#and all of a sudden the previously hated movie is being praised???

[decafgrace]

Watching the Percy Jacksonification of the ATLA fandom in real time -

[lesbianlotties]

Andy and Quynh One Shots - chapter 50 -  Impossibly Sweet and Disgustingly in Love

Prompt: Andy and Quynh being impossibly sweet and disgustingly in love around everyone Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff, Extreme Fluff, Tooth-rotting fluff, dangerous amounts of fluff, absolutely nothing but fluff

reposting my favorite one with an added bonus to wish everyone a happy new year!!

the most beautiful and incredible art inspired by this prompt by the lovely and crazy talented @mortt-artsy is here 

The first victim was Booker. Ever since he had joined the team, considering Joe and Nicky were always together, he was used to partnering up with Andy during their missions. When Nile joined in and shortly after they were reunited with Quynh, he stayed with the two older women while Nile joined the other couple. Now, seeing Andy and Quynh fight side by side was an incredible thing, it was admirable, intimidating and somehow, beautiful. But, then there was the downside, whenever they had to sit around and wait for a signal or the right moment to attack, and he was left there while Andy and Quynh…

“Andromache, focus!” Quynh squirmed on her place on Andy’s lap. They were sitting on top of a building somewhere, Booker was intensely focused on his binoculars pointing at somewhere in the distance, and Andy was thoroughly entertained holding Quynh in her arms and kissing her neck.

“I am focused!” Andy tried to defend herself but, after another kiss, she added, “but only on you.”

“Lucky me,” Quynh whispered, turning her head to meet Andy’s eyes. There she found the usual unmeasurable love and adoration in every shade of green.

“No, I’m the lucky one here,” Andy held her close, softly brushed her nose against Quynh’s, and then finally indulged herself in kissing her favorite pair of lips.

In the background, they could faintly hear Booker cursing in French under his breath.

--

Soon enough, Nile encountered a similar fate. Andy and Quynh had volunteered to cook dinner, but after it was obvious they weren’t getting very far on it, Nile forced herself to go in and help. Though she stopped in her tracks when she entered the kitchen and found Andy sitting on the counter and Quynh standing between her legs. The two women were exchanging quick kisses and completely ignoring Nile’s presence.

“We could forget about dinner, you know?” Andy kissed her. She had her arms loosely draped on her lover’s shoulders, and she was strongly considering just pulling her closer already. Then she added, “I have something different in mind.”

“Oh, do you, my heart?” It was Quynh’s turn to kiss her, “I think I might have the same thing in mind.”

They kissed again while they ignored the whispered “Gross,” coming from Nile still standing by the doorway trying to get their attention.

“Something sweet?” Andy whispered against her lover’s lips.

Quynh lightly bit Andy’s bottom lip and then slowly released it and pulled away enough to say, “Stop pretending you’re flirting, I know you hate cooking and would seriously prefer to jump to the dessert.”

Andy laughed wholeheartedly at that, and let her head fall on Quynh’s shoulder, “I love you so much,” she said, with her lips brushing the woman’s neck.

“Guys!” Nile turned around and yelled in the direction of the living room, “We are ordering pizza!”

--

Even Joe and Nicky, previously unparalleled couple in being extravagantly in love with each other, found some… light aversion to the two women’s newly rekindled flame. The two men perfectly understood how passionate love could be between two immortal beings, and they had even seen Andy and Quynh before torture and grief had tainted their souls. However, now they were seeing what it meant to have five hundred years of love to make up for. Plus, it looked like the women had suddenly remembered their old on-going joke of annoyingly, but hopefully playfully, constantly reminding the men that they had been together for much, much, much longer.

They were driving away after a mission. Joe was behind the steering wheel, Nicky was on the passenger seat and Quynh was sitting in the back seat, with Andy laying down with her head on Quynh’s lap.

“So, it’s almost three thousand years now then?” Quynh wondered, while her fingers played with Andy’s hair, “Three millennia of devoted and ardent love?”

“Yes,” Andy, who was holding Quynh’s other hand, brought it to her lips and started tenderly kissing her knuckles one by one. “I have treasured you since the very first dream of you I had, and I have adored you more and more every day.” Andy’s eyes were soft in a way that only Quynh had ever seen them, but Quynh also loved the way that in the blink of an eye she could read the sudden change for playfulness in her lover’s eyes. “We should celebrate like during our second millennium. So long ago, and still, it feels like yesterday.”

“I agree, my heart” Quynh smiled with matching mischief, “and do you remember our first thousand years together? It went by in the blink of an eye!”

“Oh, I could never forget!” Andy replied with a perfect teasing tone, “Even if we have loved each other for two more thousands of years after that.”

“That’s literally three times more, huh?” Quynh couldn’t hold back a small laugh, even if then she added more seriously, “Every thousand of years is impossibly better when I’m with you”. Her voice had turned soft and sincere and it was obvious she wasn’t just thinking about teasing their friends. Every ounce of love and truth in her voice and heart was perfectly matched in every feature of Andy’s face and the spark in her eyes. It was so easy to forget the rest of the world existed when they were staring at each other just like that.

Still, on the front seat, Nicky’s face was settled in a deep frown. Joe was tightly gripping the steering wheel, and he mumbled, “You two should get a taxi.” But they continued to be ignored by Andy and Quynh, still lost in each other’s eyes, in their memories, in all the love they had ahead of themselves.

--

This tendency of Andy and Quynh being impossibly sweet and disgustingly in love around everyone, didn’t lessen with time, to the surprise, delight, and annoyance of different members of the group.

Nile swore off grocery shopping with the two other women after the time that something about some cheese brought out a pleasant memory that had Andy and Quynh making out with each other in the middle of the aisle. On one occasion Booker had to shoot himself in the foot to get out of shooting practice, because successfully introducing Quynh to modern weapons had turned into Andy praising the woman’s skills in a seemingly unending speech. Then there was Joe, who would refuse to visit a certain mall for at least a century after someone in a store mistook him for Quynh’s husband, right before everyone there noticed his alleged wife getting up to some highly inappropriate business in the dressing rooms with another woman. Nicky wasn’t the exception either, since he had lost count of how many times he had to walk out of the kitchen, unable to take one more second of Andy and Quynh exchanging affectionate words and lovingly feeding each other bites of whatever sweet dessert they had that day.

Finally, when the entire family was together, well, there was no difference. They could try to tease Andy for her sudden, and wrongly deemed uncharacteristic, softness, but she’d reply with a threat or Quynh would successfully intimidate them in her defense or, more often than not, Andy would simply not notice at all, completely lost while staring at the love of her life. They could try to complain when both women laughed about inside jokes while they walked toward a mission, or when they flirted with each other in a dead language only they knew while they were all having dinner together.

But, at the end of the day, when it was time to enjoy some time to themselves, relaxing in some remote corner of the world, the six of them scattered around a safe house’s living room and watching a movie chosen by Nile, it wasn’t annoying at all. Centuries of pain, guilt, grief, and nightmares, that in moments like this they could pretend never happened. Moments when Nile, Booker, Joe, and Nicky can do nothing but exchange smiles with each other, genuinely overjoyed to watch Andy and Quynh, the two women that had suffered the longest, and loved each other even longer, finally get a chance to do nothing but enjoy each other’s company.

It didn’t matter if it could be annoying to be in the presence of the couple that had been together for the longest amount of time in history and still had the ability to love each other with the dedication and enthusiasm of millennia ago. Sometimes, all the mattered was Andy and Quynh, falling asleep in each other’s arms, with smiles in their faces, and in their hearts the glorious knowledge that they would wake up the next day to continue loving each other more than ever before.

[hahaha1d0that]

Let me start by saying that I apologize for the coming post. I know a lot of people love the Star Wars sequel trilogy and characters, but I’m angry about this right now.

Disclaimer: This argument is based solely on the movies, NOT Resistance/comics/books/etc.!!

As a Star Wars fan, I am very disappointed in the sequel trilogy. There are many problems with it.

The fact that J.J. Abrams admitted that the trilogy would have been better if they had a plan

The three movies are not very cohesive in telling one story/there seems to be no one superior goal in mind to accomplish by the end of the trilogy

The characters development is nearly nonexistent and honestly pathetic

The characters had so much wasted potential

The amount of fan service was astounding and it still doesn’t make up for the other atrocities of this trilogy

The story wasn’t very compelling

Making money was the primary objective

There are many good things in the trilogy and things that I liked but overall it is my least favorite part of Star Wars. It makes me angry simply because its so repetitive and confusing.

Was Snoke a Sith Lord? If he was, why wasn’t it made clear to the audience in the movies he is supposed to be a major villain in? If he wasn’t, then bringing Palpatine back breaks the Sith Rule of Two. How did he rise to power? Who is he? Where was he throughout the franchise?

These are questions about one character, that anyone might have after just watching the movies.

Who formed the First Order and when? How did it become as powerful as the Empire? How was the New Republic reduced to almost nothing over a couple decades?

The storytelling is so incomplete. There are so many gaps and plot holes.

The antagonist across the trilogy is whiny, not very intimidating, has a poorly developed origin story, and questionable motives that are so vague that it is difficult to inderstand his reasoning and beliefs. In the end, he is redeemed only to die after some slight consideration and persuasion from the main protagonist. So he rethinks his entire life and trauma because a woman told him he could do better? That’s not how real disturbed people think…

The main villain of the third movie wasn’t even present (or even known to be alive) for the first two movies in the trilogy. The movie starts and all of the sudden “somehow…palpatine returned.” That’s it?? That’s the explanation? How did he survive? How did he get to Exegol? How did all of those star destroyers get on Exegol? The Empire was gone, his army was dismantled, few lotalists remained. Was he cloned? Because honestly, I’ve seen the movie several times and I’m still confused. It doesn’t make any sense.

Not only is Palpatine alive, but the main protagonist is his granddaughter. So much for ‘you don’t have to be somebody to be important, as long as you work hard, you can achieve anything.’ Now Rey has force abilities that she never had before (or that didn’t even exist in the franchise before this)?

Rey’s character is so tragic because she had so much potential and it was wasted. She was abandoned as a child and is forced to scavenge around dangerous wreckage to make a living supporting herself on one of the worst planets in the galaxy. Does she hold that against her parents? No, she hopes that her parents will come back for her. She gets anxious when she’s been gone for a while because she’s afraid they’ll finally come when she’s away. She never let herself become bitter or hateful. She was hopeful, innocent, and passionate. However, her character develops to make it her personal mission to take on the First Order and Kylo Ren if it’s the last thing she does and she’s plagued by stubbornness and self awareness of her power and strength as a Jedi.

This annoys me deeply. Her character never really progressed from this from TLJ to ROS either. It’s almost like its a different person from TFA Rey, despite TLJ immediately following TFA in the timeline.

I’d also like to point out that Poe’s character was also shit on by the writers, especially in ROS. For the first two and a half movies his entire character can be summed up as: I’m a hotshot flyboy; I want to fight no matter the consequences; I fly X-wings; I have an adorable droid that I am highly protective over. That’s it. And then, in ROS, suddenly its revealed that he was a former criminal and drug smuggler?? Poe? Poe Dameron?? What?

How about Finn’s character only being in the background to yell “REYYYY” whenever she puts herself in harms way (which is often). The amazing lightsaber duel against Kylo Ren? In which Finn held his own for a decently long time considering he had little to no training with a weapon of that kind against someone proficient in the ways of the dark side (which typically made force users more ruthless in their attacks)? Doesn’t matter. The hints of his force-sensitivity? What hints? Finn, a Jedi?? Hahaha, no.

Dont even get me started on Rose. Great backstory, sister sacrificed herself for the cause during a desperate hour and saved the day, but in doing so left her grieving sister behind. Beautiful. Rose was such a big part of TLJ’s plot and then she’s just kinda there for ROS...it’s sad. Not to mention the romance between Rose and Finn that was never developed??

You know what, all of the protagonists were done dirty, as well as their actors. It’s clear what Disney’s goal was: making money, and lots of it. How do we convince people to buy movie tickets/merchandise/toys/etc.?? Well, let’s cast some minority actors/actresses to make people think they’re going to be represented only for the white man‘s character to be the most developed by the end of the trilogy. Daisy Ridley (a woman), John Boyega (a Black man), Oscar Issac (a Latino man), and Kelly Marie Tran (an Asian woman) were cast as protagonists. And who got the most attention/praise/development? Adam Driver (a White man). Dont get me wrong, Adam Driver is a great actor and he did an amazing job with what he was given, but really?

Even the returning characters were poorly handled. Luke’s character development is controversial so I’ll stay away, but Han?? So they decided after ROTJ that Han was the type to leave his wife and son to travel with his best friend?? Uh ok

The sequel trilogy’s plot, if you can even say that, is so repetitive to the original trilogy it’s embarrassing. A force-sensitive main protagonist, whose parents abandoned them and left them to live on a desert planet to avoid the truth about their family heritage, met an old guy that was significant earlier in his life, went on a quest with him which effectively roped them into fighting the fascist dictatorship controlling the galaxy that they previously didn’t give a shit about, teamed up with an ex-imperial deserter along the way, was trained by a different old guy that was also significant earlier in his life but decided to exile himself and live in seclusion because some of his padawans were murdered by the Skywalker villain, learned the truth about their family and the darkness within their blood, became a great unofficial Jedi knight anyways, destroyed weapons capable of obliterating entire planets, and eventually defeated Palpatine by teaming up with the main Skywalker antagonist that sacrificed themselves to save the main protagonist’s life. Sound familiar?

It’s truly sad. If you look into George Lucas’ plan for the sequel trilogy before he sold Star Wars to Disney, you’ll find that it’s much better different from what we got and it is actually pretty similar to what The Mandalorian is trying to portray. (Maul was brought back from the dead to be the sequel trilogy’s big bad guy but we never got it)

[thelonelyrdr-blog]

Thoughts on Tuesday Nights in 1980

As is the case for most readers, I assume, the cover of a book draws me in, but the cover copy decides whether or not I'll read the book. Thus, as soon as Tuesday Nights in 1980's cover copy compared it to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, I inwardly groaned, and, had I not received my copy free through YPG's Little Big Mouth program, I would have put the book down right then. I can’t stand stories where the POV characters' narratives are removed from one another only to intersect due to the contrivances of "fate" (i.e. the author). Which is why, although I know that it's among many people's favorite Christmas movies, I really disliked Love Actually, even more so than A Visit from the Goon Squad. However, as previously mentioned (here and here), with free books, I'm not picky. So I dove in, and considering how much I ended up loving this book - it may be one of my favorites of the year, if not of all-time - I'm thinking that in the future I shouldn't judge a book by its cover or by its cover copy. (But then how will I choose which books to read, you ask? Solution: just read everything.) I can best convey the experience of reading this book as follows: Eyes: Glazing over every time this motif recurred. Tearing up when the characters were at their most desperate. Ears: Distantly aware of the praise that will undoubtedly be heaped upon this debut novel and its author for her experimental writing techniques. Mouth: Opening in awe of the author's talent at times and yawning at others. Silently screaming at Lucy, whom I found insufferable for all of the reasons that Engales ultimately did, even if it is believable for the youngest character to be naive and idealistic and dependent on others to define her:   Face: Turning the pages frantically, sometimes prematurely, to find out what would happen next. Then, as I neared the end, turning pages more slowly to prolong reading the book. Heart: The same one beating in the chests of all of the POV characters. The same one bleeding onto the page through the author's pen. Kind of a cool method of reviewing a book, right? Now imagine that I used this technique three or four more times during this review. Would it still be cool? Then again, if Prentiss intended her writing itself to imitate art, then her repeated anatomical deconstruction of scenes is appropriate regardless of its subjective appeal: like art, these passages are, at their worst, obtuse and pretentious, but at their best, they're evocative and alive with meaning and sensation. Most of the time, I adored the writing in this book, pausing to savor lines and mark their pages for later reference. Other times, the writing struck me as tedious and trying too hard. But the former instances surpassed the latter in frequency, and even when Prentiss's writing frustrated me, I always, always admired the effort and artistic ingenuity it displayed. Aside from the writing, my favorite aspect of this story was its characters, as they read not so much as characters as they did people with lives and histories. The interview with Prentiss included in the back of the book revealed that it took her seven years to write Tuesday Nights in 1980, and that in that time, each character underwent several evolutions. I might've guessed the length of Prentiss's writing journey by how intimately she seems to know her characters. I might've guessed it by how well she portrays their sadness too. Authors - and lowly writers like me - like to joke about the cruelty we inflict on our characters, but often I come away from a book with a sense that its author has tortured the characters merely because tragedy is more realistic and yet more literary than happiness. Not Prentiss though: she breaks her characters to great effect. I reveled in their brokenness. Had she made less bleak narrative choices, the book would not have been as powerful. (What's with everyone in this book not feeling like eating when they're sad though? Could there not have been at least one character who gained rather than lost weight due to depression and loneliness? Or perhaps that's not how "beautiful" people grieve.) Of all of the characters, none is more miserable than the setting, which, yes, is itself a character. Through her sensuous, affecting descriptions of New York City, Prentiss captures everything I love and hate about the place. If sometimes these descriptions tire or overwhelm, then this mirrors the sensory overload characteristic of the city. The below line, in particular, resonates with my image of New York City: It was then, on his very first day, that he knew he had found his place in New York, a place for the deranged and wrecked and bold, a place where pity couldn't exist if it wanted to because there would have to be too much of it. That is exactly how I feel when, every morning as I'm trekking to work from Penn Station, I avert my eyes from the numerous homeless people lining the sidewalks. I wonder, then, if I'm the only one purposefully ignoring them (and my conscience), if my fellow pedestrians no longer notice them at all. Each time I swallow my pity, choke it down until it settles uncomfortably yet harmlessly in the pit of my stomach, I think, "I couldn't give change to all of them, even if I wanted to." The same is true of emotional currency: there is a limit to how much sadness, how much sympathy, a person can feel and still have it be useful to the people to whom it's extended.   Don't misunderstand me: I'm not sharing this experience because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. I'm merely trying to illustrate, through this example, how profoundly I connected with Prentiss's portrayal of New York City and its inhabitants.  Perhaps that's the root of why this novel was more enjoyable for me than the structurally similar A Visit from the Goon Squad: unlike the latter, Tuesday Nights in 1980 is about poor, hopeless people. My people. The people I am and am surrounded by every day. People who have earned their sadness and thus can wear it more credibly than Egan’s white middle- and upper-class characters .       How much I liked it aside, this book has also helped me begin to overcome my writer's block. I probably sound like I'm full of crap, especially because I'm posting this review a week late, but hear me out. When, toward the end of the novel, James decides that it's worth writing merely because he can and Engales can no longer paint, I lingered on that sentiment for a long time. Strangely, I'd never thought of the act of creating from the perspective of someone who'd lost the ability to create. The tragedy of Engales's accident persuaded me like no other purely intellectual argument ever had that I should write as much as I can while I can, even if what I'm writing is complete and utter garbage, as I often deem it. Not only is there inherent value in the act of creating, but hey, I might be dead tomorrow! Barring my sudden and untimely death, I might grow old and get dementia; I might be young and get dementia. I might go blind, develop arthritis, lose a hand, and in any of these instances, how I wrote, if I still managed to write, would irrevocably change. Thus, I want to take full advantage of being able-minded and -bodied, because writing time is not infinite. (And to address the late blog post, despite what fiction would have us believe, revelations don't inspire immediate change: overcoming writer's block in order to write more consistently will be a slow process for me, for sure, but it's one that I'm committed to undergoing in a way that I wasn't before.)   Reading time isn't infinite either, which is why I rarely reread books anymore, but Tuesday Nights in 1980 is one book that I strongly believe would improve upon rereading. I mentioned in a previous blog post that I dislike it when I can visualize an author's notes while reading, but Prentiss is such a master at concealing hers that I think it might be fun to go back and try to reconstruct them with the novel’s resolution in mind. Aspects of the plot are somewhat predictable, but they didn't feel predictable while I was reading, which is what matters. In conclusion, read this book, and, if you're both a reader and a writer like me, cry because you can never write anything as true or as beautiful as just one line from this novel. Then be like me and James and try anyway.