saying he’s protecting her from a bad world. Like, hello Jean-Claude Frollo, are you serious?? But Valjean is just being a man protecting his daughter, I guess! Can’t do that any way OTHER than shouting and seizing people’s wrists in this adaptation. If Valjean were a villain, this would be a different thing. But he’s the hero. The abuse is not framed as abuse, and that’s the problem. Confusing, given that the Thenardier’s abuse was framed as bad, but honestly Valjean at this juncture is barely better, it just manifests differently, and I can’t believe I am typing that. Talking about the shades of abuse through fiction is an important thing, but Andrew Davies has made our hero the abuser and I just am shocked. 

Now, to Enjolras. God, I just. I said I wasn’t going to even bother getting mad about the Amis cause so many adaptations that aren’t the musical get it wrong, but here I am anyway. There was one, brief, shining moment where Enjolras grasped Courfeyrac’s hands and they rested their foreheads together that I thought “yes, here we are, I can get past the stupid mustache for this” and then everything went to hell. This Enjolras can’t manage to do anything other than shout or lecture or say things like “there might be some rough stuff.” Instead of things like “if liberty is the summit equality is the base” or “here day embraces night and says you will die and be born again with me” we just get “let’s make this city ungovernable!” like he’s an armchair activist who read Marx one time or something and decided that was enough to start a revolution. This is not the serious, quiet young man who loves his friends so deeply and wants to change the world, this is just a dude wanting to start shit.

I guess I should be grateful they knew enough not to send Enjolras to the brothel, but that’s the only thing I’m grateful for. The bit that upset me most was when he shot the soldier who shot Eponine without even LOOKING at him. This would be one thing if they were in the heat of battle, where killing people without having time to think on it is a thing. But this was like a mashup of Le Cabuc and the sergeant, and it was Done Badly. There’s no “pray or think” there’s no tear, there’s no GRIEF at having to do this Hard Thing because revolutions are bloody affairs. But Real Men don’t care if they just shoot people point blank without thought. 

Also, I like how they made Enjolras look more traditionally masculine here, and yet made him less of a talented fighter and strategist. Can’t have the guy who looks as fresh-faced as a 17-year-old girl with glowing fair hair be a badass, no way! He looks Too Feminine to accomplish that, and as we know, women in this show faint in gardens at the sight of their crush because they Just Can’t Handle Things. So any vaguely feminine looking man is Not Correct, screw the pages of description Victor Hugo gave, who cares about that guy? We Respect The Author Not At All in the House of Andrew Davies. 

Even Marius, who is not my favorite, falls prey to the bad masculine tropes. He’s not awkward or Pontmercying around, he’s just mostly uninteresting and sometimes kind of an asshole who has sex dreams about the poor abused girl who lives next door and treats Cosette like a possession as much as Valjean does. I mean, there’s issues with both Valjean and Marius and the agency they give Cosette in the book, but not like this. Not at all like this. There is real love there, and a desperate desire by both of them (though especially Valjean) to see her happy. 

The interesting thing about Les Mis is that there are some truly great male characters that are so refreshing in comparison to the way a lot of male characters are written in current day. Are they perfect? No, they fall prey to period-typical sexism, etc., but Valjean and Enjolras are loving! They’re sweet! While still being freaking badass in their ways! That’s complex masculinity, not whatever this crap we’re getting now is, and that’s my Ted Talk for today. 

[kero-reviews]

Happy Wednesday!!

This week I’m reading:

Tokyo Ghoul: Re Volume 5 by Sui Ishida

Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

and The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

I got to finish:

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Go For It Nakamura! by Syundei

Otome Mania!! Volumes 1 & 2 by Tsukigase Yurino

Bloom Into You Volume 1 by Nakatani Nio

Yona of the Dawn Volume 18 by Mizuho Kusanagi

and Claudine by Riyoko Ikeda

A long upate! Thank you for waiting while I was on a small hiatus! I’m back now! Because I was so busy in May I feel behind on my reading list, so to make up for that I’ve upped my weekly goal to 5 books. So cheer me on that I can make that goal!! I will also be straying from my “this week I’m reading:” list a bit. I bought some thrift store books and had some great finds on Rightstufanime.com’s Pride sale at the beginning of the month, so I’m trying to get some of those read before I go back to my main focuses. I’m still including my main focus books though, because they’re what I want to be reading and actively working towards, even if progress is slow because I’m reading other wonderful things. Which I’m trying to get to as soon as possible.

That being said, I haven’t made much progress in Tokyo Ghoul: Re, Sherlock Holmes, or Gemina.

Language of Thorns is so much fun!!! It’s a collection of fairy tale-like stories from the different countries in the GrishaVerse. I’m only 2/6 stories through, but I’m enjoying it, and I’ve caught wind that there’s a Darkling cameo in it? I’m excited to find it if I heard right!! This is the newest installment in my book club with @books-take-flight and our final read with Leigh Bardugo works until the next one is released.

King of Scars was absolutely fantastic. I admit I had a hard time getting into the first half, but the second half reeled me in, in a way that no one but Leigh Bardugo could do. I was absolutely enthused to have more Nikolai and Nina. And having Zoya (a wonderfully developed, strong female character) take center stage was something I never knew I needed so badly. I loved it and I can’t wait until the next installment. I’ll be doing a mini highlight of this book when I get a chance in honor of PRIDE MONTH!

Go For It Nakamura was a thrift store find, that I was very wary towards... its cover- not so pretty. But it was very cheap, and I figured it would be a nice way to read a new LGBT series (especially one I’ve never even heard of before!) and would flip in a garage sale later on. HOWEVER! I won’t be doing that. I loved it. Yes, it’s very cheesy and not exactly a rot-your-teeth-sweet love story. But it’s a very nice slice of life. Each chapter is only a couple pages, and we get not only a romantic/coming of age story in the shorts, we also get a comedy. Because the chapters are so short, there’s not a lot of commitment needed on the readers end, but it’s definitely worth a read. I like having more relaxing, low-plot books to have on hand, because I feel like we could all use a story like this on our bad days. It’s a bit unfulfilling in the romance department, but we cheee for Nakamura anyway! I’ll also be doing a highlight of Go For it Nakamura in honor of Pride Month later on.

Otome Mania I got from the same thrift store as Nakamura, and had a similar attitude towards it going in. But I was pleasantly surprised by this duology too! I love how the story is about the Otome (dating sim) industry and reads like one! I only wish it were longer. We could have had a better developed plot, and better characters . It’s a duology manga, so all the conflicts are resolved unsatisfactorily quickly, and, like in an Otome game, our characters are introduced one at a time with that chapter being the chapter with their most screen time. While that works in a game, where you have the option of exploring that character again, in a manga it feels as though there’s too many characters to get attached to in such a short time. Regardless, I enjoyed it, and was surprised to see how few Goodreads users have read it (less than a 100! Only 55 for the second book!), i hadn’t heard of it before, but I still rarely see books on Goodreads have so few reads.

Bloom Into You! I’ve been wanting to read this book! I always get excited when I hear of a new LGBT book, and this one got a very popular anime as well! So I was sooooo ready to dive right in! Going in, I had high expectations, and it took a bit to get me invested. The characters are wonderful (they give me very Liz and the Blue Birds vibes), but not quite what I expected, which was my own fault. Once I got acquainted with who these two girls actually were, I started loving it. I can’t wait to read the next one, which I thought I ordered, but I was wrong so I have to wait. I’m cheering for their romance, but also their friendship as these two girls learn about themselves and each other in this sweet High School Romance. I will also give this book a highlight as soon as I can.

Yona of the Dawn! An absolute favorite series of mine that I can’t thank @books-take-flight more for. This book we get the Yellow Dragons past, and while I knew what was going to happen, Kusanagi writes the story so well and uniquely that it still broke my heart anyway. I’m waiting very eagerly for the next book and I hope this series continues and gets to live out the authors intent for as long as possible.

Claudine, another thrift store find. I almost didn’t buy this one, because I wasn’t a fan of the art ( I came around). However, we have a trans male protagonist and I couldn’t give that up. I went into it wary, because I had been under the impression that the series was about a trans FEMALE ( I was wrong) which meant that the title of this book was a dead name. So I was cautious going into this, and didn’t come around until I read some of the Goodreads reviews, and got to about the halfway point in the book where I became more interested in our hero’s story. The Goodreads reviews helped bring the zeitgeist into perspective for me. Particularly, that this story was written in the 70s. I don’t feel confident enough in my knowledge of the subject to use that to defend this work, but please look at Goodreads if you’re curious. Overall I was pleased by the story. The art felt very fitting after a while, and I was not prepared for how self contained and tragic this one shot is. I’ve felt dissatisfied with one shots before, but this book is so complete and planned that while I would LOVE to get more of Claude’s story, having what I do I can appreciate his story all the more. It reads almost like an old epic poem, where we go through the origin and then trials of Claude’s life. And it’s through his gender and identity that we see him learn how his true relationships differ from more shallow or lust-filled ones. I loved this book, even if it was heartbreaking. I’ll be doing a highlight on this book as well.

Thank you for bearing with a long update, and I hope you look forward to my highlights for Pride Month.

H❤️A🧡P💛P💚Y💙R💜E💖A❤️D🧡I💛N💚G💙!💜

🏳️‍🌈Kero-chan🏳️‍🌈

[itsdaniclayton]

Forget regret

@johnzocallaghan‘s prompt was “Jake and Amy talk about their pining days (inspired by tags from @juliadorable)” and that’s not wxactly what’s going on here but it’s close enough.

This is the cheesiest, fluffiest thing I’ve ever written so beware. Also a reminder that I’m taking prompts, only that I’m super slow writing so yeah.

TItle from Rent (4/5 fics titled with lyrics from musicals why am I like this)

Read on Ao3

“Babe?”

“Huh?”

“What are you thinking about?”

It’s the first day in about a month that they both have off - work has been crazy for the two of them - so it was not hard for Jake to convince her to have a lazy day in. The fact that she was awakened by a crash of thunder and heavy rain against the window of their room worked in his favor. They spent most of the morning in bed, Amy first doing that day’s crossword puzzle and then working on the ‘Christmas’ binder (which is currently almost as big as the wedding binder - turns out that spending the holiday with the Santiagos, at her parents’ insistence, needs thorough and careful planning, especially when it comes to getting presents for everyone), Jake playing Kwazy Cupcakes and watching videos of screaming animals in low volume so as not to annoy her. For lunch they had leftovers, which didn’t taste half as good as when they ordered the meal the previous night, but neither of them could be bothered to cook, so there were no complaints.

They’re on the couch now, the pouring rain reducing the view out of the window to mere inches, Jake’s head on Amy’s lap, a random rom-com playing on the TV. They only chose to watch this particular movie because it was the first thing that popped up when they opened Netflix. Neither of them wanted to repeat what happened the last time they had decided to watch something - they spent the two hours they would have used for the movie going through all the titles available and choosing what to watch (and going to bed without actually watching something). Five minutes into the movie she was already bored (rom-coms aren’t really her thing), but a quick glance at Jake was enough to know that he was enjoying it, or at least that it had his attention. She decided to busy herself making mental notes of everything she would need to add to the binder, her fingers running slowly through Jake’s curls.

At some point, she noticed, he turned away from the TV and fixed his eyes on the ceiling. She knows her husband well enough to know when there is something on his mind, so she stayed silent, waiting for the moment when he’s ready to talk. But it's been almost an hour and his attention hasn’t gone back to the movie.

“What?” he asks, rolling so that he’s lying on his back and looking up at her with a hint of a frown.

Her free hand finds its way to his chest, where she subconsciously begins to trace random patterns. “What are you thinking about?” she repeats, her voice soft, encouraging.

He puts a hand over hers and squeezes it lightly, a small smile appearing on her face when she notices his wedding ring glistening with the light coming from the TV. They’ve been married for months but she’s still not used to the feeling of seeing the ring on his finger, and the way her stomach jumps when she does so. “Us.”

“Us?” she echoes, her eyebrows raised in puzzlement.

“Yeah, the movie got me thinking…” he trails off, turning his face to the TV but going back to his previous position only a moment later. “Watching it from the outside, it seems really stupid that the guy won’t tell the lady how he feels and pine for her instead, especially because it’s obvious that she likes him back.”

“There wouldn’t be a movie then,” she says, turning her attention to the TV only to see the main characters making out under the rain while dreamy music plays in the background. That’s the thing with rom-coms - from the moment the movie begins you know how it is going to end. “Wait,” she adds a moment later, her eyes returning to him. “What does that have to do with us?”

“Really, Ames?” he chuckles. “That’s literally us before we got together - liking each other and being too dumb to do something about it.” He sits up and turns to face her, his hair an adorable, messy fluff. “We could have gotten together, like, a year before we did.”

“But you did something about it.” She moves closer to him until their thighs touch and rests her head on his shoulder, taking his hand in hers and giving it a little squeeze. “Before you went undercover.”

“Exactly, the worst possible moment. If I had said something before-”

“I think it was a good thing that we weren’t together back then.”

A frown forms on his face “What? Why?”

Amy sighs, her eyes fixed on their intertwined fingers. “You would have still gone undercover.” She gives his hand a little squeeze, his wedding ring hard against her skin. “It would have been yet another time that we’d be apart for a long time. We’ve already gone through too many of those.”

“That’s fair,” he says, leaning to place a kiss on her hair.

“It’s actually my fault we didn’t get together sooner,” she adds a moment later. “I should have broken up with Teddy long before I did. I guess I was just… scared? I didn’t want to admit to myself that I liked you.”

“Good old Teddy dropped that bomb on me,” he chuckles. “Now that was a fun trip.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Okay, but, if you didn’t know you liked me it technically doesn’t count as being stupid,” he points out, freeing his hand and wrapping that arm around her shoulders. She has a better view of his face from this position, and the way his lips are slightly curved makes her insides fuzzy. She really does love this man more than anything in the world. “Being stupid is when you don’t act on your very obvious feelings - obvious to yourself and to everyone around you. Everyone knew I liked you.”

“Subtlety is not your strong point, babe,” she says with a smirk.

He brings his free hand to his chest in mock offence. “Hey! I can be subtle!”

“It’s not a bad thing!” she’s quick to add, smiling widely now. “It’s just a fact. I do notice the way you look at me when we’re at work and I go up to the bullpen, you know.”

“Well, of course you do. I don’t try to hide it. I don’t have to hide it because we’re married, and if I wanna smile at my amazing beautiful wife when I see her, I can do it.”

She leans forward and presses his lips against his in a soft, sweet kiss. When she wants to return to her previous position, though, his hands suddenly on her waist won’t let her, and he pulls her forward until his back meets the couch, Amy on top of him. She needs to adjust herself in order to be comfortable, and when she does, she rests her head on his chest.

“Back to the being stupid thing,” he begins after a moment, a hand slowly moving up and down her back, “you didn’t-”

“You weren’t stupid either. You tried to move on, dated someone else, broke up - it’s only natural that you didn’t want to jump into a relationship so soon after that.”

He presses a kiss on her forehead, his lips lingering there for a moment. “Well, I do feel stupid. After I got over my relationship with Sophia, you were all I could think about. I wanted to be with you so badly but I was too stupid to do anything about it, and I just… I feel like we’ve wasted so much time.”

She lifts her head so that she’s facing him, her eyes fixed on his. “Maybe we did, but I’m glad things happened the way they did. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be where we are now. I think we got together in a moment when we both were ready to be in a relationship. If it had happened before, who knows, maybe we wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of months.” She brings the hand that she’s not using to prop her head on to his face, her thumb stroking his cheek softly.

“You think?”

She nods, leaning forward to brush her lips against his. “Seeing how things worked out for us, I can safely say that it’s a good thing that we didn’t rush into anything.”

“We had sex on our first official date.”

She rolls her eyes, her lips pressed so as to keep herself from smiling. “Do you regret that?”

“Are you kidding me? Absolutely not.”

She chuckles and presses her lips against his once more. “Good. And, you know, it might have taken us some time to get together, but we have our entire lives to make up for it.”

“I love you so much, Ames.” His voice is low, his gaze filled with affection. His lips are slightly curved in a soft smile that warms up her insides and makes her think that she’s the luckiest person in the world.

“I love you so much too.”

The hand on her back pulls her closer to him, and her arms move around him, her head buried in the crook of his neck. She needs to stop herself from placing light kisses on his skin - and fails to do it a couple of times. She can feel the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing, slow and steady. She meant what she said - they have the rest of their lives ahead of them and she’s determined to make the most of every single day.

[itsadrizzit]

Hello! I know you from ao3 and I absolutely adore your fics (the ones about football). You are an amazing writer! I really like how you give a specific voice to each character and make them feel so real, so tridimensional. I wanted to ask you if you have any plans of continuing with "Deleted Scenes" or with the Christian/Vincent ship in general bc it's my favourite ship ever and since Vincent is back in England (hopefully 4eva) I can only imagine how Christian must be feeling lol. Greetings!

Hello!

First, THANK YOU. This is so shocking to me every time because I’m like, wait... OTHER PEOPLE like this thing I’m doing??? I mean, mostly I’m like well I wrote this because it wouldn’t leave me alone and I’m putting it on the internet because it makes me feel less like I just spent 343279898872 hours on a thing no one but me is ever going to see, which is a way I convince myself that I’m not just wasting time doing nothing productive with my life (we can discuss the relative merits of that line of thinking some other time probably). And then people are like... I LOVE THIS?

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. A long time ago, when I first started writing and I had no fucking clue what I was doing and there were these BNFs that I was reading/following and there were these stories that had inspired me to write MY story and given me these feelings that I couldn’t categorise or place or even process really and I was just here like... I don’t know what I’m doing, but I put words on a page, I thought to myself “someday, I want to be a writer who makes someone else feel this way. Like... have feelings and be vaguely disoriented about them.” I never actually expected to achieve that, so to know that people are not only out there READING this stuff I’m doing, but also like... they LIKE it. They think it’s GOOD? They think it’s BETTER THAN GOOD? It’s baffling, but also a major honour AND a major responsibility and I love it and I take it seriously and there is not a word in any language that I know that can adequately express my thanks for this.

Now... to answer your question.

Short answer: yes, there is more fic coming.

Long answer: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA and also 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭. Yes.  Further details under this cut because I’m about to get long-winded. No one who reads my fic should be surprised about that.

I’m working on something. I’ve been working on it since JULY. It’s slow going. It’s actually part of a new series, since Deleted Scenes is done (for now... I might add more and fill in gaps since I have ideas, but I need to get through these 10 other ideas first, so that probably won’t happen until everyone is retired at the rate things are going.) But! Since Vincent is currently back with Spurs, there’s a new series in progress (It is called “All Loved Up” after THIS AMY SHARK SONG since every time she drops a song I instantly think “I WANT TO WRITE A FIC ABOUT THIS, HERE IS A 5000-word detailed outline of all my thoughts.” The idea is exploring the next chapter in Christian and Vincent’s relationship after Christian made his very rash and impulsive offer back at Christmas for Vincent to move in with him. So there’s all this constant uncertainty because Vincent wants to leave and yet doesn’t and Christian doesn’t want to get hurt again, but also wants what’s best for Vincent AND they now have to figure out how to live together and what all this means. Plus injury drama and coming out drama and parallels with the past and feelings of failure, and it’s a lot, but if I can execute it I hope it’s really going to be good.

So, I’ve been working on the first fic in this series since July, as I said, and it’s slow-going because it’s a departure from the usual way I write this relationship in that there’s a lot of tension between the two and neither of them is really speaking about it so there’s always sort of this feeling of low-key conflict and Vincent as the POV character doesn’t quite know WHY, but it seems like Christian has reversed his stance on EVERYTHING when it comes to their relationship and now wants to hold Vincent at as much of a distance as possible. This is tricky when Vincent is living in Christian’s house. Also, at this point, Vincent is still hoping to only be there for a few weeks before he can go back to Fener where his friends have prepared a room for him in their apartment, so he’s trying to get in this quality time with Christian and for some reason Christian is being kind of an asshole about pretty much everything. I actually HATE writing them fighting, it’s hard for me, and it’s especially hard for me because I want to let Christian explain himself, but I chose to do this all from Vincent’s POV for a reason, so I’m sticking with it. So it’s a lot of trying to convey Christian’s deep emotions with body language and subtext from a man who doesn’t show his emotions on the surface and that’s been a challenge. Also I keep writing ensemble cast and party scenes and I’m RUBBISH at them, so that’s something.

But! It’s almost done. Or, well, it’s more than halfway written and edited. I haven’t actually written some of the scenes yet, but I’ve edited nearly everything that I’ve written. My goal was to get this out by the end of February so I can move on to fic number 2 in the series (which is going to somehow be EVEN LONGER than this one I have now that was supposed to be maybe 20k and is currently at 35k without being fully written yet), but due to work things I don’t think that’s happening. But SOON, friend. SOON. I just want it to be over with and move on because i have so many more stories to tell.

That is your very long-winded and probably more detailed than you wanted it to be update. Hopefully that suits?

If you want occasional scene bits and sometimes updates with what’s going on and a lot of randomness with me popping in and dropping full chapters in your lap because I feel badly AND because they’ve been done for MONTHS and I just want someone to have them, you can follow my writing side-blog at @drizzitwrites. It’s possibly interesting on occasion.

So... to summarise... THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU, I APPRECIATE THE HELL OUT OF YOU, I’M WORKING ON IT, NO ONE IS AS FRUSTRATED WITH MY LACK OF CONTENT AS I AM, I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS, AND I’M SORRY.

[ninjagoat]

Notes on Supergirl 3x09

There's a good chance I might end up being facetious this episode. See if you can guess where.

So, it's the next day after Wake Up? When did Crisis happen?

We talk about bad writing on the show a lot (and believe me, we WILL be discussing it a lot today), but I want to talk about how Mon-El describes the future:

"Technology has developed beyond imagining; but at the end of the day, it's still in service of communicating with each other, and entertaining each other, and also killing each other. In this day, or in a thousand years, conflict is constant. But so is strength." The repetition, the cadence; this is a man who has given so many rousing speeches as a leader that they invade his regular conversation. It's so different from how he used to speak, and it's a lovely piece of work.

Kara's Best Friend Winn - who spent two days with a police scanner and a sewing machine helping her become a superhero, when even Alex didn't want her to be one - being tickled pink by Imra not knowing what phones are is nice.

Amy Jackson is from the Isle of Man, if you were wondering what that accent is. It's its own thing, but the Youtube videos aren't usually this... breathy.

Mon-El was basically the 31st Century Apostle of Supergirl. I'm here for it.

And for Imra's hero worship.

It's a good thing he turned down your invitation, Kara. Things might have gotten awkward, what with Lena being there and all. Or perhaps not. Who can say?

Can we have a ship war between Kara/Food and Alex/Booze soon? I think we're due a ship war that makes sense.

"Crone Buddies"? What happened to the realisation there must be someone else for you Alex? It was just last week/yesterday/possibly an alternate time-line.

I'm getting bored with Danvers Sisters time, to be quite honest. Yes, you're going to support each other through this. We know. Talk it through with someone else, Kara. Perhaps your Best Friend, Winn (who one time requisitioned an entire Catco office and server just so you would have a base of operations at work)?

Look, relationships are the only thing James Olsen has ever been shown to be bad at, so can you two hurry up? I wanna know how he's going to screw up a good thing this time.

I want to love this scene with J'onn/M'yrnn/Kara's Best Friend Winn - who once served as a buffer between Alex and Eliza at Thanksgiving while Kara basically ignored him in favour of her not-boyfriend, who called her from a romantic getaway with his actual girlfriend - but I know it's all a ploy to keep him away from Lena, and thus avoid pesky questions like, "So, how do you know the analyst from the clandestine government agency that helped me out with those things those times?"

Unpopular opinion: American Christmas songs are almost universally shite.

I should also point out that, since Lena knows he is DEO, Kara's Best Friend Winn - who once committed treason on Alex and Kara's behalf after Kara invoked his difficult relationship with his father - is the only person currently in this room that is not concealing a secret identity from her.

I'm just gonna stop having headcanons. I keep thinking of ways the show could mine conflict from the scenarios they've created, and the show doesn't then do it badly, so much as ignore it entirely. I actually burst into tears once because I thought up a thing where Kara tells Winn he can't come to the Christmas party because Lena knows he's DEO and it would raise too many questions. I would actually prefer that to this version. At least it would be a story point then.

Wait. Hang on. Are they trying to tell us that Wake Up happened on Dec. 22nd? Because... seriously, what?

Alex, you can't just steal a child, even if you are great with her; so stop thinking about it. Who said this 'wanting to be a mother' thing was out of character?

I like the choice that Lena would make weak excuses for why she can't just go for it with James. Putting your last boyfriend out of his misery by deactivating the nano-bot swarm he's comprised of must be a tough act to follow.

A funny thing about chemistry that's "off the charts"? It can't be measured.

A rhyming scene of James and Winn on the other side of the room having *their* version of this conversation would have gone a long way.

This is literally the fourth episode of eight you've spent time with Sam, Kara. It's not like she's one of the Barton Bellas.

"I've always had Alex, and she has my back, but-" Sorry, NOW TV keeps cutting the sound there, so I don't know how the sentence ends. I'll presume it's something along the lines of, "If you don't want to date someone who works for you, do you remember my Best Friend, Winn? Really smart, you saved the world together that one time? And at your party? Hates your mom? Remember? Look, he's rocking that Christmas sweater!"

(And he's clearly single, since his girlfriend of 44 weeks isn't here)

I cannot imagine how difficult blocking this scene was, if J'onn has to come up to Kara in front of the friends that don't know she's Supergirl and say she has to leave her own party on Dec. 23rd. I'll assume this scene was written by the Buffoon.

VASQUEZ! You have returned to us! From where-ever it was!

The Symbol is Kryptonian? What were the odds?

I get the feeling that 'if we don't know it, it can't be known' is a common attitude from Krypton. Kinda... snobby, wouldn't you say?

And since we, the audience, already know the Symbol is Kryptonian, why are we sending James and Lena on this wild goose chase?

Speaking of which, why would Morgan Edge burn a symbol into your corn-field, Lena? Explain the logic. While you're at it, why would you go see him about it? What is he going to tell you?

And by saying "I will go with you," as opposed to "This plan is stupid," we've got a solid idea of why there were no 'James helps mentor Kara as a reporter' stories last season.

A two minute scene solely to remind us that Morgan Edge exists. Yay.

Get Prince's name out of your filthy mouth.

"I'm here just to make sure you remain civil." You know what else would have achieved that James? Not going at all.

Here's the thing. It's Reign. We know it's Reign. There is no mystery here. THIS IS NOT HOW MYSTERIES WORK.

THE ALIEN BAR! Still lacking in visibly alien aliens. Bloody gentrification.

Dude, just put lobsters down on the floor if you're gonna do this ribs shit (given the platform, this is probably a one-percenter joke).

Look! Kara's Best Friend Winn - who quit his good job at a global media empire so he could help Kara with superheroing full-time (you know, right before Kara considered moving to Metropolis) - distracting Imra so Kara and Mon-El can talk! What a great Best Friend he is!

I'm gonna say this now: not on board with SaturnNerd, unless it's rounding out Winn's doomed trip through Nerd Fantasy Romance Tropes (the list so far: Kara - Girl Next Door; Siobhan - Mean Girl (To Reform Through Kindness); Lyra - Manic Dream Pixie Girl; Imra - Sexy/Naive Foreign Exchange Student).

You're not at the jokey we-had-fun-didn't-we stage yet, mister.

Creepy Preacher Dude! You're back! And still creepy!

Fort Rozz!

Right, they are clearly establishing Sam as Reign, and Reign as the World-Killer. THERE IS NO MYSTERY HERE.

Sam. Have you never seen a Christmas film before? You know what happens if you work Christmas Eve.

The Christmas story is nice, though. Sam & Ruby are a nice addition to the show.

El Mayarah, brothers and sisters.

'Cip'. Imra's WAAAAAY overplaying this 'foreigner' stuff.

Yep. Break her heart more, Imra. Solid plan.

Sigh. What are you doing going to other hackers, Lena? We know they're gonna be sub-par. Or James should, at least.

For newer, confused viewers, James is a superhero, who has a shield. Winn built it for him. You may not have known this.

This Reign fight is one of the best vampire attack scenes I've ever seen.

Sooooo, we needed Lena and James to visit Edge, so Edge would pick tonight to hire an assassin to kill Lena, so Reign will then target Edge. 'Kay. Oh, and Edge is apparently using Reign as a cover for Lena's 'death'. Except it happens before Reign goes on the rampage. So circular, this logic.

No love in his eyes? Admittedly, Kara's never been good at this.

Edge has a lead-lined panic room. This is the smartest thing he's done yet. Ineffectual mustache twirler.

This week's Jeremy Jordan Award For Doing So Much With So Little goes, unsurprisingly, to Jeremy Jordan; for seamlessly transitioning from sarcasm to serious through repeated use of the word 'No.'

And kudos for Kara's Best Friend, Winn - who once got up in his best clothes and went to a posh party solely to humiliate himself in front of the hostess (the hostess being Lena, who is of course not Kara's best friend, because Winn is Kara's Best Friend) because Kara had gotten herself in a jam - for emphasising that an attempt on Edge's life is only 'objectively' bad. Sticking up for his Sister in Science.

Okay, how late is it on Christmas Eve? Everyone's still at Catco. IT'S A SUNDAY. WHY IS EVERYONE HERE? GO HOME.

I'm not against GuardianCorp, there's a lot of story to mine there in terms of the relationship between Journalism and its Corporate Masters (it's not a marriage made in heaven, nor should it be); but like many things, it depends on execution. With that in mind, there's a few tangible details I want to highlight here:

Firstly, with the exception of letting her call him Jimmy, which is only relevant to a specific section of the audience (casual viewers won't remember why that's a big deal, and longer term fans of the character consider it the default); the nicest thing we've ever seen him say to or about her is that he doesn't see her as an extension of her brother. That seems like a low bar to cross. In fact, I have no idea how James feels about this particular development at all.

Secondly, James hasn't been challenged yet; or at least, it doesn't *feel* like he's been challenged yet. In my notes for 3x02, I wrote of GuardianCorp, "This isn’t a thing that’ll be resolved by him doing nothing until someone else makes the decision for him," but he hasn't actually made any decisions. This story isn't a James story (yet). It's a Lena story, about her taking a chance on him.

(ASIDE: At some point, someone decided that Lena's main flaw would be 'self-doubt' instead of 'hubris', as was previously established in 2x05. I take small comfort in the fact that person is likely no longer employed)

Thirdly (and this last one's much more open to interpretation, so YMMV), Mr. Brooks isn't really pulling his weight here. Ms. McGrath is doing *all* the heavy lifting: she's standing there, giving him full heart-eyes, and he barely seems to notice that it's happening. James could be playing it cool, I suppose; but that's just another way in which I can't relate to James as a character (because HOW? How do you play it cool when she's looking at you like THAT?).

(FURTHER ASIDE: You know who would have been a challenge for James? LYRA. Or, at least, a visibly alien alien. That story would be about James and his perception of himself; having been friends and love interests for 'passing' aliens over the years, why is an ALIEN alien a sticking point for him? Played by a trans actress, preferably, to hammer the metaphor home. It would also have given him a cause to champion at CatCo)

At some point, I should stop doing notes, and just write a damn review. It'd probably be shorter.

Why are all these Christmas parties happening on Christmas Eve?

You know when would have been a great time to do a Christmas episode? Last season, when it was all about the immigration metaphor, and your three non-human characters can all express how they feel about this religious festival they don't belong to.

Love the tone of this office fight (the song still sucks)

Kara's getting the beat-down of her life, and she's still trying to protect others. I love her.

That block and swing is fucking incredible.

AND THEN THE FLAMING DOOR!

Where the hell is this fight happening that James, Lena, AND Edge can be witnesses?

Impressed at how objective Alex is being here. Would like more detailed reaction shots though. Particularly from Kara's Best Friend, Winn.

Imra's very confident about Kara being okay.

Episodes since Winn and Lyra have had a scene together: 13. THIRTEEN. These counts were supposed to be a joke, show. Not a running commentary of despair. Speaking of which...

Episodes since Winn and Lena have had a scene together: 9 (Record high: 16). No, I'm not counting this one. Being in the same location does not a scene make. We'll just have to live with my pain extending to double digits in January.