#THE FIRST PART IS A DREAM SEQUENCE we get to the actual real-time stuff a little further into the fic

[rye-bread-soda-iceberg]

discussion and a little theory about black swan and sparkle's companion mission under the cut (+ spoilers) aka listen to me yap about the blue thing until I go insane

the First sampo we meet in penacony, specifically the one that follows us as we're hanging out with firefly, is nothing like how sampo himself is

his personality is a poor attempt from sparkle to try and convince us that it's him, but perhaps she's not familiar enough with him anymore to know exactly how he acts. "he" is acting weird and a little bit mean towards firefly for not knowing things about penacony even though she should

I don't think sampo would do that, at least the one we met on jarilo-VI wouldn't

the second (and third) time sampo appears, and this time it's actually him, is during the girls' companion mission

during the entire quest him and black swan play this little detective game orchestrated by sparkle where she writes herself in as a murder victim and has the two find her murderer. it's fun and silly and very chaotic

the entire story unfolds inside a dream bubble created by black swan, and when it's over the giant eyeball guy tells us that even though we recognized the people in the dream, it is still a dream. it doesn't represent reality and could have been tampered with

I don't believe that

anyways so. in this sampo acts a little bit more like the one we know, maybe slightly over the top at times but I think he was putting on a performance to spice things up. he was helping out sparkle with the whole thing in exchange for his mask that she probably stole from him (that we sadly don't get to see) so I bet he really put some effort into that, even begging black swan to not skip the last murder case

But. the MOST important part of this entire quest is.. the end. and the end is definitely not a dream

after the trio finishes talking, the dream stops and we briefly return to the real world before going into a memory. and boy there's some stuff to unpack in here

first of all the way they talk to each other? they almost seem like friends. of course, their views on the pursuit of elation are still different

he is still very polite about it

sparkle doesn't mention anything except muttering "why so serious" to herself

but they do talk like old friends and it's clear that in a sense they may be

after he asks for his mask back, sparkle remarks that it is not like the sampo she knows and then this little exchange happens

it is now canon, as in acknowledged out loud by a character (in this case himself) that sampo Really did orchestrate almost every thing that happened in jarilo-VI

how did he know this was going to happen? how can sparkle guess the reason why he wants his mask back? has he done this before? well clearly, thinking back to all the chaos he unleashes on that planet, maybe some kind of catastrophe has already came to it that we don't know about?

also slightly unrelated but I think he likes living there. he genuinely enjoys living in belobog because if he didn't, he'd find a way to leave

so anyways what we can deduct from this sequence is that:

- this entire quest is most likely a memory, not a dream. black swan deals with memories and it could be possible that she had some slight changes done to it and passed it off as a dream. maybe. and this would mean that it's a real event, that happened before the jarilo-VI story

- consequently, before that sampo and sparkle were on friendly enough terms that he was willing to help her put on a show for black swan in exchange for his mask (of course, he's always willing to do something to get something in return)

so I did say I have a theory

sparkle is the reason for That One sampo eidolon, "the deeper the love the stronger the hate"

she's the only character so far that we are SURE he dislikes, and that's something knowing he doesn't admit that stuff so openly. source: listen to his lines about other characters, he always masks any kind of negative emotion about other people yet tells giovanni that if it were for him, he'd never see her again (still said in a polite way)

so the "hate" he feels, that he still masks by smiling even though his eyes are devoid of any light, as of right now can only be towards sparkle

I believe she betrayed him somehow and maybe doesn't fully realize that

she's childish, really mean, DEFINITELY cannot "read the room" in any way and I doubt she cares about other people's feelings enough, so if sampo who by nature almost does everything to hide how he truly feels about people ever felt betrayed by her, there'd be miscommunication and possibly confusion on her side and feelings of hate towards her on his side

in the main quest, before sparkle reveals herself, she mentions hearing about his deeds on jarilo-VI but doesn't seem to hold a grudge against him. she probably dislikes him as well but perhaps not as much as he does, which also leads me to think she wouldn't understand if she did anything wrong

them not talking anymore would explain why sparkle's rendition of sampo feels off and kind of out of character

this is a theory I had actually already saw circularing on here, around the time sampo and giovanni's conversation in the memory bubble got leaked. but if I'm correct it's not as discussed

sad cause it's very interesting and you know what this also means?

penacony might not be the last we see of sampo

he has so much going on behind him and this just adds to it. he doesn't speak much about his past himself, he is clearly hiding so so many things and hoyoverse wouldn't keep leaving these little crumbs of information behind if it wasn't for a greater purpose

I feel like I say this every time I talk about him and maybe I'm slowly going insane but I'm also very happy cause I want to see what my beautiful man will do in the future

thanks for reading this far if you did and sorry if this is really messy

I just wanted to let some thoughts out!

[misc-obeyme]

It’s me I’m back with Lesson 34 spoilers below. (including the hard lesson)

I always try to write these posts shortly after finishing the lesson so that it’s like… my immediate and unfiltered thoughts lol. Sometimes I change my mind about stuff after I see other people’s interpretations of things. So if you were wondering why I’m taking the time to write this at 2 am, that’s why. I totally forgot about the lesson during the day due to the whole Thanksgiving thing.

ANYWAY.

I feel like we got SO MUCH BARB in this lesson?? He was barely in it. But we had other characters talking about him and that honestly makes me happy, too. Probably because I like when they give us some perspective into his character.

BUT FIRST.

Belphie. We were actually playing the role of Lilith in his little Celestial Realm dream sequence, right? And then at the end it’s all but we’re not siblings.

Listen. I just think that Belphie has a lot of unresolved trauma surrounding Lilith and I really don’t feel like having MC play hide-and-seek with him in a dream is going to be enough to help him move past it. Enough to make him want to help MC? Maybe. But I dunno.

However, I also think I probably shouldn’t expect anything more intense than that from an otome game. They were just trying to give us SOMETHING to explain why he was cool with making a pact.

WHICH WE FINALLY DID. With Beel, Belphie, AND Levi. I get Beel & Belphie doing theirs at the same time, but I’m still a little baffled about why Levi waited so long. There probably isn’t a reason, but who knows maybe they’ll surprise us with something lol.

Ah. Lucifer.

This was my favorite part:

I love Mammon, he always just says exactly what he’s thinking (unless it’s how much he loves MC lol).

But we all knew it wasn’t going to be that easy, right? We knew Lucifer would be last. We knew that Lucifer would be the most difficult one to make a pact with. Remember what happened with him last time? Of course he doesn’t want to make a pact with us now. We’re likely going to be going through some kind of long drawn out drama that will eventually lead to Lucifer giving in and making a pact with us.

However, I found both Solomon’s and Diavolo’s reactions to this absolutely hilarious:

Can the two of you take this seriously, please?? I know you both find Lucifer highly entertaining and yeah, I'm usually laughing at him most of the time, too, but I need that pact to get back to where I'm from, thanks.

But we’re only on Lesson 34. So I think we still have plenty of time to make a pact with Lucifer, learn the truth about Nightbringer, and return to our timeline (or have the timelines merge or whatever nonsense they’re gonna do).

I’m still hoping for all that to get resolved by the end of this season lol.

Now, I found this exchange from Belphie’s Celestial Realm shenanigans especially interesting:

Assuming this is accurate to what actually happened when Lucifer was still an angel, this means that the angels knew Barbatos. They know him by name, they clearly think he’s a big deal, and they’re surprised that he’s agreed to be Diavolo’s butler.

I was always under the impression that the demons and the angels didn’t really know much about each other. But now I’m wondering if maybe Barbatos had something to do with the end of the war that happened before the Celestial War. The one that was between the Celestial Realm and the Devildom. I have no reason for thinking this other than the fact that as angels, Lucifer & Simeon clearly know him. And what else would they know him from? Though I suppose anything could have happened lol.

And then there was all of this:

What does it MEAN?! (Obviously I chose the second option for MC's dialogue, which increased Barb's intimacy.)

Barbatos my true love. Why did you give MC a real piece of paper from your grimoire? He’s always been cautious, always keeping MC at arm’s length, and now all of a sudden it’s here’s a piece of my grimoire? There is NO WAY he doesn’t have all of the build up from the OG. I can’t believe that he would actually give MC a piece of his grimoire if he had only just met them at the beginning of Nightbringer. So I’m tacking this on as additional evidence that Barb knows all.

Also can we just appreciate Lucifer in 32-A? All his brothers are completely out of it and he single-handedly motivates every one of them back into action.

It sure worked, huh? Do you think the credit card is in the freezer yet?

You guys. THE HARD LESSON.

It was everything. I LOVE the Little Ds. I LOVE them hanging out with Diavolo. I LOVE that Barbatos couldn’t accompany MC because Diavolo requested some fancy human world dish. This entire hard lesson was *chef’s kiss*

GOD I love Barb's knowing look and Dia's little frown. I love them so much it's almost painful lol.

Okay that’s all I’ve got to say about this lesson. In general, I enjoyed it. They coulda played up Belphie’s yandere tendencies a bit more. I felt like his change of heart was rather rushed, but they really can’t put him through the therapy he needs. I don’t think the lessons are long enough for that.

[kookidough]

random rant about tbp tiktok cause i’m actually Sick of it at this point💆‍♀️💆‍♀️ these issues probably exist Outside of tiktok as well but i only ever see them on there so thats the platform i’m gna talk about

before you read i just wanna say warning for mentions of sa!!!!!

first of all i dont want to jump straight into the serious shit so the unoriginality is actually INSANE like ive been seeing the same jokes since 2022, can we Please get something funnier than “griffin does gymnastics / is a ceiling fan” 😭 the amount of times recently i’ll see a tbp tiktok and then get someone copying the idea and making the Same exact post like 3 scrolls later is insane like Pls can we be original Pls this movie is so sad i need something to laugh at

outside of being totally unoriginal some of the jokes tend to be Really Fucking Disgusting like straight up joking about assault, i shouldn’t even have to explain that thats not funny in the slightest?? this one person made a bunch of really gross ones and kept blocking people who called them out in the comment section, my friend had to dm them Several times and all they did was take down one post, the rest are still up with a ton of views :/ i know its like shock humour or dark humour or whatever but i dont see the ‘funny’ side of a grown man forcing himself onto a child and i think if youre laughing at that you should sit down and ask yourself why you think thats so funny.. people in the comments are always like “i shouldn’t laugh” so they Know its wrong as well which just ugh the whole thing just really gets on my nerves

another thing that gets on my nerves is the lack of media literacy and straight up spreading misinformation, maybe on the media literacy part i’m just a hater but i see so many questions being asked or theories being posed when all of the things mentioned were… literally answered in the movie?? “whats up with finney and gwen’s mother” it’s literally said in the movie that she has the same ability as gwen and she killed herself bc of it, next question, “why was max so interested in finding the missing boys” maybe because he was a coked up conspiracy theorist who saw a serious crime happening in his brother’s area so he decided to be a genuine concerned citizen who wanted these boys to be found💀 “why did the grabber kill max” because he had evidence of the highly awful crimes he’d been committing and was about to let his latest victim free?? the list goes on and on but those r the main ones i see all the time

as for the misinformation. Ough. it annoys me So much this is a hill i will die on😭 i dont know if its people’s half-baked theories or personal headcanons that just got way out of hand but i see so much stuff being spread that just Isnt true, it gets spread so far that when you google these things it appears as true when its not which is annoying !!! i actually was gonna make an entire rant about one theory in particular that pisses me off so bad but i can fit it in here alongside my list of “other theories presented as facts that i Absolutely Despise”

first theory, the one i was gonna make an entire post over, is the theory that vance is the grabber’s son. if i see one more tiktok of those two with that marina and the diamonds song im going to fucking lose it😭 i have no idea where people got this from but its so fucking popular that it comes up on google and i Hate it, i think it comes from the fact that in gwen’s dream sequence, which, might i add, WAS A DREAM, it looks like the police drop vance off outside the grabber’s house and he goes inside there, which… apparently automatically makes them related…?? it takes like one ounce of media literacy to realise that Obviously he’d be getting dropped off at his own house in real life, but as a ghost he’s centred on the place he died and is showing that house to gwen in her dreams, like how every other ghost shows that house to her. awful theory awful take i hate it, if its ur personal headcanon sorry but i do Not fw that

the other theories i have like. not much to say about other than the fact that they’re Not true, i see a lot of stuff about griffin for some reason? the number tends to change but a lot of ppl say “he was kept in the basement for 4 years” like . Huh. where is your proof???? i know the missing posters are insanely unreliable but if you literally read them griffin went missing on april 2nd and billy went missing on may 4th so highly likely griffin was only in the basement for like. a month at most, no idea where ppl are pulling 4 years out of💀 i also see people say griffin has broken legs or a broken back Just because of the first scene where we see him doing a backbend but . if that was the case then he wouldnt be able to stand with the other ghosts when they show gwen the house, i think the backbend was just the position he died in and thats why he first appeared that way to finney but Hey thats just my opinion! last two i have like no rants over but just. firstly people saying robin never made it to the basement for some reason but clearly he did otherwise his ghost would not be down there with the rest of them😭 secondly the theory that vance was kept there the longest “because he’s the most feminine” which. just makes absolutely zero sense to me whatsoever idk whos random headcanon got popularised but i dont like it

okay getting serious again, while this one does not make me angry its like. just really weird to me? i think its common knowledge at this point that both the book and the movie are inspired heavily by the john wayne gacy case, with the grabber literally being inspired by john wayne gacy himself (you Cannot argue with me on this one its literally confirmed and theres a boatload of evidence supporting it). i guess its natural to see people making comparisons between the movie and the case because of the inspiration but i’ve seen Several videos recently of people taking photos of jwg victims and putting them next to tbp characters and saying thats who theyre inspired by and i think thats . Really coming across as insensitive i cant lie😭 we know the grabber was inspired by jwg and its heavily thought that billy was inspired by johnny gosch but theres not much about the others and i think its just really distasteful to compare real life murder victims to fictional horror characters just to get views/likes on tiktok, it comes across as insanely disrespectful to me but idk i havent seen anyone else talking about it so i might just be being sensitive

last thing that really really bothers me is grabber simps. while i do see it on tiktok i see it on here, tumblr, most often and its… so odd to me…. like why are you thirsting over the paedophilic serial killer… so so strange to me… i want to see art and character analysis and silly little posts about all the characters but every time i open the tbp tag i’m jumpscared by someones weird ass grabber x reader oneshot and its SO GROSS get that shit away from me😭😭😭😭 also saw this one girl on tiktok one time whos literal entire account was dedicated to the grabber and she defended this by saying the sa in the movie was “just a theory” which is so victim blamey girl i do not trust you there is so much evidence for it in the movie, again w the media literacy point, just because something isnt directly shown to you doesnt mean it isnt shown in other subtler ways… anyway i get if people like the grabber as a villain but actually like. loving him and thirsting over him is weird as fuck to me

so um ya the fandom is a trainwreck can we go back to there being like 3 of us please and thank u. if you actually read all this then Wow thank you its literally just me being chronically online and ranting about stuff that doesn’t matter in the real world at all

[cyberphuck]

ROYAL ASSASSIN ABRIDGED: PART ONE My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposting about Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, but they don’t want to actually have to read the books, so I’m summarizing it for them (and you)! When we last left Fitzy-Fitz, it was a really fucking long time ago, sorry, I stopped going to church and learned to chainsmoke (and this book is LONG, I mean it’s LOOOOOOONG, so I kept avoiding getting started on Abridging it, lmao). You can brush up on the frankly insane amount of different characters here at the Royal Assassin Cast of Characters post, or find the links to the rest of the Farseer Trilogy Abridged series here at this link here.

- Fitz awakens one fine October morning in a bed at Jhaampe hospital, where he's been recovering from being poisoned and poisoned and bludgeoned and kicked and drowned. At first he was having eighty seizures a day, but now that it's down to only twenty-five seizures a day, he and Burrich figure it's high time for the two of them to skedaddle before they get snowed in.

  Then, exactly like that scene in Attack on Titan where Eren reaches for a spoon and accidentally turns into a Titan, Fitz drops a spoon and accidentally turns into a seizure. It's a lot less cool. He wakes up hours later back in the same damn hospital bed with Jonqui the King's Sister and now healer sitting beside him.

  "This sucks," he whines.

  "Time heals all wounds, Pull-Out Fail," Jonqui says sagely.

  "Shut the fuck up. I'm fifteen and obviously know a lot more than you about healing, and I've decided I'm never going to get better."

  Burrich strides healthily into the room with a swanky new skunk stripe in his hair where his skull was recently cracked open. "What-ho, Lil Accident, are you ready to go back to Buckkeep?"

  "No. Everybody's gonna make fun of me. You go back without me."

  "So long as you wear that collar," Burrich says solemnly, "I must follow you."

  Fitz touches the black collar with the word DADDY on it in gold letters. "The way you followed my father?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it like, a sex thing?"

  Burrich, who has enough hidden piercings to set off a metal detector at twenty paces, asks, "Are we going back to Buckkeep or what? I'm getting kind of bored sitting here watching you do the Harlem Shake."

  "Also, I heard that Molly's candle shop was foreclosed on and she had to go live with relatives in a town that's about to be raided by Vikings," The Fool says from under the bed.

  "Gosh, I wish I could talk to King Shrewd or the Fool or find out what's happening to Molly," Fitz sighs, then sits up as the room fills with the wavy lines and harp glissando of a dream sequence.

  "Wake up, King Shrewd," the Fool says. He's sitting on a chair, not under the bed or in a hay bale for once, and Fitz finds it extremely disturbing.

  "Fool? What are you doing here?"

  "Oh, King Shrewd and not Fitz, I have to be here because you're sick and old," the Fool fools. "Here, let me fluff your pillows and feed you soup."

  "This is so weird," Shrewd-Fitz says. "I feel like... oh, the Skill line is ringing. What? Vikings are viking Siltbay so late in the fall?"

  "You know, it's creepy when you talk to yourself like that," the Fool mutters.

  But Shitz (Shrewd-Fitz) is already on a Skill video call, watching the Red-Ship Raiders pulling up onto the coast. Vikings run through the town, viking everything in sight. The raiders are wading through blood up to their knees, people are running around headless and on fire, it's awful. The raiders aren't even stealing anything-- they're just wrecking stuff, which anyone who's been to a Raiders game can attest to (go Cowboys).

  "Fool," Shitz says. "You can see the future, right?"

  "This is a weird time to reveal that particular nugget of information, but sure. Let's see... ah, yes. I see a bard who can't fucking read the room trying to find a rhyme for 'dismembered child.' That is not something Jaydee made up, it's a real line from the book."

  "Thank you, Fool, that's extremely fucked up," Shitz says. "Oh wait, who's this on the video call... It's Molly! Oh SHIT, it's Molly and Vikings are going to vike her!"

  But Molly wasn't called Molly Nosebleed as a kid because she's a trembling little violet. A Viking tries to vike her and she stabs him to death, whirls around and shouts "WHO WANTS SOME, MOTHERFUCKERS?!"

  Then a house falls on her.

  "Oh god, oh fuck," Shitz says, panicking. "Fool, use your future vision and tell me if Molly's okay!"

  "A bunch of women died in a bunch of horrible ways," the Fool says. "Do you want me to list them?"

  "No," Shitz says, and so the Fool doesn't spend two pages describing the graphic sexual assault, murder, and maiming of a bunch of townsfolk. Shitz sits back in his bed. "Run off and let Verity know Siltbay is being viked."

  Ever loyal, the Fool cartwheels down the stairs. Then Shitz sighs and says, "Man, being old sucks."

  "Yes it does, so quit your fucking whining about your little seizures and come home," Shrewd says, and ends the Skill call.

  The next morning, Fitz-Fitz packs up his stuff and heads out with Burrich and Hands to make the long boring trip back to Buckkeep.

The return to Buckkeep sucks especially hard because they have to take the 99 instead of the I-5 like last time, and Fitz is getting carsick. Along the way they keep having to stay in incredibly sketch Super 8s, which wouldn't be that bad (free soap and free weird smells!) but Burrich and Hands overhear someone standing out in the hallway talking loudly on their phone about how much King Shrewd fucking sucks.

  "Yeah he keeps raising taxes to 'defend our country' or whatever but Vikings are still viking the beach towns as much as they want," had said the Buckboi in the hallway. "You know who rules, though, Prince Regal!"

  "What towns did Buckboi say were viked?" Fitz asks.

  "A town no one cares about," Hands answers solemnly, "and the one where Molly had a house fall on her."

  After that incident, Burrich decides that they're gonna make the rest of the trip using surface streets and driving through people's yards. "If Regal finds out you're out here, he'll send someone to kill you," Burrich explains. "Verity's definitely not gonna protect you."

  "Is that because he consistently sees me as a tool first and a family member and human being second?"

  "Look," Hands interrupts. "I see Buckkeep-shaped lights in the distance." They ride up to the gates, which are guarded by a kid who was born a thousand years too early to be the squeaky-voiced teen working at the drive-thru. “Halt,” he squeaks. “Who the fuck are you?“

  Burrich scoffs. ”Who the fuck are YOU?“

  ”I asked you first!“

  ”I asked you sec—“

  ”All right, all right, who's holding up the line?“ The last book had a rich and exhausting cast of random extras murmuring in the background, but this one used all of their budget on talking CGI wolves, so they had to fire most of them and give almost all of their lines to Blade, The Guard Captain. His job is to appear at important moments and say things like 'hear, hear!' and 'how big WAS she?' “Holy shit, it's Burrich! Twitter said you and Chivalry's Post Nut Regret were dead!”

  “It's called X now,” Fitz says, emerging dramatically from the shadows.

  “Oh.” Blade says, while four of the other guards die of secondhand embarrassment. “H-hi, Chivalry's Pos... I mean... Fitz. You uh. Did you have a nice trip? Hey, you... did something with your hair, it looks... it looks good!”

  “Prince Regal was going around telling everyone I was dead, wasn't he,” Fitz says flatly.

  “Sometimes I can still hear his voice,“ Regal sighs from somewhere in the castle.

  ”What? No. What?? No! What?! No!“ Blade laughs as six more guards thud to the ground. ”No, of course not! It was just, you know, like, you know. YOU know. You know. I didn't really believe you were dead, I did retweet the link Regal posted but I commented with 'big if true,' so it wasn't really...”

  Fitz smiles. “Ho ho ho, Captain, don't worry your sweet little tits about it. Everyone falls victim to misinformation from time to time, and I accept the apology I assume you were about to provide me. Do carry about your business.”

  Halfway up to the stables, Burrich pulls Fitz aside. “Listen, Lil Accident, we're not at Grandma's house anymore,” he hisses. “You can't talk to people like you matter or Regal's gonna get his panties in a knot about it.”

  “And then he'll choke me,” Fitz agrees.

  “What?”

  “With his knotted up panties.“

  ”I'm also still alive,“ Hands offers after a long silence. ”Fitz, you're too weak and pathetic to wax your own horse, let me do it.“

  ”But...“

  ”Come on, Fitz, let Hands, my new favorite child, take care of the important work.“ Burrich takes Fitz's arm. ”Now go on up to the castle, that collar is making everybody question their sexuality.“

  ”What's a sexuality?“ Fitz asks, just before he's shoved into the castle, screen door banging behind him.

  Inside, Fitz looks around and notices that the place looks cleaner than it had before he'd left on the world's worst road trip. All the beer cans and ash trays have been cleaned up, someone's taken down the band posters and put up tasteful watercolors of succulents, and the 'NICE COCK' that had been scrawled above the toilet has been replaced with 'live laugh love.'

  ”Wrow,“ muses Fitz as he passes a sign on Verity's door that reads 'IF THE WARSHIP'S A-ROCKIN', DON'T COME A-KNOCKIN'. ”I'm kinda gonna miss the crusty sock smell. Good thing my room still reeks like teenaged boy.“

[spaceorphanssecondbreakfastclub]

SO's Bookclub : The Viscount Who Loved Me

Title: The Viscount Who Loved Me Author: Julia Quinn Genre: Romance

Goodreads Summary :

Anthony Bridgerton hasn't just decided to marry—he's even chosen a wife! The only obstacle is his intended's older sister, Kate Sheffield—the most meddlesome woman ever to grace a London ballroom. The spirited schemer is driving Anthony mad with her determination to stop the betrothal, but when he closes his eyes at night, Kate is the woman haunting his increasingly erotic dreams...

Review:

It should not have taken me a month to read this, I've just been super distracted...

The second book of the Bridgerton series focuses on Anthony and Kate's romance, and I found it to be a lot of fun, actually. While this is only the second book I've read because I am reading them in order, I can already see why this ends up at or near the top of the lists.

If you've seen the show -- there's a lot that the show pulled from the book, more so than I had expected. It definitely hinges on that enemies to lovers-ish trope. (And while not a favorite of mine, personally, I think it's handled relatively well here.) Kate is a great protagonist -- she's smart and clever and holds her ground really well, which makes her someone to root for. Anthony is... fine. Look, I probably will never like these male heroes because they usually descend too far into anger and bad boy with a heart of gold figures out love when a level headed woman straightens him out gets a little old after a while. Plus, I do appreciate Jonathan Bailey bringing some great charm to the show that book Anthony lacks a bit.

But I think there's a lot of fun to this book, too. There's a real competitive spirit that's enjoyable to read. The pall mall, family stuff is great and a clear stand out in the book, which I can see why they adapted it. I also think the book does tension relatively well, and the push and pull between Kate and Anthony works!

I do still think there are times the book drags (I felt this in the previous book as well) where Quinn sometimes lets scenes go on for a little too long, or she gets repetitive within a scene. But as someone who isn't an outright fan of romance novels, and has read quite a few bad ones, Quinn is at least a solidly good writer, and it's a fairly quick and easy read.

The only plot thing that I took any issue with is the fact that two thirds of the way through, Anthony and Kate are forced to marry due to circumstances of the time, and I wish they could have not been forced into it? Part of it is the schtick of Anthony having to really fall in love with his wife, and I get that. But that kind of thing just isn't my cup of tea. All things considering, I really don't have a whole lot to complain about with this one.

One drawback coming from someone who's watched the show first, is the fact that these books are so focused on the couple, we don't get as much of a sense of the greater world. All the rest of the Bridgertons play a relatively small role (though it's nice to see Daphne and Simon back). Eloise shows up at the end for the first time as a little spy, which is cute. Colin continues to be a delight, though he's less in this one. I'm surprised Benedict was hardly here, and there's really no mention of the younger ones or even Violet. I will say, one of my favorite things, though, is that Kate and Penelope got to have an entire sequence where they strike up a friendship, and I did love that!

I was also kind of surprised that, while they were featured a lot in the first half of the book, Edwina and Mary don't play as big of roles in this book as I thought they would. They're still very important to Kate and her character, though, and their family unit is really nicely on display throughout.

Also, we end on another tease of Lady Whistledown, and I am so ready for it. But, alas, we have to get through Benedict's book first. So, let's do it!

Overall, I think if you liked the show, you probably would like this as well. It's fun and uses the tropes it sets up relatively well. It's still a regency based romance novel written in the early 2000s, but I think it is better than a lot of the same kinds of stuff written around and at the same time.

Rating : 4 stars

[pinkiepiebones]

Renfield Interview Info from SCREAM magazine (and a little bit from "L'officiel Hommes")

-Nicholas Hoult taking about Renfield's growth: "...he ends up in a scenario where he sees an interaction between Rebecca and Teddy... Renfield sees someone who is able to stand up for their themselves, risk everything, and stand by their morals. He feels completely inspired by it because he sees her do the exact thing he's been wanting to do for many decades, but hasn't found the voice to be able to say it. So, he's completely awed and inspired, and that feels like his way out. But obviously, he has a big journey to go on in actual change instead of just the idea of it."

-Following Hoult, the movie's idea man, Robert Kirkman, adds: "There's an admiration for Rebecca that forms very early on in the movie, that drives Renfield to emulate her. Rebecca shows Renfield a different way of living, a different way of existing that is possibly going to lead to something that he never in a million years thought he could attain, which is happiness. We meet him at the beginning of the movie when he's at his lowest point. He has nothing but regrets. There was a tremendous amount of sorrow in his life, and (Rebecca) becomes this beacon of hope that drives him to strive to be something more."

-The writer of the article (Bryan Cairns) writes: "Renfield isn't your ordinary mortal" and that phrasing just tickled me. He's not like ~other~ mortals, he's over a hundred and twenty years old!

-Renfield's powerset includes superhuman strength, endurance, and speed. I wish the speed bit had been played with...

-Director Chris McKay about Hoult: "I have never worked with somebody who wants to do as many stunts as possible... If he wasn't working on first unit, he'd want to go over to second unit so he could be part of the stunts and be in the scene as much as possible. We had a dance scene that we ended up cutting from the movie, he learned all the choreography and threw himself into it. It was incredible to work with so many actors that are nice people and so committed to the movie and characters."

The Hoult interview in "L'officiel Hommes" doesn't have much Renfield stuff but here's what I gleaned:

-First off, his The Great costar Elle Fanning interviewed him for this lol

-Elle: "And you're a good dancer! You do some dancing in Renfield."

Hoult: "Cut! Gone. There was a whole dance sequence that we practiced for weeks. It was a dream fantasy sequence. We shot it all in one night, we had these amazing dancers, and then it's not in the film."

Elle: "That"'s showbiz though, isn't it? That happens all the time. Sometimes the things you're most excited about get cut.

Hoult: "It's been a bit of a learning curve for me; when you get really attached to things in the script, and you put in a lot of effort to learn them, or whatever it might be, and then it just doesn't work in the end." (Aww)

-Elle: "What's with your obsession with vampires? Are you one? Is that why?"

Hoult: "(laughs) That's it. I just like leeches and anything that drinks blood, basically. Mosquitoes, all blood-sucking creatures."

-Hoult asserts that the real bugs he did eat on the set of Renfield were all dead and dried, not alive. He says "I wasn't just randomly picking bugs off the floor" to which Elle responds "if you were a real actor, you would've." XD

-Hoult says that for Robert Eggers's NOSFERATU he was "flirting with an accent" and a dialect coach on set said "Don't do that. That's terrible."

-Hoult says Renfield's voice and accent were mostly just his own voice and accent- contrasted with NOSFERATU, where it's set in a different era and is a serious piece.

So there you have it!!!

[salubriwrites-blog]

Our Golden Demons, Ch 18 WIP

tl;dr Teaser for Chapter 18, Hwei took Sett's instructions to "do whatever you can to stay out of trouble with Jhin" too literally????

Oooh boy. I fucking Love this story.

I think that the JhinHwei ship is cool and all, but I love the healing nuances of SettHwei. In Our Golden Demons, we meet a version of Hwei who hasn't gone one way or the other toward darkness or light. He's just left in search of answers, meeting all sorts of people in Ionia and using his Ink Magic to soothe their own trauma. He hasn't found a cure or the strength to confront his own yet, and when he meets Sett he thinks he's found someone who might make those problems worth solving.

Spoiler: Yes he has! Also Spoiler: In this story, Hwei chooses light, and gains a mastery over his darkness with guidance from people like his loving hunk of a boyfriend/mate, and Ma. If you want a version of Hwei where the darkness envelops him, go read "My Mind, Your Mask" >:)

In Chapter 18 of Our Golden Demons, Sett and Ma have set off for Tuula, a small village on the absolute ass end of Ionia, which is - for all the lore junkies out there - is the Monastery where Jhin was incarcerated after Master Kusho apprehended him. Jhin has returned there with Hwei after a pretty sick kidnapping, and is using Hwei's power for some nefarious end that will be revealed.

I chose this specific piece to tease the chapter because it shows Hwei veering off the track that Sett had put him on. He starts to regress to a version of himself that Jhin recognizes, a version of Hwei which can be manipulated. So Jhin believes. When Sett wakes up from the nightmare, he realizes he might be running out of time to save Hwei.

Also because when I was writing this I had an intrusive thought to make a reference back to THIS little bit:

In the very first chapter of OGG, Hwei makes a bet. He'll go against one of Sett's fighters in his fighting pit, and if Hwei wins Sett has to cough up information about this person Hwei is searching for. If Sett's fighter wins, Hwei has to devote a year of servitude to Sett, including but not limited to that kind of servitude. Luckily Hwei wins, so that never gets realized, but my intrusive thoughts came in.

I played with the idea of making this dream sequence where Hwei is getting dressed up all slutty/provocative is actually his first night preparing to go to work for Sett. He comes down a sweeping staircase into the fight hall, and a bunch of Sett's investors/business partners immediately grab him, all while the real Sett watches a nightmare version of himself grab Hwei by the hair and remind him of bet he lost.

I decided against doing that cause I couldn't really justify it, but I might put it (along with some other intrusive JhinHwei smut I cooked) in its own story, because non-con is not part of this story.

Aaaaand that's it. Enjoy this snippet, and I'll be posting a link to chapter 18 once its done ^^.

I'm working on this story and towards its conclusion slowly, because my brainrot is demanding I do other stuff at the same time. But it's cooking, and it's gonna be delicious.

Once again if you read this far, thank you <3

[romilly-jay]

[What is] the right amount of the right kind of pummelling people [in movies]?

***spoilers***

Tonight we watched Unlocked (2017), a spy thriller starring Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette doing a fantastic Emily Blunt cut glass accent and sporting Excellent Short Hair, John Malkovich just this side of utterly menacing, and Trust Me Michael Douglas.

I'll try to get this first point out of the way quickly and efficiently - presumably I've already blathered about this on these very blog pages only my ST memory isn't marvellous and I can't quite recall.

I've learned that Me Loving A Thing - or liking it or finding it tolerable - is a very poor indicator for how popular That Thing is likely to be.

[It's not a neat negative correlation, either - it's not that I can *always* look at things I've enjoyed and know that this means that popular media take is to Hate Them. It... depends...

For a not-really-on-topic case in point, I share what I understand to be the very wide consensus view that The Empire Strikes Back was the best of the original Star Wars trilogy - and I think Rian Johnson's marmite-middle-movie was the best of the most recent trilogy, which I appreciate is a far more controversial take, though I'm not alone in holding it. And yes, I'm on that end of the opinion range that would be more likely to enjoy it... Might be losing the thread here a little.]

Back to the action movie in question. Didn't love love it, but definitely liked it considerably more than the critical 26% consensus on Rotten Tomatoes and, yes, quite a bit more than the audience rating.

I'd have given it - ack - 60 ish? Yeah, 60 ish.

I mean - look at that CAST...

For why?

NR is super watchable and IMO super credible (movie credible, not actually-capable-of-surviving-all-this-stuff credible) as the lead.

[That low score - not connected to being asked to watch a woman anchor this movie? One who Doesn't Sleep With Orlando Bloom?]

Speaking of... I'm projecting of course, but I got the impression OB was enjoying his Cheeky Burglar Chappie With A Secret role. On which note, I have a great deal of respect for movies that acknowledge the short cuts the audience is using to assign characters as Goodies, Baddies, Hotties, Untrustables, Victims, etc. And then plays around with those expectations with a nice blend of To Type and Against Type casting. Looking at youse, OB and JM.

Also speaking of... OB's character certainly learned that most basic of movie lore lessons - Do. Not. Kill. The. Dog.

Sort of a side-bar but I vm enjoyed seeing certain scenes playing out in parts of East London I was familiar with - and I also got a certain kick from the moments when I then found myself thinking WHERE's THAT and then it turns out that part of the movie was shot in Prague.

There was a moment near the start when I found myself worrying that the setting was going to be too Gritty and the violence Too Real.

Thankfully, not the case. From the moment NR rumbles what's going on and goes about digging her way out again, we were dealing with Spy Cartoonish Violence - where the look is superficially "realistic" but the beats are closer to graphic novel than graphic.

Personally, for me, the more cartoonish the better - and if it's Artfully Unrealistic in an overtly choreographed way - THAT's the dream.

Saw The Transporter for the first time the other day - and the fight sequence in the bus station is pretty much at my perfect level. Enjoy.

The kind of nonsense they get up to with Jason Statham's top in this scene is truly *chef's kiss* fight fantasy IMO - and thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my pedantic lil heart to whoever decided he was going to go back for the shirt once he'd erm - wiped the floor - with the rest of the Baddies? (watch the scene...)

PS I'm in what is perhaps the less popular opinion group [AGAIN!] where the thing I like re the top is the clever use of it as a resource NOT the way using it requires JS to remove it. Fair play, the guy has clearly worked extremely hard for that bod. His muscles have muscles. But do I need to see 'em? For me, no, not really. Entirely happy to trust that he's doing all the gym-work you'd anticipate.

[misterradio]

house of leaves has my mind blown at such random stuff. page 97 has a check mark in the corner.

[i'll add random other musings below]

notation 127 references a real book which is even on archive dot org..!!! and it says to check out a diagram But you need to log in to view the book. AAGHH!!

page 119 it is now time to be confused on how to read this 👍

nevermind the box is just all one long footnote. and the backwards box is like a reversal of the previous box.

"this is what happens when you hurry in a maze. the faster you go, the worse you are entangled"..... UH OH !

the footnotes along the sides are just BUILDING NAMES?? and then ARCHITECTS ??????? i do really like the cyclical nature of these notes, one makes u flip thru several pages and then you have to turn the book upside down and flip back thru the same pages. the last note in this series is right at the 2nd page in this sequence but along the side. makes me think of. a spiral ::-) makes me smile.

im just now realizing some of these notation marks are letters instead of numbers....X appears several times (that footnote is on page 107) but theres also like, LL (but if the first L was reversed)? and this one is F (page 122). not sure if there is a meaning here

page 127 guys this is scary

(page 151) "I was sorry to hear he disappeared. Do you know what happened to him?" HE WHAT?????

(page 620) okay i decided to read some more letters from (checks her name) Pelafina and. this is one is. ::-(

okay i finished her letters and wah........... sad. i wonder what was the one jewelry johnny kept from her.

(page 154) i already forgot what these different names were for ermmm lol. great hall and antechamber. i forgor

(page 159) the fact that the stairwell was around 13 miles long for Roberts' crew and then for Navdison its 100 feet.... LOLLLL F--K the explorers in particular

(page 192) YAY JED and wax !!! i never thought id be so so happy to see them again. yayyy. but now getting out is the next obstacle.. F--K OFF I CANT BELIEVE HOW SOONI SPOKE f--k this book

SICKENIINNNNGGGG!!!!!!!

(page 263) I LOVE THAT there are occasional emails from people after the 1st printing and someone says "what was all that crazy stuff in the introduction about guns and blood?" THATS WHAT IM SAYIINNGGGGG

(page 272) this makes me think that the stairwell is analogous to a throat..

(page 305) once again. witnessing the staircase lengthen and groan. makes me think it is literally swallowing navy.

(page 318) im so so glad wax survived YAY

(page 320) this made me get up and start pacing and smiling. like. this house wants navy so bad. SO BAD

(page 326) JOHNNY BECOMES SELF AWARE THAT HE A FICTIONAL CHARACTEr (scary)

btw i did find ouf the letters used in notations are actually symbols bc there is a photo of a graph of them on the inner cover. i dont actualy know how to look up what they are called at all tbh. theyre like. aircraft related.

(page 342) bruh this is new and scary. fhe house's shifting horror now extending beyond the imposible hallways but into the main house ...... what the......

(page 397) everyone in this book is so FREUDIAN !!!! like all the psychology is so fruedian i think.

(page 402) im so fascinated by these dream scenes i didnt expdct this book to really have a dream scene but there u go ^^__^^ im sad the promised third dream is missing......

OH YEAH BABY WE ACTUALLY HAVE A MINOTAUR PRESENT also in a dream scene. EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR A MINOTAUR PRESENCE

(page 406) this is some like. reverse tma thing. you know how in tma everyone who gives a statement to jon has nightmare of him. this is like what if jon did something to absolve everyone of their nightmares. huh. (also i havent gotten past this part i dont even know what navidson Does back in the house yet.........)

OH I JUST REALIZED THE SKETCHES IN APPENDIX II ARE JOHNNY'S. he mentioned doodling on any scraps of paper he had like mail and i was like heh. just like in the appendix. OH WAIT

i love that tgis chapter does NOT end in a period and ends with an open-ended sentence that segues into the next chapter. thats so neat ::-) idek if navy is still alive like wtf i dont know yet SHHH shhhh

(page 425) the dread this is imbuing in me. the floors tilting slightly wherever navy goes to guide him along. youre at the mercy of this house now..

(page 465) WHAT THE ? THIS BOOK IS WITHIN THISBBOOK? (navidson has a book titled house of leaves) WHAT?

(page 468) this desolation almost made me cry somehow . maybe logcially its not the worst thing thats happened in this book but the nothingness is crushing

this part makes u turn the book around a lot and i really did get a sense of dizziness while reading bc i realized i didnt know whether the text i was reading was really along the bottom of the page or what... also im still so tripped up that they mention this book by name, even say how many pages it has, and that 'maybe some of the pages are hard to read'. bro.

the song on page 479 is apparently "when johnny comes marching home" which i had to look up but thats where the tune of that song the ants go marching one by one comes from???? u learn something new every day.

i like that the footnote on page 488 is another of those aeronautic symbols (theres a chart of some of them on a collage in the back) and this one means "heavily injured, need a doctor"...............

(page 527) "and whenever she laughs the notes sing a call to Victory" STARTS BAWLING

okay i done YAYYYYYYYYY AAAUUUUUHHHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHHHHHH i have yet to finish the appendices....

[karliahs]

For the fic writers ask game, 17 and 18!! :D

17. talk about your writing and editing process

ohh boy! my initial writing process is to clatter as many words onto the page as i can without overthinking it too much. which depending on how much stuff i have stored up in my head, often ends up meaning writing kind of in notes form - often just the dialogue itself with no or very little of the interstitial stuff.

hunted through my drafts and here is an example:

early drafts may also be full of square brackets of things that need to go there - [concluding dialogue] etc - or just empty square brackets to mark a place where i know some kind of descriptor will need to go between dialogue

i don't always write scenes in order, e.g. several of the scenes in unwanted that are chronologically last were written first, which definitely creates more work for myself in the long run trying to make sure things flow right and make sense but sometimes you've just gotta go for the part you're most excited about

then i go through and turn the notes into real prose, fill in all the stuff that needs to happen around the dialogue

and then i edit...obsessively. there are definitely exceptions where i've thrown things up after only a few readthroughs, but unwanted for example...i think i did editing passes on sections of that upwards of 20 times? when something is in progress i'll often get myself back into the flow by rereading & editing the parts that are already written, so whatever was written first might get an insane number of readthroughs before it all gets done

a big part of early editing is syntax and punctuation - we all joke about semicolon addictions but truly first draft me is always like. every sentence is connected to every other sentence. gotta have 4000 colons, semicolons, dashes. and i don't want to dedicate brain space to reining that in when i'm trying to get ideas out so it gets fixed (...mostly) later

i read through and look for places where sentences snag, where it doesn't quite flow right, and try to fix it. this often means waiting a day or so so i can actually notice that stuff again. i look for words that are being repeated too much (catch first draft me putting some variation of gentle/gently 4 times in the same paragraph)

i spend a lot of time looking at the stuff around dialogue. the actual words said by characters come to me pretty vividly and usually don't need that much work, but when i read through a scene i'm always looking at whether there needs to be more or less descriptors filled in around the dialogue, whether it needs to be sped up by taking some out or slowed down by putting more in.

i go through trimming off dialogue tags when they aren't needed (my old work has...infinitely too many dialogue tags imo), looking for cleverer/neater ways of indicating who is talking. thinking about whether i need to describe how a character says something or if the words said work fine on their own, and looking for repetition in how people are described talking (again first draft me is like. you've gotta indicate they are talking softly! everyone all the time is talking so so softly), and in the descriptions in general.

that kind of line-by-line editing is what i spend most of my time on. because my works are relatively short, i don't need to do as much big structure stuff - though for some fics i fuss with the order of scenes a lot, like unwanted again: i changed the order of the dream sequences and shiho scenes a lot.

then a certain amount of editing for thematic coherency/making sure things come to a conclusion that feels right to me. often i'll spend a lot of time fussing with the last scenes to try and make sure that the resolution feels decisive enough to be satisfying but not like everything is 100% fixed forever, because i'm usually writing people having big emotional things that can't be fixed without like 100k words and a bunch of therapy. it's a balance.

ahhh this got so long but man. editing. it's so so much work. it's the only reason anything i write is any good. it's really exciting when i can feel myself getting better at it. i could talk about it forever probably

18. if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

i'm trying to get better about keeping this stuff because it is really fun to look back on!

i had a doc full of offcuts from dead man's hand, because i pretty much let that conversation wander wherever it wanted to go while drafting and then wrestled it into some kind of coherency later, so here's a section of unused dialogue from there:

[huntingteeth]

author headcanons for i know how we got here (give in again) that don't spoil the fic but and might be fun to know

part 3, aka chapters 11-14

chapter 11

this chapter went through about four drafts before we ended up here and it's SO MUCH BETTER than it was initially.

i think it would be fun to do a side by side comparison of the first draft to the final product but uh here is not the time nor place and also that's probably not as interesting lol

initially this chapter was going to burst open with vessel and the gang and have it go straight into the action but!! this scene both gives us a break from the tension of the previous chapter and lets us check in with iv.

again, i wanted there to be a throughline between iv's first dream with sleep and this dream sequence, so he comes to in the forest and transitions to the shoreline, both places that briefly show up in the first dream.

sleep explains some things in its own peculiar way while explaining nothing at all, tbh.

but wait, didn't you say that ii cast protection from good and evil on iv before he was pulled through the portal? i mean yes but i don't think sleep is trying to possess, frighten, or charm iv here. it's just trying to communicate with him and the best way for sleep to communicate is through his dreams while he's unconscious. i know irl dreaming while passed out can be a symptom of a specific type of epilepsy, but for the purposes of this fic this isn't the case and sleep uses it as a way to speak to iv.

i've been calling the small voices that also speak to iv the echoes. they echo things that sleep has said, they echo things from the waking world, but they're also able to generate their own speech.

"think of how happy you'll be to see them" > "he'll be so happy to see you" to iii from the start of this fic, aka sleep said the right thing at the wrong time initially because sleep, unlike humans, isn't tethered to time.

if it makes you feel worse, i think iv was probably conscious while he was in the trance in the previous scene. he could do minor things like cover his bleeding ears, as long as he didn't look away from the mirror, and watching marc in the mirror. the flinching was definitely iv flinching every time marc tried to break through the mirror on his side, but he was unable to move away or call for help.

again, protection from good and evil is keeping bune at bay in this moment, but iv is still aware that he's near

iv casts arcane ward here and it activates just as marc opens the door.

i needed marc to be close enough to iv so iv could use the ring sam gave him to cast burning hands. unfortunately, marc is exactly the type of creep who would get that close to iv to keep him where he wants him. if you're picking up on the weird non-con vibes here, that's because they're definitely there.

this scene with marc asking him where he learned that kind of magic went through several iterations. originally originally there was going to be a conversation about how marc told iv not to use magic in the past and how it's a real shame he disobeyed him but it didn't fit in correctly with the first blocking of this scene. then, i left in the part where marc asks him where he learned magic like that and left in the part where iv says, "i don't belong to you" because i thought it still conveyed the same idea, mostly because i think we're all aware of the type of asshole marc is. in the actual chapter they don't really have the conversation but i put back in that marc had told him not to use magic in the past, because i think it illustrates better the mindset and beliefs that marc has about who iv is in relation to him.

spirit shroud, the spell marc uses to demonstrate what new powers he's gotten from bune, slows a target's speed (and does some other stuff that doesn't happen here in this fic) so iv finds it very difficult to move away.

this ending line really demonstrates how much marc has lost the plot, so to speak. "all i had to do was give you up"? what the fuck, man.

this second scene was originally all in iii's perspective and ended differently than it does in the fic. it started different, it ended different, and it had a totally different vibe. it had a funny ending! wild that i had a totally mean aha! moment by draft 4 and changed everything.

small disclaimer, it's really hard to write a) an action scene, b) an action scene with so many people, and c) an action scene with so many people who are also fighting using magic, so i hope you liked the final product as much as i like it. after writing the first draft of this scene, i had a huge moment where i was like "oh my god, this sucks, it doesn't capture what i was trying to portray, it's going to be a huge letdown when people read it for the first time" and i stewed in that for a significant amount of time. drafts 1-3 were in iii's perspective and then i flipped it, on a whim, to ii's perspective and i think honestly that made a difference.

for example, in the first draft, iii only dimension doors vessel to the apartment because i was going to use that as a way to introduce that ii can bop from one shadow to the next (aka, hidden paths, a feature of his circle of dreams druid class) and could use that to travel quickly and because ii being able to use hidden paths was going to be a major point later in the scene. but i ended up scrapping that entire plot line lol.

when iii smacks marc's spell out of the air, that's either an off-label use of foresight or a counterspell, but i haven't really decided which and honestly i don't think it's integral to the story to know which it is!! it's fucking cool is what it is!

iii goading marc here, you're right, is a direct reflection of real life iii yelling at the crowd on stage, how did you know?

"a familiar blue string of light unfurls" that's the mind spike from earlier that's still in effect.

marc casts maddening darkness here and then lyns casts faerie fire on him -- to be clear, idk that this is how faerie fire works in a real dnd game but it's fucking cool so it's happening here. she casts another spell on iv here as well, but you don't know what it is in chapter 11, tee hee!

after he gets stabbed, marc casts eyebite. i tried to stick with spells that fell under the "necromancy" category for marc. that's just some extra flavor for you.

in the first draft, marc did not do as much talking as he does in the final chapter and it was really lacking lol. i also like how it vacillates between marc and the boys and then paige and sam. i think it creates a sense of things are happening and they're happening quickly.

i wanted bune to be really scary and also really gross and i think i achieved that. also, what the fuck did sleep ever do to bune? idk, that's literally the only plot point i didn't try to figure out.

bune puppets marc here because truly that's all he sees marc as. he doesn't want marc, he doesn't really want to give marc powers, but marc is a means to an end.

get it, mattie!!!! i think this is supposed to be kind of like holy aura and then she casts sleep, but to be honest about halfway through writing this i stopped referring to my copious notes on dnd spells and just started doing things that seemed cool. it's my fic, i can do whatever i want.

you can break the sleep spell if you take damage, ergo bune injures marc so he can keep casting spells through his body.

sam!! sam!! sam!!

again, we're doing that thing where we switch from one thing that's happening in the scene (iii pushing iv back) to another thing that's happening during the scene (bune tearing down the wall) to create tension and a quick pace before they merge together to continue the story

originally there was going to be venom in the fic. like, bune was going to spit a venomous substance onto iv and it was going to be narsty.

chapter 11 continued, because apparently there's a character limit per block and tumblr hates me

i wanted to sandwich iv getting impaled between two big godlike moments. i wanted to undersell it in the moment and make you think, "wait, what?" i didn't want you to realize he had been impaled and injured until iv realized he had been impaled and even then, i didn't want to explicitly say the word "impaled"

i think i already established that ii can't heal iii's throat because it was an injury made by sleep, but i'm officially retconning that only injuries made by sleep can't be healed. any injuries made by gods can't be healed by ii, which sucks, but also how would they know that if they've never been in a fight with another god?

actually, if you for whatever reason are in a situation in which you need to staunch the flow of blood in someone's torso area, you should pack the wound with gauze or a t-shirt or other fabric, and then apply pressure. simply applying pressure isn't going to do anything in the long run.

ok ok ok ok this really short scene at the end of the chapter! it's short on purpose. we're back in the forest, bay-bee. "you're losing a lot of blood/you've lost a lot of blood" is from the first dream iv had with sleep. did i know when i wrote that first scene that it would culminate into this? no

yes, parts of this are directly lifted from the first dream. i like the parallelism of it tbh. "[...] like there's someone who's supposed to be sitting just outside his periphery who he can't see when he turns his head because they're not there." in the first dream, iv knows it's sleep who sits just outside his periphery. sleep is missing from this scene in chapter 11 on purpose.

this forest is also familiar to us because we've already read about it in iv's first dream with sleep.

i wasn't originally ever going to share the dreams that iii shared with iv because uh ultimately this is a story about the things iv knows and the things he doesn't know. he knows iii is already in love with him; what he doesn't know is why. but it felt kind of cinematic and right to pick the places that he flashed through in the first dream and transpose them so that ah actually they're places that iv and iii shared together in dreams. i like how it ties everything together; i like how it turns these things and places that were bad into things that are good.

again, tying what sleep said in the first dream back to the current moment. was the gift the powers or was the gift iii and ii and vessel? was the gift both of those things? iv deserves to be able to protect himself but he also deserves to be loved.

"i don't want to die" = "i'm not dead/i didn't die" and then the echoes repeat what sleep said to iv, tying everything back together

i really love this chapter, you guys.

chapter 12

starting out with mattie's pov for the first time in the fic! i wanted her to feel very shocked, but the kind of shock where you know what you have to do and you do it because that's all you CAN DO, you know?

i feel like iii irl with the red body paint probably alludes to something to do with blood so i just incorporated that in the fic here.

the spell lyns casted on iv was death ward! i used it here to kind of bolster the effect of mattie's healing spell, which i think was neat and another example of sort of layering spell work and also that magic in this universe is a communal effort!!

i wanted iv's injury here to have meaning and to leave an impact in the story, which is why it's not a one and done spell-heals-wound situation. gut wounds are serious and i think sometimes that sort of thing gets glossed over in fic so i hope this feels as realistic as possible in a fic where magic is centered lol

i feel like mattie in this fic is a little more stoic so having her have this big emotional moment and then immediately having her hide her face in sam's shoulder was a+. i think she's probably in shock right now but knows that she has a single job to do and that's to get iv stable.

it's really important to iii that iv not wake up in the room he was taken from.

there's something very comforting in having someone who knows you so well. i want the reader to feel like each character knows that they have a good support system lol

i need you to understand for real how hard it was to think of more dreams for iii to share with ii and vessel. it was so hard. for a long time in the draft it was just like DREAM 1, DREAM 2, DREAM 3 etc.

iii continues to blame himself. water is wet.

i have alluded this whole fic to the idea that iii is able to manipulate their soul bond in ways that vessel and ii can't and i finally delivered upon it. i guess since i already broke that seal of iv getting to see the dreams he didn't remember, i figured i could loop all of them into it and just really tug at your heartstrings that way. i always wanted it to show like a progression, like here's how they were in the beginning of the dreams and here's how they were toward the end of the dreams. no wonder iii fell in love with iv, right?

again, really wanted the sense of community to feel very prevalent with sam and the girls taking over the running of the household so that the boys can take care of iv.

hell yes, sleep! sleep definitely won that fight. i haven't decided in the canon of this universe if a god can kill another god or how that works, but sleep definitely came out on top here.

it's time for ii to have his breakdown. he's dealing with his worry by cleaning but i bet it's really hard for him to try and clean iv's room, especially considering it's the place where he couldn't grab onto iv fast enough.

as you know, magic is a communal effort in this universe! i wanted to punctuate that with mattie helping ii complete the hearth spell. so mattie helps him and chooses the herbs that she thinks they need in the moment (a direct contrast to how iv helped earlier in the fic and was mortified to have done so). i specifically highlighted orange blossom because it represents family. mattie totally has a soft, gooey center

and then again with paige, who just effortlessly slips into that role of "my family is hurting, here is a little something i can do to make their lives easier"

of course mattie is a little manipulative here. she's got strong older sister energy if you can't tell. she knew iii wasn't going to bother to try and eat if it was just about him, but telling him that you haven't seen vessel eat recently?? of course iii's gonna jump at the chance to share a sandwich with vessel

this whole kitchen scene was also an excuse for levity because this whole chapter is pretty emotionally rough all things considered.

fun fact this scene was originally written in vessel's pov! i changed it to ii because it flowed better, something something if i had a nickel for every time i changed a scene to ii's perspective, i'd have two nickels

chapter 13

weirdly hard chapter to write tbh i think i noted that in the author's note on the chapter, but it's like, the main plot line has wrapped up, iv's awake, and now it's time to wrap up the emotional plot line.

this first scene in the chapter was not the first scene that i wrote. the second part with mattie in the second scene was actually the first part of this chapter that i wrote. i had a pretty good grasp of how i wanted that to go early on in writing this chapter, but it was the first and last scenes that gave me the most trouble.

idk if you've ever healed from an abdominally-related surgery but i have and the important parts of that that informed my writing here is that the wound has to heal from the inside out otherwise just the top heals and it can cause problems down the road AND they hurt. they really mess up your core. so even though iv is being healed through magic i wanted to illustrate how a wound like that would affect him. he needs help getting up out of bed and walking sucks.

then we get a sweet moment between iii and iv, which we all deserve tbh

big ol' guilt monster that lives in iii's chest rears its ugly head once again.

ii to the rescue, obviously. that man can't stand to see his partners being mean to themselves

HE'LL BE HAPPY TO SEE YOU finally happened, it only took 13 chapters

if it feels like the chapter kind of tonally shifts here, that's because it does and that's because this chapter was a beast to write.

is it surprisingly emotionally mature of him, mattie? is it even emotionally mature of him????? is that just what you think being emotionally mature is?

i want mattie and iv specifically to have a sibling relationship, i think it would be good for both of them tbh

boof, we're still getting painted a picture of what kind of asshole marc was and what kind of hang-ups iv is bringing with him. i don't love the picture it paints tbh!!! honestly i know the broad strokes of the exact sort of asshole marc was because that was definitely something i had to think about so that information could inform how i wrote this story.

iv verbalizing that he feels safe with them is something that can be so personal actually

but mattie, who all are you in a polyamorous relationship with??? WHO ALL? i'm never going to tell you. you're gonna have to decide on your own, dear readers

"sponge bath with sam" was a phrase that would not leave my head. idk.

iv tugs up his shirt here, displays bare skin for the first time on purpose (bare arm out of the shower curtain doesn't count; sorry vessel) and with intent!! it's a big moment in a small sentence tbh.

oof, iv shares that he remembers the dreams: some emotional vulnerability from our boy iv, which iii reacts to by being completely overwhelmed. it's been just him for so long who remembers the dreams.

iv immediately asking if he did something wrong because he hasn't been awake to see how iii's been working himself up throughout this whole situation.

if you're getting soft dom vibes from ii, good, because they're there lol.

once again, i think iii is very adhd-coded in this fic, and i definitely think there's some rejection sensitive dysphoria in his character here too. i do think his anxiety would be largely present in his body language, which was what i was trying to get across here.

but i'm still reinforcing that sense of community with paige and lyns cleaning up iv's bedroom, and showing the little ways in which they take care of the boys.

"iv has always left" ooh boy, there's some unexplored trauma there i guess

if i ever write like a lil one-shot based off this fic, it might be the scene where ii helps iv shower l m a o. you know he was So Respectful and So Aware of iv's boundaries, you just know it.

chapter 14

there was such a gap between this chapter coming out and the last chapter coming out because i was feeling burnt out at work but also because i knew this was going to be like "the last chapter"

obviously there's the epilogue, but i also didn't want this story to end lol

i was also very nervous that the audience was going to be let down that there wasn't necessarily a "sexy" scene between all four of them, but i think i was able to genuinely explain in fic why there was never going to be a sex scene in this chapter. iv's not ready!

anyway, vessel knows iv is healed. iv knows he's healed. iv knows vessel knows he's healed. i think vessel would still be worried about iv despite the fact that everyone knows he's been healed through magic. like vessel said earlier in the fic, the body knows it's healed but the mind is slow to catch up.

cheese on toast. i think at the time that i was writing it, i was craving a good cheese toast lmao. but it also helps to develop these characters to give them little things that feel real -- cheese on toast, friendship bracelets, sam who likes to work on his projects at their house, etc. -- to make them feel fully fleshed out as people.

i think he probably makes enough cheese on toasts for all the people in the house but definitely is very excited when the girls say they already ate hahahaha

i also needed to get sam and the girls out of the house.

this scene, where they talk, was arguably the hardest scene to write in the fic. it went through very many iterations and i think i landed at a place where i'm happy with it.

the scene was originally broken into two different scenes and the part where they're in the living room was originally in ii's perspective, but i just smooshed them together and made it all from iv's perspective because it was a little confusing having ii have to guess where iv's anxiety was coming from.

and of course, iv's worried that he won't be able to jump into a sexual relationship with them right away and that it won't be fair to them -- wild perspective, but sort of understandable when you consider what relationship iv is coming out of, and i really needed there to be a scene where they're like, we don't want you for sex, we want you for you. we love you.

i did waffle on whether it was too much to have them all kiss iv one after the other, but i figured they've been waiting so long to be able to that it was probably the move lol.

did he kiss him in the back garden because it reminded him of the dreams they had in fields? yes

again, we're kind of flipping between two things that happened in the story -- vessel kissing iv and more of the conversation they all had that we didn't necessarily get to see explicitly in the fic. i also wanted to circle back to that repetition that's happened throughout the fic, little callbacks. so when vessel kisses the side of iv's head, it's a promise again.

what does sleep say to iii!!! i gotta know!! idk but i really liked the image of this big unknowable thing that drew them all together settling around them as they all finally get what they want.

ii and iv at the hearth is an obvious parallel to the first time iv joined him at the hearth, but we get to see how much iv's grown and how comfortable and safe he feels. love that for him!!

they nap so much in this fic, lmao. oh well

"oh, definitely," iii continues. "it's like... ii's element. all the trees turn their leaves to give him shade." is definitely iii's equivalent of vessel telling iv in the beginning of the fic that iii can see the future. kind of overstating what the power is because you know they all riff on each other about their powers when given half a chance.

i also wanted to emphasize here that ii is a druid lol. he uses hidden paths here, which is a feature of his dnd class lmao, circle of dreams.

a gift before you knew it was a gift!! a gift you deserved!! sobbing

part 2 | back to part 1

[imminent-danger-came]

If you could write your “ideal” season 5 for LMK, what would it look like? Like, what season 5 would be like if you were to write it (assuming you would also be trying to implement your theories and stuff into the mix, Feral MK/EAMK are two of my favorite theories from you!)

That's a really hard question! Mainly because like...I don't know the end game—I don't know what the writers are ultimately building towards. For example, I have pretty much 0 clue what our mysterious figure's plan is. I don't know why Wukong killed Macaque (and while I'd like for the show to go that direction, I'm still not 100% confident SWK did actually kill Macaque). And when it comes down to it, I have no clue who/what MK actually is.

Like I've said before, my ideal s5 is the one they give me!

But, I would of course love EAMK to become canon! I think it really fits with what we see in the show, and it just makes sense for MK's arc. Now that MK's identity has really come to the forefront, he's going to actually have to learn about himself/think about himself and then come to terms with it. We really didn't focus on MK's Monkey Demon identity too much in the s4 special, meaning s5 is gonna have a huge focus on it just like s4 did, and because of the way this has been structured I'm assuming it's going to get worse before it gets better. Which then hopefully leaves some room for feral MK and the reveal of the plan of our new antagonist!

However, I'll try to "plot out" a s5:

The season opens as a parallel to 4x01, MK & Mei are fighting a "monster of the week" type villain—except uh oh, the Jade Emperor's seal isn't holding (& also MK is not in totally control of his powers). Reality is starting to fray a little bit!

Luckily Yellowtusk has some experience with containing the Jade Emperor's Power, but now Ne Zha is gonna have to touch base with Wukong and the rest of the Gang

They are gonna have to find a "suitable host" so to speak. The first recommendation is one of the 10 Kings of the Underworld—one of those guys has both the power and control to be the new Jade Emperor

It's underworld time

Except, wait! One of them is a traitor! They released Azure and tried to tip the world into chaos. There can't be a new Jade Emperor until this is resolved

Who-done-it murder plot ensues

Something goes awry

MK and gang? They have now been re-trapped into a different section of the scroll of memory (like the infinite scroll room) (Macaque, SWK, and Ne Zha remain in the real world)

oh_no_the_curse_is_back.png (The curse spreading and consuming the world is now a relevant threat again)

Tang magic is able to keep most of the group together—MK is separated.

There is some Tang and group side plot and relevant development (do not feel like coming up with what this would be)

MK is plopped right into the memory of his birth. This relates to how the pilgrims died, and it's clear SWK knew MK's identity the whole time (the gang reunite with MK in the middle of this sequence) (EAMK is confirmed canon. Nice. It's still somewhat unclear what exactly MK is, but he is connected to the underworld/curse/memory)

MK is not holding it together AT ALL, but "Monkey King had a good reason" or whatever

On the outside SWK and the others have been trying to figure shit out. Subodhi arrives to help and can send SWK into the scroll

He finds MK and gang

They are yeeted into the memory of why Wukong killed Macaque

MK snaps. L + ratio + your beloved Mentor killed his ex-best friend + you just learned you are chaos incarnate + you killed the past lives of everyone you hold dear

SWK V MK fight of my dreams ensues

Sadly reality is fragile and MK is not helping this

"Oh god if we don't stop MK everything will end"

There was relevant Mei development in the scroll, it's dragon time baby (Macaque tried and failed to calm MK down rip)

Samadhi Fire Part 3 plays out. Mei get's her dragon form, MK is successfully talked down by his best friend

There are still uh, issues

hey wait remember why we were here, the jade emperor's power-

Oh god the traitor revealed themself.

MK is basically not breathing because he is trying not to fracture reality any further

We as the audience are given a hint of the master plan

The curse is involved along with the Jade Emperor's Power maybe. Something something Chaos. Peng is. Somewhere. MK is revealed to be a key pawn in this game

Reality is so close to becoming undone. Someone has to become the jade emperor NOW or they will all die

Wukong sacrifices himself TM

Jade Emperor Wukong is real, if only for a moment

He plans to use his body to restitch reality back together like Azure did

Everyone is not gonna let that happen (they r stronger together)

With their combined effort, they are able to collectively use the Jade Emperor's Power to fix the world (again)

This is when the traitor comes and swoops in, stealing the Jade Emperor's power somehow

Season ends on a probably pretty shitty note

[chaoflaka]

ONE PIECE FILM RED SPOILERS

- I’m honestly not gonna lie, the fact the film red trailers made us believe that Uta was in danger by the main antagonists.

Only to reveal in the film that it is Uta herself who is the main antagonist.

Like damn that’s one good way for the trailers to fool its audience.

- And not only is Uta the antagonist, she’s also pretty screwed up. I mean she decides to try OBLITERATING the entire ENTIRE world and because Luffy told her he was willing to remain a pirate. Like she decides to respond to her hatred for pirates and the flaws of the world by kidnapping his friends, holding her fans captive before turning all of them into “happy” objects, and attempted to cause the destruction of the entire world..

- And I’m going to admit it. Her devil fruit may be the most dangerous one we have seen so far and it’s suppose to be non-canon. 

- The sunny mascot is adorable, not gonna lie.

- I know it’s common for Luffy’s hat to be taken by someone. But thinking about it, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen someone cause damage to it in front of Luffy. I think the last time that ever occurred was when this non-canon antagonist impaled it in a pretty old one piece movie, although I forgot what it was called.

- Is it me, or did the way she attempted to murder Luffy in the real world to be unsettling?

- I’m going to point out to anyone who hasn’t watched it yet. But the majority of the scenes, specifically in Uta’s song sequences and the fight scenes towards the end, has lots of bright colors and flashes. It irritated my eyes a little bit, but if you’re sensitive to those stuff, I recommend you watch the film with lights on in the room.

- I know lots of people are complaining about Luffy using gear 5th in this movie even though this supposedly takes sometime before the Wano arc. I’m not complaining though cause that was my most favorite part of the entire movie and I was deep down anticipating on seeing Luffy’s awakened form for the first time in anime (even though Toei was willing to make it brief in order to not catch anime watchers off guard).

In all honesty, I guess him triggering his new form likely make sense since he was fighting in the dream world and he was getting close to awakening it. I doubt he even noticed. But yeah, not complaining at all. Seeing gear 5th in anime earlier than expected was extremely satisfying.

- So Uta is not biologically Shanks daughter after all. She was found by him and the crew, deciding to raise her as his own

- Did Uta die in the end? I’m trying to look it up and it says that her status is “unknown”. Cause if she did, she would be the second antagonist to have actually died in the end.

[mitamicah]

Spoilers for The Owl House 3.03 Watching and Dreaming

Okay so .... I have a lot of words about this episode!

Since I’ve just watched it don’t expect anything here to be cohesive since I am basically just ranting from memory and getting all my thoughts down in writing. No profound meaning behind everything here, just vibes :’D

The Collector - their mini arc in the episode and having them learn to appreciate life, forgiveness and friendship was such a treat - I screamed and actually feared for their life when they ran to Belos then to scream at Luz breaking apart (dying) afterwards - I had no idea this was the way the crew would go with the collector but I loved it

Belos - fucking hell, I am glad he finally died!! I am a little sad that we didn’t get more of his backstory with Caleb but I think what we did get about Belos especially though the words of the titan to Luz in the inbetween fits well with the story and gives closure to Luz and her doubts about being as ‘bad as Belos’. Also him melting in the boiling rain and Luz being over him to the point of not even flinching when Belos tries to manipulate her? Good stuff!! So was the call back to the first episode with the Good Witch Luz pulling Belos off the dying heart of the titan!!

The dream sequences ... I actually thought those and the games would take up more screentime but I am not too sad about it since what we got was pretty much just as angst as I’d thought it would be - and giving time to Raine being badass resisting Belos and Luz meeting the titan was a far trade off for me

I did get some Amphibia the Hardest Thing vibes from the Luz meeting a deity in the in-between after “death” only to get back to life bit but again I don’t mind it since it ended in a pretty badass finale seeing Luz, King and Eda fight side by side 

Seeing the rest of the Hexside squad helping to free the other inhabitants of the Boiling Isles with the help of best mom Camila was pretty fun although a part of me had wanted to see them have a bigger impact on the story: still, it was nice checking in with them once and twice and gosh I adored Amity for being the first to genuinely giving up her hand of friendship to the collector after Luz has just told them about friendship - it was a perfect moment in my mind.

The scenes of people meeting up with their family was so sweet - I enjoyed it a lot especially with Hunter getting his found family in Darius and Ebberwolf :3

Yet to me the real beauty was the epilogue - seeing all the different ways that the peeps on Earth and the boiling Isles have grown up and their new looks! I love Luz’ eyeshadow, and gah, Vee’s piercings look so cool!!! (I wonder if the nose piercing is a nod to the voice actor also being the voice of Amethyst? I believe she had a nosering  (Amethyst?)? I could be wrong, this is literally my unhinged, first thoughts written down unedited) - Willow being a badass sports girlie fits so well and I love the short hair for her, Gus looks incredible with those gold accessories in his dreadlocks, and Amity as a badass air explorer with a sidecut? Hello!!!? Hunter is killing me being this adorable taking up the mantle as apprentice of Dell and aaaaa the blue bird is gorgeous and somehow fits Hunter so well :’D what really killed me about him tho was two fold 1) Flapjack’s grave and 2) the red thing on Hunter’s arm that king of sort of looks like a Flapjack tattoo to cover up his empire coven sigil OVO

And then hello white haired Raine!? Why do they slay with that haircolour and the ‘tear down’ scars!? this look fits them so well, and I am so happy seeing them together with Eda, finally :’3

The ending sequence with the collector sending the fireworks and all the casts saying “Bye” feels like the biggest nod to the fans - thank you so much Dana, the crew, the cast, the animators, everybody for this wonderful show!!

[bronanlynch]

once again I've watched more anime than done anything else this week but I promise I also have other stuff to talk abt

listening (podcast):

Great Gundam Project: almost done with their 0079 episodes and it's so funny to hear how confused and surprised they are that Newtypes don't get mentioned until the last 10 episodes. also, once again, hearing them talk about Char reminds me that I miss seeing Char on my television screen :/

Palisade: once again it was crazy good this week. shout out to fucked up dream sequences/visions of alternate futures, gotta genuinely be one of my favorite storytelling devices

listening (music): MakeDamnSure by Taking Back Sunday, which is going on my Partizan/Palisade playlist for Balence reasons

reading:

Imperial Uncle: got to more fun reveals that make the main relationship a lot tastier and more fun. still having a good time with this one

The Death I Gave Him: part of the appeal of this book for me (other than that I love Hamlet & Hamlet retellings) is the romance with the sentient lab AI. this should shock absolutely no one (at least no one who knows me as the Sokrates/Integrity guy lol) but I'm real into stuff that explores like, how intimacy works when you don't each have your own separate bodies

A Power Unbound: also started & finished something I've been looking forward to, A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, the third book in a romance/historical fantasy trilogy (different main characters for each) set mostly in Edwardian England. I've enjoyed the other books in the series, and I enjoyed this one too (though I think I prefer the other two for reasons that probably don't have to do with the actual quality of this book and have more to do with what I like & don't like in a main relationship, and actually it's a testament to how strong the writing was that the relationship worked for me anyway, because it did feel earned in terms of both characterization & themes, even though it's the sort of relationship dynamic that I tend to be hesitant about because I often see it done very badly in fanfic in ways that do a disservice to the personalities of both characters involved). anyway. my actual review is that I love fucked up magic houses and there are several of those in this book so shout out to that, and one of the main characters is extremely my type (short, angry, hates the aristocracy, etc)

watching:

I'm in Love with the Villainess: we're caught up now, and I do love class conflict even if I'm sure it's going to be incredibly simplistic and silly because that's the show this is (which I am fine with, to be clear, this is a romance anime based on lovingly parodying otome games, I am treating it with the same kind of seriousness that I would treat something like Scum Villain)

Bakeoff: I'm glad that this year they seem to be better about not putting way too much weight on the showstopper and sometimes deciding star baker based on other challenges like. finally some respect for people who do really well in the signature!!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: I mean. I've been posting through it about this one so I don't think I have any new insights here just. man. I love it when a major character death is done really well. what a show (positive)

Gundam Seed: you may, at this point, be asking why Seed is our next Gundam after finishing ZZ, especially when every week I talk about pining for Char. the answer is because my roommate watched some of it a while ago and wanted to revisit it, and also because we're saving Char's Counterattack for when we get really desperate for Gundam that isn't Seed. anyway. Seed is fun so far!

the above description of Gundam Seed was written a few days ago when we first started but before we got to the info dump about what's up with Coordinators & Naturals so I'm editing this to say: oof. it really is like what if someone took all of the parts of the original Newtype stuff that I was most skeptical about, took out all of the metaphorical stuff from Zeta that redeemed the concept for me, and then explicitly added literal eugenics. don't like that!

the other thing about Seed is the misogyny which like. god. at least the misogyny in Zeta felt more interesting to think about. at least it felt like Tomino was saying things about gender even if I didn't always like it. this is just peak early 2000s misogyny where everyone including the writers hates women so much that every man comes across as incredibly gay because their relationships with other men are treated so much more seriously

at this point you might be asking what I actually like about this show since I've been complaining for several paragraphs and the answer is I love it when childhood friends end up on the opposite sides of a war. also, a lot of Seed feels like it's trying very hard to Be A Gundam Show (for better or worse tbh, I can feel myself being marketed to, I can practically hear Bandai being like, hey remember how cool it is when a blue-and-white mobile suit fights a pinkish-red mobile suit, don't you want to buy some models), and I am not immune to classic Gundam shit like "oops these kids are involved in a war now because the military was developing a top-secret superweapon right next to where they live" and "your lives are at risk and/or you might get arrested for trying to protect your friends because the higher-ups are incompetent/selfish/do not care about you." I am also not immune to squads of edgy anime boys, or giant robots that each have their own special weapon/power, or whatever the fuck Le Creuset's got going on. I love him. I still miss Char and he's not quite filling that void but I do love him

playing:

another session of my Blades in the Dark campaign, based on the image below (from here). the crew was asked to get the sea serpent to go away and leave ships alone, and absolutely no one was surprised that the secret actual mission was to protect the sea serpent (a baby one) from the coast guard who were going to try to make it leave but more violently because we're playing Blades like it's a game about befriending creatures (see also: Missy is currently trying to resocialize a former fighting goat and Xiao Yun collects extremely fucked up birds)

Ace Attorney 5: not very far into the trial but man. sorry for falling for the trilogy nostalgia but I love to have Edgeworth as a prosecutor, I love the energy that he and Phoenix have, I'm such a sucker for defense attorney & prosecutor working together to find the truth and also they're in love

making: vaguely spanakopita-inspired stuffed pastry wreath. we made it once before and put too much extra vegetable in that released too much water while it was baking so the dough just straight up did not cook. we did it better this time! the dough is actually baked! (it's store-bought crescent rolls, we did not make the dough). anyway. there's spinach and mushroom and herbed goat cheese in there, and it's tasty

drinking: the grocery store had peppermint bark creme liqueur, and it's pretty good in hot chocolate

writing: continued to pick away at a zine fic, figured out what I want to write for my Nirvana in Fire exchange fic, and also did a little bit more on the Integrity fic that I've been working on. it has been a minute since I've written an action scene huh

The Principality knows how to contain divines, to leash them, to defang them and bend their powers to its will. And Integrity is an old divine, and never among the most awe-inspiring. Integrity is a small, quiet thing, precise and intimate and not suited for flashy displays of power like many of its fellows. But it is a divine nonetheless, and when it fights, it brings death. Orbit-and-Integrity steps into the corridor where the Princept fled. Orbit bares their remaining teeth, blood pooling in their mouth and seeping through the seams that begin to open in Integrity’s armor where it no longer has the focus to keep them closed.

[prettybluelites]

Thoughts: The Innkeeper

Ahhhhh here we go, part 3 of 3. I'll do the new episodes next week once I've had time to digest. Ugh, I can't believe I have to wait until I get home from work tomorrow to watch, what the actual fuck? Anyway!

That little lick of flame to open is kind of elegant, I like it

"Soul Reaper" makes me laugh because I can just imagine that guy being like, "Yeah, I'm a reaper of souls but also...I've got soul" and it's doubly terrible.

Just watching Zheng in action and thinking about "Every pirate captain captains pirates differently"

I really love Stede's crew lined up and watching as they approach the Revenge, I think they all look suitably shellshocked and I think they're all at least a little bit thinking of it like Jim was when they were talking to Archie, a place where their lives meant something

Stede scaling the side of the ship, not wasting a thought on something as trivial as a rope ladder

One moment to survey the devastation and then back to action

"Guys, hi!" Like there's nothing amiss about the scene he just walked in on. Never change.

"I thought you'd be taller" is such a great callback

"He retired" belongs in the Treacherous Liars Hall of Fame. And "If you don't want to work anymore, you can just give up, I guess," is another early favorite for best line delivery of the Season

Love Zheng's face when she says "Leather. And B.O."

When I watched the trailer and I saw the bits that had this blue saturation to them I called a dream/vision situation and I guess I wasn't far off. Everything about the way this is shot is gorgeous.

My sis: "Why is there a pig?" I think since it's a dream (-ish) it's one of those things where the brain just tries to plug in something, I don't think Ruthie has any real significance but I would love to hear thoughts if anyone has any. It did remind me a little of the bit in "Cold Mountain" where Inman meets the goat woman who cares for him for a time. Like, some mysterious hermits have goats, some have pigs. *shrug*

I think i want to start a band and call it the Coolin' Bevvies

Better name for a band than Shit Tits, anyway

Jim and Olu forever, even if not as a capital-c Couple, even if only as best friends they tell stuff to

The way Con's voice trembles when says "I dared to mention your fuckin' name" - masterful

Stede seems to be realizing that for everything he's coming to understand about Ed and about pirating there's still a whole world of stuff he needs to learn.

Okay, dumb question, is Ed's shirt black or is it purple? Or is it legit changing from shot to shot? Or is it just the...the filter or whatever they used here? (Sorry, I don't know the lingo) whatever, I love it, sometimes his hair even has a purple cast to it, so cool.

Aw, Stede, listen to you, talking it through

When Ed starts flashing back in reaction to Hornigold going at him and there's that one tiny burst of Izzy laughing at him - oh god, that's such a gut punch

Gravy Basket would also be a great name for a band

In all seriousness, Taika is so good in this whole scene

I really like Olu defining a friend as "someone I'd like to see grow old"

Lol every time at "This one has a smell" because yes, chamomile has a smell and it is weird

"I never said that"/"You say that all the time" - another hilarious callback/inversion

Between multiple viewings of both this episode and the trailer, I've seen this bit with Black Pete and the crossbow probably dozens of times and I still laugh out loud every time

Madeleine Sami is gorgeous, just sayin'

I think...Izzy's trying. That's all I'm gonna say for right now. I think he's trying.

"I hate you. I've always hated your guts." Oh, all my insides clenched. Oh Ed.

And then...and then. I don't even know where to start about this whole sequence. I loved it the first time I watched it, and I sobbed (always a good indicator in my book, I think Stede saying "I messed all of this up" is what really touches me off) and I think I've loved it more every time I've watched it. It's beautiful and perfect and sweet and just the right amount of dramatic and just the right amount of...silly, which doesn't mean I'm selling it short or diminishing it in any way, I mean silly in the best possible way. And the way they smile at each other when they're finally face to face? And the way Ed leans in? That's it, going to watch again....

I was too young (and too American, probably) to have really gotten into Kate Bush in her heyday, I knew "Running Up that Hill," and her album "The Red Shoes" got played a little on the radio around here when it was out, but I honestly don't think I knew "This Woman's Work" until recently. I now love it just by virtue of it being so perfect in this scene. The ethereal-ness of it and the way it builds with the action, or the action builds with the song - I can't think of something that would have been better.

The way Stede kind of steels himself before taking the towel off Ed's face

And the way Ed's fingers immediately close around Stede's

If I'm that far in my feels after 3 episodes what is the rest of the season going to do to me??

Thanks for reading, if you're still here! Everybody enjoy episodes 4 and 5!