#all ships are created equal it is we the fans who decide our own personal rankings ^^

[thatseventiesbitch]

That is such a good post about the fandom. Honestly, I think a lot of fandoms have the problem we do, which is a few people deciding that their personal head canons are fact and reality. Like 'my verse is canon' is usually meant as a joke, but a small yet very loud minority constantly proclaim that their own interpretations (some of which are...out there lol), their non-canon ships, their personal wishlist etc are reality because he or she SAID so, and it's hard for the rest of us not to be like "i mean, imagine and daydream whatever you want, but that's actually NOT what happened on the actual show." I'm not sure I'm explaining this well, but basically a few fans insist that 2+2 is five and then freak out when people politely point out otherwise. Maybe it's because I'm Tumblr Old like you are lol and fandom in our day was more analyzing character' personalitiess, trading ideas about favorite and least favorite storylines etc rather than fixating on stuff like "CHARACTER A IS GENDERFLUID AND IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH TEN OTHER PEOPLE AND IS A DEMIROMANTIC PANSEXUAL BECAUSE I SAID SO" when it's like but, no, they're not, so maybe just create an original character if that's what you want to write about lol.

Thanks! I guess a lot of us are feeling similar things right now.

Yep, I (think!) I understand what you're saying. We're on the same page. Folks can do whatever they want on this silly little site, of course - imagining different sexualities for the characters or pairing them with characters they were not romantically linked to in canon, inventing their own 'universes' that are based on the source material - these things don't hurt anybody. Let them be.

I think the rub comes in when the rest of us do not take their ideas seriously or do not agree with them - which of course, we're under no obligation to do. Sorry, but I don't think every interpretation is equally valid. I don't want to read about your OC/self-insert characters when I peruse the T70S and T90S tag, I want to read about the characters from the show I like. I do think everyone should be able to express their own thoughts and ideas on their own blog, but when one makes public posts on a public blog using fandom tags, others are going to respond. Those are literally the kinds of interactions this site was designed to foster.

The good news for me continues to be that the vast majority of folks I've interacted with in this fandom are good, creative people and even when we see things differently we can often have great conversations anyway. I hope newer fans aren't driven away by a couple of bad apples. I've only encountered a few blogs who are aggressive towards those with dissenting opinions or who are openly hostile to any good-faith discussion, and frankly, I've blocked them and I wish I had done it sooner. We do have the ability to curate our own fandom experience. I think folks hesitate to block because they don't want to be impolite, but I think it's far worse to continue seeing that person's content, become angered by it, and send nasty anons (I've seen a little bit of this happening and it makes me upset). If it's not for you, unfollow! If you keep seeing content you don't want to see, block! Now all that stuff is gone from my dash/tags and I only see the things I want to see - fan fiction, (canon) character analysis, excitement for the new season of That '90s Show. 🥰

[ridiasfangirlings]

rank your favorite ship in K and the reason why, ridia!!

Are we talking all my ships because I have a lot of ships XD Maybe just the highlights...also I feel this needs to be split into Fushimi ships and non-Fushimi ships because I have a bias okay.

So Fushimi ships:

1. Sarumi - As I once said on Twitter, I have many ships but at the end of the day I'm just a basic bitch who loves Sarumi. For me I think it all comes down to their wonderful dynamic, they have all this history and angst and pain and reconciliation and it's just perfect for me. I love how Yata was the first person to ever show Fushimi affection and how Fushimi just quietly clings to that all through middle school, how the two of them just manage to be on the same wavelength and become so important to each other that the idea of breaking apart feels like it could never happen. And then they join Homra and everything gets dragged down by misunderstanding and miscommunication and Fushimi's deep-seated issues that don't allow him to believe in Yata's honest affection the moment Yata finds someone else intriguing. So Fushimi breaks it himself and styles himself to become Yata's enemy, except he utterly fails at that because even with all the cruel words he speaks the both of them are just so clearly still unable to hate each other – Yata can't delete his phone number even after everything, Fushimi can't cut his ties to Yata completely, and it's all just waiting for these two to finally be honest and accept that their connection is too strong to be broken and I love that (though technically I love Misaru more because bottom Fushimi is my jam).

2. Reisaru – Second favorite pairing, another wonderful dynamic. This one's completely different from Sarumi but wonderful in its own way, how Munakata does really understand Fushimi in a way I think even Fushimi himself doesn't, and how Fushimi respects Munakata even if he won't ever say it out loud. I also love Munakata's doting side, how he gives Fushimi all this praise and makes a position in Scepter 4 just for him and basically is the one who gives Fushimi a place to belong. And Munakata as this pleasant dork who just wants his gloomy boyfriend to be happy is always fun, just imagining their dates with Munakata so eager for Fushimi to enjoy things and Fushimi acting annoyed when really he is in fact enjoying himself is a nice image.

3. Mikosaru, Hisaru, AkiFushi – Okay I'm cheating because honestly I can't rank these, I like them all equally. Mikosaru is tantalizing because they really shouldn't work but that's part of the fun, Fushimi hates Mikoto and is afraid of him but then at the same time it's clear in canon that despite what Fushimi thinks Mikoto does actually care for him. Their dynamic in general is just very full of possibilities and needs more attention.

Hisaru is a cute pairing with eager puppy dog Hidaka who wants to get to know Fushimi more and who won't let his superior's gloomy exterior bring him down. He's a bit like Yata with being all open and honest about his feelings but at the same time I think there's a bit more maturity there and none of the baggage that Sarumi have, instead Hidaka wants so much to learn about Fushimi and what he likes and doesn't like while also being a person who can give Fushimi the kind of open affection that he needs.

Akifushi is a more low key pairing, with Akiyama as the endlessly patient and mature type who worries for Fushimi while also letting Fushimi grow at his own pace. I admit I've kinda moved Akiyama into the positon of the guy who perpetually gives Fushimi drinks but it fits for them I think, in canon I feel like Fushimi treats Akiyama in a friendlier manner (in his own way) than any other member of the alphabet squad and I feel like Akiyama watches over him a bit. Instead of being someone who crashes into Fushimi's life like Yata or Hidaka Akiyama takes his time scaling those walls and he's always ready with a calm smile or soft encouragement that makes it hard for Fushimi to push him away (also secret dom Akiyama works very well with bottom Fushimi :3c).

4. TotsuFushi – You know that scene in LSW, where Mikoto saves Yata and Fushimi during the surprise party and Totsuka hugs Fushimi? Yeah, I like that scene. That's a good TotsuFushi scene. This is another good dynamic too, Totsuka who sees through Fushimi more than Fushimi would like and who seems kind but can also be very pointed and even a little cruel in his own way, and Fushimi who is uncomfortable when Totsuka's kind but would have no qualms pointing out that cruelty or those faults. 

5. KurohFushi – It's not really a crack pairing if they have a short story together, right? Blame the tweets book for this and that story where Kuroh makes Fushimi meat with veggies mixed in. I just want to see Kuroh scandalized by Fushimi's terrible everything and attempting to get him to become healthy while also finding himself unexpectedly attracted, is that so wrong?

6. YukariFushi – I don't think they even have an actual pairing name do they XD I have one (1) doujinshi about them and I just want Yukari to call Fushimi 'Saruhiko-chan' all the time and to do his makeup.

7. HisuiFushi – Only in dark, twisted 'going to betray you but you're also currently my King' ways, but still, I ship it.

8. KusaFushi – Honestly this is only so low because I always feel like Kusanagi's 'older' in a way that makes pairing him with Fushimi feel unbalanced? (No shade to anyone who likes it btw, this is solely my personal feelings and I still enjoy this pairing, just not as much as some others.) They get along well and Kusanagi is clearly impressed with him, so it's all good.

Bonus: non-Fushimi ships:

1. Niki’s face/my fist

1. Akiben and AkiHida -  I can't choose between these two, I love them both equally. Akiben just have that perfect partner dynamic, while AkiHida have a lovely 'serious mature bunny meets overly enthusiastic puppy dog' vibe (also again, Akiyama as secret savage dom and Hidaka just screams 'tie me up and have your way with me'). 10/10, would ship them both.

2. Mikorei -  They are stupid and I respect that. Also gotta love the whole 'this is my boyfriend, I hate him but we can't stop making out' vibe. The tragedy of S1 is just the icing on the cake.

3. Munatotsu – That they barely interacted in canon is a crime, I tell you. Imagine the hobbies. The bonding experiences. The sparkles. They would be the worst best couple.

4. Izuseri – Actual adults? In my K project? It's more likely than you think.

5. Douseri – They never met but they should have. Awesome ladies being awesome together and eating terrible food.

6. IzuTotsu -  Is it because of the tragedy? Maybe. Okay, yes, it's the tragedy.

7. MikoTotsu – Weirdly I like them better as unrequited with Totsuka pining, but still it's good.

8. MikoIzuTotsu – Actually you know what just put them all together why do we have to choose. 

9. MikoIzu – I like them more as friends but I will 100% buy that they have had drunken sex at least once, I'm just saying. 

10. HabariZenjoh – I have a couple doujinshi, okay? I feel they deserve a rank for having doujinshi.

11. KurohShiro – They cute. They'd be higher but I'm mostly indifferent to the Silvers.

[merlinbingo]

August Round-Up

We are without frills this month, because trying to open canva crashed my browser twice. I know third time is supposed to be the charm, but I don’t wanna take the chance that it’s actually gonna be ‘third time kills your laptop forever’...

So, if we could all get on with pretending it’s closer to August than October, here’s our double load of stats!

July brought us 42 fantastic fills created by 18 wonderful participants (and one by me, though I don’t remember what it was or when I posted it...). Fics were once again top of the list with 32, but art (3) was edged into third place by fantabulous gif creators (5 fills!), and we also got a beautiful fanvid and a glorious playlist to round things off. Unsurprisingly, most fills were either Merlin/Arthur (20) or gen (12), though Merlin/Gwaine (3) and Merlin/Lancelot (2) have their own share of fans.

As for August, we got 50 fills created by 26 people. 38 fics, six artworks, two gifs, one fanvid, plus the glorious overachievers who decided to do fic and art (one person), and a moodboard and ficlet (one person, but they did it twice!).

On the subject of overachievers, the absolute machine who brought us nine fills in July brought us a further six in August - if you’re who I think you are, you’re well on your way to blacking out a second bingo card, and I am filled equally with awe at your creative output and shame at my own (yeah, those badges I promised wouldn’t be long last time? Turns out they still haven’t materialised...)

Shipwise, it’s the same old story: Merlin/Arthur with 27, gen with 10, and Merlin/Gwaine (2) still plodding along in the background, though this time they were matched by Gwaine/Percival and Merlin/Morgana... The Lancelot/Merlin fills were non-existent this month (if my keyboard did emojis, I’d be sadfacing right now), but we did get a few other rarepairs, including one Lancelot/Will fic - only the fourth work on ao3 to be tagged as such!

Aaaaanyway, enough babbling from me. Please find all of the beautiful fills hidden below the cut, and remember to heed the warnings and practice self care when clicking on those links!

Love, peach x

Gen/No ship

The One Who Will Be King by chaosgenes Rating: General audiences Warnings: background character death Major tags: Baby Arthur Pendragon, Pre-canon, Grief/Mourning Summary: The moment Arthur was born, Uther did not spare him a glance.

The Sword in the Stone by theartsylillipad Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: merlin, merlin bingo, bbc merlin, merlin fanart Summary:

First Snow by demitimelord42 Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: fluff Summary: Merlin takes Aithusa to see the snow for the first time

Gwen's pink dress by kairennart Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Summary:

Single dad AU by Ice-mint Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Alternate universe, Uther Summary:

Introspection by Ice-mint Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Summary:

Lady Morgana on Break by monoisbored Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Summary:

Taliesin by thebookluvrr1816 Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Summary:

Who is the Monster Here? by archaeologist_d Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply, OC death Major tags: pre-canon, Lamia, OCs, explaination of Lamia's origins Summary: In the Old Religion, there was power and then power, good or bad. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And so, the Lamia were born.

Of Farmers and Mercenaries by tigereyes45 Rating: Teen Warnings: Major character death Major tags: Flash Fiction, Ficlet, Angst, Final Moments, Canon compliant Summary: William of Deira became a mercenary after helping Arthur that fateful day. He wanted to serve him again. Sadly, he never gets the chance.

Gwen/Morgana

melting into you by kirani Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: modern AU, vacation sex, established relationship, light bondage Summary: Morgana has been buried in her latest case for weeks but it's finally wrapped up, so Gwen decides to take her on a little vacation. And if she packed some toys in their bags, well, she doesn't think Morgana will complain.

Gwen/Merlin/Arthur

Something Different by Anonymous Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Female POV pleasure, Sexy new ideas to try, Double Penetration, Caring Lovers, Fluff and Fun Summary: Gwen has some ideas to try with her lovers, Arthur and Merlin. How would it feel if they made love to her the same way they do to each other? How it would feel to have them both inside her at the same time? The three of them give her ideas a try.

Merlin/Freya

To a Better Place by devotedwaywardangel1 Rating: Mature Warnings: Major character death Major tags: Mercy Killing, Angst, Hurt Freya (Merlin), Hurt Merlin (Merlin), Blood and Injury, Summary: Set at the end of S02E09 of BBC Merlin, Freya can't heal and magic will not let her die so she asks Merlin to do the unthinkable

Merlin/Morgana

The Best Laid Plans (Get You Laid Old-Lady-Style) by gwen-cheers-me-up Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Pranks, Humor, Sexual Content, Roleplay, Fluff Summary: Merlin transforms into a naked Dolma in Morgana’s bed as a prank. It does not go the way he expects.

Simplicity by gwen-cheers-me-up Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/non-con Major tags: Tentacles, Eggpreg, Multiple Orgasms, Aphrodisiacs Summary: Morgana has finally figured out how to get rid of Emrys for good. Unfortunately for Morgana, she isn’t immune to her own trap. But maybe that’s not so unfortunate after all…

Arthur/Gwaine

it's what my heart just yearns to say, in ways that can't be said by Saurus Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Romance, love confession, canon era, arthur is a soppy bastard Summary: All the signs were there, right before his eyes but Arthur tried so hard to deny it. He thought it must be his imagination, it couldn't be true. He surely, couldn't possibly be in love... Right? or Arthur is a soppy lil shit for one of his Knights.

Lancelot/Will

rise from above by stanzas Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: AU - Canon Divergent, Lancelot lives, Will lives Summary: The first time Lancelot heard Will's name spoken aloud, he was in Merlin's room.

Merlin/Mordred

Call Me Emrys When You Want It To Hurt by MerthurAllure Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Painplay, bdsm, pwp Summary: Mordred loves pain, and Merlin quickly learns he loves giving it to him.

Arthur/Lancelot

Like Honeyed Summer Days by queerofthedagger Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Religious Imagery, Fluff Summary: The point is, Lancelot has never considered himself a religious man, but he is sitting in a clearing, late summer blooming around him, and there is a king lying with his head in Lancelot’s lap, hair spun gold and eyes closed with trust. There is a king lying in his lap, face turned into the palm of Lancelot’s hand, and the small smile quirking his lips is so content that Lancelot fears he will choke on the happiness of it all.

Gwaine/Percival

Will you read to me? by Laevateinn Rating: Mature Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: moodboard, A/B/O, Fluff, Bookstore AU, slice of life Summary: Gwaine and Percival have a nice Sunday morning.

Come on, big boy, tell me what you want. by Laevateinn Rating: Mature Warnings: No archive warnings apply, Underage Major tags: Lingerie, Handcuffs, Topping from the Bottom, College AU Summary: “Gwaine. Gwaine please” The rattle of handcuffs clinking together diverted Gwaine’s attention from where he was kneeling between Percival’s knees.

Merlin/Gwaine

Turn Back - Merlin/Gwaine by tigereyes45 Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: angst, let's go back to the start, unwavering trust, Summary: A short video highlighting Merlin and Gwaine's relationship. I edited it from the idea that Gwaine and Merlin would like to turn back time.

Giving Me a Sugar Rush by MerthurAllure Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: PWP, friends to lovers, blowjobs, modern era Summary: Gwaine is a different type of sugar daddy, and Merlin can’t say he’s opposed to it.

Merlin/Arthur

Poetry by thebookluvrr1816 Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Summary:

you keep watching my eyes by kairennart Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Pining Arthur, Getting Together, Court Sorcerer Merlin, Fluff Summary: "Come on, attack me as if you mean it." Merlin adjusts his footing into a defensive posture, expecting his taunt to rise something in Arthur. It does. Apart from his words, his eyes are heavy on Arthur’s, his lips red and smug, his hands clenching and unclenching, ready to cast. A soft breeze ruffles his hair. Arthur swings his sword.

love me, love my laundry by @ravenwilds Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Modern Era, Husbands, Fluff, Arthur's late, Merlin hates laundry Summary: Completely unsurprisingly, Arthur's late, Merlin's been left to do all the laundry, and they're probably going to miss their flight.

Another Roomba AU by Nivelle Rating: General audiences Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Roombas, Alternate Universe - Robots Summary: In which Roomba!Arthur has a sword taped onto him and is chasing Roomba!Merlin who has been equipped with a shield through the palace.

Live for the Hope of It All by queerofthedagger Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Mentioned Ygraine, Fluff Summary: August days, a stealthy plan to make sure that for once, Merlin will take a break, and the heaviness of memory that tends to come with late summer days. Arthur wouldn't change it for the world.

Forgotten Knighthood - Chapter 4 by evaelisaa Rating: Teen Warnings: Choose not to use archive warnings Major tags: Summary: Part 6 of the Knight Merlin series - During a trip where Merlin and Arthur are alone together, Morgana manages to get a hold of Merlin...

The Kissing Fever by Camelots_Daffodil Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Love Potions/Spells, Canon Era, Merlin is Tired, Kissing, Everybody Gets Together Summary: It's spring time in Camelot and you know what that means... love is in the air! Only Merlin thinks that there might be a little too much of it when everyone in the land seems to be unable to stop themselves from kissing whoever is closest. As usual, it's up to him to fix the magical issue before anyone can realise that there's a magical issue that needs fixing.

Nothing Left to Prove by queerofthedagger Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Gym AU, Fighter Merlin, Smitten Arthur, Protective Merlin, Getting Together Summary: Five times Arthur appreciates Merlin's skill, and one time Merlin makes good use of it.

The First Step of Many by Mischel Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Pining Arthur, Fluff, Holding Hands, First Kiss Summary: Arthur is no coward -- then why is it so hard to take Merlin's hand and admit his feelings? And why is it even harder when Merlin catches him pacing and wants to know what's going on?

Almost Accidental by archaeologist_d Rating: Teen Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: fluff, dancing, kisses, clumsy Merlin Summary: The first kiss was definitely an accident. The rest of them, not so much.

Playing with fire by Laevateinn Rating: Mature Warnings: Light BDSM, bondage Major tags: Moodboard, shibari, fire play, sub Arthur, dom Merlin Summary: "“Do you trust me?” “I do.” Merlin and Arthur experiment with fire."

A Heart is made to Ache, Break and Heal by royal_spud Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence Major tags: unhinged Merlin, emotional hurt/comfort, Angst, Unrequited Love, Betrayal Summary: Merlin's always been the kindest among them, barely able to stand the sight of a dead rabbit. He despised violence and loathed hunting. And flinched at the sound of clanging metal. But when a sorcerer snatches the king and his knights from their bedchambers one calm night, and forces them all to watch him as he rampaged everything and everyone in his way as he searched of them, well kept secrets come spilling out; leaving them to wonder just how well they knew who Merlin was. If he was the same person who smiled as bright as the sun and sung to himself and made flower crowns. The person they'd known, and adored, and some had even grown to love. Or if he was someone else entirely.

Patron of the Arts by archaeologist_d Rating: Mature Warnings: No archive warnings apply, Graphic depictions of violence Major tags: modern au-no magic, merlin as artist, angst Summary: Arthur always loved to draw but when his father refused to allow it, Arthur left it all behind. Until he met Merlin.

don't you think i look pretty curled up on this bathroom floor by Saurus Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Non-Binary Merlin, Masturbation, Lingerie, Sexual Fantasy Summary: Arthur finds an unexpected item of clothing... Who could it belong to he wonders.

Chemistry part 12 by archaeologist_d Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: angst, arthur is a prat, modern AU with magic Summary: The scrawny kid knew more about chemistry than Arthur did. Who knew he’d fall in love with the idiot?

Doctor, can you fix me? by chaosgenes Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Modern AU, Fucking Machines, Bottom Arthur Summary: Arthur thinks there's something wrong with him and visits Dr Oddlove, a recommended sex therapist, who gives him an unorthodox solution.

Floppy Dick by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Smut, Established Relationship Summary: Arthur learns that it's not wise to accept Gwaine's dares. Merlin is a good boyfriend and offers to make him feel better.

Carefully Planned Coincidences by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, First Time, Fluff and Smut Summary: After watching them pine for ages, Merlin and Arthur's friends decide it's a time for intervention.

Seeking an Alliance by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Porn, First Time, Bottom Arthur, Canon Divergence Summary: To save Camelot Arthur approaches Emrys with an offer of an alliance.

Screw Fear by chaosgenes Rating: Explicit Warnings: Choose not to use archive warnings Major tags: Fear of Heights/Flying, Mile High Club, Blow Jobs, Anal Fingering Summary: Merlin is afraid of heights but rides on a plane for work. Arthur, his boss, helps distract him.

Sex Education by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Modern AU, Porn, Gangbang, Roleplay Summary: Arthur teaches his class the wonders of exploring various body orifices.

Dining Out by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Porn, Vampire!Arthur, Immortal!Merlin, Modern AU with magic, Frottage Summary: Arthur needs to feed. Merlin is more than happy to provide.

Drawing by elirwen Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Porn, Modern AU, Bondage, Edging, Dom Merlin Summary: Merlin shows Arthur various pleasurable drawing styles.

Follow the Rainbow by chaosgenes Rating: Explicit Warnings: No archive warnings apply Major tags: Post-canon, Modern, Public Blowjobs Summary: On a sweltering hot day, the Once and Future King finally returns—and lands in the middle of a Pride Parade. Reunions and frisky times ensue.

[disaster-j]

Dear J,

It’s a quarter past 1:00 am right now, and I still can’t sleep. So I decided to look at your other asks. And ugh, what is people’s problem nowadays? 😓 But to give my 🪙 about this: obviously I can’t judge anybody’s -> Off’s sexuality. (1. Because it’s rude; 2. Because I am not a psychic; 3. Because I’m not a famous person so I have no idea how they would deal with such a thing; and finally 4. Because estimating other people’s ideas and motivations has never been my strongest suit. 🥲) And I don’t think it really matters.

And I would never underestimate the trials of coming to terms with who you are 🏳️‍🌈 (god knows it took me nearly 20 years and I’m still learning every day!), but I don’t think we should underestimate how difficult it can be portraying someone like “us queers.” Especially if you’re unsure about your identity or not part of the community at all. And this is really not meant as queerphobic, but merely targeted at the toxic climate that has been created around BLs (which Off rightfully criticises), in which “skinships” and real life shipping at one point became the norm. And whatever the reason is (you weren’t raised in a way that made intimacy a part of everyday life, you simply aren’t a tactile person, you find it difficult to do all those things [or anything at all frankly] in front of masses of screaming people, you don’t feel the need to do those things, you don’t consider it part of working at your career etc.), not everyone is immediately comfortable with presenting themselves like that. (Mind you I’ve only been in the fandom for a hot second 👶, but even I can see that back when OffGun first rose to prominence, the “demands” were even more insane than now.) Even when it comes to accurately portraying a queer character, I would consider that a craft, especially when you aren’t queer yourself.

Obviously we, a small ensemble of “us” noble fans with common sense who just want our favourite actors happy and succeeding in their work, can’t do a lot to change the entire BL system. (Gosh, this almost make them sound like Tawi’s gang! 🤭) But what we can do, is be patient with all of the actors (especially the new ones or those who, like Off, don’t seem exactly “at ease” in the BL cosmos) and support them in their endeavours. And let the art (lmao ehh the “production” 😅) be the prime focus. So, instead of complaining about “lack of chemistry” or your “fave ‘couple’ not acting together”, try to focus on what other projects actors are working on or just new BL shows with new stories. Stories that can open a whole new world, whatever that world may look like. 🏳️‍🌈 🌏

Love from,

~ anonymatcha 🍵

P.S. Apologies for this long sermon. 😬 (That would be my other inner half, the declining Protestant one 🙃)

Very well said anon! I don't think there's much for me to add except that I really do think people should keep what you point out in mind when talking about actors, especially asian actors since queerness is still very much something taboo for so many asian cultures. Not being comfortable with BL culture doesn't necessarily make someone homophobic. Even when he was super uncomfortable with the demands from bl fans he never once acted like queerness itself was something disgusting (looking at krist) he was very clear about the discomfort coming from his own dislike of physical touch. And still he never treated Gun poorly for wanting to hold hands and hug. He was always very careful with how he portrayed and talked about queerness too. Even now he's one of the most vocal BL actors when it comes to talking about queer rights. Just today him and Tay were flooding the tl with articles about the marriage equality struggle in thailand. To say that he's "aggressively straight" or not a good ally or being performative just because 6 years ago he didn't like holding hands with Gun is just such a toxic take.

People need to let asian actors be. Asian countries aren't as open to queerness. Not even thailand. In fact, being openly queer in the thai industry has effectively killed a lot of careers and even insanely good actors like Fluke and Gun struggle to get good roles bc execs don't want to cast them in "masculine" roles. It's a whole homophobic mess over there. So yeah, people aren't always gonna be comfortable with the BL industry and a lot of queer actors won't actively come out for years still. People shouldn't judge them without considering the context of their situation.

[gch1995]

No one hates OUAT more than those of us in the fandom who actually watched it and/or followed it long enough to fully realize just how disappointingly awful, hopeless, and ridiculous the writing became in the piss poor excuse for canon the show devolved into the longer it went on, even though it was supposed to “be fun” and “give us hope.” At least all of its beautiful wasted potential became an outlet for far superior writing in our headcanons and fanfiction, though, no matter how shitty the actual show got.

I always feel so bad for newbies in the fandom who haven’t yet uncovered the horrific clusterfuck of bad writing this show ultimately devolved into. A part of me always feels like telling new fans to just spare themselves the pain, and to just quit watching after the Neverland arc. The majority of those of us in the OUAT fandom agree that the show’s writing ultimately devolved into a painfully biased, cheaply shocking, cheesy, wildly inconsistent, melodramatic, nonsensical, pandering, repetitive, and wildly ooc unsalvageable mess of bad writing that made us feel angry, betrayed, bored, and disgusted more often than not after that.

However, even after the show’s writing went completely off the rails beyond all salvaging, there were still those gold nuggets of wasted potential for characters, relationships, and storylines that could have and should have been amazing, if Kitsowitz and these writers actually had been able to be consistently competent and professional at their jobs. Particularly when looking back at the first two-and-a-half seasons of OUAT, I feel a great sense of disappointment at just how much beautiful and interesting potential they ultimately wasted in these characters and relationships in favor of blatantly biased, cheaply shocking, contrived, nonsensical, mutually toxic, wildly ooc, repetitive, and thus, character destroying magical soap opera melodrama.

There’s always this deep sense of disappointment in me over the amazing show that canon OUAT ultimately could have and should have been whenever I see all of those golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential Kitsowitz and these writers showed us in those moments when they were actually being competent show-runners and writers, particularly in S1-2A before they show got too distracted by the next big contrived magical thing to actually let the characters slow down, talk to each other, hang out with each other, and grow and react like in-character and relatable human beings. If only they were able to ultimately write and stick to a consistent, relatable, gradual, realistic, and organic course of character development that actually would have ultimately made these characters, happy endings, redemption arcs, and/or regression arcs actually feel well-earned and satisfying in the end.

Instead, they ended up erasing, minimizing, and/or outright romanticizing certain bad behaviors and choices of their characters at certain points and the negative consequences and/or effects they had in regards to those they hurt and/or victimized.

Instead, they ended up outright derailing most of their characters normally and/or consistently previously established complex, intelligent, and sympathetic characterizations and/or positive development at one point or another in order to rerail them over and over and over again more and more post S3 in increasingly abrupt, cheaply shocking, contrived, disappointing, flanderdized, horrifying, melodramatically toxic, and nonsensical ways that made them suddenly come across as uncharacteristically unsympathetic and stupid out of nowhere.

Instead, they created absurdities out of nowhere to inorganically force the characters to regress in ways that contradicted all previously established canon characterization, continuity, and previously established logic on the show.

Instead, they selectively bent, broke, and contradicted their own rules of magic with less and less fairness, rhyme, or reason as every season passed the first.

If only they had consistently and fairly stuck to their own rules and limitations of what magic could and couldn’t do. If only they treated their characters as complex and relatable human beings and equals with compelling, consistent, and realistic personalities, flaws, conflicts, regressions, redemptions, and resolutions that drove their stories consistently, gradually, organically, and realistically because of who they were and/or developed into as people, rather than because nonsensical asspulled twists and/or magical macguffins demanded that these characters suddenly become whatever they needed them to become a certain way to create cheap shock value, suspense, drama, and repetitive storytelling, regardless of all previously established characterization, continuity, development, and logic in their own canon.

Instead, they decided to cherry pick favorite characters and/or ships to frame as “redeemed” in the narrative, even though they may not have actually done anything to earn it and/or regressed without any negative consequences for doing so, just because Emma and the Charmings accepted them as “family.”

Instead, they ended up slapping increasingly biased, petty, meaningless, and shallow “hero” and “villain” labels on all of their characters, regardless of how objectively and needlessly harmful their choices, behaviors, and reactions may have been to others, in spite of being on the “right” side.

But we all ultimately sustained ourselves in the OUAT fandom by imagining just how amazing these characters, their relationships, and their storylines could have and should have been, trying to disregard the character assassinating bad writing in the piss poor excuse for canon that OUAT ultimately devolved into, taking Kitsowitz and these writers golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential for these characters, their relationships, and creating far superior works of art with those golden nuggests of wasted potential in canon with our headcanons and fan fiction.

OUAT isn’t a show that stuck with most of us because we were impressed by its writing in canon. In fact, most of us are fully aware that there were writing choices in the piss poor excuse of canon OUAT our favorite characters and relationships on the show that were inexcusably awful, biased, cheesy, cheaply shocking, gross, offensive, inconsistent, nonsensical, tone-deaf, wildly ooc, and/or repetitive at one point or another. Honestly, if the main character and/or relationship lasted past S3 in the main cast, then Kitsowitz and the writers destroyed your favorite character and/or ship with bad writing at one point or another.

After the writers unceremoniously killed off Bae/Neal, and resurrected Rumple from the show’s most consistently relatable, realistic, sympathetic, and well-earned two-and-a-half season redemption arc from S1-3A, it became clear thet they ran out of story to tell after wrapping up the Neverland arc, and had no idea where else they were supposed to go with Emma, Regina, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, and even Henry’s individual characters or relationships anymore.

We know canon OUAT became a shitshow of inexcusably bad writing. We know it became horrifying and stupid. However, most of us didn’t actually remain in this fandom because we agreed with the writing on the show. We latched onto it so strongly because of its amazing main cast. We latched on to it so deeply because it showed us how to not completely fuck up amazing, relatable, and compelling individual characters, their relationships, and their storylines with biased, hypocritical, ableist, classist, homophobic, racist, sexist, petty, cheaply shocking, gross, wildly ooc, flanderdized, melodramatic, pandering, repetitive, and nonsensical lazy plot-driven writing. Granted, these problems were starting to show up in canon OUAT’s writing as early on as S1. However, after 3A, the show’s writing completely went off the rails for everyone in the remaining main cast that lasted past S3, and these characters and their relationships never fully recovered what made them at all coherent, compelling, magical, relatable, and enjoyable to watch and get invested in in canon from S1-S3, in spite of their obvious flaws.

Most of us have remained in the OUAT fandom because the show’s shitty writing choices and wasted potential inspired most of us to tell far better stories than Kitsowitz and their team of hacks ultimately did.

[marmarparadoxa]

I always read opinions about hanji post time skip and ch 132 they say her decision to sacrifice herself was the decision of a suicidal person because of how inadequate she felt as a commander and unable to live up to erwin’s legacy or things like yams ruined Hanji’s character and was treated by him as unimportant character useless weak or gave up easily and was just there until armin grow up to be commander. As a hanji fan I feel so disappointed in hanji's treatment. What do you think?

Hi! I’m sorry to hear you feel like that as an Hange fan, and I’m aware that you’re not the only one who sees it that way. However, I felt very disoriented at first, when I started reading these opinions, because my experience about Hange’s character in reading the manga was very different from yours. Although I also have my complaints, I actually think that Hange had their time to shine in the last arcs, and moments and scenes and speeches for which I think I came to understand them better, and loved them and all the more felt proud of them, so I can’t say I feel disappointed by their treatment.

For one thing, I don’t think their decision to sacrifice themselves was the decision of a suicidal person. Hange never manifested any sort of suicidal ideation to begin with (as for instance, obviously Reiner did, and somewhat Armin - when he said, in reference to the serum bowl, that it wasn’t him, the one whom they should have revived), and overall, they never gave me the impression of someone willing to throw their life away. It’s true that they didn’t feel worthy of Erwin’s legacy, and blamed themselves for not having been able to show Eren alternative solutions. You can see, in certain moments, how much these thoughts made them doubt their value as commander. However, Hange was not the type of person who would let themselves be led astray by these thoughts, nor shy away from their responsibilities, to cry over themselves - and back to chapter 71, we can see what was their opinion of people who’d do that, in their reaction at Keith Shadis’ story.

Shadis shirked from his role as commander, because he wasn’t “special”, because he didn’t feel equal to his role. In learning that, Hange, for once, was not very sympathetic, but reacted very harshly, and labeled Shadis’ motivations as “childish reasons” and “inferiority complex”. And I think it was not only because they used to admire and have a crush for him once that they felt so outraged at that point, but mostly because of the kind of person Hange had always been. They were an incredibly strong-willed, resilient and self-denying person, who fiercely believed in the ideal they decided to dedicate their life to, and thus felt offended in learning about Shadis’ petty self-concern. And this is how Hange concluded their tirade against the poor Shadis that day: “Isn’t that what it means to cast away your own life and dedicate your heart to the greater good?”. And this leads to a further important point.

Being suicidal, or more or less actively seeking your own death for the sake of your own death, is a different thing from being prepared to altruistically give up on your own life, for the better good. And in view of the above, I’m convinced that Hange’s sacrifice falls under the second sort. In their very last moment, Hange was not thinking about their own misfortunes, but was still looking for the plan to take off, because they wanted to make sure that they could save their friends, and with them, the last chance for salvation for humanity.

So I didn’t like the briskness of the chapter, and I had a hard time suspending my disbelief at Floch having survived Gabi’s shot, and throughout the whole trip of the ship. That was not good-writing, and obviously Isayama wanted to kill off Hange, for whatever reason. But their readiness to take up their responsibilities, and sacrificing their life, was nonetheless consistent with the kind of person Hange has always been. When I think about their sacrifice, their speech to pastor Nick, on top of the walls, in chapter 34 always comes to my mind: “Do you know what exactly we in the Survey Corps have spilled our blood for? To take back the freedom the titans stole from us. For that cause...our lives were a small price to pay.” The Survey Corps required its members to devote their lives, their flesh, their hearts to its cause, and Hange was aware of that.

And when it comes down to it, what exactly could have Hange done to avoid their sacrifice? They couldn’t send any precious titan shifters (to Reiner’s chagrin) and of course they wouldn’t have sent any of the remaining kids (Mikasa, Jean or Connie), to go sacrifice themselves, instead of taking responsibility for their decisions. Levi, at that time, could barely stand up straight. So it had to be them.

I think that Hange was even more courageous, and their sacrifice was all the more admirable (and more painful for me) if you consider that Hange, though willing to take their responsibilities, and committed to their purpose, didn’t actually want to die. Their leaving the kids was so swift, rushed, and they didn’t show how scared they were. But it became manifest when they were asking Levi to let them go, and when he put his fist above their heart, and told them to dedicate their heart, their lips curved downward, and then they laughed it off, and flew away. They downplayed their feelings and rushed, so to be able to leave Levi and the kids - the people they loved - behind. Death, for them, didn’t come as a release from sufference or a crushing burden, but they accepted and went toward it nonetheless.

Then, if we want to address Hange’s character general treatment post time-skip, I think it’d be better to first briefly observe what was Isayama’s general treatment of all Paradis characters, post time-skip. My general impression is that, having come into play all those new different characters from Marley, which asked for narrative space and development, and the plot which had to keep going on, somehow there wasn’t space and time to a proper treatment of the old cast, so that its members, more or less, became rather static and passive.

However, I didn’t perceive Hange’s character as being “unimportant, useless, weak, or giving up easily, who was just there until Armin grew up to be commander”, as you said. In those four years, Hange had a most important role - they were the one who directed their first encounters with Marleyans ships, and talked to their members, and initiated their alliance. Among all Paradis’ political figures, together with Pixis Hange was the one who most took part in negotiations and diplomacy, and worked hard to give Paradis a future. They were shown happily getting excited over Marleyans’ inventions, overcoming  Marleyans’ hostilities. And then there’s that beautiful scene, when they restored hope for the kids, proposing the trip to Marley, and then expressing the Survey Corps’ ideal.  Later on, when Eren betrayed them in Liberio, when in the dungeon he threatened them, and then when the Jeagerists organized and Floch sequestered them, of course Hange felt let down, disheartened, and powerless, and doubted their value. However, given the circumstances, I wonder how these reactions would spoil Hange’s character, where in fact they are most understandable, and human. It made me sad to see Hange suffer that way (the scene where they were shooting at those SC soldiers and crying, and then seeing how Sannes’ words were still haunting them was painful to see), but it was also interesting to see more of their vulnerable side. And so, it was even more remarkable to see what they were able to do, despite the seemingly hopeless conditions, after Eren initiated the Rumbling - Hange didn’t give up easily at all. It was them who gathered the Alliance. They spoke with Magath, and Pieck, and thus persuaded previous enemies to join forces. Then they went and found Mikasa and Jean, and asked them to help them. And, in the morally wavering atmosphere after the start of the Rumbling, the scene of “I’m not accepting genocide!! You’re not getting me to agree with any reason to support this!!”, and their following speech was so powerful, meaningful, and important.

In conclusion, Hange kept on being Hange till the end, I think - they were still the playful, optimist crazy titan scientist (I mean, they asked Pieck’s Cart titan if she ever brushed her teeth in her titan form XD), and, in the bleakest moment, they didn’t lose hope (“It might not work out today...but maybe someday”), they were still keeping on looking to the future.

And I want to add one more thing, in regards to the “afterlife” scene. I imagine that a lot of people (myself included) felt let down when Isayama stated that it was only a “revolving lantern”. But now I think that it doesn’t really matter whether that's just something Hange’s mind created, or an actual afterlife plane. It was an unexpected act of kindness from Isayama, which completed Hange’s arc in a somehow uplifting note. Hange got reunited with their friends, and saw the plane, flying above them (so they knew their sacrifice was not in vain). And then Erwin told them “You did well”. That’s the message Isayama wanted to give us about Hange, and, if nothing else, I feel grateful for that.

[literateleah]

the paradox of emily prentiss’ audience perception and character design

some of y’all about to be real mad at me, but it must be said:

emily prentiss’ character design makes no sense: my personal opinion + an objective analysis

i think it can be challenging to separate the versions of characters we have in our little brains from actual canon content, but doing so is important for understanding what those characters are truly like, especially within the context of their environment and in contrast to others around them. plus developing a deeper understanding of the media we consume is super fun and interesting! with that being said: emily prentiss should not work for the fbi and here’s why (in three parts regarding who’s responsible: cbs, paget, and fans) (sit down and grab a snack i promise this is over 3k words)

quick disclaimer: i don’t dislike emily at all! that’s my girl, i just looked closer and realized some funky things the writers did and felt the need to analyze her of course: so let’s get into it

part one: what cbs did

cbs set the stage for emily’s introduction on the heels of the departure of lola glaudini as elle greenaway! lola has clarified that she decided to leave the show because filming in los angeles was not the best environment for her personally, and after one successful season on a major network (but not much established long term plot or drama beyond elle’s departure as a character) a consistent ensemble cast was required- particularly because the bau had been criticized for being predominantly male in the first few episodes of the show and not much development was given to penelope or jj yet. enter emily prentiss.

for the duration of seasons 2-3ish, emily was framed as a chip off the block that was elle greenaway, just slightly…richer? in her first few episodes emily was hesitantly polite but ambitious, clean cut, intellectually concise and held her own within the team. she seemed equal parts intimidated and frustrated by her male superiors (gideon, hotch) but certainly proves herself among other profilers. her childhood was explored only within reference to her strained relationship with her mother (which was only ever referenced once more after the fact) and we received a short overview of her educational and career history in her first few episodes. emily fit right into the hole elle had left, and didn’t have many major storylines yet.

seasons 4-6 brought a bit more development and depth to emily’s character! she begins dropping more snarky remarks, one liners, and socially deepening her relationships with the other team members. this seems more within the lines of elle’s design, but emily arguably took more time to grow into her place within the team. during the foyet arc she was vulnerable and supportive, and the doyle arc gave her some independence and agency she didn’t have previously. this era also solidified her appearance and persona as more edgy, which falls in line with general fanon perception of her character (especially when compared to jj or penelope). i can’t address this era or season 7 without mentioning that cbs was actively trying to remove paget from the cast, similar to how they did to aj cook as well. paget has spoken about this instance before, and i believe it slightly affected her portrayal of her character, and “lauren” was somewhat of a goodbye for both paget and emily (thus why she wished for mgg to direct since they were best friends).

season 7: in my opinion, one of the best seasons for emily. she was wisened and deeply wounded by her experiences with doyle, which was understandable of course. she returned to the team she loved and learned to appreciate life in a different way, remaining mature during this time period as well! though her departure was a bit less than graceful and sudden at the end of this season, it made sense compared to some other exits the team had seen.

now *sigh* all the rest.

paget as emily appears in two separate guest appearances (once in s9 and once in s11, and she is referenced offscreen as well) before permanently reprising her role as unit chief of the bau. these appearances were most likely to boost ratings and get the team back together (i.e. 200) or just to pepper in international cases (tribute). emily’s personality remains pretty consistent here, just more mature and comfortable in leadership positions (seeing as she is running an entire branch of an international law enforcement organization). then season 12 hit.

upon the departure of thomas gibson as hotch, cbs reached out to paget to see if she would be interested in fulfilling her role as emily within a longer term unit chief position. i’ll get into why this is wack in a few paragraphs, but the remainder of her time on the show is spent on a mature portrayal that seems very distant from her previous versions. emily is more authoritative, gives orders with ease, and has no qualms about leading a team of agents or even receiving promotion offers as director of the entire bureau.

thus concludes a general summary of the canon content cbs gave us as viewers. now let's talk about what they didn’t give us, regrettably

the primary aspect of emily’s design that comes to mind for many is her queer coding. though not much was to be expected from cbs, a prime time cable tv network, each of her relationships on the show (all with men) seemed oddly forced, and without much chemistry as compared to the SOs of other main characters. rumors of scrapped plotlines have floated around about what may have been, but the ultimate lack of acknowledgement of any queer characters in the main ensemble still leaves a feeling of disappointment to audiences, and leaves more to be desired as for how emily navigates social bonds.

part two (sidebar): what paget did

i think it could be agreed within audiences that paget brewster’s portrayal of emily made the role what it was! her dry witty delivery and emotional prowess combined with sitcom acting experience made her performance a mainstay for years. i think she did the best she could with a confusing and at times flat characterization, and brought the role to life.

paget also heavily contributes to fanon indirectly with her comments outside of the show (press, cameos, twitter etc). her general continued interest and fondness for the role post production affects fan perception, particularly in what she chooses to elevate and comment on. she and aj have both spoken about viewing jemily content, and paget and thomas have both also commented on hotchniss. most cast members feel free to comment on their characters in the appropriate timing, and seem open to discussing fanon ships and theories outside of canon!

part three: what fanon did

as we can tell from this fan space as well as the presence on insta, tik tok and twitter, fans LATCHED onto emily super quickly. she’s remained a favorite over the years, and this fan persistence is what brought her back so many times after leaving (so many times). in my opinion, queer coding and a bolder female trope (in contrast to her female counterparts) are the main pulls because they resonated with so many fans- new and old. with that being said, newer fans of the show in the past year in particular have been heavily influential in fanon, solely because of the large influx of fan content and popularity of it.

fan content began to take coding and bite size moments and snippets from the show as canon, and cemented it into much of the content and discourse they created. these small pieces of emily’s character are significant, but have become magnified by how easily they are to share and edit. for example, a collection of catchy one liners from emily over the seasons makes for a great video edit intro, or gifset! there’s absolutely no problem with this content, it just all combines to create a certain fanon perception no character escapes (this isn’t a phenomenon limited to emily or the cm fandom!)

these droves of content also solidified emily’s personality as much more defined, but at the same time, simplified it in a way that’s slightly harder to explain.

fanon: more emo/goth than canon basis

fanon: more introverted/anti social than canon basis

fanon: more violent/chaotic when canon emily is relatively well mannered and doesn’t start many conflicts (particularly in the workspace)

fanon: much less maternal when canon emily displays desire on multiple occasions (even crossing professional borders) for children, particularly teenage girls (possibly projection)

(again, nothing wrong with this interpretation at all and it still varies! This is just a generalization based on most of the popular content i have seen)

part 4: why it doesn’t work

let me start with this: emily prentiss does not like her job.

we don’t receive much in depth information about emily’s internal feelings and thoughts towards her mother beyond resentment. this stems from wanting to make it on her own, as a professional and as an individual (cough cough college deposits). this makes emily’s insistence on proving herself to authority figures in her earlier seasons is interesting to watch in different circumstances. she cites her experience and denies help from her mother when justifying her placement in the bau to hotch, she is extra vigilant about being helpful on her first case with gideon, etc. nevertheless, emily forges her own path outside of diplomacy and becomes a successful profiler and agent, with the help of her privilege, wealth and name whether she likes it or not. but if we read between the lines and fill in the blanks cbs neglected, these ambitions may subconsciously be oriented towards pleasing her mother.

example one: emily’s authority issues go further than just “rebellion” or “anarchy”, she frequently questions the ethics and sustainability of the work that the bau does. every team member does this, but emily much more so than anybody else.

in “amplification”, emily almost breaks federal protocol to inform civilians of anthrax threats. she butts heads with both hotch and rossi on this front, and ends the episode with having a conversation with rossi about the ethics of lying in their line of work. emily resigns to a solemn “it be like that” and moves along, accepting this reality.

on multiple different occasions emily laments to derek about the darkness she sees on the job, and it’s shown that this gets to her quickly on particularly bad cases. this is another contradiction of the design that she can supposedly “compartmentalize” better than others on the team, when she cannot unless the lives of others are at risk (doyle arc, s7 finale).

emily also responds in this way to many cases involving children, a similarity to jj many don’t notice upon first watching the series. “seven seconds” and “children of the dark” come to mind, during the latter in which emily is prepared to cross multiple professional lines to adopt a teenage girl left orphaned by the case, until hotch stops her and establishes that her emotions can’t rule her judgement on the job. regardless of hotch’s thoughts about her attempted caretaking abilities, these actions and impulses deeply contradict the typical bureaucratic pathways of the work the bau does.

the looming reputation of her mother’s diplomatic history hangs over emily, and after going to law school and working for the cia, she most likely did want to forge her own path as far away from being a socialite: being a spy. her inner nature doesn’t always reflect this profession, and leads me to believe that with her knowledge of psychology, law procedure and care for children: emily prentiss might be more inclined to working in social work, placing suffering children and teenagers in homes they deserve.

and finally, the hill i will die on: emily prentiss was an bad unit chief

this wonderful post touches on my general sentiment, but there were many reasons as to why emily prentiss’ career arc makes little to no sense (plot holes included).

first: her background. emily attended chesapeake bay university as well as yale and achieved a ba in criminal justice. keep in mind that though timelines evidently don’t exist in the cm universe, emily prentiss is ONE YEAR older than aaron hotchner (for context). in her first episode, she professes that she has worked for the bureau for a little under ten years in midwestern offices- something the audience laters knows to not be true. emily worked with the cia and interpol as a part of a profiling team and undercover agent up until roughly TWO YEARS before her canon introduction. plot holes and time gaps aside, this makes me wonder, why didn’t she just say the cia was a backstop without revealing the highly confidential nature of her work with doyle (similar to jj’s state department backstop and cover story)? penelope or hotch could have easily accessed her file and seen that she did not in fact have experience with the bureau in midwestern offices recently, and given the fact that erin strauss set up her bau placement, i’m presuming these formalities or references were overlooked.

second: her experience within the team. emily worked as a part of the bau with the bureau for roughly 6 or 7 years. after this, she is invited to run the entire london branch of interpol, one of the most renowned international law enforcement organizations. i’m surely not the most knowledgeable on requirements or standard timelines for such matters, but with the fact that emily had never led a team in her life (not in the bau or interpol previously) and had roughly 10 years of field experience, i don’t believe she would have ever realistically been considered eligible to run the whole london department.

third: her return to the bureau. fanon depiction of their relationship aside, if you believe aaron hotchner’s last wish before going into witsec was to entrust his team to emily prentiss, you’re dead mistaken. bringing emily back was clearly a pull for ratings after the loss of two main characters (hotch and derek), but logistically a bad decision. let’s suppose emily has had 4 or 5 years of experience in london now, this established authority position would be unlikely to change at the drop of a hat, even for old teammates or friends. also considering how close they were after a decade of working closely in bureaucratic and field contexts, i firmly believe hotch would have referred jj for the job of unit chief but that’s another discussion for another time.

emily’s reign as unit chief is odd, because of the many chaotic storylines crammed into it. but amidst bad writing and viewings plummeting, emily’s character is completely flattened. completely. emily is unrecognizable, both in appearance (that god awful wig) and personality. at times she acts as a complete wise authority, giving orders and delegating local authorities as hotch did. but at other times she makes multiple illegal, emotional, and incorrect judgement calls based on personal circumstances that lead to further chaos (deleting the recording of her and reid’s mexico conversation and reprimanding luke in “luke” for the exact same thing she did in season 6 even though she enabled her to do so come to mind).

i’m not sure if this is due to paget trying to find her footing in the role again, or the writer’s bad decisions towards the end of the show wrecking any previous design for their ensemble. then, there’s the infamous “wheels up” scene in s13e1. notoriously cringey, this seems like a vague caricature of something rossi would say many years in the past (the same goes for her pep talk in “red light” in the hunt for diana reid). these moments are meant to mature emily in the audience’s eye, but instead completely removed her from who we understood her to be, and made her an unreliable leader.

part five: and why it does

in theory, emily was a bolder foil to jj, similar to elle who she arguably replaced at first. she came into her own, and stands as a more uniquely developed character than almost any other in the main ensemble. she isn’t as maternal or domestically inspiring as canon jj, less bright and sunny than penelope, not quite as stoic or intimidating as derek or hotch. And yet at the same time, she’s a fairly blank slate. stripping fanon content away entirely, canon emily has few defining traits (all of which are constantly changing), and that may be the key to why we love her so much.

[bidisasterforzutara]

What Already Is

*Deep breath* ok...so I read this article quite a while ago and wanted to discuss my take on it but never found the time to (and mostly bc I’ve been afraid to do so) but I feel like now is the time, especially as zutara month nears its end

As everyone who follows me knows, this is a blog for zutara positivity and I try to spread this and search for it often. While there are some things I agree with in this article, I thought it was simply...too depressing for the most part and wanted to write a new take on it for anyone who’s willing to listen.

Keep in mind, this is my opinion, and you’re free to disagree and simply ignore this post if you do. But like pretty much all my posts, if this can spread even a little positivity and help even one person, that would make me extremely happy. So...here goes:

Firstly, I’d like to address that it’s ok to be disappointed at the ending. I myself cried. But then I stopped and thought: can’t we just ignore Kataang? Why should bryke have free reign in our minds? Is it so wrong so create our own canon in which zutara is happy together? Because being “gutted” after so many years is...very saddening to me. It’s just allowing bryke to win in my eyes. As if the original ending was the ONLY possible way Zuko and Katara can be happy together, when this simply isn’t true. And the “painters” who DO in fact finish the “second eye” are the fan artists, fanfic writers, and fans you go on to praise in the next few sentences

THEY are the artists who make zutara canon. Not bryke. So I ask: how can they have “squandered” potential when they’ve got so many amazing artists complete their story? Why do bryke need to apparently be the only ones to complete their story?

With all this content that you admit we have over the course of so many years...it just seems wrong that you still believe zutara was squandered.

As much as I love Dante and as amazing of a person he is...I really wish he’d said “canon is what we make of it” or something along those lines instead of the quote he says here, because i honestly think this fandom as a whole would be MUCH more positive if he said so, including this article writer.

I’m sorry...we’re NOT bound by a shared ache of zutara’s “squandered” potential. We’re bound by their beauty, their parallels, their perfection as a couple. We’re not aching. We simply want to spread love for this beautiful ship. And like I said before...is their potential really squandered if we’ve got COUNTLESS fan artists creating content for them in countless different ways?

Sure as hell doesn’t sound squandered to me.

“Rather than bemoan what could have been” therein lies the issue, you ARE bemoaning them rather than stating the fact that canon is what me make of it. You continue to be upset but...there’s really no reason to be. Just because one interpretation aired on Nickelodeon with a large budget doesn’t make it ANY less valid than fan works. Zutara is VALID. and canon. And we certainly weren’t robbed. Not “could have been”. Rather, “what already is”

These last few lines are SO INCREDIBLY CLOSE to understanding the point I’m trying to make. Fan artists and fans are the ones who complete the portrait. WE are the ones who breathe life into this ship.

But again...this is NOT an issue of “what could have been”. It’s “what already is”. Why should our fan works be considered nothing more than fantasies? Isn’t the original show a fantasy as well? Aren’t these characters all just pixels in the end? They’re fictional. And as such, we have the power to decide the outcome for them. Fan works are EQUALLY as valid as the source material and shouldn’t be considered as a simple “what if”. If you want them to be canon, they are! Ik this is a nuclear take but canon really is what we make of it, and the sooner every fandom realizes that you don’t have to be bound by one specific interpretation, the healthier our experiences will be.

We create art year after year not bc we’re depressed over zutara, but because we love them so much and want to create countless stories for them that the original show never could. Doesn’t mean we were robbed. Doesn’t mean zutara is doomed. It just means we’re an extremely talented, dedicated fan base with a hell of a lot to offer

Also...idk if this writer is aware of the live action but they seem to value on screen confirmation (who doesn’t?) so if they somehow end up seeing this post and weren’t convinced by the first half, bryke left the atla live action. We’re most definitely going to get zutara. They will have a happy ending (especially since the show runner has a good enemies to lovers track record... 👀)

And one last thing...some of you may think I’m overreacting and maybe I am, but zutara is a HUGE hyperfixation and has been for almost a year. I’ve never gotten this attached to a fictional ship. So pls refrain from any “it’s not that deep” comments. This is my opinion, and you’re free to ignore. But for anyone who reads this and agrees, I hope this helps and I hope I’ve offered a more positive perspective to this otherwise well-written article. This is NOT by any means an attack on the writer, just a rambling opinion of mine :)

It’s like I’ve said countless times before: canon is transformative 💜

[yurireview]

Whiterose and the Supercorp syndrome

To start the scene between Ruby and Oscar will not lead to anything (the scene is not even romantic) ... but I think a good explanation is necessary for my Whiterose teammates to leave negativity.

Since I was a little absent I could see how many are "negative" for what happens with the Whiterose in this volume, many are already saying:

"I'm sorry for you fandom Whiterose"

"The Rosagarden will be canon"

There are times when the ships that are destined to be "Endgame" seem not to be when they try to force a Straight ship

Whiterose has Rosagarden

The Supercorp had Lames and Karamel (both equally bad)

The Supercorp is the best example of this even in spite of the adversities ... now it is the center of the plot and its future is bright (its 2 competitions sank and nobody misses it)

One of the things that helped this apart from chemistry, is that each interaction did develop its relationship which gave the material that both were "EndGame"

There was an acceptable context

First you have to analyze if the Rosagarden has material to be a canon?

I made a review of Rosagarden and how all their moments only had 13 min and that none had a "romantic" moment or even more significant than Whiterose'(here I leave the link) https://yurireview.tumblr.com/post/183745440112/why-the-rosagarden-does-not-work

but I will summarize 2 key moments in Vol 5 and 6 of RWBY

the dynamic between Ruby and Oscar does not exceed 5 minutes in the Vol 5 and Ruby really treats him like any of his other friends

let's just see the end (At no time can you see that it creates an emotional bond between the two) in fact the narrative ignores it.

It only focuses on the RWBY team but at the same time on the Whiterose (the link between Ruby and Weiss grew a lot after this)

that also moments before when she had to make the decision between helping Ozpin-Oscar or her sister…she decided to help her sister

It is safe to say that there is nothing about Rosagarden here (nothing was established)

Vol 6

Again this volume highlighted the Whiterose over the Rosagarden by far ... let's just observe the opening

This is Oscar

This is Ruby and Weiss

Again at the end of the season you could say that again the Whiterose was one of the main focuses and they had great moments between them (0 for the Rosagarden) the funniest thing is that in the end Ruby treats him like a child (like again from the group) ... so tell me, where is the establishment of the supposed Rosagarden canon?

there isn't, this one doesn't exist

Whiterose Vol 7-Supercorp season 3

As you know both cases are similar ... our ships receive almost no screen time and prefer that the protagonist talk to any other character and have their plot separated from the other.

While the other are "pairing" with another person

Supercorp fandom reactions were evident

Weiss is there (what a great irony)

The fandom Whiterose and others of the RWBY fandom are also having the same reaction as the Supercorp in this context ... it makes no sense.

Everyone even outside the fandom Whiterose notices how forced and stupid RT is being with the dynamics of Weiss and Ruby

That one there is one of my favorite conversations about Oscar ... as a character this fails because it is boring (apart from Ozpin inside) ... as I mentioned before is the "James Olsen" of the RWBY series and matching it with Ruby would be something so disastrous-pathetic for the show and for the protagonist ... as was the character of James for Lena

I think the difference is that Oscar is a shotacon (so the fandom tolerate it)

In general it is a couple that really does not add anything to the series and to top it is not profitable in the business sense. What do I mean?

Again the manga of RWBY always highlights the Whiterose (it is profitable) The merchandise highlights the Whiterose (because it is profitable)

We are a good part of the fandom of RWBY. Number 1 ship of Japon

As that girl said ... the Whiterose always stands out and it's not about showing off  but (We have more fan art than any other RWBY ship)

Whiterose Vol 7

Even though I understand narratively why R.T is separating Weiss and Ruby a lot:

They are giving time to many unimportant characters They are developing Weiss drama alone to prove their independence more The conflict of Ruby's secret and that is moving away a little from everyone The return of Penny The Bumbleby The Renora

Ironically, the Rosagarden has not received 3 minutes of screen in this volume, so saying that this is "Canon" is ridiculous in every aspect ... but even when there are no talks between Ruby and Weiss, there is something that RT does.

The looks between Ruby and Weiss

Comparing their past interactions, Ruby and Weiss didn't do that kind of look between them before and less with so much devotion in their eyes ... it is likely that the lack of communication in this volume (which is making the whole fandom anxious) has a reason for the end in season ... that all this has a great result for the Whiterose

so personally I don't worry about Rosagarden because R.T is not so stupid to do something so forced like the Rosagarden that it ends badly

Like the Supercorp ... the Whiterose ship is one of those who has traded his own fandom

in conclusion ... just wait and as always show support for your ship, in the end they will do well the Supercorp never gave up and now they are about to prove the glory of being a canon, having said this I say goodbye until next time

[morningstarwriting]

College AU

So this was an idea that popped into my brain and I had to write it. I don’t know if this has already been done, but if it has oh well. I had a lot of fun writing this as it was my first time writing for Obey Me! I hope that you enjoy it! 

───────────────────────────────────

「 Lucifer 」

This man will be a lawyer

Don’t argue with him

He’s always right

Mainly cause he’s majoring in psychology

But he’s not stopping there

He’s actually double majoring

Psychology and History

And it ALSO doesn’t stop there

He’s getting a minor in philosophy

This means that he’s going to school for five years instead of four though

He’s so insanely intelligent though

He psycho-analyzes his brothers all the time

The only ones who don’t really care about what he has to say are Belphegor and Satan

They regularly plot against him

He always knows it

He blames it on daddy issues

This just means that even when he’s with his brothers, he’s constantly working

Always doing his schoolwork

He’s also the Vice President position of Student Government

He was beat out for the President position by Diavolo

And forced his brothers to join in the other positions

He’s also an Admissions Representative

He’s the perfect person to look at applications and determine if people are suited to attend his school

Diavolo also has this job with him

They spend countless of hours together all the time

And he knows that people ship them

He knows

There is one thing he refuses to take part in on campus, though

The only Greek life you’ll catch him in is an Honor Society with Greek Letters in the name

He isn’t the biggest fan of Greek Life

Or parties

However, he was convinced to go to a party by Asmo once

Never again

The biggest perk for his brothers is that he’s so ridiculously busy

That he can’t really constantly be on their cases

At least that’s what they think

He finds his ways

He finds a lot of ways

「 Mammon 」

He went into school as an accounting major

Big Miss Steak

He… wasn’t the best at it

He didn’t necessarily hate it

But he wasn’t thrilled about it being his major

Lucky for him

He was required to take a fine arts course

He decided on photography

And boy oh boy

He fell in love with it

Taking pictures was a Big Yes from him

He was really good at coming up with poses for his models

And most times the people in his class would ask him to model for them

And that’s when he started getting into modeling

And he loved that even more than photography

So naturally

He googled what he should do to become a model

And he found out you don’t necessarily need a degree

But Lucifer would NOT let him drop out

So, he saw that a few majors would help

Luckily for him

Photography was on there

But there was another that caught his eye

Fashion Merchandising

And here we have it

The brother who everyone sees as a dumbass is a double major

Who would have thought?

Not his brothers

Now don’t get me wrong

He barely passes his general education classes

But his major classes?

Easy

He loves them

He has shown up to class many times hungover, though

That’s what happens when you’re in a frat

Yes

Our boy Mammon

Is in a frat

He’s in the frat that puts on the best parties

They don’t let him spend money on anything anymore

They learned that the hard way

He’s also in Student Government, courtesy of Lucifer

He’s the Director of Public Relations

He considered running for treasurer

But all of his brothers reminded him of all the things he’s spent money on

And bet money on

And lost money on

He decided against treasurer

When it comes to partying

Mans goes hard

Doesn’t give a fuck

Does it all

Except hard drugs

…

Only that one time

Thank God Lucifer was there

「 Leviathan 」

If you think he would major in anything other than video game design you’re wrong

He went in looking to be a general programmer

And then he saw the words “Video Game Design”

He changed major immediately

He’s perfectly happy with just Video Game Design

But he is getting a marine biology minor

He’s always been fascinated with the ocean

And the creatures in the ocean

So he decided a minor would be a neat idea

He could also totally use his knowledge to design a dope ass underwater themed game

Which high key may be his thesis project

He really doesn’t get out much

He stays home the majority of the time

Gaming

Watching Anime

Reading manga

Lucifer literally scolded him for always staying in his room

Never going out to do anything with anyone

Levi tried to tell him playing games was basically his homework

But Lucifer was having NONE OF IT

So, to shut him up

Levi looked at the clubs the school offered

He nearly screamed when he realized there was a Japanese Manga, Anime, and Gaming Club

He quickly became the president of that

He’s also a part of Student Government with the rest of his brothers

He’s the Media Representative

He runs all the social medias for the Student Government

And he’s damn good at it

He’s frequently on his phone during meetings

And he’s the only one who’s allowed to do that

And he may use it to his advantage

He needs to know what happens in the next episode of the anime he’s watching

He doesn’t have time to listen to Lucifer and Diavolo preach about things damnit!

He also doesn’t have time for

Shudder

Parties.

Just the thought of going to a frat party makes his skin crawl

What a normie thing to do

Sadly, for him

He’s frequently forced to attend them

Thanks Mammon

He just follows Mammon around like a lost puppy

He gets flustered any and every time anyone talks to him

One time, Mammon thought alcohol would make him feel more confident

…Mammon should not have provided Levi with alcohol

Too many things happened

Things the two never speak of to this day

N E V E R

He apologizes to Ruri-Chan every day for his mistakes on that night

「 Satan 」

VETERINARY MEDICINE

HE DOESN’T CARE HOW LONG IT TAKES

HE WILL TAKE CARE OF ANIMALS

Almost bit Lucifer when he reminded him, he’d have to put down animals too

Lucifer then proceeded to call him an animal

But seriously

Satan wants to be able to help animals in any way he can

He’s well aware he will have to put some animals down

But he knows he won’t have to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary

He’s also going to be a whole ass doctor

Fuck off, Lucifer Esquire

Here comes the DOCTOR of the family

Literally took up a job just to get away from Lucifer

He works as a librarian

He loves it

He’s constantly reading

And I mean  c o n s t a n t l y  r e a d i n g

He’s the nicest librarian ever

Just

Don’t talk too loudly

Or destroy a book

Or do anything stupid

Because he will go off

He doesn’t tolerate stupidity

Not in his safe space

He’s on track to get a certificate in writing

So please

Do not interfere with literature

He’s also on track to get a certificate in Women and Gender Studies

So do not interfere with women’s rights or equality in front of him

He will not be happy

And he’s horrifying when he’s angry

Same thing goes in Student Government

He’s the Parliamentarian

And he does the job well

You either follow the rules

Or you get a talking to from Satan

Nobody wants a talking to from Satan

The only person who isn’t necessarily afraid of him is Lucifer

But Lucifer never breaks the rules so Satan can’t pop off on him

Satan might watch him like a hawk just to see if he messes up eventually so he can yell

He never catches him doing anything wrong

He catches Mammon doing plenty wrong, though

Constantly on his case for staying out too late

Mammon always blames it on his frat

And Satan always rolls his eyes

Similar to Lucifer

The only “frat” he’s in is an honor society with a Greek name

He considered joining the “smart” frat

But he decided against it seeing as Mammon was in a frat

He didn’t want to be associated with him

Sadly

He can’t escape it

Every party he goes to

Mammon is right there

Every

Time

Satan doesn’t understand how he does it

To avoid the feeling of dread he just

He drinks as much as possible

He doesn’t party often

But when he does

He

parties

The amount of times he’s gone out with his brothers and then disappeared only to come home after some crazy shit happened to the rest of them?

So many times

He doesn’t have time for their foolishness

He parties to get away from them

You know sometimes he just needs a break from his family dynamic

Even though when he gets drunk, Lucifer usually gets a voicemail

And… it’s soft

Satan has no idea those voicemails exist

Lucifer keeps them for blackmail

He also just keeps them to remind himself that Satan has a heart and isn’t a fucking dick to him all the time… don’t let the insult fool you, he actually really cares for Satan and hearing him be nice is pleasant

「 Asmodeus 」

He is a fashion design major

He’s known what he’s wanted to do since he was a child.

He’s been making his own clothes for years

People always stare at him because wow he looks good

He also decided to minor in music

Specifically focusing on his voice

Boy can sing

And sing he does

Sometimes Belphegor tells him to shut up

To which Asmo responds with

“I can’t hear you over my Grammy Award worthy voice! Did you say something?”

Before Belphegor can respond

Asmo is singing again

It’s futile

He never stops

That helps him in his Acapella Group though

He loves singing with them

Invites his brothers to every performance

Actually, gets happy if they show up

He’s the treasurer of Student Government

He’s actually very good with his money

He basically runs his own mini fashion business after all

He not only creates clothes for himself

But other people too

And don’t even get me started on his make-up looks

He’s literally an icon

He walks into a room and people know exactly who he is

He also has a YouTube channel

Focusing on fashion and beauty

He’s decently popular

And he loves it

He’s the other one in a frat

His frat is the most popular on campus

Everyone knows it

Everyone knows the people in it

And he loves the attention

So many girls and guys on campus throw themselves at him

And he loves that too

He always treats whoever he decides to bring home with him like royalty

Even though he’s had several hook ups and one-night stands

People don’t mind

Because he’s

1)

AMAZING AT IT

and

2)

HOT AS FUCK

He knows it

And he is not afraid to show it

He parties every night

Like actually

If he isn’t partying, it’s concerning

He’s one that believes that college are the best years of your life

And he isn’t letting that slip away from him

No matter how much Lucifer yells at him to stop partying all the time

Of course, partying is also an excuse for him to ignore some other things

So, he does it a lot

When he’s with someone else is when he’s happiest

So, he always makes sure to be with another person

「 Beelzebub 」

Bet you think he’s gonna major in culinary science

WRONG

That’s his minor

His major

Is Family and Child Science

He wants to help people so bad

Especially children

He wants to do everything in his power to make sure that children live happy lives

So, his main goal in the end is to either be a school counselor or a crisis counsellor

He’s very serious about what he does

And he holds some past trauma

So, he wants to make sure people have someone to talk to when bad things happen

Of course, he also loves making food

He loves eating it more, though

But honestly

He’s a student athlete

Of course, he needs food

He’s always moving

He’s the captain of the American football team at their school

If he wasn’t going into child services

You’d best believe he was going into the NFL

Mans can PLAY football

It’s also really nice to have him in Student Government

Because the student body actually respects them because of it

He’s the secretary

It’s always nice when Lucifer asks Beel for the notes they took that meeting

He hands them over

Super detailed

Perfect, even

He always pays attention

He’s great at listening

And he knows how much it means to Lucifer

So, he never disappoints

He isn’t in any other clubs other than student government

But that’s because he’s on teams

Like I said, one hell of a football player

And if he’s not home making food or doing schoolwork

He’s at practice

Or just at the gym

He’s always bettering himself

And he’s certainly a campus heartthrob

It’s always fun going out with him

because he is the heaviest of all the heavy weights

His record for taking shots is twenty-one

That should have KILLED HIM

It didn’t kill him

BUT

That’s definitely his limit

That was an interesting night

Beel is just happy that his brothers happened to be there

He wasn’t too happy when he realized Mammon did something even more stupid than taking twenty-one shots

Lucifer made sure they were both okay though

Which Beel appreciated

He just… avoids vodka as much as possible now

Too many bad memories

At least from what he can remember

「 Belphegor 」

Like Beel

Belphie really cares about the mental state of people

Not children specifically

Just people in general

He’s just

Not cut out to be a counsellor

He doesn’t have the personality for that

He needs to do something that can actually take his sarcastic ass and allow him to use it for the better

SO

He does some research

And something catches his eye

Rehabilitation Coordinator

Specifically Rehab for drugs and alcohol

He’s no-nonsense enough to enforce the rules of the facility, but still be able to care about these people

And become one

He needs to go to nursing school

This is difficult for him

He really enjoys sleeping

And this whole getting up early for clinicals thing?

Not ideal

However

After talking to his advisor about it

And by talking

I mean just straight up telling him he’s nocturnal got severe insomnia and waking up early is a no go

He gets put on the night shift

And that does wonders of good for him

The brothers barely see him

He’s either in class, asleep, or at the hospital

The only brother he ever really makes time for is Beel

They’re twins

Of course, he’s going to make time for him

A lot of the time, Belphie will return home around the same time Beel wakes up to go on a morning run

So, they have breakfast together

Because of his chaotic schedule

The only club he’s in is Student Government

And he did his best to snag the easiest position

The Reporter position

He just

Submits stories to the papers in the area

That’s it

He loves it

It’s so easy

Lucifer has to remind him to do it sometimes, though

He doesn’t mean to forget

He’s just got a lot going on

He needs to memorize he human anatomy, Lucifer

Some things are more important

He rarely goes out

He isn’t fond of parties

Even though he’s a night owl and enjoys the occasional drink

There are too many people

The main reason he goes is to make sure Beel doesn’t get too wasted

Not after that one time

But he did party a little hard when he found out he passed a test that he needed to get higher than a C on to stay in his major

He celebrated

Sleeping was the last thing on his mind that night

He was so hungover in the morning

[hellstenglow]

Fiveya Meta: they need to talk

Endure me, I am on a fiveya-train and my thoughts don’t shut up.

After watching the most recent behind the scene videos of TUA season 2 we can conclude that they did make senseless choices in the plot because in some cases they had to. For example in the case of the snow storm created by Harlan in the final episode, that was added to the script because suddenly there have been a snow storm on the outside set the days before the scheduled filming and they couldn’t clean the place enough, in time for the recording. The snow was added.

I also think they could have written some of the characters better and given them real development (*cough* Luther, Ben *cough*). I wasn’t even a fan of the whole “Vanya lost her memory” thing, but I’ve read that Steve Blackman (the showrunner) doesn’t want to diverge from the original content too much (which is a bit silly to say since they did make major changes since season 1, but okay). I guess that’s why Vanya’s amnesia was still there, although they treated it differently. In the comics it was Mom-Grace who helped Vanya to find herself again and her own value, in the show it was Sissy who did it. I thought it was kind of a hint to the comics the fact Sissy resembled Show-Grace a bit (blond, kind and a mom). Did I think it was unnecessary to have a love interest for Vanya right after season 1? I did, but I justified the choice by thinking that the show wanted to give Vanya a taste of what real love (not like Leonard’s manipulative and abusive love) is supposed to be. I also thought it was a way to show how Vanya needs to stop clinging to the first person who gives her affection, attention and treats her with kindness. I hope she’d realize that and work on herself and family in season 3, first and foremost.

Even with the evident flaws I enjoyed season 2, especially because I decided to treat it as a passing by (detour/digression) chapter in a longer story. All Hargreeves siblings in the ‘60s tried hard to make a new life and ignored their actual life (Allison, Luther, Klaus) or had a convenient amnesia (Vanya) or focused on something too much to lose track of what matters (Diego). Everyone except Ben (who was not treated once again as a full character despite the apparent level up the PR promoted) and Five (who once again was running around in panic mode to stop an apocalypse). Remember Vanya saying, “New timeline, new me.” And Five replying “That’s NOT how it works.”? I may give the writers more credits than it is due, but I hope those two lines were some kind of meta messages for the more attentive viewers. Those two lines can explain perfectly season 2 to be honest.

Nobody can know how long a tv show would run, a fact that expose us to uncertainty. It’s always a gamble trusting writers and showrunners to deliver a good story, but all it’s fair game and one has only to accept it. I do not trust any of them, but I cannot help myself and still hope that they will not ruin everything. With all this said, let’s talk about something I think the show has to tackle in next seasons: Five and Vanya are two points of a theme that needs to be addressed and solved. They need to interact, talk and close their open theme together.

This is not a cohesive meta and I probably will lose myself in too many details, but I hope the message I am trying to convey will arrive. This is only my reading of the show and theories, so you can disagree. I just hope you’d find something interesting and maybe help someone to have a different perspective on what’s going on and where (I pray) the show will go. Here the points I will talk about, if you are in for a very verbose essay, please click on the “keep reading” button. Meanwhile I’ll wear my tinfoil crown and sip some margarita.

Five and Vanya are a theme

It was mean to be Ben

Why the Fiveya’s tension in S2 EP 7’s iconic scene is a symptom of something

I dare to hope in fiveya (at least until proven wrong)  

1. We have a theme: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the apocalypse

It’s a twisted joke of the universe that the very thing Five is obsessed about in season 1 (the apocalypse) was caused by the person he trusted the most (“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust” - Five in S1EP1). The red thread that linked Five and Vanya can’t be more evident, that’s one of the reasons why I started shipping them. The family’s dynamic, the siblings’ relationships and bonds are equally important, they add layers and motivations to the story, but if we strip everything else and look at the core, we all know Five and Vanya are at the centre of it.

It’s not a simple coincidence that Five said “I’m the four horsemen”. At first, it’s just a funny line, because Five is drunk and he described himself as those fearsome figures (because he is the best assassin of the whole world and time. Death incarnated in his humble opinion). You don’t take him seriously when he said that line, you don’t pay attention to it.  

However, later it gains a certain degree of truth. Subtly the show tells you that indeed Five is linked deeply to the “apocalypse” (Vanya), as much as the four horsemen (they are the prelude and the bringers of the end) are linked to the apocalypse (in the biblical sense). He lived it. He was trapped there for 45 years. He is obsessed with it. The Apocalypse is his business.

Timid little Vanya is the first person he looked for in the middle of the doomsday’s ruins and arguably his closest friend. On the first day of his return Five only have meaningful talks with Vanya. Five sought her to confide the horror of his memories and share the burden of the truth. He trusted her above everyone else. Then the universe made a laughingstock of him when it was revealed that Vanya caused the Apocalypse. Five didn’t know he was running towards her, despite wanting to go back to his family (her) all his life. 

In the first two episodes of season 1 they made clear that Vanya and Five had an intimate bond in their childhood and still cared for each other after so many years, then the show proceeded to separate them until the finale. They tried so hard to keep them far away from each other during season 1 and we all know everything would have been different if they had time to properly talk, process their situation and find a solution together. Of course, the show didn’t give them that chance, otherwise the show would have ended in episode 3 and goodbye drama!

They did not confront each other in the end of season 1, they let Allison take that role because the show built up their connection as sisters and I didn’t dislike the choice. Did it work thematically? No, Allison has no connection with the apocalypse. That’s Five’s business. He didn’t confront Vanya, he let others take the lead in the most crucial moment and with no surprise the apocalypse still happened.

The other apocalypse in season 2 was still connected to Vanya and again Five ignored the cosmic signals and focused on dead ends. Despite knowing perfectly that the butterfly effect can come from any source, he didn’t even think about Vanya’s being the cause of the apocalypse again. Five should have listened Klaus when he suggested that Vanya might have been the cause. Funny how Klaus told him in S1 that he has an addiction and Five aggressively denied it. Funny how saving his family and stopping the apocalypse are always his top priorities, but Five still deny himself (for a reason or another) the time to confront Vanya (the apocalypse).

We have a theme waiting to be resolved: Five wants to stop the apocalypse and Vanya is the cause of the apocalypse. If Five does not confront Vanya the theme will never have a closure. It’s still open right now. It is still there, waiting to be picked up again. There is no resolution.

2. Vanya and Ben’s goodbye

The scene between Vanya and Ben was one of my favourites from season 2 and after pondering for a while I concluded that it couldn’t have been anyone else but Ben the one who helped Vanya in that moment. My theory is that the show will walk backwards the breaking points of Vanya’s life: Ben’s death, Five’s leaving and Reginald’s abuse.

Vanya is not fixed. How could she when she was barely Vanya in this season? “New timeline, new me” she said, but that was just a convenient escapism mechanism. Years and years of mentally and emotionally abuse don’t disappear in one week. The Hargreeves have still a lot to process and resolve, individually and as family. That’s why I hope the show will progress the story in the right direction and actually work on them in season 3. Especially Vanya, who needs to confront her trauma. That’s why the scene with Ben in episode 9 was necessary.

From Vanya’s book:

[…] Our everyday existence was full of evidence that Dad had [...]-pped into treating us like experiments. Not as children, but like animals. And what happened to Ben was the last straw that finally shattered the illusion for the others …

Ben died long time ago and his death was the last straw that shattered the illusion (for the others) that their father cared about them (even in his own messed up way). Everything changed from that moment and each sibling drifted away from one another after that. Ben’s death was the moment Vanya and the rest of her siblings stopped being a family. The definitive step of Vanya’s alienation from her siblings.

There was no place in the group for her. With Five’s absence and Ben gone (he is a caring brother, with Klaus is like that and I can imagine him being kind to Vanya in their childhood too. Although, Ben is not Five and we have seen him being harsh to her in the flashbacks in S1EP10), Vanya was truly lost.

The tearful and important moment between Ben and Vanya was a reverse moment in my opinion. Vanya needed that from Ben, his death heavily influenced the course of her life (everyone’s life) and it was only fitting that Ben should have been the one helping her to start again. It’s symbolic in a sense, but also very factual.

“Sorry that I left without saying goodbye” – Five, S1 EP2

“At least this time I can say goodbye.” – Ben, S2 EP9

I’m using my fiveya-goggles, but we all thought that what Five said in S1EP2 (when Vanya tried to find him at Hargreeves’ mansion) wasn’t just about him leaving her apartment. It’s a very specific line that works on double levels: text and subtext. The subtext of course refers to the day he run out the house and time jumped. I highlighted these two lines from Five and Ben because I think they share the same theme: leaving her without saying goodbye.

Vanya wasn’t on mission with the team when Ben died, and I doubt she even saw his body (or whatever remains were left) when the Umbrella Academy returned. She didn’t even see his manifestation during the Icarus’ fight, too focused in her own power. The scene between them in Vanya’s mind gave both the opportunity to make amend of untold words and missed moments.

Ben is dead, he is the one he cannot return. His departure is permanent, there is nothing they can do about that. However, they can have a closure. Ben needed to be the one first patching to mend Vanya’s relationship with her family, to remind her that she does belong. This sort of second death (finally move on into the Light) has more meaning than the first one, this time Ben completed the mission. He saved someone he loved (he couldn’t stop Klaus from destroying his life with drugs and alcohol) and could trust his siblings to take care of the rest.

I still think Ben didn’t need to die-die, but in a sense it was time for him to move on into the light. He was afraid to go on, but if he could move on so his siblings. It is time for Vanya to move on her own trauma.

(Yeah, I know. I still have problem with the scene because they erased canon in a way and Ben could do a lot more as character. They erased the fact drugs stop their powers like in Klaus’ addiction and Vanya’s pills, so how Vanya was able to use them under LSD? I tried to explain that to myself by the fact “they needed to bs that canon fact in season 1 and ignored it”.

We can also argue that Ben could have prevented the apocalypse in 2019 by doing the same thing, but in their defence S1-Ben didn’t know he could possess a body. Yeah, how did he do that without Klaus’ power help? No idea, that doesn’t make sense to me either. Ahah. I just swam with the flow at that point and accepted it as it is. Call it the power of superpowered siblings’ love. I’ve seen worse plot holes in my life. I can live with this).

3. Pass me the knife, there is some tension here!

From Vanya’s book:

Though prone to arrogance and outbursts, even more than the average preteen, Five was my sole confidante in the years before he disappeared. It almost seemed fitting […] the siblings to leave us, it would be him who [I fully?] […] who fully trusted me.

I said that Vanya’s walking backwards her life’s breaking points. So, after Ben’s death, she needs to address Five’s leaving. Five was her only confidante in the years before he disappeared, as she wrote in her book. Five was very important to young Vanya (and old Vanya needs to remember that) and I bet when he left, that was a scar never healed.

Vanya missed him and hoped for his return, for a while she kept the lights on in the house every night and prepared for him his favourite sandwich. When Five did come back Vanya couldn’t process that fact properly in season 1, all she could think of was that she didn’t want to lose him again. Five on the other hand decided that he would save everyone on his own and for that choice he made a bunch of tragic rookie mistakes.

Miscommunication is their kryptonite and right now Vanya and Five aren’t able to fully communicate at the same level. Reggie did such a good work at parenting that they’re so unfit to deal with their emotions and relationships, that will always be the root of their mistakes.

Same story in season 2, meanwhile Vanya is on the verge to provoke another apocalypse (although indirectly), as usual Five was too obsessed with his own plans and was not even aware of the situation. He knows nobody is insignificant when it’s about altering the timeline, but he always ends to focus on the wrong lead. The show again did incredible summersaults to avoid the two to interact properly and when they interacted things still didn’t work for a reason or another. She didn’t remember her past, he was not entirely sincere with her. She wanted to start anew (having a family with Sissy, easy-peasy), he is trapped again in a run against time to save his family. They are still not at the same page and for the show that is convenient. They still can play with their open theme (my point number 1 in this meta).

I don’t blame Five in S1 for thinking that if the worse happens, they would need to kill her. I think he was in a very delicate state of mind in that moment, he didn’t have time to process the fact Vanya (his favourite sibling and we all know she is his favourite) caused the end of the world. It was disappointing and cynical, but time was ticking fast, and he had been in his “maniacal-panic” mode for almost eight days. I also think he wouldn’t really kill her; he was the one who convinced the others that they needed to take her with them in the time jump. They need to “fix her” (aka help her to never feel alone in the universe and prove her we do love her) or they’re going to make the same mistakes again and again.

Just to be clear I think if Five wasn’t one day from the end of the world and in a rush to stop Vanya, he would had had the same reaction as Old Man Five in S2. His 14-days younger version take it very well “Fair enough” he said and then proceeded to tell Luther how to save Vanya, no mention about killing her whatsoever. Old Man Five had time (10 days more than our current Five) and a direct clue on how to stop the apocalypse (thanks Luther). Nobody was going to kill Vanya.

“Vanya will always be the cause of the apocalypse, unless we fix her.” - Five S1EP10 

“Vanya is the bomb. She will always be the bomb.” - Diego S2EP8

Vanya is the bomb and she will always be the bomb unless she heals. A fact that can be added to my number 1 point in this meta, there is an open theme and they need to tackle it. Five and Vanya need to confront each other and resolve it.

This takes me to S2 EP7: the iconic stare-power stand between Five and Vanya. THE TENSION was real, and you could cut it with a butter knife. The first time I screamed at my screen, I felt like Gordon Ramsay in one of those episodes of “Kitchen Nightmare US” when someone finally serves him good food.

Of course, the immediate reading of the scene is that Five needed Vanya to come along and Vanya didn’t want to go because at that point these Hargreeves are still strangers to her (amnesia is so convenient), Sissy and Harlan are the ones she knows and loves in that right moment.

They were still able to cut each other with sharp words and hostile glares though. Five let her have what she wanted, not because he feared her, but because as usual he cares more about her feelings than what he would ever admit. It’s the second time in S2 he let her go, his soft spot and favouritism for Vanya was showing once again! *fakes surprise*

I think the tension shown in this scene is a symptom that Vanya and Five are on the verge of something they will (they have to) confront soon or later. This is the subtext reading I came out with.

Even if you don’t look at it with shipper goggle, you feel there is something going on. They let the viewers feel there is a sensitive something whenever these two have an alone scene together. All their alone scenes have a specific grade of intimacy, they made it clear since the scene in front of Five’s portrait. They care for each other, they love each other (sibling love, platonic love, we-could-have-been-something love etc…) and it’s there. However, Five left and Vanya never truly recovered from that. They didn’t process that fact and I truly believe they can’t move on until they heal that scar.

Basically, S2 EP7 Fiveya’s scene = We have to talk, but this is not the moment because the show is only on its second season! THIS TENSION IS HERE FOR A REASON.

4. Hope is the last thing to die

I shouldn’t trust a show, I’ve been disappointed so many times in the past years and showrunners of popular shows tend to be unoriginal and cowards. However, I am an optimist at heart and until season 3 I dare to hope anyway. If proven wrong, there are always fanfictions who can do better job than canon.

If all was lost they could have eliminated Alluther too from the universe because of certain fans screaming “harcest is incest you weirdos”, but Allison and Luther’s situation still exist and still work on the parameter “will they or not”? I imagine for their shippers it was annoying to have such a regression in season 2, but they didn’t destroy it and they still gave them scenes.

Fiveya had even a more subtle situation than Alluther but they’ve been granted the same level of intimate interaction whenever they have an alone scene together. Until Five (the character) will gain an older body (which he can) the whole thing is suspended. However, I think they wouldn’t have been open about the possibility of Five changing back to an older body and spoke about in season 1 if they didn’t have an idea for that.

I brushed off the line Five said to Old Man Five about being forever trapped in his 13-years-old body. It’s canon that there is a way to gain an adult body for Five, the Commission has the technology and even if it’s not the Commission they can mambo-jambo the thing in a way or another. That would never work. The actor is a growing up teenager and from season 1 to season 2 he has already changed. I imagined he will change even more before season 3 will ever start recording (maybe very late due the COVID-19 situation).

Aidan is a fan favourite and I am one of those who can’t see anyone else playing Five, with this said there are still ways for the show to give us fiveya. Young fiveya flashbacks will be always an option to explore the idea of “they had a crush on each other when they were young” and make other viewers understand that it wasn’t all “sibling” love between them. Endgame in a distant season can always have an epilogue with an adult Five (another actor I mean) having a very non-platonic (let adult Fivey kiss please) moment with Vanya, meanwhile building up the longest slow-burn (kinda, deep down I believe those feelings for each other are there) of the century.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe my tinfoil crow is too tight, and my brain doesn’t breathe. Maybe the show will succumb to easy paths and angry bullies. I don’t know, but until proven wrong I dare to hope.

PS: This is a monster of a meta and it probably doesn’t make sense? I hope someone will get what I’ve tried to say. I hope you survive, brave readers. Here a glass of margarita for you. I’d love to hear what you think

[fanexus-dot-net]

FAQ

What is the purpose of Fanexus?

Fanexus was originally conceived as a way to make it easier to organize fandom content. The founders are fans who have followed fandom activity as it has migrated across many different social media platforms, and found that none of them quite suited their needs. After spending years thinking about how each of these platforms could be altered to better support fandom activity, we eventually realized that we’d amassed the money, skills and connections to make a platform ourselves.  

Fanexus is also open to use by original creators; original works are where fandom begins, after all. Enthusiasts of non-media fandoms, such as people who are passionate about interests as broad as cooking, crafting, interior decorating, brewing, extreme sports, rock collecting, history, model-building, archaeology, philosophy, etc, are also all welcome to use Fanexus as a place to post about and discuss their interests and ideas. Fanexus can be used for any type of interest so long as it doesn’t violate our rules regarding legality, harassment and hate speech.

While we originally wanted to create Fanexus as a means to better organize our content, as we’ve watched toxicity in fandom grow to increasingly alarming levels in the last few years, we’ve decided that making Fanexus a space that actively opposes this toxicity is a goal of equal importance to us. We want Fanexus to be a place where people can explore weird, complex and dark things in art and fiction without being accused of endorsing those things, and can have nuanced discussions and debates without things immediately devolving into insults and dogpiling.  

You can read more about the philosophy driving Fanexus here.

Why an integrated wiki?

We would like to go over some of the issues we’ve faced as fans that inspired the inclusion of the wiki:

There are a lot of fandoms that have very complex fanon worldbuilding/terminology/characterisations/etc, and this can be very confusing for a new fan. The way we have the wiki set up means that users will be able to go straight from a post that mentions those concepts to the wiki page for those concepts (we’ll elaborate on how this works in a later post dedicated to this feature), instead of having to search through other parts of the internet for an up-to-date fanon wiki for this fandom. We feel like people will be more likely to keep these wiki pages updated than they would if it were an external wiki, because once they have accounts on Fanexus, it will be very easy to quickly go and update a wiki page on the site, rather than going and creating a new account for a separate wiki.

In a similar vein, fandoms can produce very interesting AUs that many different fans contribute to. We’ve had the experience of coming across a piece of artwork or fiction based on one of these AUs and wanting to know more, but then finding it very difficult to track down information that explains what the AU is about, and people’s various different takes on it. We thought that by providing a wiki feature, people could create pages for each of these AUs and then update them as they develop. The AU itself may not be complex enough to justify the creation of an entire wiki for it, but having a page or two dedicated to it could certainly be helpful. The same logic applies to things such as OCs.  

People develop their own personal headcanons which can be very complex, and it can be tiresome to have to explain them over and over. So if users can create wiki pages for each of their headcanons (or AUs, OCs, etc) and link them whenever they’re necessary to understand the context of say, a fic they wrote or a piece of art they made, it could save them a lot of bother. Personal wiki pages won’t be available on launch, but we’re endeavouring to add them as soon as we can.

Can you tell us more about your other features?

Details of the features we’ve announced so far can be found here. 

We intend to add new features to Fanexus to improve our users’ experiences for as long as we have the funding to do so. We endeavour to add features that are highly demanded by our userbase, so long as the features in question are within our legal and technical capabilities to implement, and align with the philosophy of Fanexus.

How is this being funded? Will it be free to use?

Right now the beta is being paid for by the founders. Once the beta is online and in use, we plan to have a Kickstarter to fund the development of additional features we couldn’t afford to include in the beta. Fanexus will be freemium, which means it will be free to use, with premium features such as added customisation, that will be used for the ongoing funding of the site.  

Will there be a mobile app?

Currently we have a responsive web app, but a mobile app is one of the first things we intend to develop should we get the required funding via the Kickstarter. 

What kind of customisation options will Fanexus have?

In the long term, we hope to introduce in-depth customisation options to Fanexus, some of which will be premium options. We will take feedback from our userbase to decide what customisation features we will prioritise implementing first.

Are all ships welcome on Fanexus?

Yes. We understand that the reasons someone may enjoy a ship can be very complex, unexpected and/or personal, and have nothing to do with a belief that the ship is healthy or a desirable relationship to have in reality. So long as a person understands the separation between fiction and reality, and knows what a healthy real life relationship is like, we maintain that they should be able to ship what they like. We just ask that they tag their content for people who wish to avoid it. This extends to the shipping of real life people, with the provision that if Fanexus gets a direct request from any of these real people asking to have shipping content of them removed, we will remove content containing them specifically, out of courtesy.

Is NSFW content allowed on Fanexus?

Fanexus welcomes NSFW content, simply requiring that it be tagged with an adult content warning so that it is hidden from underage users.

Our servers are currently hosted in Denmark, so content posted on Fanexus must abide by Danish law. 

Further details of what sort of content is and isn’t permitted on Fanexus will be outlined in our TOS, which will be shared prior to launch.

How old do you have to be to use Fanexus?

Fanexus will be 13+, with adults-only spaces. On sign up, users will be asked if they are over 18, and anyone who indicates that they are a minor will be required to enter their DOB. Posts and blogs that are marked as Adults Only will then be hidden from minor users until they turn 18. Minors found to be lying about their age to interact with adult content will be banned. We looked into ways we could have people prove their age on sign up, but we couldn’t find any practical, reliable method. People were uncomfortable with providing personal information, and given that many adults don’t have credit cards, while many minors borrow their guardians’ credit cards, having people make a credit card deposit to prove their age wasn’t a viable solution.

Will Fanexus be doing anything to protect minors?

We believe that the best form of protection against online dangers is education, and so we’re in the process of compiling educational resources to be made available on the site so that people are aware of what sort of red flags to look out for when it comes to a variety of online threats. We also want to provide information about the separation between fiction and reality, so that minors (or anybody impressionable) won’t misunderstand or be manipulated with fiction into thinking that unhealthy behaviors and attitudes presented in dark/complicated/self-indulgent fiction and art are acceptable in reality.

We currently have the following ideas for distributing this information:

We’ll have a staff blog that provides site updates, and also periodically posts articles containing this information.

We’ll keep a compilation of this information available on a page on the site, which will be easily accessible via the navigation bar.

Eventually we want to introduce a feature where if a user searches for particular keywords, a banner appears above the search results, linking to helpful/education information relevant to the keywords. The banner will be able to be hid so it doesn’t show up again in subsequent searches.

We will of course also have a mod team watching out for any reports of suspect behaviour that may be endangering minors (or any of our users), who will take action to neutralise these threats. Another feature we are planning to develop to help our mods protect minors is a keyword detector for comments and DMs. This will scan the comments and DMs of minor users for any keywords that suggest they may be being targeted, and send a warning to our mods to check up on them. 

What is your affiliation with the Prostasia Foundation?

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Prostasia has an Advisory Council made of voluntary, unpaid experts from relevant fields. These advisory members do not carry any vote or authority on deciding Prostasia policy, and the views that they express on social media or elsewhere are not necessarily representative of the views of the Prostasia Foundation. Fanexus’s point of contact with Prostasia has been with the Foundation’s Executive Director, and we have no affiliation with the members of their Advisory Council.  

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Are you trying to replace Archive of Our Own?

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Will Fanexus be open to all or invite-only?

We want Fanexus to be open to all eventually, but we also anticipate that the sort of people who promote and thrive on fandom’s toxicity will sign-up with the express purpose of breaking the rules we put in place to protect people from them. To avoid that happening en masse on launch, Fanexus will initially be invite-only. Once we have an established community of fans who can report trolls and other troublemakers, we will open Fanexus up.

In order to get an invite to Fanexus, you will need to apply via this form. If you are accepted, you will be emailed an invite (please check your junk mail) to our  Forum and Discord. Users of the Forum and Discord will be given priority invites to the site.

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Are there other places I can follow Fanexus news?

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[burnedbyshoto]

Can we get the same thing dealing with Uraraka and Momo? People hate on them soooo much and I dont see the reason why. Most of the time its just because they interrupt peoples fave ships, and Ive noticed a lot of the hate they get is from other girls. Like. Though a lot of quieter anime girls get a lot of shit from fandoms, mostly from the girls and with the idea of them interrupting whatever ship they like a lot.

I think... dealing with female characters is very hard in terms of shonen manga. especially for us western fans.

as always this is my opinion on how I see and interpret the manga and anime, you’re free to disagree and hate my interpretation!!!!

number one thing you need to know is that I don’t hate a single female character in bnha. i don’t. my least favorite female character is like... I don’t even know, I like them all really. but when it comes to hating on female characters in shonen manga it’s hard for me to find a true stance.

for us westerners I don’t think we’ll ever be satisfied with female empowerment within shonen unless we have more series like sailor moon honestly. to be honest i’m not well versed in anime and manga, I haven’t like watched more than 5 series and all of them have been popular and mainstream things, so they’re all pretty formulaic in the same way.

strongest male main protagonist, not as strong as main protagonist but can kick his ass still male protagonist, and the female protagonist that’s meant to serve as an equal but is sorely unequal to both her counterparts and will grow to be strong but not that strong but strong — can probably beat up the two protagonist in a playful way but never ever in a serious match.

all things considered from what i’ve seen females are plot devices for one arc and one arc only.

westerns — female fans specifically — want our female characters to be as badass as the men, to be able to go toe to toe, to be loud and obnoxious and still be loved, to be crusty and ugly villains and still be loved. from what I gather people just want female characters to be more than just love devices and hold their own weight and not cry.

we also have to take into consideration that bnha is literally designed for young boys — it is a shonen after all — and while it’s by means no excuse for lack of female character building, this series is meant for young boys to see themselves within these characters. and within our cis heteronormative world that does mean letting these young boys see themselves within these male characters. again, not an excuse, but an insight we do need to take into consideration.

now applying this to bnha we have our main female protagonists within uraraka and momo.

I think that they’re pretty well written all things considered. I know they’ll never be like winry or hawkeye in fma and that’s literally the only anime i’ve seen where the female characters were developed in their own field of expertise in strong ways.

uraraka has been made to be the love interest of izuku, there is no denying it, but I don’t think that’s her only character trait. she’s 16 years old going to a school that people dream of getting into, and is best friends with someone she admires. it’s without a doubt that feelings catch on, but izuku isn’t the one driving her to be a hero.

from episode what 5??? of the anime she states that she’s becoming a hero for her family. she’s becoming a hero so she can use her quirk to help her family and to rescue people. uraraka wants to be a rescue hero (and tbh people often forget that that’s what izuku wanted to be too). she learns a few fighting skills because she experienced first hand that her inability to fight is going to cost her big time. so she thinks “what would izuku do” once gets called out about it from aoyama and suddenly no one can shut up about it.

the entire sports festival battle against bakugou she fucking had him, tbh the fact that bakugou was able to clear the entire air of concrete chunks and only get a 5 second arm cramp is ass. bakugou always says quirks have a limit but that’s the only time we’ve seen him near a limit and it wasn’t even that impactful seeing that he was ready to roll again. but uraraka did THAT!!! she pushed bakugou to the point where she has been the first person to ever really put him at the brink. sure bakugou and izuku go at it many times leaving them bloodied and bruised, but never have they been like: “OMG MY QUIRK IS GONNA BE INEFFECTIVE NOW”

uraraka takes her initiative to do things, and hell if it really bugs you that she’s getting stronger because she wants to be like izuku idk what to tell you. she’s becoming a hero to help her family, and her getting a little side piece along the way isn’t a big deal to me as long as she doesn’t throw her entire life away to save izuku (which she hasn’t). uraraka is a self sufficient queen, she’s dirt poor and is thriving. she’s 16 years old with a crush, that’s not a big deal in my eyes.

now momo is ehhh idk how to explain it. okay, so like, I love momo. but I don’t see her becoming a fighting hero and that’s okay!!!! why do we have to have girls being able to one hit KO other heroes when it’s been made perfectly clear that not all heroes are alleyway boxers. momo is fucking smart, with the ability to create whatever the fuck she wants, sure she can pull gun after gun from her chest and mow down any villain who comes her way — but that’s not who she is. momo is a leader through and through. she is a take none give none, and battling isn’t her expertise but she’s still good at it. momo has scored first in every single UA exam validating her intelligence every time.

if momo becomes a hero similar to todobakudeku, which I severally wish she won’t because that’s not her, I know she’s not going to be the best. her quirk makes her have to be sneaky, smart, and faster thinking than anyone else on the field. I mean look at her fight with tokoyami, her inability to think fast cost her the match really.

to be honest I don’t know much hate on the girls because it’s so stupidly irrelevant to me that I just go “scroll!!!!!”

I do think costumes need to be redone, but like can we also remember that heroes are also superstars in a hero society so looking hot af for popularity is needed. these girls were also 15 years old when they decided on their costumes and idk about you but I would’ve picked a costume that made me look hot as hell!!!! if i’m going to be fighting for living, people best know that I am hot as fuck!!!! besides, these costumes weren’t meant to be fought in outside of training!!!! they should see how their costumes work, how to improve them!!! they have 3 years and even more changes outside of UA to make them the best!!!! uraraka didn’t want her suit to be skin tight, but because the support company took into mind appearance it became tight. momo doesn’t want her costume to be regularly destroyed through her quirk, so she wanted to basically be naked because she thought there was no way to save her clothes!!! I hope hori gives her the ability to make her costume from her hair like mirio did so that way it can phase through her outfit without tearing it into smithereens.

but we also have to remember that female characters don’t have to be like male characters. would I love a female character to be able to best all might, shiggy, todobakudeku??? yeah, what female wouldnt??? but then we’d all have problems with her not being realistic enough and yadda yadda yadda. females not being the best is okay in my eyes as long as they get the proper growth and attention.

undeniably momo and uraraka have been on the back burner but with how the manga is going there hasn’t really been time for them to be on the front, but maybe it’s coming??? idk. I just want another stupid school arc but noooooooooo people hate it when the kids are being kids!!!! why do you want them to suffer all the damn time jfc 😫😫😫

if you want girls to be as strong as the boys I say look at girls like ryuuku neijire mina and miruko, i’m positive these ladies will be your saving grace once japan figures out that mina is amazing and that it’s okay for girls to be on the front lines kicking ass too

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: My granddaughter is 16 and in the us navy sea cadet program here in the USA. She hopes to become a naval aviator. She love reading military books. Any recommendations for her. Her mom says she reads anything military from equipment to history. I could use advice on a reading list to buy books for her. William Law

Thank you William for sending me this. It’s certainly one of the most interesting asks I’ve ever had the pleasure to reply to because it involves my love of Classics and also being a former military aviator.

So I put some thought into it because I can sense a kindred spirit in your grand daughter. She must be a remarkable young girl if she is as focused and committed as you say she is in terms of her life goals. If I may say so she is also blessed to have a grandfather like you who recognises the value of reading books to aid her and inspire her.

I have tried to confine myself to the narrow parameters of recommending books that can appeal to a precocious teenager that have a connection to naval and maritime themes (rather than the landed military) and have a general connection to women in the navy or as aviators. So the list is broken into personal memoirs, naval and maritime history, fictional works, and finally a select Classics list.

If you will indulge me I have included the Classics because I firmly believe a grounding in the Classics (from as early age as possible) is so culturally enriching and personally rewarding. In my experience the wisest military leaders and veterans I have ever had the privilege of knowing were grounded in the Classics.

To my mind Classic history, literature and poetry belongs in any library relating to maritime affairs. It provides a flavour of sea life, helping strategists understand this alien element. Just as important, it enlivens the topic. As you will know, ships and fleets do not make history; people do.

It is by no means a comprehensive list but something to start with. I’ve decided not to give you a bullet point laundry list but add some notes of my own because I found it fun to do - and in doing so I found myself looking back on my teenage years with equal icky amounts of embarrassment, regret, foolishness, fun, and joy. 

1. Personal memoirs

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

‘Poetry in flight’ best describes this 1942 memoir from aviatrix Beryl Markham of bush flying in Africa and long-distance flight, which includes her solo flight across the Atlantic. Lyrical and expressive her descriptions of the adventure of flying continue to inspire generations of women pilots, including myself when I learned to fly.

Markham was a colonial child and was raised by her father on a remote farm in Njoro, British East Africa (present-day Kenya). After a tomboyish childhood spent roaming the Kenyan wilds, she moved upcountry to Molo, becoming a racehorse trainer. There she saw her first plane and met British pilot Tom Black, who became her flight instructor and lover. Soon Markham earned her commercial pilot’s license, the first woman in Kenya to do so, and began to freelance as a bush pilot. Much of West With the Night concerns itself with this period in Markham’s life, detailing her flights in an Avro Avian biplane running supplies to remote outposts or scouting game for safaris.

Since airfields were essentially nonexistent in Africa at the time, Markham’s flights were particularly dangerous, punctuated with white-knuckle landings in forest clearings and open fields. In fact the dangers of African flying claimed the lives of a number of aviators. Markham eloquently describes her own search for a downed pilot: “Time and distance together slip smoothly past the tips of my wings without sound, without return, as I peer downward over the night-shadowed hollows of the Rift Valley and wonder if Woody, the lost pilot, could be there, a small pinpoint of hope and of hopelessness listening to the low, unconcerned song of the Avian - flying elsewhere.”

Markham’s memoir shies away from personal details - she is rumoured to have had an affair with an English prince - and straightforward chronology, instead focusing on vivid scenes gathered from a well-lived life. Rarely does one encounter such an evocative sense of a time and place as she creates. The heat and dust of Africa emanate from her prose. Anyone interested in aviation, in Africa, or in simply reading an absorbing book will find much to like in its pages. Ernest Hemingway, a friend and fellow safari enthusiast, wrote of Markham’s memoir, “I wish you would get it and read it because it really is a bloody wonderful book.”

It is a bloody brilliant book and it’s one of the books closest to my heart as it personally resonated with my nomadic life growing up in foreign countries where once the British empire made its mark.

I first read it on my great aunt’s Kenyan tea farm during the school holidays in England. I got into huge trouble for taking a treasured first edition - personally signed by Markham herself - from the library of my great aunt without permission. My great aunt - not an easy woman to get on with given her questionable eccentricities - wrote a stern letter to the head teacher of my girls’ boardng school in England that the schools standards and moral Christian teachings must be in terminal decline if girls were encouraged to pilfer books willy nilly from other people’s bookshelves and thus she would not - as an alum herself - be donating any more money to the school. It was one more sorry blot in my next school report.

Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History by Keith O’Brien

For pioneering pilots of the 1920s and 1930s, the challenges were enormous. For women it was even more daunting. In this marvellous history, Keith O’Brien recounts the early years of aviation through a generation of American female pilots who carved out a place for themselves and their sisterhood. Despite the sensation they created, each “went missing in her own way.” This is the inspiring untold story of five women from very different walks of life - including a New York socialite, an Oakland saleswoman, a Florida dentist’s secretary and a Boston social worker - who fought and competed against men in the  high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s — and won.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly and deadly pursuit. The derisive press dubbed the first women’s national air race “The Powder Puff Derby.”

It’s a brisk, spirited history of early aviation focused on 5 irrepressible women. Florence Klingensmith, a high-school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota, and who trained as a mechanic so she could learn planes inside and out but whose first aviation job was as a stunt girl, standing on a wing in her bathing suit. Louise McPhetridge Thaden a girl who grew up as a tomboy and later became the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee was determined to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Amelia Earhart was of course the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled. Ruth Nichols who chafed at the constraints of her blue-blood family's expectations of marrying into wealth and into high society.

In 1928, when women managed to get jobs in other male dominated fields, fewer than 12 had a pilot’s license, and those ambitious for prizes and recognition faced entrenched sexism from the men who ran air races, backed fliers, and financed the purchase of planes. They decided to organise: “For our own protection,” one of them said, “we must learn to think for ourselves, and do as much work as possible on our planes.” Although sometimes rivals in the air, they forged strong friendships and offered one another unabated encouragement. O’Brien vividly recounts the dangers of early flight: In shockingly rickety planes, pilots sat in open cockpits, often blinded by ice pellets or engine smoke; instruments were unreliable, if they worked at all; sudden changes in weather could be life threatening. Fliers regularly emerged from their planes covered in dust and grease. Crashes were common, with planes bursting into flames; but risking injury and even death failed to dampen the women’s passion to fly. And yet their bravery was only scoffed at by male prejudice. Iconic  oilman Erle Halliburton believed, “Women are lacking in certain qualities that men possess.” Florence Klingensmith’s crash incited a debate about allowing menstruating women to fly.

And yet these women still took off in wooden crates loaded with gasoline. They flew over mountains, deserts and seas without radar or even radios. When they came down, they knew that their landings might be their last. But together, they fought for the chance to race against the men - and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all. And When Louise Thaden became the first woman to win a national race, even the great Charles Lindbergh fell curiously silent.

O'Brien nicely weaves together the stories of these five remarkable women in the spirit of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff who broke the glass ceiling to achieve greatness.

Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Stockdale

Thoughts on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics, the selections in this volume converge around the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity- lessons just as valid for the challenges of present-day life as they were for the author’s Vietnam experience.Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in the U.S. Navy from 1947 to 1979, beginning as a test pilot and instructor at Patuxent River, Maryland, and spending two years as a graduate student at Stanford University. He became a fighter pilot and was shot down on his second combat tour over North Vietnam, becoming a prisoner of war for eight years, four in solitary confinement. The highest-ranking naval officer held during the Vietnam War, he was tortured fifteen times and put in leg irons for two years. It’s a book that makes you think how much character is important in good at anything, especially being a thoughtful and wise leader in the heat of battle.

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life And Maybe The World by Admiral William H. McRaven   On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better.

Admiral McRaven's original speech went viral with over 10 million views.

Building on the core tenets laid out in his speech, McRaven now recounts tales from his own life and from those of people he encountered during his military service who dealt with hardship and made tough decisions with determination, compassion, honour, and courage.

The book is told with great humility and optimism. It provides simple wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement that will inspire readers to achieve more, even in life's darkest moments.

Service: A Navy SEAL at War by Marcus Luttrell with James D. Hornfischer 

Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell is more known for his other famous best seller Lone Survivor but this one I think is also a thrilling war story, Service is above all a profoundly moving tribute to the warrior brotherhood, to the belief that nobody goes it alone, and no one will be left behind. Luttrell returned from his star-crossed mission in Afghanistan with his bones shattered and his heart broken. So many had given their lives to save him-and he would have readily done the same for them. As he recuperated, he wondered why he and others, from America's founding to today, had been willing to sacrifice everything - including themselves-for the sake of family, nation, and freedom.

In Service, we follow Marcus Luttrell to Iraq, where he returns to the battlefield as a member of SEAL Team 5 to help take on the most dangerous city in the world: Ramadi, the capital of war-torn Al Anbar Province. There, in six months of high-intensity urban combat, he would be part of what has been called the greatest victory in the history of US Special Operations forces. We also return to Afghanistan and Operation Redwing, where Luttrell offers powerful new details about his miraculous rescue.

Throughout, he reflects on what it really means to take on a higher calling, about the men he's seen lose their lives for their country, and the legacy of those who came and bled before. I did rub shoulders with the US special forces community out on my time in Afghanistan and whilst their public image deifies them I found them to be funny, pranksters, humble, brave, and down to earth beer guzzling hogs who cheerfully cheat at cards.

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh

Being one of the classics in aviation history, this well written book is an epic aviator’s adventure tale of all time. Charles Lindbergh is best known for its famous nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927 as it changed the history of aviation. “The Spirit of St. Louis” takes the reader on an extraordinary trans-Atlantic journey in a single-engine plane. As well as provides insight into the early history of American aviation and includes some great fuel conservation tips!

20 Hrs. 40 mins by Amelia Earhart

How can any woman pilot not be inspired by Amelia Earhart?  Earhart's first transatlantic flight of June 1928 during which she flew as a passenger accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot Louis Gordon. The team departed from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on 17 June 1928, landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later. The book is an interesting read but I much prefer her other book written in 1932 The Fun Of It. The book is Earhart's account of her growing obsession with flying, the final chapter of which is a last minute addition chronicling her historic solo transatlantic flight of 1932. The work contains the mini-record of Earhart's international broadcast from London on 22 May 1932. Earhart set out from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on 20 May 1932. After a flight lasting 14 hours and 56 minutes Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The work also includes a list of other works on aviation written by women, emblematic of Earhart's desire to promote women aviators.

2. Naval and military history

The U.S. Navy: A Concise History by Craig L Symonds

Symonds’s The U.S. Navy: A Concise History is a fantastic book from one of the doyennes of US naval history. I cannot think of any other work on the US Navy that provides such a thorough overview of American naval policy, navy combat operations, leadership, technology, and culture in such a succinct manner. This book is perfect for any reader - young or old -  just wading into the waters of naval history and not knowing where to start, or for someone who wishes to learn a little bit about each era of the navy, from its founding to its modern-day mission and challenges.

His other distinguished works are more in depth - mostly about the Second World War such as the Battle of Midway and the Normandy landings - but this is a good introduction to his magisterial books. His latest book came out in 2019 called World War II at Sea: A Global History. I have not read this yet but from others who have they say it is a masterful overview of the war at sea.

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian W. Toll

Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders - particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams - debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect from pirates or drain the treasury and provoke hostility? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.

From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliff-hanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and the narrative flair of Patrick O’Brian.

The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight

The starting point of Roger Knight’s magnificent new biography is to explain how Nelson achieved such extraordinary success. Knight places him firmly in the context of the Royal Navy at the time. He analyses Nelson’s more obvious qualities, his leadership strengths and his coolness and certainty in battle, and also explores his strategic grasp, the condition of his ships, the skill of his seamen and his relationships with the officers around him – including those who could hardly be called friendly.

This biography takes a shrewd and sober look at Nelson’s status as a hero and demolishes many of the myths that were so carefully established by the early authors, and repeated by their modern successors.

While always giving Nelson his due, Knight never glosses over the character flaws of his heroic subject. Nelson is seen essentially as a "driven" personality, craving distinction in an age increasingly coloured by notions of patriotic heroism, traceable back to the romantic (and entirely unrealistic) depiction of the youthful General James Wolfe dying picturesquely at the moment of victory in 1759. Nor does Knight take Nelson's side in dealing with that discreditable phase in 1798-99, when he is influenced, much for the worse, by his burgeoning involvement with Lady Hamilton at Naples and Palermo. Knight accepts that this interlude has left an indelible stain on Nelson's naval and personal record. But he traces the largely destructive course of Nelson's passion for Emma with appropriate sensitivity.

Nelson was a shrewd political operator who charmed and impressed political leaders and whose advancement was helped by the relatively weak generation of admirals above him. He was a difficult subordinate, only happy when completely in command, and capable of great ruthlessness. Yes he was flawed, but Nelson's flaws, including his earlier petulance in dealing with higher naval authority - only brought fully under control towards the end of his career - pale before his remarkable strengths. His outstanding physical and moral courage and his inspired handling of officers and men are repeatedly and effectively illustrated.

1812: The Navy’s War by George C. Daughan

When war broke out between Britain and the United States in 1812, America’s prospects looked dismal. British naval aggression made it clear that the ocean would be the war’s primary battlefield - but America’s navy, only twenty ships strong, faced a practiced British fleet of more than a thousand men-of-war.

Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, a handful of heroic captains and their stalwart crews managed to turn the tide of the war, besting the haughty skippers of the mighty Royal Navy and cementing America’s newly won independence.

In 1812: The Navy’s War, award-winning naval historian George C. Daughan draws on a wealth of archival research to tell the amazing story of this tiny, battle tested team of Americans and their improbable yet pivotal victories. Daughan thrillingly details the pitched naval battles that shaped the war, and shows how these clashes proved the navy’s vital role in preserving the nation’s interests and independence. This well written history is the first complete account in more than a century of how the U.S. Navy rescued the fledgling nation and secured America’s future. Daughan’s prose is first-rate, and his rousing accounts of battles at sea will certainly appeal to a popular audience. 

I was given this book as a tongue in cheek gift from an American friend who was an ex-US Marine officer with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was obviously trying to rib me as good friends do. But I really did enjoy this book.

Among the most interesting insights is Daughan’s judgment on the effect of the American invasion attempts in Canada; all ultimately defeated. Demanded by enthusiastic War Hawks unencumbered by knowledge or experience who predicted that the Canadians would flock to U.S. banners, these incursions became the groundwork for a unified Iraq Canada - Ha!

What I liked was the fact that Daughan places the war in its crucial European context, explaining in detail how the course of the Napoleonic Wars shaped British and American decision making and emphasising the North American theatre’s secondary status to the European conflict. While they often verbally castigated Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, American leaders were in the uncomfortable position of needing Napoleon to keep winning while they fought Britain, and his defeat and (first) exile to Elba prompted an immediate scramble to negotiate a settlement. Despite its significance, few historians have bothered to systematically place the War of 1812 in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, and Daughan’s book does exactly that.

Empires of the Seas: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Centre of the World by Roger Crowley

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, the great Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic clash between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world.

In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar.

Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality.

Empires of the Sea is a story of extraordinary colour and incident, and provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilisations.

One hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander by Admiral Sandy Woodward RN

Written by the man who masterminded the British victory in the Falklands, this engrossing memoir chronicles events in the spring of 1982 following Argentina’s takeover of the South Atlantic islands. Admiral Sandy Woodward, a brilliant military tactician, presents a complete picture of the British side of the battle. From the defeat of the Argentine air forces to the sinking of the Belgrano and the daring amphibious landing at Carlos Water, his inside story offers a revealing account of the Royal Navy’s successes and failures.

At times reflective and personal, Woodward imparts his perceptions, fears, and reactions to seemingly disastrous events. He also reveals the steely logic he was famous for as he explains naval strategy and planning. His eyewitness accounts of the sinking of HMS Sheffield and the Battle of Bomb Alley are memorable.

Many in Whitehall and the armed forces considered Woodward the cleverest man in the navy. French newspapers called him “Nelson.” Margaret Thatcher said he was precisely the right man to fight the world’s first computer war. Without question, the admiral’s memoir makes a significant addition to the official record.

At the same time it provides readers with a vivid portrayal of the world of modern naval warfare, where equipment is of astonishing sophistication but the margins for human courage and error are as wide as in the days of Nelson.

3. Fiction

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The majestic novel that inspired the classic Hollywood film The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart. Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a US Navy warship in the Pacific theatre was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II.

The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna

It’s a fantastic novel that inspired a Steve McQueen film of the same name. Watch the movie if you haven’t, but read the book. It’s impossible to do a story of this sweep justice in two hours, even with the great McQueen starring.

Naval friends tell me The Sand Pebbles has been a fixture on the US Chief of Naval Operations’ Professional development reading list, and thus all mariners should be encouraged to read. And it’s easy to tell why. Most American seafarers will interact with the Far East in this age of the pivot, as indeed they have for decades.

Told through the eyes of a junior enlisted man, The Sand Pebbles recounts the deeds of the crew of the fictional U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo during the turbulent 1920s, when various parties were vying for supremacy following the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty.

It’s a book about the mutual fascination, and sometimes repulsion, between Americans and Chinese; the tension between American missionaries and the sailors entrusted with protecting them; and China’s descent into chaos following the collapse of dynastic rule.

How do you separate fact from fiction or myth when writing a historical novel. Wisely, McKenna lets the reader to conclude there’s an element of myth to all accounts of history. Causality - what factors brought about historical events - is in the eye of the beholder. The best an author of historical fiction can do, then, is devote ample space to all contending myths and leave it up to readers to judge. Sailors, missionaries, and ordinary Chinese get their say in his pages, to illuminating effect. Authors report, the readers decide.

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P.W. Singer and August Cole 

The United States, China, and Russia eye each other across a twenty-first century version of the Cold War, which suddenly heats up at sea, on land, in the air, in outer space, and in cyberspace. The fighting involves everything from stealthy robotic–drone strikes to old warships from the navy’s “ghost fleet.” Fighter pilots unleash a Pearl Harbor-style attack; American veterans become low-tech insurgents; teenage hackers battle in digital playgrounds; Silicon Valley billionaires mobilise for cyber-war; and a serial killer carries out her own vendetta. Ultimately, victory will depend on blending the lessons of the past with the weapons of the future.

The book’s title, Ghost Fleet, comes from an expression used in the U.S. Navy that refers to partially or fully decommissioned ships kept in reserve for potential use in future conflict. These ships, as one might imagine, are older and naturally less technologically sophisticated than their modern counterparts. Singer and Cole cleverly use this concept, retiring older ships and weaponry in favour of newer versions with higher technological integration, to illustrate a key motif in the book: while America’s newest generation of warfighting machinery and gear is capable of inflicting greater levels of punishment, it is also vulnerable to foreign threats in ways that its predecessors were not. The multi-billion dollar, next generation F-35 aircraft, for instance, is rendered powerless after it is revealed that Chinese microprocessor manufacturers had implanted malicious code into products intended for the jet.

I’m a huge sucker for intelligently written thrillers and I found Ghost Fleet to be a page-turning speculative thriller in the spirit of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. The debut novel by two leading experts on the cutting edge of national security, it is unique in that every trend and technology featured in the novel - no matter how sci-fi it may seem - is real, or could be soon.

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (Aubery-Maturin series)

This, the first of twenty in the splendid series of the famous Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship’s Irish-Catalan surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson’s navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

I have the first editions of some of the series and I have treasured them ever since I read them as a teenager. I felt like stowing away on the first ship I could find in Plymouth. The Hollywood film version by Peter Weir with Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey is a masterful swashbuckling film and perhaps a delightful way into the deeper riches of the other novels in the epic series.

Beat to Quarters by C.S. Forester (Horatio Hornblower series)

Horatio Hornblower remains for many the best known and most loved of these British naval heroes of Napoleonic Age. In ten books Forester recounts Hornblower's rise from midshipman to admiral, during the British navy's confrontation with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. For readers, the books work as a window into history because of the outstanding details that appear in these books. Through this singular series, according to critics, C.S. Forrester - like Patrick O’Brian - has contributed his own uniqueness to the confluence of fact and fiction.

They are above all ‘ripping good yarns’, with fast-moving plots, stirring battle scenes, lively dialogue, and vivid characters, but they also offer a picture of the British navy during the period; and Hornblower himself is an original and memorable literary creation as fictionally charismatic as James Bond.

Young Hornblower is introspective, morose, self-doubting. He is crippled by the fear that he does not have the qualities to  command other men. He is harder on himself than anyone else would dare to be – and is, simply, one of the most complete creations of character in fiction. This is why many teenagers love Hornblower because they can see something of themselves in his adventures from from chronic self-doubt to soaring swashbuckling self-confidence. Hornblower is much more relatable than the brooding seasoned Jack Aubrey for instance.

I recommend reading the books in the order they were written rather than chronologically. In the first written novel, Beat to Quarters (also published as The Happy Return), we find Hornblower in command of a frigate in lonely Pacific waters off Spanish Central America. He has to deal with a mad revolutionary, fight single-ship duels with a larger vessel, and cope with Lady Barbara Wellesley (who provides a romantic interest to the series).

In A Ship of the Line Hornblower is sent into the Mediterranean, where he wreaks havoc on French coastal communications before plunging into a battle against the odds. Flying Colours is mostly set in France: in it Hornblower escapes captivity and returns to England a hero. In The Commodore he is sent with a squadron into the Baltic, where he has to cope with the complex politics of the region as well as helping with the siege of Riga. And in Lord Hornblower a mutiny leads to involvement with the fall of Napoleon — and brings him to prison and a death sentence during the Hundred Days. Forester then went back and described Hornblower's earlier career. Lieutenant Hornblower is perhaps my favourite of the Hornblower books.

Piece of cake by Derek Robinson

It’s an epic tome covering the opening twelve months of World War Two, from the phony war in France to the hasty retreat back across the Channel and then the valiant stand against the might of the Luftwaffe in what became known as the Battle of Britain.

The book follows the exploits of the fictional Hornet squadron and its members, a group of men who work hard and play harder. Though fiction, this immaculately researched novel based on an RAF Hurricane fighter squadron in 1940 highlights the ill-preparedness of Britain in the early stages of Word War Two.

Its British black humour is on full throttle with its nuanced observations of class politics and institutional ineptness. The manic misfits, heroes and bullies of Hornet Squadron discover that aerial combat is nothing like what they have been trained for. The writing sears the reader’s brain and produces some of the finest writing on the air war ever put to paper.

Be warned, though, this story isn’t about one specific character or ‘hero’. Indeed, just as you get to know a pilot, they are either chopped or killed; such is the nature of war in the air. Even though this is initially frustrating, you soon come to realise just how authentic Robinson’s storytelling is, and that this is exactly what it must have been like to be part of an RAF squadron on active service, never knowing who of your comrades would be alive from day to day. And, although the war proper for Hornet squadron doesn’t start until late in the book, when it does come the rendition of the dogfights in the air are so gripping that you’ll feel like you are actually there, sat next to the pilot in his cramped Hurricane cockpit, as Messerschmitt 109s scream by spitting death from all points of the compass.

All in all, this is a thoroughly entertaining (and educational) novel, and a must read for anyone interested in the RAF and how so few stood against so many. It has the dark humour of Heller’s Catch 22 but with a very distinctive British humour that can be lost on other foreigners. I recommend it as a honest and healthy antidote to anyone thinking of all pilots and the brave deeds they do in some deified light when in fact they are human and flawed as anyone else. Anyone who’s ever been a pilot will recognise some archetype in their own real life in this darkly comic British novel.

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim has it all. It's not just a novel of the sea but a work of moral philosophy.

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In my humble opinion the greatest aviation fiction book ever written. It made the celebrated French aviator famous and Antoine de Saint-Exupery would go on to write the timeless classic The Little Prince.

Saint-Exupéry, though born into French nobility was always the odd one out as a child. Portly but jovial, he had bags of courage and curiosity to match his thirst for adventure and travel. He doggedly pursued his dream of becoming a pioneering pilot. In the 1930s he was an airline pilot who flew the north African and south Atlantic mail routes. During the long lonely hours in the cockpit he had enough time to accumulate experience and reflections which could be fit into Night Flight.

The novel itself narrates the terrifying story of Fabien, a pilot who conducted night mail planes, from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation when it was dangerous and pilots died often in horrendous accidents. The book romantically captures the danger and loneliness of these early commercial pilots, blazing routes in the days before radar, GPS and jet engines.

Night Flight is a good gateway into his other aviation themed books. Each of them are magical in capturing the austere feelings of seeing the world and its landscapes from above. Southern Mail, The Aviator, and Wind, Sand and Stars are fantastic reads.

Night Flight is inspiring for every pilot by sharing a unique magic of piloting an airplane.

These books changed my life as it inspired me to fly as a late teen. I still re-read Saint-Exupery’s writings sometimes as a way to tap into that youthful joy of discovering the wonders of flying a plane and when the impossible was only limited by your will and imagination. I cannot recommend his novels highly enough.

4. Classical

The Odyssey by Homer translated by Emily Wilson

Homer should the read at any age and for all seasons. I’ve chosen Emily Wilson’s recent translation because it’s good and not just because her publication was billed as the first woman to ever translate Homer. Wilson is an Oxford educated Classicist now a professor of Classics at Pennsylvania. Every discussion of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey is prefaced with the fact that hers is the first English translation of the poem by a woman, but it’s worth noting that Caroline Alexander’s Iliad (Ecco 2015) was also published as the first English translation by a woman to much less hoopla (to say nothing of Sarah Ruden’s Aeneid, Yale University Press 2009).

While a woman translating Homer’s epic is certainly a huge milestone, Wilson’s interpretation is a radical, fascinating achievement regardless of her gender. Disregard the marketing hype and the Wilson’s translation of Odysseus’ epic sea voyage home still stands tall for its fast paced narrative.

Compared with her predecessors’, Wilson’s Odyssey feels more readable, more alive: the diction, with some exceptions discussed below, is straightforward, and the lines are short. The effect is to turn the Odyssey into a quick-paced page turner, an experience I’d never had reading this epic poem in translation.

The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians by Thucydides translated by Jeremy Mynott

This is the classic treatise about what is essentially rowboats and spears of one of the most important and defining wars of Western civilisation. A long story of people killing one another, cynically justifying their cruelties in pursuit of power, making gross, stupid and fatal miscalculations, in a world devoid of justice. It's a long, drawn out tragedy without any redeeming or uplifting catharsis. If you are not already an extreme pessimist, you will lose all illusions about the inherent goodness of human beings and the possibility of influencing the course of events for the better after you read this book. You will be sadder but you will be wiser. Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta “a possession for all time,” and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition.

People look at me in a shocked way when I tell them that you can learn 90 percent of what you need to know about politics and war from Thucydides. Maritime strategy falls among the remaining 10 percent. If you want to read about the making of strategy, Clausewitz & Co. are your go-to works. If you want big thoughts about armed strife pitting a land against a sea power, Thucydides is your man. Considered essential reading for generals, admirals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War is a mine of military, naval, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.

Finding the best and most accessible translation (and commentary) is key otherwise you risk putting off the novice reader (especially the young) from ever taking an interest in the Classical world e.g. I would never give the Thomas Hobbes translation to anyone who is easily bored or is impatient with old English. There are many good modern translations to choose from and here you have Strassler, Blanco, and Lattimore that are more used in America. Richard Crawley’s is the most popular but also the least accurate.

My own personal recommendation would be to go for Jeremy Mynott’s 2013 work which he titled The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. Mynott was a former publishing head at Cambridge University Press and emeritus fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, as well as a leading expert on birds and natural history. Mynott’s aim is to re-introduce Thucydides to the reader in his “proper cultural and historical context”, and to strip back the “anachronistic concepts derived from later developments and theories”. Hence the name of the book: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, not, as it is usually called today, The Peloponnesian War.

But what is in a name? In this case, a great deal, since it contains Mynott’s mission statement in miniature. He has dropped the conventional name for the work, for which he correctly says there is no evidence from antiquity, in favour of a less one-sided title derived from Thucydides’s opening sentence. This is just one example of the accretions which Mynott’s edition aims to remove, so that the reader can come closer to being able to appreciate Thucydides’s work as it might have been received in classical Greece. In my humble opinion it is a minor miracle that Mynott has achieved in conveying in modern English the literary qualities of this most political of ancient historians.

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

I’m deliberating ignoring Victor David Hanson’s book on the Peloponnesian War (A War Like No Other) not because it’s not good (because it is in parts) but because I prefer Prof. Donald Kagan’s book.  Professor Kagan at Yale is one of the foremost scholars of Ancient Greek history. He has written a concise but thorough history of the Peloponnesian War for a general audience It's not the least bit dry for those with an interest in ancient history. The book’s an easy read. Kagan’s writing style is clear and straightforward.

Like any scholar worth his salt, Kagan is conversant with the scholarly consensus, with which he is for the most part in step, though he occasionally offers alternative scenarios. Much of the book is simply riveting. Like when the Spartan general Brasidas retakes Amphipolis, or the naval battle fought late in the war for control of the Hellespont. Woven throughout is the longer story of the Athenian turncoat, Alcibiades. Kagan’s analysis of the tactics and strategy of the conflict always seems on target. Interestingly, despite their reputations, the aristocratic Spartans usually come across as vacillating and indecisive while the democratic Athenians are aggressive and usually seize opportunity with successful results. Kagan refrains from drawing analogies to modern politics, although there’s certainly plenty of opportunity for it.

Professor Kagan preceded this one-volume history with a four-volume history of the war that took him around 20 years to write. That four volume series is a much more detailed and academic consideration of political motives and military strategy. But with this single volume, Kagan was able to produce a fast-moving tale, full of incident and colourful description easily readable for the general reader.  

Lords of the Sea by John R. Hale

This book spans the history of the Athenian navy, starting with its founder, Themistocles, and carrying the story through to the fall of Athens - its real fall at the hands of Alexander the Great, not the brief unpleasantness at Spartan hands - in 4th century B.C. Along the way Hale furnishes a wealth of details about naval warfare in classical antiquity. Lords of the Sea profiles Athens' seafaring culture fascinatingly, probing subjects on which Thucydides remains silent. An invaluable companion to Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, and a rollicking read to boot.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the second book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the third book was written at Carnuntum.

It is not clear that he ever intended the writings to be published, so the title Meditations is but one of several commonly assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.

When US Vice-Admiral. James Stockdale was shot down and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he attributed his survival to studying stoic philosophies, particularly Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” Aurelius, the Roman emperor, wrote his simple rules for living by candlelight and they have been a source of strength for the thoughtful man of arms or the cultured citizen ever since. I also think teenagers would gain a lot from reading Meditations than endure reading angst-ridden nihilism of many tacky teenage books out there.

SPQR by Mary Beard

Anything by Cambridge Classics professor Mary Beard is worth reading. Everyone loves Mary Beard, fast becoming one of Britain’s national treasure. I’m not just saying all this because she was one of my teachers at Cambridge. I think SPQR is a wonderful book. Ancient Roman history is so very dense and intricate that it can be difficult to teach and learn about. Mary Beard makes it accessible- and she goes through it all, from the early days right up until the present day.

Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? Mary Beard provides a sweeping revisionist history to get to grips with this thematic question.

‘SPQR’ is just four letters, but interwoven in those four letters are thousands of years and pages of Roman history. Cicero used to talk about the ’concordia ordinum.’ He said there was a harmony between all the orders in Rome. It’s like a pyramid hierarchy structure. At the top you have the ′senatus′ or the Senate—the aristocrats, the rich men who make decisions. Underneath that you have the ’equites’ who we don’t talk about as much , but they have their own spheres of power. They’ve got a bit of money and are a lower level. And underneath that you’ve got the ’populus’ or the people. SPQR is the harmony between the senatus and the populus and how they work together. That’s where Rome comes from: it’s not just about the Senate. The Senate can’t work without the people and vice versa. So ‘SPQR’ is basically a four-letter summation of the Roman constitution. It’s what it should be, though often isn’t. One of the reasons why - and she writes about this very well - Rome falls apart is because that relationship of harmony and hierarchy does fall apart under Caesar and Pompey in the 1st century BC.

Imperium by Robert Harris

This is one of my favourite novels, even if it weren’t classical, because like all Harris’ books it’s written like a smart thriller. I’m a huge Robert Harris fan. A lot of Robert Harris’ books are quite similar: they have a protagonist and you see the story - all the machinations - through his eyes. In Imperium we see the life of Cicero through the eyes of his slave, Tiro. We know Tiro was a real person, who recorded everything Cicero wrote.

The late Republic is one of my favourite periods of any period of history ever. You get all the figures: Cicero, Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Octavian, Antony and Cato. Robert Harris paints compelling portraits of these people so nicely that even with Crassus, say, who comes up every so often, you get a sense of who he is. There are actually two more books in the trilogy: Lustrum and Dictator. Once you get to Dictator, you know who Julius Caesar really is, you know why he’s doing it.

[dougmeet]

flynt (13)     hustler (5)     died (4)     trump (4)     million (3)     doing (3)     insurance (3)     larry (3)     seniors (3)     ditching (3)

In 2017, Flynt offered a $10 million reward for evidence that would lead to Trump’s impeachment, and in 2019, Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some Republican congressional members that showed Trump lying dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying: “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one assassinated me” — a reference to Trump’s boast that he could commit such a killing and wouldn’t lose votes.

Eggleston Works è una società di cui  avevo sentito parlare molto tempo prima che io abbia mai avuto la  possibilità di assaggiare le loro merci. Situato a Memphis,  nel Tennessee, La loro prima offerta era un oratore che  sembrava un tavolo finale, ma alla fine non ha avuto il successo come  avevano sperato. Alla fine del 1996, l'Andra fu rilasciato.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises Will Shelve 6 Books, Citing 'Hurtful' Portrayals

no more Seuss or WAP for my kid

CSS Grid CSS Grid simplifies existing layout patterns

and

adds new possibilities for graphic design.

It’s a layout framework — without the framework

Fixed or FlexibleYou can create a grid with fixed track sizes or with flexible sizes using percentages or the new

fr fractional unit

Place & Align

You can place items at precise locations on the grid independent of their HTML source order. Alignment features control how items align when placed into a grid area, and also how the whole grid is aligned.

In our urban and suburban houses what should we do without cats? In our sitting or bedrooms, our libraries, in our kitchens and storerooms, our farms, barns, and dockyards, in our docks, our granaries, our ships, and our wharves, in our corn markets, meat markets, and other places too numerous to mention, how useful they are! In our ships, however, the rats oft set them at defiance; still they are of great service. How wonderfully patient is the cat when watching for rats or mice, awaiting their egress from their place of refuge or that which is their home! How well Shakespeare in Pericles, Act iii., describes this keen attention of the cat to its natural pursuit! A slight rustle, and the fugitive comes forth; a quick, sharp, resolute motion, and the cat has proved its usefulness. Let any one have a plague of rats and mice, as I once had, and let them be delivered therefrom by cats, as I was, and they will have a lasting and kind regard for them.

watch  -- 6,780 results ("mrjyn" AND "dougmeet") OR ("dougmeet" AND "BLACKPINK") SEO Results Deliver (images) in something i call (Bracket Racket Cluster SOF SEO) inspired by mr. Kurzweil, who makes your piano tuned No thanks to The Recording Academy for inexplicably overlooking Apple's new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters for an Album of the Year nod at this year's Grammys. @fionaapplerocks

In 2017, Flynt offered a $10 million reward for evidence that would lead to Trump’s impeachment, and in 2019, Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some Republican congressional members that showed Trump lying dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying: “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one assassinated me” — a reference to Trump’s boast that he could commit such a killing and wouldn’t lose votes. (65)

flynt (13)

hustler (5)

died (4)

trump (4)

million (3)

doing (3)

insurance (3)

larry (3)

seniors (3)

ditching (3)

Porn purveyor Larry Flynt, who built Hustler magazine into an adult entertainment empire while championing First Amendment rights, died Wednesday.

He was 78.

Flynt had been in frail health and died of heart failure at his Hollywood Hills home, said his nephew, Jimmy Flynt Jr.

Advertisement Skip Ad From his beginnings as an Ohio strip club owner to his reign as founder of one of the most explicit adult-oriented magazines, Flynt constantly challenged the establishment and became a target for the religious right and feminist groups.

Flynt scored a surprising U.S. Supreme Court victory over the Rev.

Jerry Falwell, who had sued him for libel after a 1983 Hustler alcohol ad suggested Falwell had lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

Paid Post What Is This? Seniors Are Ditching Their Auto Insurance and Doing This Instead Seniors Are Ditching Their Auto Insurance and Doing This Instead Seniors Are Ditching Their Auto Insurance and Doing This Instead See More Sponsored Content by Comparisons.org Flynt’s company produced not only Hustler but other niche publications.

He owned a video production company, various websites, a Los Angeles-area casino and 10 Hustler boutiques.

He also licensed the Hustler name to independently owned strip clubs.

His publishing and financial successes were offset in equal measure by controversies and tragedies.

Advertisement 00:48 02:53 Shot by a sniper in 1978, Flynt was paralyzed from the waist down and used a wheelchair the rest of his life.

He fought battles with drug and alcohol addiction, and his fourth wife died of a heroin overdose.

His daughter, Lisa Flynt-Fugate, died in a 2014 car crash in Ohio at age 47.

With a fortune estimated at more than $100 million, Flynt spent his later years in the political arena.

When Gov.

Gray Davis was recalled by California voters in 2003, Flynt was among 135 candidates who ran to replace him.

He called himself “a smut peddler who cares” and gathered more than 15,000 votes.

A self-described progressive, Flynt was no fan of former President Donald Trump.

Before the 2016 election, he offered up to $1 million for video or audio recordings of Trump engaging in illegal or “sexually demeaning or derogatory” activity.

In 2017, Flynt offered a $10 million reward for evidence that would lead to Trump’s impeachment, and in 2019, Larry Flynt Publications sent a Christmas card to some Republican congressional members that showed Trump lying dead in a pool of blood, with the killer saying: “I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one assassinated me” — a reference to Trump’s boast that he could commit such a killing and wouldn’t lose votes.

Flynt’s life was depicted in the acclaimed 1996 film “The People vs.

Larry Flynt,” which brought Oscar nominations for director Milos Forman and Woody Harrelson, who played Flynt.

—2021年3月3日 (@mrjyn) status: WAP—2021年3月3日 (@mrjyn)

  Twitter [@]  Tweet to: @squarebooks From:  @mrjyn Comm. on:  squarebooks (reply) RE: SB mention by  (author) re. SB her book status: WAP—2021年3月3日 (@mrjyn)

mrjyn comment: quotes Elvis song lyric: 'i don't care' adds:  'I miss #BarryHannah (author), mutual friend to mrjyn (person) and SB, Oxford, MS (bookstore) adding here: RIP Date: 03:13:2021 Time: 8:17 CST

1 of 3 jpg att: 1.  Elvis photo ephemera 'TCB Oath' 2. Photo of cover of Barry Hannah book jacket "Tennis Handsome" Pub: Knopf Ed.: Gordon Lish 3. Jerry Lee Lewis   Cover of Bio Author: Nick Tosches

definitive hypnogogic, Biblical Ovid Southern Gothic Epic hagiography, esprit l'escalier epitaph precursor to whose words will be most tribute to the possible mortality race between the Killer and Keith Richards, KR JLL's Jr. by 15 yrs. check Vegas Book for Odds says Stanley Booth, Author 'Up and Down with the Rolling Stones,' Memphis, TN 'author' -- not Rockcrit, please?

   mrjyn comment: quotes Elvis song lyric: 'i don't care' BarryHannah

This frisky pop confection finds Blackpink teaming up with American singer Selena Gomez. The five girls use a series of ice cream double entendres to send out mating calls and detail how they are different from the other females. I know that my heart can be so cold But I'm sweet for you, come put me in a cone Blackpink and Gomez are encouraging the guys to ignore their icy cool demeanors. Once they take a couple of scoops they will find they are loving and affectionate.

The song's icy metaphors not only have a sensual connotation but also allude to the singers' wealth. Ice on my wrist, yeah, I like it like this Get the bag with the cream The girls are wearing diamond encrusted watches (ice is a slang word for diamonds). "Get the bag with the cream" refers to a bag loaded with cash.

The song is Blackpink's second hookup with a major American pop star in 2020, following their Lady Gaga collaboration, "Sour Candy." Both songs use sexy food analogies to represent the enticing love that the girls are ready to give out.

Frequent Blackpink collaborators, the Korean Teddy Park and the American Bekuh Boom, are the primary writers. Park wrote the main melody while Boom was in Korea. She then wrote the lyrics over his tune, incorporating a series of sexy ice cream-related play on words. The other credited writers are Ariana Grande, her go-to collaborators Victoria Monet, and Tommy Brown, Mr. Franks, Selena Gomez and the Korean producer 24.

The retro-tinged video finds Gomez driving a pink ice cream truck in a pinup sailor outfit. The four Blackpink girls all appear in a candy-coated frozen dessert fantasy land before ending the clip in an ice cream amusement park. Blackpink's scenes were filmed in South Korea, while the scenes featuring Gomez were shot in the US because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The song was birthed at a songwriting camp that producer Teddy Park asked Bekuh Boom to run for Blackpink's debut studio album. Boom asked Tommy Brown and Victoria Monét to come to the sessions at LA's Westlake Studio, and the pair brought Mr. Franks along with them. "Tommy had Franks pull up beats, and eventually Franks played the one that all of us started vibing to and decided to work on together," recalled Boom to Genius. "Victoria brought up the subject 'ice cream' and started humming melodies that we then started writing lyrics to together in the room. From that point on we had a great back and forth of ideas for the first half of the song that was done that night."

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no more Seuss or WAP for my kid. Dr. Seuss Enterprises Will Shelve 6 Books, Citing 'Hurtful' Portrayals https://t.co/Cc23ru1M6K— mrjyn (@mrjyn) 2021年3月3日

     Eggleston Works " Fontaine II "

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   L'opportunità per me di ascoltare  un altoparlante EgglestonWorks è arrivata tramite il mio amico e collega,  Marshall Nack. Alcuni di voi lettori a lungo termine  potrebbero ricordare la recensione approfondita di Marshall dei Rosas di  EgglestonWorks.    Marshall e la sua adorabile moglie  Lynn sono una coppia insolita in quanto entrambi sono audiofili. In  realtà, sono l'unica coppia audiofila che conosco personalmente. Sono  certo che il fatto che siano entrambi dei musicisti seri è in gran parte  responsabile della loro capacità di ascoltare le gradazioni e i dettagli  tonali molto fini con tanta facilità. Tra i suoi molti  talenti, Marshall ha un'eccezionale capacità di dare voce a  un sistema. Sembra sempre in grado di trovare la giusta  miscela di componenti e accessori che si traducono in un sistema  eccezionalmente ben bilanciato. Questo è molto più difficile  da realizzare di quanto si possa pensare. Tuttavia, la natura  rivelatrice dei diffusori EgglestonWorks è stata determinante nel  raggiungimento dei suoi obiettivi sonori.    Quando lo Stereophile Show è  arrivato in città questa primavera, la stanza di EgglestonWorks era in  cima alla mia lista delle visite obbligatorie. È stato lì che  ho incontrato EgglestonWorks prez Jim Thomson e ho iniziato il mio primo  ascolto con i Fontaines. So che hai tutti sentito che la  qualità del suono agli spettacoli è generalmente piuttosto brutta. Mentre  trovo che questo sia ampiamente vero, allo stesso tempo, puoi avere  un'idea del potenziale sonoro di un prodotto, o come alla  fine potrebbe funzionare in condizioni di casa. I Fontaines  furono sistemati nella sala dell'home theater di Eggleston. Incluso  con il display era un paio di sub-woofer dedicati.    Secondo la letteratura aziendale,  "il design di ciascun modello di altoparlante nella linea EgglestonWorks  inizia con il midrange". Per le Fontaines, una coppia di 6  "polipropilene, i driver a doppio magnete gestiscono il  midrange e il basso. Ognuno di questi driver ha una bobina da  3 "di diametro, che è stata ripetuta molte volte ma che ripete, come è  vero, se il midrange non è corretto, di tutti gli altri è  infruttuoso. Il tweeter ha una grande camera di smorzamento  aperiodico che imita il caricamento infinito del diaframma. Il  tweeter è collegato al crossover con un cappuccio e due resistori  utilizzati come un L-pad.    Un singolo set di morsetti è  montato in un pannello incassato nella parte posteriore della sezione  driver. Ho chiesto a Jim Thompson di utilizzare un singolo  set di post di rilegatura in contrasto con la tendenza attuale di  utilizzare post doppio. I driver sono direttamente collegati  ai bind. Ovviamente, se un cliente è impostato su biwiring,  questi diffusori possono essere dotati di doppio binding post su un ordine  speciale.

I driver dei bassi e dei medi sono  alloggiati in quello che EgglestonWorks descrive come una custodia con una  linea di trasmissione quasi in trasmissione. Ciò si ottiene  impiegando un materiale di imbottitura acustico specializzato noto come " Lastre  di granito italiane legate a loro. Il risultato finale di  questi sforzi è un recinto molto inerte che fornisce una risposta dei  bassi molto migliore rispetto alle dimensioni ridotte dei driver.    Dopo diverse conversazioni con Jim  Thompson, quattro cartoni di dimensioni medie ma piuttosto pesanti  arrivarono da EgglestonWorks. I cartoni contenevano il driver  e le sezioni di base corrispondenti. Dovresti stare molto  attento mentre imposti questi diffusori per non danneggiare la squisita  finitura nera del pianoforte. L'immagine non rende in alcun  modo giustizia a questi oratori. Devi davvero vederli di  persona per capire cosa intendo. I Fontaines possono essere  visti come uno di quei prodotti che rientrano nella categoria "audio come  arte". Sono semplicemente belli. I Fontaines  possono essere visti come uno di quei prodotti che rientrano nella  categoria "audio come arte". Sono semplicemente belli. I  Fontaines possono essere visti come uno di quei prodotti che rientrano  nella categoria "audio come arte". Sono semplicemente belli.    La vestibilità e la finitura sono  proprio lì con il meglio che abbia mai visto.È ovvio per me che  EgglestonWorks ha preso molta cura e ha fatto spese considerevoli nella  progettazione e costruzione di questi contenitori.    Una volta assemblati, gli  altoparlanti danno l'aspetto di un monolitico sul pavimento. Le  basi sono sabbia-fallibili e formeranno un recinto molto sostanziale. Vi  consiglio caldamente di stabilirvi il posizionamento finale prima di  riempire le basi di sabbia. Questi bambini sono abbastanza  pesanti per cominciare; una volta riempito di sabbia, sarebbe  quasi impossibile per la persona media muoversi da sola. Ho  posizionato gli altoparlanti su una trapunta, quindi sui loro lati, per  inserire i quattro bulloni che fissano le basi in posizione. Questo  viene fatto attraverso un pannello di accesso nella parte inferiore della  base. Mentre le punte fornite sono molto robuste, hanno  un filo sottile e possono essere facilmente danneggiati se si è negligenti  durante l'installazione. Il cofano del conducente è molto  inerte quindi consiglierei molto se decidi di eseguire il test delle  articolazioni.

Mi piace particolarmente il modo in  cui hanno scelto di affrontare le griglie. Sono costruiti con  un materiale molto puro montato su una sottile struttura in acciaio. Si  collegano al pannello frontale mediante magneti che sono sepolti sotto il  laminato di superficie. Questa disposizione rende il  fissaggio delle griglie il più semplice possibile e ha funzionato bene per  me.    Mentre l'efficienza è elencata come  quello che potrebbe sembrare un 87db piuttosto basso, non ho avuto  problemi a raggiungere livelli di rottura del lease con l'amplificatore di  potenza Bel Canto EVo. Però,    Quando ricevo nuove attrezzature da  recensire, inviterò spesso diversi amici non audiofili, accenderò il  sistema e osserverò le loro reazioni. In ogni caso, le  reazioni ai Fontaines iniziarono prima che il primo CD fosse nel cassetto  ed erano sempre abbastanza positivi. Tutti sono stati presi  con il loro aspetto sorprendente e il modo in cui si sono mescolati così  facilmente nella stanza. Sono belli come sono discreti. Mentre  è abbastanza ovvio dalle specifiche e dalla qualità dell'hardware  utilizzato che EgglestonWorks costruisce i suoi diffusori con molta cura,

Come suonano?    Dal momento che non ho la  possibilità di eseguire alcuna misurazione sull'attrezzatura che ho per la  revisione, posso solo dirti come si comportano nel mio sistema. Mentre  credo che le misure abbiano il loro posto, difficilmente  danno il quadro complessivo. Ci sono stati molti componenti  che hanno misurato terribilmente, ma erano artisti stellari dal punto di  vista sonoro, e viceversa.    Hanno quella qualità trasparente  che consente ad ogni strumento di occupare il proprio spazio, ma sempre  con un naturale senso di proporzione all'interno del palcoscenico. Nessuna  durezza o nervosismo ha mai accompagnato questa chiarezza. Ho  notato anche una qualità semplice e costante del suono che lasciava che la  musica scorresse in modo molto seducente. Piatti e campane  hanno la giusta quantità di lucentezza e delicatezza e di nuovo, sembrano  avere le giuste dimensioni. I tassi di decadimento per questi  strumenti contribuiscono anche al senso del realismo.    Hanno costantemente svelato i  dettagli di basso livello che tra l'altro davano un senso reale delle  dimensioni del luogo di registrazione. Con Miles Davis,Tipo  di bluHo sempre messo in  discussione il suono registrato del pianoforte, specialmente con molte  delle vecchie registrazioni Blue Note. Proprio l'opposto è il  caso della registrazione XRCD, in particolare con molte delle  vecchie registrazioni Blue Note. Proprio l'opposto è il caso  della registrazione XRCD, in particolare con molte delle  vecchie registrazioni Blue Note. Proprio l'opposto è il caso  della registrazione XRCD,Waltz  for Debby del  Bill Evans Trio [JVC XRCD VICJ-60141]. Qui le qualità tonali  e la complessa struttura armonica del pianoforte sono presentate molto  bene.    Sono rimasto sorpreso dal senso di  profondità con cui questi relatori mi hanno presentato. La  mia stanza non collaborerà molto in quest'area, quindi questa è stata una  sorpresa gradita. In effetti, è il migliore che ho sentito  qui. Il riempimento del centro era azzeccato: i solisti erano  un po 'più avanti di quanto io non fossi abituato, ma era di buon effetto. Nel  complesso, ho trovato le capacità di imaging di questi diffusori di essere  eccezionalmente buone. Per i miei gusti,    Dal momento che il punto -3db è  quotato a 55Hz, non mi aspettavo troppo dalle regioni inferiori, ma sono  rimasto piacevolmente sorpreso da ciò che ho sentito. Ora non  fraintendere, questi non sono gli altoparlanti per gli organi  a canne o i fan del reggae. Per quel tipo di uscita dei bassi  dovresti guardare molto più in alto nella linea EgglestonWorks. Ciò  che è notevole in questo caso è la precisione del basso. Non  è mai cupo; piuttosto, tende ad essere stretto e melodico. Quando  eseguito male, il basso può oscurare gli elementi musicali nella gamma  media inferiore. Il basso dei Fontaines non interferisce o  oscura affatto il midrange. In altre parole, la fioritura  della fascia bassa non viene a scapito della chiarezza del midrange. Per  classica e buona parte del jazz, potresti essere abbastanza  soddisfatto della fascia bassa delle Fontaines. Nel  complesso, l'uscita dei bassi è stata molto meglio di quanto mi  aspettassi.    Lo scorso giugno Tim Shea ha  scritto una magnifica recensione del Musse Audio Reference Two NF  speakers. Li ho a portata di mano e farò una revisione di  follow-up. Tuttavia, poiché sono nella stessa fascia di  prezzo delle Fontaines,    I Reference Twos, come i Fontaines,  sono monitor bidirezionali. In questo caso, fornisci gli  stand. Le differenze sonore colpiscono a causa della forza di  ciascuna bugia alle estremità opposte dello spettro sonoro. Con  un punto -3db di 35Hz e una frequenza di sintonizzazione della porta di  29Hz, non sorprende che i Reference Twos si approfondiscano. La  parte bassa qui è stretta e melodica. Mentre i Fontaines non  vanno così in profondità, Devo dire che il basso è un po 'più  stretto e un po' più melodico dei Reference Twos. Tuttavia, i  Fontaines ottengono sicuramente un cenno del capo per l'estensione del  registro medio e superiore, dolcezza e ottima resa dei  dettagli. Questi sono tratti sonori che sono un appuntamento  fisso nella sala d'ascolto di Perry e in seguito sono venuto ad ascoltarli  per tutto il tempo. In aggiunta a questo, c'è  molta aria intorno agli strumenti con un tasso di decadimento molto buono. Alcuni  potrebbero descrivere questi diffusori come neutri dal punto di vista  tonale, tuttavia si desidera descrivere questa caratteristica. Io,  d'altra parte, trovare la loro tonalità per essere  leggermente sul lato caldo. Mi sta bene. Nel  complesso, semplicemente si tolgono la via della musica.    Etta James, Life,  Love and The Blues [Private  Label 01005-82162-2]: Questo è un CD che è un ottimo esempio del suono  "Mussel Shoals". Ha una linea di basso sostenuta molto  pesante durante molti tagli. Check-out " senza  alcun segno di sovraccarico del conducente o altro pericolo. Dal  basso superiore in su tutto va bene. La voce di Etta James  arriva con la giusta quantità di morso e calore. Dal basso  superiore in su tutto va bene. La voce di Etta James arriva  con la giusta quantità di morso e calore. Dal basso superiore  in su tutto va bene. La voce di Etta James arriva con la  giusta quantità di morso e calore.    Patricia Barber, Companion Il  senso di immediatezza e presenza è tale che è possibile ottenere  un'implicazione delle dimensioni della stanza senza alcun iper-dettaglio  per intromettersi. Sul taglio "Usami" c'è un  assolo di basso verticale che i Fontaines riproducono con tutte le trame e  la ricchezza armonica in tatto. Signorina. La  voce del barbiere ha una trama soffice che è abbastanza piacevole senza  che i dettagli vocali siano mai esagerati. Non ho mai avuto  l'impressione di poter vedere le sue tonsille.    Con opere sinfoniche su larga  scala, questi bambini continuano nella stessa vena. Mentre le  loro capacità limitate di fascia bassa diminuiranno parte dello slam e del  peso che i loro fratelli più grandi sono in grado di gestire,    Per riassumere, la EgglestonWorks  Fontaines può essere descritta come molto musicale. Mentre ti  daranno tutti gli attributi che gli audiofili bramano, non sono mai  eccessivamente analitici. Apprezzo molto le qualità dei medi  che mantengono le mie sessioni di ascolto sul lato lungo. Mi  fanno venire voglia di togliersi la roba da audiofili e semplicemente  sedersi e godersi la musica. Mi trovo a tirare fuori CD dopo  CD che non ho sentito da un po 'di tempo per ascoltare. Se  ritieni di dover semplicemente avere quell'ultimo bit di uscita dei bassi,  ricorda che i sottotitoli corrispondenti sono disponibili. palcoscenico  sonoro totalmente coerente e la massima semplicità della presentazione  musicale. Non ho mai sentito alcuna discontinuità tra basso,  medi o alti. Erano sempre coerenti in questo senso.    Questi diffusori sono di altissima  qualità ed è necessario collegarli a ingranaggi di pari qualità a monte. Ovviamente  lavoreranno con amplificatori economici, ma riveleranno  rapidamente tutte le carenze e le deficienze del suono. Le  Fontaines EgglestonWorks sono l'essenza del lusso. Mentre non  possono essere considerati a buon mercato e sono in un campo affollato a  questo punto di prezzo

     VEDIAMO DIETRO

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[mrsmess]

Faves and fails of SPN (season 15, finally):

Favorite episodes (in chronological order):

15:4 Atomic Monsters - Demon!Sam flashbacks! Dean in a beard! Some old fashioned banter! Meatman! Beaverdale! Love how Sam starts arguing w the parents in the parking lot - Me too, Sam, me too. Loving the self-aware monster. I know Becky is problematique™, but I dig her, so, all kinds of fuck Chuck. He must die, and when he does this is the episode I’ll think about.

15:6 Golden Time - Badass protection spells. Dean in a robe and a hot dog pyjamas. Cas going by Clarence. Jogging Sam. Eileen! God I ship her and Sam, and I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that I don’t ship him w anyone. Liking this ep a lot, every little side plot. Nice. And Eileen is back and I know it won’t last but like, that was awesome.

15:10 The Heroes’ Journey - Pretty neat intro. Monster on monster violence to the sound of Clair the Lune. Oh, and excellent casting of Garth’s kids. Regular people trouble... Awesome! Brilliant! This is the kind of meta storylines this show should deal in, exclusively. Oh my Garth! Explosives! Why isn’t every episode like this?

15:11 The Gamblers - Oh, is this another lucky coin episode? In that case yes please! More inconsequential bullshit kindly! Loving Sam staying in touch w Eileen. Hey guys, remember when you did the gambling thing w your years? And the rabbit’s foot? Good times. Will this be an equally good time? I hope so. A god! Excellent. ”Lady, I’m Tolstoy.” Yeah ya are, and i’m dead. The guys and Fortuna bashing god. And I'm equally delighted and distraught over the lore that god created man, man imagined gods and god decided to create the other gods to play into man’s ideas, or as a distraction.

15:13 Destiny’s Child - Omg the intro! Savage garden! I’m dead. Jack w the sandwich, why is that so funny? Cas is a gem this episode! ”’Sexually intimate’?” Lol. That’s what you get for trying to speak plainly, Cas! Hunter Corp. I’m dead, again. Keep the different Deans and Sams coming! I’m digging this! Why would they send ‘em to Rio? They could be your buffy-bots!

15:14 Last Holiday - Weird people popping up in the hq is awesome. And Dean’s immediate instinct to yell for Sam reminds me of me calling mr mess for everything! ”Shouldnt you be in the woods? Nymfing?” Monster radar? Oh, oh this is excellent. So mrs Butters is capable of murder when home and family are threatened, good for her. They better not kill her. I can accept them returning her to the wild. Yes! Did I call it or did I call it? Good Supernatural, good boy! And Dean making a cake for Jack! My heart.

Fail episodes (in chronological order):

15:2 Raising Hell - Rowena! Instant win. Ketch. Instant lose. Ketch undressing Rowena with his eyes = rating plummeting. Jeez. A bit dangerous even joking about the GoT finale, don’t you think? Rowena and Ketch full on flirting... this is hell, I'm being punished.

15:3 The Rupture - Don’t call him god! His name is Sucky-Chucky. The shock of Cas! “You’ve been playing us the whole time!” This is how it works Cas, where have you been? They're always solving problems like Jason Mendoza. In-Dean-angry-voice: “Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.” Rowena! And Sam! No!

15:5 Proverbs 17:3 - Listen, spn, it’s your last season and if you like just wanna stop writing and casting women completely rn i won't stop you or hold it against you (also why are these ladies identical?). We’ve had a terrible run but lets just let bygones be bygones.

15:8 Our father, who aren’t in heaven - Gosh, having Eileen in the show is painful, I’m just constantly expecting a piano to fall on her head. *Ugh* Sucky-yucky-Chucky. But hey, at least everybody else looks better alongside him. Case and point: I never rly cared that much for Donatello, but it’s great to see him, and Michael’s back, sure is nice to see him too.

15:9 The trap - Ugh. Main plot shit and Sucky-yucky-fucking-Chucky. Fail. Although the flashforward to jan 6th 2021 was a hoot (but probably not meant like one, huh?) Dean’s monologue in purgatory though... gosh. This show would be nothing w/o Jensen Ackles. Omg the kiss! Nice. However, the show at this point has lost the ability to offer any sort of pleasure. Because like Sam, we know which way this will go. They used to have some hedonism working for the characters but now they don’t even have that.

15:20 Carry on - You know what? I’m not gonna make this post longer than it already is talking about the last episode of Supernatural, that has been done better by people w real grievances w the show. The kindest thing you can say about the finale is that it just as well could’ve been jammed into a few extra minutes added to the previous episode.

Mediocre mentions:

Drag me away (from you) - what is this ugly cell interface? The opposite of product placement. Yay! Retro episode! And they got the same actor to play Dean, neato! Dean admitting he had a hard time handling hunting, that always gets me. Woah! That scream effect without reverb was kinda startling. And the camera zooming in on the little porcelain clown even though Sam is nowhere n- oh shit. This was an interesting episode

Inherit the earth - Goooood I hate Chucky. Barefoot Sam is okay though. Digging this soundtrack too. Very un-Supernatural. Nice to meet ya Betty, but I wouldn’t pull up a chair if I were you. Always a fan of the shiteating grin. Jack, stripping god of his power, that’s so hot. And again: kudos to the soundtrack! The Youngbloods and then Jackson freakin’ Browne! And you know, it’s clichéd and kinda vacant, but also kinda nice. I’m cool with the story ending like this. Why did they have to do another one? Supernatural has never known when to quit, and this is the very real backside of this.

Honorable mentions:

I don’t know who this Ardat chick is but killing Ketch puts her instantly in my win column.

Winchester-dumb, new household term.

”Feels like were taking a big, probably stupid risk. Feels good.” That made me feel good too.

I’m vastly enjoying this dark-art hippie couple in Unity and Jack’s interaction w them.

Cas launching straight into his dramatic I-will-not-let-you-end-your-own-life-speech when Sam casually mentions he’d like to talk to death in Unity, that angel has seen some things, and he has learned.

Those are some pretty pretty death effects on Jack in Despair/The Truth.

Obviously Misha Collins

Things that makes you go hmm:

Which of the clowns is this supposed to be in Back and to the Future? Because the one from season 2 was a monster, right? So he would’ve gone to purgatory. You know what? I’m not an expert. I try to not pay too much attention ’cause it makes me funny in the head. But just, y’know, a general objection.

Here’s my deal w death as a looming threat in this show: it holds no weight. And even if it did it has been painted as the ultimate relief, unless you go to hell, these characters know for a fact that there’s a potentially blissful afterlife, so their attitude towards death should be, what? More pragmatic, I think. And it’s partly why Ackles is wasted on this show; That man can deliver a death monologue like it’s nobody’s business, too bad all those words have been rendered meaningless after 15 seasons of this shit!

Summing up:

So, I did not go into or leave this season happy, I knew how it would end and I was sad for everyone the show screwed over (more than it already had). Which really meant that I always had to force myself to watch another episode, knowing what was coming. But I had to see it through. I did, so I’ll give myself a pat on the back and get to work on my own personal selection of episodes that will henceforth represent spn to me. A selection I’ll enjoy all the way through. All in all I think the most frustrating thing about the show is how it insists on taking itself so freakin’ seriously. It has always done horror *and* humor best and this whole heaven and hell aspect has never sat right w me, and in any case they should’ve leaned more on “supernatural” narrative tropes (if you will) getting out of their plot problems, gambled some more and thought a bit more outside genre conventions *especially* in their main arcs, they opened up so many opportunities that they never even used. They could’ve been more like Buffy, or Doctor Who. That said, I’ll always get that spn-itch, and when I do, I’ll be happy to have seen all the episodes so I’ll know which ones to avoid.