#and so visceral. and he learns how to fight and has a love affair with close combat and pain and blood and sweat and dirt

[wraithsoutlaws]

been thinking about the neglected section of dagger's lore after he leaves the bakkers as a teen and winds up in a smuggler outfit and aaaa for so long i couldn't grasp details of it all but now its flooding in and its coming together :ratscream:

[vyeoh]

this is your chance: wax poetic about an Empires or DSMP character of your choice to a fan who is new to both. Explain why I should love them. I need guidance in this new and meme-populated land.

okok this is a lot of pressure haha. Spoilers for EmpiresSMP and DreamSMP below, obviously. I wrote a lot so prepare yourself, anon

I watch a lot of empires POVs but the ones I most anticipate every week are Scott and Sausage.

c!Scott (I'll call him Smajor for the sake of simplicity) starts off the series chilling, not really getting involved with the rest of the server, and staying aggressively neutral. After all, he's an elf. He has lived far longer than most of the other rulers already, and will most likely outlive them for many years. So, the best thing is to stick to his mountains and not get invested in the dealings of mortal affairs, maybe sometimes causing problems on purpose and dipping because what's life without a little spice right.

But then, this demon comes to the server, Xornoth. He's going around causing havoc and wants to send the world into an eternal winter, but he doesn't bother the kingdom of Rivendell much so Smajor stays tentatively cautious but ultimately unbothered. But then, the puzzle pieces start falling together. The first thing that the audience noticed was was Xornoth sounded like Smajor, but we mostly thought that this was just due to cc!Scott voicing both of them and there was nothing more to it. However, then, the people the demon starts possessing start chanting in elvish. The demon hates mortals, and the elves are conveniently one of the two confirmed not fully mortal races in Empires.

This culminates when Smajor stumbles across a cave that contains the backstory of the patron god of Rivendell, Aeor. Basically, there's two opposing forces, Aeor and Exor, and both have a champion. In a previous life, those champions were two brothers, where Aeor eventually prevailed and banished Exor. In this life though, the champions are - you guessed it - Smajor, and the demon Xornoth.

So now Smajor is like. Well fuck. It's my literal god-given destiny to be responsible for defeating this demon who is technically my brother, and if I fail the server gets plunged into an eternal winter. And I have no fucking clue what is happening because I've just been here on this mountain actively trying to stay out of the issues outside my kingdom. We watch him panic and teeter on the verge of spiraling for an entire episode, and when the followers of Xornoth go to the End to kill the dragon, releasing Xornoth's full powers, he fails to stop him. Smajor is a character who was used to being the smart one, the prepared one, the one who has the least deaths on the server. But he's also a character who runs away from his problems and ignores them. Before and during the dragon fight, we hear the desperation in his voice, as he's thrown into a situation he is wholly unprepared for, and it's bigger than him going to the Cod Empire to kill their king, or assisting in other people's plans to kill the codfather. He can't run from this. cc!Scott plays this scene so well as well, as I've said before, one of the best parts of Scott's acting is how he's never super dramatic, but he's so effective in the little things like inflection to make you feel, viscerally, the panic and dread.

So after the dragon fight, Smajor realizes, I can't do this on my own. I've tried and failed. So he gets allies. We watch him, someone who has so strongly been an isolationist, learn the benefits of allies and watch him learn to trust others and watch him learn how to get that trust in return.

My favorite thing about Smajor's characterization is that he's an incompetent protagonist, but not in the way of the "plucky young adventurer". He's capable skill-wise, and fairly jaded and very pessimistic. However, his issue is that up until recently, he did not care about the rest of the server at all, and by the time he learned to, it was way too late.

Also, in 3rd Life, cc!Scott and cc!Jimmy were canonically married and they reference it sometimes in Empires. Like, Scott goes over to the Cod Empire every so often both in and out of character to kill and/or flirt with Jimmy, the ruler of the Cod Empire, which may develop as a secondary plot into the future who knows. So ty Scott for giving the gays what they want o7

Now onto Sausage: his is a story of Icarus, his hubris and ambition being his downfall. He's one of the two followers of Xornoth, who promised him endless power in exchange for his servitude. He started the series being eccentric, but not outright unhinged, but slowly gets more and more extreme as the series progresses, as he gets brought more and more to Xornoth's side.

One of the best parts of Sausage's character, in my opinion, is how his gradual corruption affects the people around him. Initially, he got into a conflict with the Cod Empire and was allied with two other people in the Witherrose alliance. They were allies, but also close friends. The fandom liked to joke that the three had sibling energy, and I'm pretty sure the ccs played to that even more lol.

It was painful to watch the other two members, Gem and fWhip, watch Sausage get corrupted right in front of them, and see them desperately clinging on to this old idea of Sausage in their head because if they faced the truth, it would mean that their friend was gone. Eventually, they do finally cut him out of the alliance, leading him to fully commit to the side of the demon. Sausage felt very clearly betrayed by this, and declared the remaining two Witherrose alliance members to be enemies.

He gets more and more possessed, and we even see the other Empires, his enemies even, slowly realize that something is very wrong with the ruler of Mythland. He starts doing more and more evil things, like killing people more, making sacrifices to the demon, and eventually helping to kill the dragon to free Xornoth. So things are good for Sausage, for a bit. He won, and is more powerful than ever. Then he finds out: he's going to die. Xornoth's possession is slowly killing his soul, and eventually, his body going to be fully taken over and he himself is going to be trapped in the spirit realm. So how do you react to this? Over the next few episodes, we watch Sausage struggle between "the demon is literally killing me" and "the demon has given me so much, and I love it", all while Xornoth takes over more and more of him. We hear him exclaim that "don't worry!! I'm still about 15% there!" while trying to downplay every time Xornoth completely takes over his body. We watch him willingly oppose anyone who is trying to end the thing that is killing him.

My favorite thing about Sausage is that he is undoubtedly evil and proud of it, but he's also undoubtedly human. If you like to watch evil characters go absolutely feral, he's the guy for you. He makes the deal with Xornoth in the beginning, knowing and fully embracing the evilness of the demon, but at the same time he knows what he's doing is detrimental to both himself and everyone around him, but he's gotten in way too deep at this point, and to be fair the demon has held up its end fo the bargain, right?

Also, I would be damned if I don't talk about cc!Sausage's editing. Every one of his videos is like a movie. The way he does camera angles and uses music is so skillful- every lore scene feels like something out of a high fantasy action saga (think: LotR). Every big lore event I always wait in anticipation for Sausage's ep because his editing truly takes lore to another level.

I'm just generally very excited to see where this series goes. Empires is such a good mix of talented builders and good lore. Part of the reason why the series is so immersive for me, beyond any other lore smp, is that they have the settings to back it up. There is a certain charm to the DreamSMP's objectively terrible builds (with a few exceptions) but in Empires, the settings help sell the plot so much.

Another part of why I love EmpiresSMP is how much the ccs are involved with the fan community. I'm sure you've seen the memes about Scott being on tumblr, and Sausage regularly goes through the EmpiresSMP fanart tag on Twitter and likes art, even ones not related to Mythland. Most of the ccs, in fact, have brought up tumblr content on stream at some point or another. Like, several ccs have said that they read tumblr lore theories and hcs and stuff and sometimes take inspiration from them. Fun fact: Rivendell's church was inspired by my pinned drawing; confirmed by Scott Smajor himself. It's just such a good cycle of ccs and fans being excited about each other.

As for DreamSMP, I'm gonna be honest here, the only person I really am invested in in Technoblade. I started watching when he joined the server, and he's the only person whose lore I keep up to date with.

Techno's fun to watch because he's like the Deadpool of DreamSMP. Virtually unkillable, very skilled and scary, but consistently cracks jokes and breaks the 4th wall during plot. His POV is just fun. Like, he does wild plans and gives speeches and some of the stuff that happens to him should be called deus ex machine if it wasn't for the fact that Technoblade is the one who's doing it, and all the stuff is grounded in the fact that cc!Techno is just that good at the game.

However, the fact that he rarely takes anything seriously makes the few times Techno is 100% serious so much more impactful. His whole character has a basis in being perceived as inhuman and being treated as such, and therefore in return trying to hide his humanity. So, when he shows that humanity, whether that's fear, anger, or genuine love for his friends, it really makes you go "oh shit."

Techno's often said not to have character development, but I'd argue that while he remains steadfast in his moral code, he develops leaps and bounds as a person. Like, at the beginning, he's brought onto the server to help Wilbur and Tommy overthrow a government; them knowing he's 1) an anarchist and 2) very very powerful. His character was more of a plot device at that point and was treated as such in the canon. Wilbur and Tommy straight-up lie to him about their plans to establish another government after they overthrow the current one, while he was led on to believe that they were abolishing all governments in the area. But he isn't a plot device. He's a person, as much as he only shows the terrifying, blood god side of himself.

After the establishment of New Lmanburg (the new government its a long story), his friend Phil joins. And for the first time, we see him be fully human with someone and we see someone treat him like a human. Like, we saw glimpses before, with Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, but Phil is the first person we noticeably see he trusts 100%. Then Doomsday happens, and Techno essentially retires to the tundra. During this time, we see Techno learn to be more human, first with Ranboo, then Niki when he establishes the Syndicate. In fact, the two of them, along with Phil, canonically throw him a birthday party, which is a far cry from his treatment in Pogtopia.

Techno's development is one of a god learning to be human, and I just think he <3

[thexfridax]

Wynonna Earp Boss Hopes Syfy Finale Made You Feel 'All the Things' — Plus, Scoop on One Happy Wedding Accident

By Matt Webb Mitovich, tvline.com / April 9 2021, 8:02 PM PDT

The following contains spoilers from the Syfy finale of Wynonna Earp.

After four years of protecting Purgatory with her Peacemaker, Wynonna Earp got to quite literally ride off into the sunset. And she did so while straddling a motorcycle, with Doc Holliday seated behind her.

Mind you, the two almost didn’t wind up together. Following the simply beautiful “WayHaught” wedding, Doc (played by Tim Rozon) was determined to put Purgatory in Charlene’s rear view mirror and get to living life as “just a man,” and Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) felt compelled to stay put as Purgatory’s protector. But with an empowering nudge from li’l sis Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), Wynonna caught up to her man and professed her love, after which they decided to travel light, for the first time in a long time, and pay their daughter Alice a visit in MIracles, Montana.

TVLine spoke with series creator Emily Andras about crafting this very fine finale, at least one “happy accident” that wound up stirring many emotions, and more.

TVLINE | The finale has just aired…. What emotions do you hope the fans are feeling at this moment?

Just head-to-toe body warmth, and love, and affection, and wistfulness…. And a little bit of bittersweetness. I feel like joy has to be paired with nostalgia, so I hope they’re feeling all the things. But hopefully not hungover!

TVLINE | At what point over the years did you ever envision Wynonna and Doc riding off into the sunset?

Ahhh! I almost never even let myself envision it, you know? It’s so funny — when you start doing a show, you have all sorts of ideas about what pairings are going to rise to the top, who’s going to end up with whom, and one of the joys of Earp is that so many different things have happened. But those two characters have certainly earned the chance to try to be happy, whatever that means to them. I never knew that I would be allowed to end such a romantic pairing with the woman driving the motorcycle and the guy on the back.

TVLINE | I’m watching that final sequence and it almost feels alien, seeing the two of them head off into what I think of as “the real world.” But I also found that viscerally exciting, to see so much ahead for them.

That’s so lovely, thank you for saying that. I feel like having the world ahead of them and being such an unusual couple, I would love to see what happens next for them. I’m sure there will be lots of crazy sex and crazy arguments and crazy laughter. So, godspeed! Godspeed.

TVLINE | When throwing a season-ending wedding, what is Emily Andras’ marching order? “Above all else, this wedding has to be…”?

It has to honor to all of the characters — and by that, I mean it has to try to find a moment for every special pairing on the show, not just WayHaught. I think it’s important to pay due respect to how far Waverly and Doc have come; she never gave up on him, she always saw a better man in him — and now he gets to be the best man! Nedley (Greg Lawson) and Nicole’s (Kat Barrell) relationship, that paternal/daughter bond is so special, so honoring that was very important.

And at the end of the day, I still think the real love affair of the show is the Earp sisters, so I ended to make sure that that was honored. I really love the parallel with the pilot, where Wynonna came into town against her will and was so hungry to leave but was forced to stay. And now you have Waverly secure enough in how their relationship has evolved, that she knows Wynonna deserves to leave again — because she’ll come back.

More than anything, it was about giving every character a moment of happiness. Even Jeremy (Varun Saranga) becoming deputy chief of Black Badge and maybe finding a new date…. It was all about finding everyone a moment of potential joy, after they’ve gone through so much after four seasons.

TVLINE | Talk about the decision to have empty guest chairs laid out with the names of those who are no longer with us or didn’t make it to the wedding.

That was such a happy accident. We were on-set, it was very much in the middle of the pandemic, and we knew we were going to have a limited number of people for the wedding. But then we put out chairs so you could understand where the aisle was, and they looked really empty. So my incredible director, Paolo Barzman, who also did the pilot, and my art director Trevor Smith, pitched this idea to me. I had sort of joked about, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you had the ghosts of characters past?” In the moment, they said, “What if we hung names on the chairs?” and it was just one of those goosebump moments, like, “That’s brilliant.” So then we have people writing up these cards, rushing them out, and it’s honestly one of my favorite things. Whenever I see that Dolls chair, I just can’t help but feel things.

TVLINE | But Mercedes (Dani Kind), to be clear, is still with us.

She’s just out, like, being her best vampire self. She’s out being an amazing vampire, yeah. I still have that spinoff if you want to help me sell that!

TVLINE | If anything caught me a bit off-guard, it was us getting a song from Rachel (played by Martina Ortiz-Luis).

The thing about Martina is that she is a phenomenal singer. She is the anthem singer for the Toronto Maple Leafs — so she’s quite a star here! — and she was on Pilipinas Got Talent back in the day…. It seemed like a waste to not have someone with such an exceptional voice perform! And what better song to lay over the necessary wedding montage than a WayHaught classic (Fleurie’s “Wildwood”), the song that was playing the first time WayHaught kissed. It’s a bit of an Easter egg for those hardcore WayHaughters!

TVLINE | I don’t think anyone would have ever felt like a “Dark Angel Waverly” detour was missing, if you hadn’t spent time on it the episode prior. Why did you feel it was important to go there during one of the final hours?

The truth of it is that honestly we’ve been balancing the spectre of whether we were going to have a Season 5 or not. When we started breaking Season 4 two years ago, we were looking down the barrel of about 24 episodes, so [when you get half that] you’re like, “What are we going to keep, and what are we going to pitch overboard? What can we live without learning about?” I would argue that this idea of Waverly having a darkness inside of her did have to be highlighted after four seasons. I completely agree that in a perfect world I could have done eight episodes of Dark Angel Waverly, exploring that and seeing it come to pass. But if we ever get more story, I don’t know if Waverly has complete control over that part of herself. I dont think it’s “gone.” If Nicole puts mayo instead of mustard on her sandwich, who knows what’s going to sprout out!

TVLINE | I mean, if only to see what other outfits Dark Waverly has.

As long as she keeps her thigh holster, she’s ready to go.

TVLINE | Looking back at these last few episodes, what are you most proud of?

‘m so proud of this cast. It’s so boring, but God, just to see them grow and thrive and shine…. performing comedy and emotion, seeing their commitment to the show, and the feelings…. It’s just been such a joy to see such an amazing group of people get their due. They really are that wonderful, off-screen as well.

I’m also pretty happy — in this day and age, and despite all the fights the show has been through — that if this is the end, I feel like that’s a pretty nice finale, a pretty good topper on the cake. I feel like the fans will feel like they went on a journey, and they left the characters in an interesting, good place. And look, that’s really rare in TV, to end your story the way you want. How can I be anything but grateful, at the end of the day?

TVLINE | When I was writing my tweet the other morning, I wanted to call it a “very fine finale,” but I worried you’d think I was saying it was only “fine.” But it was a very fine finale!

No, you have to keep me hungry! You get to challenge me, Matt. Listen, I just didn’t want to risk…. I’m the queen of 75 cliffhangers, but I feel like the fans have worked so hard for us, for so many years, that it was more important that they got closure, just in case. But there’s always another demon, there’s always another thing to trigger Dark Angel Waverly. There’s always more story, but at least you have this, no matter what.

TVLINE | And if some network or streamer does ride to the rescue, would there be something that brings Wynonna and Doc back to Purgatory? Or might a Season 5 be without the two of them?

Look, the show is called Wynonna Earp, so you need Wynonna Earp. She’s still the champion, she’s still got the magic gun and the best hair on the show — sorry, everyone else!

There are a couple of unresolved issues. We still have Eve, who we kicked out the the Garden very early in the season, and who can kind of shapeshift; she could take on the appearance of any one of our characters! That would certainly throw a wrench in the works in Purgatory. There are a million different reasons to bring Wynonna back, to help out her sister.

TVLINE | And lastly, was there anything you had to cut or just didn’t have room for, or any returning cast you couldn’t fit in?

Oh, tons. But look, you kind of hit the nail on the head earlier. I’m always striving to be better, and some stuff at the end felt a little rushed, with Dark Angel Waverly. I think if it hadn’t been a pandemic, there would have been more people at that wedding. I would have loved four more episodes to round the bend there. But look, that’s Wynonna Earp, man — perfectly imperfect! So that’s what we did, and what a ride it’s been. The ride of a lifetime for me.

[chalabrun]

hinata: a deep dive (meta)

As it can be expected, many girls in Naruto have development that often takes some number of deep dives to find. Hinata is certainly no exception to this rule, but with this meta, my hope is that I can suss out some of that hidden development and her accomplishments and list them here.

Hinata: A troubled past

As many of us know from canon, Hinata's past was troubled and fraught with difficulties. 

Ch. 102, when Hiashi is engaging the toddling Hinata in a spar and manifesting bloodlust during.

Ch. 78, wherein Hinata is officially disinherited from the main branch heirdom. 

Growing up as the main heiress of the Hyuga clan, and eldest daughter of the main branch head, Hinata was under tremendous pressure from her father to exceed. Compared to even her younger sister, her junior by five years, Hiashi looked down upon her. In chapter 102, in the above panels, it could even be implied that Hiashi was enraged by her, pushing a young Hinata to the point that her uncle Hizashi tried to interfere, but was punished for it when he activated the clan's juinjutsu.

Yet, this wasn't the only hardship Hinata faced. 

Ch. 102

When Hinata was three years old, while Kumogakure's Head Ninja had been visiting Konoha on matters of diplomacy at the declaration of an armistice between both villages, she was almost kidnapped by this self-same ninja. What would eventually be known as the Hyuga Affair in Kumogakure would result in Hizashi dying in exchange for acting as Hiashi's body double as to satisfy the then nullified demand for Hiashi and his Byakugan that the clan's juinjutsu destroyed in Hizashi upon his death.

First Databook, Head Ninja of Kumogakure (Scan & Translation)

This would go on to lead to a whole host of issues between Hinata and Neji that notably came to light during the Chunin Exams.

Ch. 78, where Lee explains it in more detail.

As we learn from the exposition of others in chapter 78, not only was there existing turmoil between the main and cadet branches, but that it manifested in the rookies' generation as Neji and Hinata's one-sided conflict; of Neji blaming the main branch for both his father's death and being consigned to being a proverbial slave to the main branch.

Ch. 80

And as Neji would go to to explain, all of the former would result in a girl bent and bowed by both the immense pressure of her clan, the strain of conflict in her own family, and the high expectations she couldn't yet meet. Neji even went on to describe it all in visceral detail during their preliminary fight.

Ch. 78

As we can see from chapter 78, Neji manages to ruthlessly disseminate Hinata's character just by examining her body language and reflecting on her past, and while much of it seems brutally true, it doesn't mean that it's the whole truth, either.

Hinata: Growing from her pain

Despite all the clear hardship that Hinata faced, that doesn't mean she did nothing to grow. As we come to see in much the same arc, she faced these challenges in her own way.

Ch. 79

Despite all the brutal things Neji said to Hinata, it wasn't enough to kill her confidence. Or, her courage and resolve to keep enduring. And, damn does she endure.

Ch. 79, when they engage in close, melee combat.

Ch. 79, when Kurenai reflects on the beginning of Hinata's changes.

Something I see criticized often about Hinata is that she's a hopeless fangirl much in the way Sakura supposedly was over Sasuke. However, something I think that should be clarified is that, coming from a nigh abusive home life that she did, Naruto was her source of hope. And frankly, I don't think it's a deficit to her character at all. Naruto helped inspired her, and her growth showed because of it.

Ch. 79

As shown near the fight's climax, Hinata keeps standing up and trying to fight despite how seemingly hopeless the situation is. Even though Neji had debilitated her with severe injuries, some borderline fatal, she kept relenting because of her admiration and inspiration she found in Naruto. 

Ch. 98

And as it would show in the period after Hinata's recovery, she made the full extent of her admiration known; and in doing so, she speaks not as some obsessive fangirl, but a downtrodden girl thanking her greatest source of inspiration so she could rise above it. Something I don't think makes her obsessive at all.

But as the series would continue on, the fruits of this growth shows the most in the second part.

Hinata: The lioness of the Hyuga Clan

As the future would come to prove, Hinata did grow into the inspiration that Naruto gave her, enough to do the impossible and attempt to save the boy she loved from an impossibly powerful enemy.

Ch. 437, when Hinata faced off against Pein, one of the most powerful villains in the series after the likes of Madara, Obito, or Kaguya.

But, it went beyond that. 

Ch. 540

Ch. 632

Ch. 526

As demonstrable throughout the war arc, by both her clan's reacceptance of her and fighting alongside Naruto, Hinata showed just how far she was willing to take a shared ideal in order to fight at the side of the one she loved and admired more than anything, that inspired her to be strong and endure.

Now, in terms of complete strength and excelling as a kunoichi, this brilliant meta by silalcarin proves that Hinata excelled in other ways, even more than her utterly gifted cousin, Neji.

Hinata: What the databooks say

Village: Konohagakure

Rank: Genin

Ninja Registration Number: 012612

Birthday: December 27 (12 years old, Capricorn)

Height: 147.cm Weight: 37.9 kg Blood type: A

Personality: Shy, withdrawn

Favourite Food: Hors d’oeuvres, cinnamon rolls

Least favourite food: Crab, prawn

Interests: Pressed flowers

Graduated from Ninja Academy at age 12

Currently undertaking the chuunin examination

Mission Experience

D-rank: 5

C-rank: 3

B-rank: 0

A-rank: 0

S-rank: 0

Statistics

Ninjutsu: 1.5

Taijutsu: 2.5

Genjutsu: 1

Intelligence: 2.5

Strength: 1

Speed: 2

Stamina: 1.5

Hand Seals: 2

Total Ability: 3

Latent Potential: 4

Luck: 2

Hinata’s fighting ability was found lacking by the Hyuuga Clan. But her latent potential is quite conspicuous, so development is to be expected in the future.

“Because… This is my Nindou too”

The kind and gentle dancing fighter with feelings for Naruto

Although she is a heir to the renowned Hyuuga Main House, she is full of compassion, and dislikes competition and fighting: such is Hinata’s personality. Currently, her father has given up of her, and she is assigned to difficult missions as a Genin. Even being in that dire situation hasn’t broken her, she hasn’t lost that kindness of hers, and that’s because Naruto was there, inside her heart. And now, Hinata is strengthening herself, soundly and steadily.

Hinata is a shy and withdrawn person who can’t do anything in front of her dear Naruto. Something she’s been constantly wishing to change about herself.

Timidity and hesitation, unease and nervousness… An ebbing and flowing love story

[Attack]

Hinata is in love with Naruto, but regardless, she can’t take a step forward. However, she’s able to pluck up her own brand of courage sometimes, as proved by that “attack” of hers. Because that’s her Way of the Ninja…?!

She can’t even look Naruto in the eyes as she hands him the ointment to treat the injuries he’s received during the Chuunin exam, but she’s put all her strength into this…!

[Naruto and Herself]

There’s a definite reason behind Hinata’s passion for Naruto. She wants “to become like him”. Shackled by the strict laws of the Hyuuga clan, and further weakened by her inferiority complex towards her younger sister, Hinata is always seeking strength and power.

Hinata is never assertive about anything, something she tends to hate about herself.

When she was fighting Neji, no matter how many times she was struck down, she would think of Naruto and stand up…!

Hinata admires and esteems Naruto. But he is totally clueless about those feelings.

The one she admires taught her about the courage to stand up!!

Chuunin Exam: Third Preliminary Test

[Her fight against Neji]

The time had finally come to fight against Neji, from the Branch House, and hater of the Main House. Hinata disliked conflict, despite which she fought desperately in order to change herself. But as expected, she was no match for Neji, whom people refer to as the strongest in the Hyuuga Clan. [Missing sentence]

Naruto is throwing taunts at Neji. Hinata is able to draw courage from his cheering…

A scene where she even fights on par with the great Neji. The blood of the Hyuuga also flows is Hinata’s veins!

But she yields before Neji’s Gentle Fist, and gets wounded and beaten down several times over…

Earnest feelings are stronger than any weapon…

- First Databook, Hinata's entry (Scan & Translation)

Village: Konohagakure

Rank: Genin

Ninja Registration Number: 012612

Birthday: December 27 (13 years old, Capricorn)

Height: 148.3 cm Weight: 38.2 kg Blood Type: A

Personality: Shy, withdrawn

Favourite food: Soft bean-jam, cinnamon Rolls

Least favourite food: Crab, prawn

Favourite word: Self-confidence

Interests: Pressed flowers

Graduated from the Ninja Academy at age 12

Promoted to chuunin at age –

Mission Experience

D-rank: 5

C-rank: 3

B-rank: 0

A-rank: 0

S-rank: 0

Statistics

Ninjutsu: 1.5

Taijutsu: 3

Genjutsu: 1

Intelligence: 3

Strength: 1

Speed: 2

Stamina: 1.5

Hand Seals: 2

“I must…do my best too…”

Turn a pure heart into strength…

Hinata passively gave in to everything, but with the support of Naruto’s cheering, she had a fierce battle with Neji, and matured greatly. There is still a lot of her that is not sufficient as the child of the Hyuuga Main House, but indomitable strength is added to her original pure heart, and little by little, but steadily, Hinata progresses ahead… She wishes that she could move even one step closer towards the back of Naruto, her idol…

Hinata, always feeling the same towards Naruto. Will the day come when she can face him directly?

- Second Databook, Hinata's entry (Scan & Translation)

- Third Databook, Hinata's entry (Scans)

Fourth Databook, Hinata's entry (Scans)

Hinata Hyuuga The Sunflower Who Hid Love and Admiration for Naruto in Her Heart, and Bloomed Beautifully

Hinata was born as the eldest daughter of the Hyuuga clan’s main house. Having struggled since childhood with the pressure of being “the next leader of a noble clan,” as well as with her own withdrawn nature, she admired Naruto’s “strength,” and decided to adhere to his nindou. Now, having matured as a shinobi and as a woman, Hinata’s feelings for Naruto cause her to shake… Before: Caption of panel of near-beaten Hinata from chuunin exams: I never go back on my word. Hinata resolves to adhere to the same nindou as Naruto…!! Caption of panel where Hinata uses hakke kuushou against the Juubi: She uses her juuken palm to release air pressure. This is taijutsu handed down by the Hyuuga clan. Caption of panel where Hinata uses hakke rokujuuyon shou: The secret juuken technique “hakke rokujuuyon shou.” She masters it with the courage to step out beyond her limits. “Byakugan” The rare “kekkei genkai” inherited only by the Hyuuga clan. It boasts a 360-degree range of vision and the ability to see clearly for hundreds of meters, and is able to see through opponents’ chakra networks. Caption for sketch of Hinata with activated byakugan: When her byakugan is activated, Hinata’s facial expression becomes sharper. Before: Hinata shows her byakugan in her death match with Neji. Feelings Towards Naruto Since her days at the academy, Hinata has been attracted to the “strength” that Naruto possesses. That admiration eventually changed into the desire to be by Naruto’s side, and also became the source of Hinata’s growing confidence. Before: Caption for panel from chapter 98: He unintentionally leaves her dazed with his impulsive “I like you.” Before: Caption for panel from 615: During the ninja war, Hinata grew into someone who could support Naruto in a predicament and stand as his equal. Art of Hinata Wedding clothes Caption at lower right: Headdress. Her hair is rolled up in a turban-like structure. Middle caption: An Ootsutsuki wedding dress, complete with a veil on her head. Left caption: Hinata wears a skirt while not on a mission.

- Seventh Databook, Hinata entry (Scan & Translation)

Boruto Moviebook, Hinata's entry (Scan & Translation)

Hinata: Databook jutsu files

- Kekkei Genkai, Supplementary, All ranges - User(s): Hyuuga Neji, Hyuuga Hinata

The heritage of the Hyuuga Clan, the white eyes that see through everything!!

The Hyuuga Clan is a distinguished family, and one of Konohagakure’s two brightest jewels, the other being the Uchiha Clan. The Kekkei Genkai that circulates within House Hyuuga is the Byakugan. Upon using Byakugan, the caster sees right through immediate obstacles, even catching a glance upon things situated remotely ahead of them.

But Byakugan possesses an even more astonishing ability. It can also distinguish the inner body’s acupuncture network through which chakra circulates, and the apertures through which it is released outside the body, the tenketsu. Because of that ability, the Hyuuga are praised as the clan which has the most outstanding ability. That said, this is also the reason why they have accumulated tragedies throughout their history…

When Byakugan is activated, it is so powerful it causes the veins around the caster’s eyes to protrude!

How exactly does chakra circulate inside the body…? If one has the power of the Byakugan, even such a thing can be understood just like that, with absurd ease.

- First Databook, Hinata's entry (Scan & Translation)

- Taijutsu, Kekkei Genkai, Offensive, Defensive, Supplementary, Close range - User(s): Hyuuga Hinata

Strong will held in the fists!! Its form is double lion heads!!

A secret high-level Gentle Fist technique, taught only to the Main House of the Hyuuga Clan. By changing the shape of chakra released from both hands, [the user] greatly increases reach and destructive power. The arms become entirely like lions which drain the chakra network of those they touch.

Because it will fail at even the slightest mistake in chakra control, it is extremely difficult to learn this ability, which is a feat that requires the Byakugan.

It can be used to increase the power of Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms.

- Fourth Databook, Gentle Step: Twin Lion Fists entry (Scans & Translation)

Hinata: Full jutsu list & stats, etc.

To add to this, the jutsu part of this list are from more than just the manga; they include the anime, movies, and games!

Jutsu:

Barrage of Gentle Fists  

Chakra Transfer Technique  

Eight Trigrams Aerial Attack  

Eight Trigrams Aiki Palm  

Eight Trigrams Lion Palm  

Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven  

Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven: Sever  

Eight Trigrams Palms Twin Handed Back  

Eight Trigrams Palms Vacuum Heaven  

Eight Trigrams Sect Palm Wave  

Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms  

Eight Trigrams Spirit Sixty-Four Palms  

Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms  

Eight Trigrams Twin Lions Crumbling Attack  

Eight Trigrams Vacuum Lion Palm  

Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm  

Eight Trigrams Vacuum Wall Palm  

Four-Corner Sealing Barrier  

Gentle Fist Art: Exorcism  

Gentle Fist  

Gentle Phoenix Spiralling Twin Lion Fists  

Gentle Step Spiralling Twin Lion Fists  

Gentle Step Tailed Beast Twin Lion Fists  

Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists  

Gentle Step Twin Palms  

Giant Insect Fang: Sixty-Four Palms  

Hundred Furious Palms  

Hyūga: Great Revolving Heaven  

Hyūga Great Combo Palm  

Mystical Palm Technique  

Palm Bottom  

Protecting Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms  

Protecting Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms  

Water Needle  

White Haze Heavenly Dance  

Wide Healing  

Tools: 

Hyūga Clan Secret Ointment  

Stats: 

Missions completed: 

10 D-rank

14 C-rank

8 B-rank

1 A-rank

0 S-rank

Academy grades:

Taijutsu = A

Cooperation = A

Classroom attitude = A

Ninjutsu = B

Genjutsu = B

Positivity = F 

Closing thoughts

As I've tried to list in detail, Hinata not only has a lot of in-depth characterization, development, and growth as a kunoichi and member of the Hyuga clan, but extreme promise as a character and love interest of the protagonist. Yet, there's far more to her than her relationships, which I hope I've shown here (even though this doesn't even touch on everything, by far)!

[revchainsaw]

The Descent (2005)

Greetings and Welcome to the Cult Film Tent Revival. Come Worshippers and join me, Reverend Chainsaw, as we partake in the word of the Lord. This week we will be reading from the Book of Neil as we pray and reflect upon the 2005 film The Descent.

The Message

The Descent tells the story of a group spelunkers who find more than they bargained for when they attempt to explore a new cave system. Our cave crawling crew consists of 6 women, foremost of which are Sarah and Juno. Sarah and Juno have a history, mostly a friendship centered around thrill seeking and globe hopping, but a rift formed between them when while returning from a whitewater rafting trip Sarah lost her husband to a logging truck accident. Sarah was left with severe PTSD and Juno made it her mission to get Sarah her groove back.

Unfortunately this is not the fun and fantastic story of gal pals overcoming adversity. Juno's motivations are not quite that altruistic. She seeks to alleviate her personal suffering. Juno was in love with Sarah's husband and the two had been carrying on an affair behind Sarah's back when he was killed. Sarah does not know this, but Juno has been plagued with guilt. In an effort to pay penance for her wrongdoings without actually talking to her friend and confronting her betrayal, she feels she can make things right by giving Sarah a heroic accomplishment by exploring a barely known cave system in North Carolina.

The group soon discover that their are ancient carnivorous hominids who reside in these caves and they are being hunted. The women must overcome the dangers of the cave system, the beasts that dwell in the dark, and their personal demons if they are going to make it out alive. Unfortunately; in the midst of an attack Juno accidentally fatally wounds a friend and leaves her for dead. After being separated for some time and winding up in a cesspool of viscera Sarah learns from the dying girl that Juno had betrayed her. Sarah enters warrior mode and kills Juno and many of the cave dwellers before finally escaping into the Appalachian wilderness.

Now please stand and receive The Benediction

Best Effect: Captain Caveman vs the Teenangels

The Cave Crawlers are definitely a huge selling point of this film. Long before I had any interest in horror films I remember seeing the trailer for this film and with the minimal glimpses I saw of these troglodyte creatures was enough to captivate me, so much so that I remembered what was coming years later when I finally saw this film.

Best Character: Live Fast, Die Young. Bad Girls Do It Well.

Believe it or not, I like Juno. I think she was a flawed character, but that's what made her all the more human. She was a bad ass and a hero for much of the film. She was not ethically unambiguous but I wanted her to uplift Sarah, I wanted her to succeed. The fact that she did not is the aspect of this film that gives it it's greatest tragic edge.

Best Moment: Blood Bath

If anyone has seen the Descent before they will know exactly where I'm going with this. The Killing floor scene. Where Sarah finds herself in what basically amounts to a garbage disposal, a metaphorical pit of Hell. Sarah and a Cave Crawler end up in a violent conflict submerged in a pool of blood and guts before they eventually submerge out of sight. When after an uncomfortable amount of time passes the surface is broken, Sarah emerges triumphant and we the audience feel truly empowered with her.

Most WTF Moment: You Got Knocked The Fuck Out!

For many of the congregation the opening sequence will have cemented long held anxieties about driving behind logging trucks. This movie is like the Jaws of the logging industry. I had one moment though that hit me way harder. Maybe it is just that I'm getting old, but the danger of bonking my head in a particularly rough way, even from not so great a height, just hits me in a very visceral way. There's a sequence where one of the girls bashes her head on a rock and passes out. The force portrayed and the sound effect were very very effective and I let out a very guttural ouch. It wasn't even a kill and it sticks with me.

Worst Scene: Kill Your Darlings (or how I learned to stop asking questions and embrace excessive force)

I didn't know what else to call this because it's not so much a scene but a choice in the script. I found the fact that Sarah murders Juno to be a bit extreme. Maybe if she had simply chosen not to help her do to her feelings of betrayal, but she actively harmed her friend in an act that felt pretty petty, over a piece of shit cheating husband. I never understand why films portray "the other woman" as the villain in affair stories. I mean, yes, Juno betrayed her trust, but murder is a bit extreme, especially when we spent most of the movie watching Sarah struggle over the loss of her husband. There's no point in the film where Sarah wrestles with the idea that her partner whom she had been grieving over in such an extreme way was actually not a very good guy. Instead we are left to put all of our hate onto Juno. It also seemed like having Juno accidentally and understandably struck one of their companions in a fight with cave dwelling monsters seem like a cheap ploy to make us feel like she's getting what she deserves. The writers needed to make Juno more evil, and making tragic mistakes and having common human moral failures is not enough to make a cold blooded murder feel justified. In the end I wind up feeling more like Sarah is a fucking murderer than like justice was served, and since that's clearly not what the filmmakers intended, I think it makes the whole film weaker as a result.

Summary

The Descent is an excellent movie! It speaks volumes about the quality of this film that I can say "The Descent is great to look at" when the movie is this dark (and I don't mean the tone). The creature effects are excellent, the actors portraying them sell it, the characters are engaging and likeable as opposed to just being lambs for the slaughter. The sets are believable. I've already spoken above to the weaker aspects of the film so I won't spend anymore time here doing so. Please join these ladies for a spelunking trip next time you have the opportunity, and give praise to the Cult of Cult!

Overall Grade: B

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!

[ivory-haired-queens-blog]

I just played ep 3 and you wanna know what things fucking ripped my heart out and fucking stomped on it and tried to shove it back in with scotch tape and glitter glue? SPOILERS, DUH.

*Also this might be the most in-depth and analytical thing I've done so... it's long.

A) When Louis picks up Minnie's crossbow and fucking accidentally shoots that woman and he's like "i..I didn't mean...fuck" or something like that. That fucking voice acting shredded me and I will never be over that. Louis, Louis of all people, the lighthearted jokester that just wants everyone to be happy was forced to shoot a woman in the skull! In one of the most grisly deaths in the season at that! Skybound can throw hands with me for that one. Also when Clem goes to get Aj Louis, even as broken and torn as he is at this point, he still tries to come with her. The best boy honestly.

B) Look, I know Lilly is the villian of this season. I'm fully aware of this. But she obviously still kinda cares about Clementine, as in ep 2 she said, and I quote "this SHOULD be easy." But it's not. It's not easy to shoot clem. But then she just fucking takes Aj? And then tries to strangle Clem on the side of the boat? And then when I mercied her and tried to let her live, she just???fucking kills James??? Like, I already didn't like James (I'm sorry James stans) but he didn't deserve that. And then the bomb goes off and we don't even get to Aj in time??? Like, 👊👊👊 throw hands.

C) When Aj talks about Clem getting bit and how he'd want her to bite him. Like, fucking James just had to say something. This boy is 6, maybe 7 at the absolute latest. He's impressionable, he learns from what he hears. You can't just tell him that walkers are still kinda human. If they had any shred of humanity left, they would not kill people. Especially those close to them, like Lee's brother tried to kill Lee when he was under that lamppost. Just fucking stop I'm crying.

D) LOUIS' STORY. If you did the Violet path and didn't hear Louis', basically he was rich. Like, filthy rich. But the only thing his dad wouldn't buy him was singing lessons. Louis got so mad at what his dad said to him, "You can either be happy or you can be rich," that he wanted to teach his dad a lesson. He started buying things on his dad's credit card that eluded to his dad having an affair (jewelry, hotel rooms, etc.) And when this worked, his parents got the divorce, he came clean. He told his dad "You can either be rich or you can be happy." A week later he was at the school. And just fucking??? How much his character has grown in the 8-9 apocalypse years??I'm so proud of him. Sure, younger Louis was a little shit, but he knows how fucked up what he did was. If you watch the scene, it's so....heartbreaking. like it's his biggest regret, even with all the Marlon shit thrown in. I love Violet with my whole heart, but I fucking love Louis' storyline.

E) VIOLET WHAT THE FUCK??? As I stated before, I love Violet. She's my favorite gay/gal in the whole apocalypse. But what the fuck? Like, you...I get it. I saved Louis instead of you, but wait a fucking minute I made it blatantly obvious that I love Louis (my son) and when you see me in the prison cell you're like "fuck you I'm staying here with my psychotic gf." Like??? I think the writers made a huge character mistake with that because there's no way Violet would have actually done that to me. Also especially after Minnie admits to killing Sophie, which I'll touch on later. Like, her character would NOT do that. Idgaf if she still loved Minnie or not, she'd be fucking pissed.

F) We have to talk about Minnie. Just....ugh. Props to telltale/skybound because holy fuck. That got me. That got me good. She just??? Is completely brainwashed by the delta and lilly? She killed her own sister, and despite me telling her what Tenn told me to she still locked me in the cell? Also she doesn't say one loving thing to Violet, who literally is willing to get herself blown up just to be with her. And when that woman tells her her family is the delta and to forget about Tenn she just fucking accepts it? Like??? Fuck off bitch?

G) Louis' date was the cutest shit

H) I'm sorry but at the party that first bio sounded a fuck ton like Marlon and Idc what anyone else says you cannot convince me that my love Ruby ever did such things.

I) I hate that the story is so compelling that, even after all she's fucking done, I still care about Lilly. I call this "the Kenny effect." We have history, and that matters a lot to me. Even if I don't agree with her ever, I still don't want her to die. (Like with the Kenny/Arvo thing) I see her as family, which is why in s1 I let her stay after she shot carley and in ep 2 of this season I told her we were family. I do care about Lilly, and then she just kills James??? Like, ugh. I wish she would just fucking stop and I could hug her and everything would be fine and Lee isn't actually dead and Christa and Molly and Kenny and everyone's alive and AAHHHHH.

J) The scene where Minnie has clem's knife against clem's chest and is pushing down is so fucking similar to the Kenny/Jane situation is s2. Minnie is Jane and Clem is Kenny, this time all of the kids from the school is clem. Both Minnie and Clem want them to be safe, but they have very different ideas on how they'll be safe. Clem wants to protect them at all costs, and Minnie wants to protect them by getting rid of clem. (Like how Jane wanted to get rid of kenny) I'm crying in the club.

K) James fucking making me walk in the barn full of walkers to touch the wind chime. I was literally so anxious during this and I knew that it's a game but just??? That would have been a pointless death.

L) ABEL. NO! Look I don't like this guy as much as the rest of ya'll, but they way he just breaks down??? I refused to torture him, and I put out his cigarette. He begs to be killed because he doesn't want to turn. This is so visceral and raw that I almost cried when my knife went through his head. Then the screen thing told me I tortured him in front of Aj?? Hello? When did I do that??? I gave him mercy, I gave him peace.

M) Louis toasting to the fact that he thinks he's gonna die at the boat just fucking destroys me.

N) Rosie is the goodest girl and didn't get enough screen time.

O) Louis helping clem up when she gets pulled under water by a walker is cleansing for my soul

P) Omar and Aasim got like 4 lines between them and that's fucking breaking the law

Q) I literally only found 1 collectible where the fuck where they all???

R) I was legitimately going to not kill any of the walkers when James was getting his mask, but I honest to God kept dying over and over so I literally had to kill one of them.

S) the fact that James kept bringing up how much of a heartless bitch I am for not caring about dead people that are walking and killing the living and everyone I've ever cared about.

T) The sheer genuis of the dialogue option that asks James if he knows the names of the walkers and he's confused and clem is just like "Omar, Aasim...Violet." like, he doesn't know the walkers. They're killing machines that he has no attachment to. Clem's friends are alive, and she cares about them deeply. Like fuck off m8.

U) Aj is so broken and confused and scared I don't know how to fix him he's a murderer but he's trying to atone and I just hope to God Lee would actually be proud of Clem and I just wish he was alive and Clem and Aj and him were a family and he could meet the boarding school kids at then Louis would learn about history, something I hc him as never being good at in school, and Louis teaches him how to play the piano and he teaches Violet how to actually map the stars and she teaches him all the fighting skills she's learned and Lee takes a liking to Tenn and makes sure to thank Omar for cooking and appreciates willy and mitch and what they do and supports and learns medicine from ruby and stops Aj from killing Marlon and talks him through the bad shit and helps him atone for his sins and then he meets Rosie and when he sees Lilly again she stops being a hateful cunt and we kill all the delta people and go back to the school and everyone, including mitch and James and Minerva and Sophie is alive and this is getting way to long aahhhh.

V) When Louis is freaking out about the responsibility of planting the bomb, and it gives you to either slap him or kiss him and that's the fucking cutest shit

W) the fact that it never let's me hug Tenn or Willy, nor have a funeral for Mitch. Like I know we were crunched for time, but it would've taken 10 minutes tops.

X) to my knowledge, Tenn and Menerva never see eachother. Maybe she would have changed if she saw him? I don't know...

Y) I don't have the option to cuddle with Rosie and that's an actual crime.

Z) When the kids are talking about all the people they've lost. 34 people. 34. We've lost a lot, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's 34. It might be close, but some of those people we weren't close to nor knew for very long. Also the fact that they've lost 34 but only have like 5 graves. Wtf?

*) AND THE BIGGEST THING THAT TORE MY HEART INTO PRICES WAS THE LEE SCENE, AND THE DIALOGUE OPTION OF TELLING LEE HE'S NOT REAL AND HE TELLS CLEM THAT IT'S OKAY TO BE A LITTLE NUTS AND THEN THE HUG AND THE "LOOK AT YOU..." FROM LEE AND AAAHHHH I MISS HIM SO FUCKING MUCH.

*Edit: I'm not saying I love Lilly as much as I do Kenny, I could never like her that much, even if she had a change of heart and died protecting clem or Aj. I'm saying "the Kenny effect" because he was being an asshole, however you try to defend him. He wasn't in the right, and harmed an innocent kid (Arvo) just like Lilly does. Cool? Cool.

[myfandomrambles]

Rory Gilmore Character Analysis (Expanded)

Facts

raised by a single mom

basically abandoned by her father

grew up in a small town who adore her. Functionally like an extended family

huge reader

Family financially struggled when she was little

highly devoted to education

Goal oriented when she is young

Wants to be a journalist and travel

Highly obsessed with media of all kinds, a shared interest with her mother

Somewhat of a wallflower as a teen

attended an elite preparatory school for last three years of high school

Tends to do whatever is asked of her, most common with her grandparents going against her upbringing and mothers lifestyle

deeply competitive with her main Rival in school (Paris)

Excellent in academic settings

Displays a willingness to be in unhealthy relationships with her BF’s

Believes in a strict pattern in her life and rejects changes

Has visceral reactions to rejection, like with Mitchum

Learned to fit in well with an elite culture

Struggled in her work

Analysis:

Rory overall was a combination of natural gifts, communication issues, commitment, perfectionism, and a girl who faced very little criticism.

Rory’s relationship with her mother Lorelai is the deepest defining connection. Her taste in media and food come from her mom, as well as her struggles to form competent romantic connections. Lorelai instilled an independent identity as well as a fun-loving idea and a love of laughter. Lorelai also shaped Rory by acting as much of a friend as a parental figure, part of this was having trouble ever telling Rory “no”, or that anything she did was wrong. Rory was to some extent a parentified child. She helped run a lot of the boring but important parts of living and was the main emotional support for her mother. Lorelai and Rory also had a relationship that lacked normal boundaries between parent and child. Lorelai did love and support Rory. Lorelai would do everything she could for Rory and worked her ass off to give Rory everything she could to be happy and successful. Rory did know that, and it was important in her best characteristics.

Rory grew up with a very strong extended family in the form of stars hollow. Mia was a grandmother figure more than Emily when Rory was very young. Sookie acted as an aunt figure to Rory often, was at all the parties, baked the birthday cakes etc. Lane was her very close friend throughout her childhood. Lane appreciated Rory and Lorelai as an escape from her strict home life. Rory was influenced her in musical taste by lane, as well as her seeming to be Rory’s only friend around her age in stars hollow.

Luke was a large part of Rory’s life way before he dated Lorelai, often playing a fatherly role. He consistently made meals, helped with birthdays, giving presents, taking care of Rory when she was ill, fixing up the girls house, being deeply protective and attending her big events. Rory struggled with her lack of a father but seemed to really appreciate Luke even going to him when she was struggling during her and her mother’s huge fight.  He was awkward and sucked as much as the girls in proper communication, but tried as best he could to support her. Luke is just as protective as her own father, and present way more often.

The rest of the town: Ms Patty, Babette Dell, Morey Dell, Fran Weston, Bootsy, Gypsy, Taylor Doose, Mrs Kim, Jackson Belleville, Andrew & Kirk Gleason were all very important in Rory’s upbringing teaching her different things, keeping her in books. The town at large loved Rory as a kid and into her adulthood. They all come to birthdays and throw her a bon-voyage party.

Being surrounded by a large extended family in the form of the town gave Rory a kind of cushioned experience with how people treat one another. Even if she wasn’t intensely popular at school the town at large prop her up, told her she was wonderful and basically never told her that she was wrong. She was the darling of everyone. Rory was deserving in some senses, she was kind and helped with the town but she struggled to learn how to deal with other people realistically, expecting things to always go well and others not to take advantage of her.

Rory's relationship with her grandparents becomes extremely close after 15ish years of almost no interaction. They love Rory but are controlling in a way that causes strain. Another problem they often have is they are also navigating around the fallout of Lorelai and her parents' history. Emily and Richard want to "fix" what went "wrong" with Lorelai. Rory is their second chance, placing an unfair expectation. They also feed Rory's need to be perfect and expectation of getting it. One reason I do think they click is they do in a way give her more traditional parenting. Lorelai struggled to balance her want to be friends with Rory and Parent, Emily and Richard are always parents. I do think even with headstrong, stubborn and independent person like Rory to have people care for her and not force decisions on her. But this becomes toxic when she lives with them and she suffers the stifling aspect of emotionally controlling and abusive nature of the Gilmores.

Dean was her first love and an important part of her life for a long time. Her relationship with Dean was fine enough in the beginning but Rory overlooked the part of that that wasn’t healthy. The unhealthy behaviours grew overtime instead of exceeding good parts, this ultimately leading to them having an affair and Dean hurting his wife. Rory was supported in this relationship when she was younger by most of the people around her. Rory wanted him to be the one and only but it was an unrealistic goal. Their second try at a relationship began as cheating and ended when Dean realised she had more to her life than being his girlfriend.

Her relationship with Jess started off as a kind of forbidden romance against the wishes of society and the feelings started while she was dating someone else. the relationship was strained for a lot of the time because they both sucked at communication. She was also the only person besides Luke Jess ever had, it's hard to experience a healthy relationship when you are really the only person the other one has. They did care deeply for each other though, and end up helping the other be a better person through their deep understanding of each other, even if their romance didn't work out.

Logan and her relationship was mostly healthy in terms of making each other happy and was the best communication, though that is a low bar. In slightly less productive he was also a large part in her embracing the partying lifestyle. He also enables worse impulses like leaving Yale, he doesn't force them but his lack of care and Hakuna Matta lifestyle making it easy. Their disagreements like the others come mostly from lack of communication and being hyperemotional people. Rory expects him to be the worst he can be, and he doesn't take time to think through what he doesn't. They also have similar family lives which cause strain, though the handle it differently, Rory tries to be the perfect Gilmore while Logan bucks the system. Logan also has aa implied Alcohol addiction problem which of course strains their lives, as it always does.

Rory's relationship with Paris Geller is another huge one in her life. They start off pretty much enemies in school. Paris is so obsessed with being the absolute best she hates that Rory is able to match her skill and standing in the class. She spends much of the first year playing games to have more success and power. Rory is also a perfectionist and has the same natural skill and usually, the same time and work put in.  Rory ends up seeing that Paris is deeply insecure and has even worse family relationships then she has ever had. It's hard for them to hate each other when they are both struggling to be as best they can, working together. They end up being more "frenemies" for the last two years of high school and in college.  They push each other forward a lot and support them as time goes on. Paris's intensity and propensity to think everyone is acting against her, and their inherent need for competition keeps them going back and forth quite a bit. But they stay friends for their whole adulthood seen in AYTL.

Rory slid into higher society better than her mother ever did. She was close to her grandparents that might have been healthy they expected a better Lorelai and in many ways, that’s what they got. Rory learned the functions well, attended elite schools and dated a Huntzberger. Rory, in the beginning, so conflicts averse she did as she was told, and then adopted much of that lifestyle by choice later. This society allowed her intellect to continue to be praised as well as her looks and luck of birth.

Rory’s friends and family viewing her as usually flawless has always been the best, and truly being naturally gifted academically made it very hard for Rory to deal with any rejection. She is so deeply perfectionist that losing is unexpected and quickly hugely destabilizing. We see this when she isn’t perfect at college and then in extreme form with Mitchum Huntzburger.

Rory broke down twice around not living up to her and others expectation. The second time landing her in jail and listless in her purpose. This dates back to her never being told know and perfectionist tendencies.

Inbetween the end and AYTL we see she burned out early and was fine cheating on her boyfriend (who she treats real shitty) by sleeping with an ex who was engaged. She falls back on her most destructive tendencies forgetting that even with her natural gifts she had actually done the work when she was, young.

Overall Rory is generally kind and willing to help others, her lack of communication and relationship skills were often detrimental to her. Her overstated belief in her own raw talent and tendency to deny the obvious made her professional life struggle as well.

ADHD:

RSD

hyperactivity

hyper interest

hyper fixating

needs a schedule to function

attempts organization but has trouble sticking to it

outbursts of emotion

rambling

impulsivity often masked my anxiety

difficulty in social settings

struggles to understand her emotions

Bolting

GAD:

An overwhelming fear of failure

easily overwhelmed by stimuli

easily stressed out

escapism through books

fear of expressing emotions causing bottling up till it spills over

needs things done in one way

Obsessive behaviours, organization and studying

panic attacks when she is older

people pleaser to avoid conflict

perfectionist 

rumination

struggles to define her needs in relationships

[bbclesmis]

Interview: Dominic West, Lily Collins and David Oyelowo on the BBC's new adaptation of Les Miserables

Dominic West strides across a 19th century square packed with ­horses and carts, carriages, and authentic market stalls. Given he is playing Jean Valjean and this is a new version of Les Miserables, you half expect West to stop, ­remove his extravagant hat, and blast out the former convict’s famous tune, Bring Him Home. But this is a very different Les Miserables. It’s an ambitious six-part BBC drama adaptation that draws heavily on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel – a tale of redemption and revolution, which, somewhat controversially, features no singing.

The story of a book

“It’s unrecognisable from the musical, to be honest,” admits West on set, after his scene is finished. “We’ve got six hours of television to tell the story of a book, which I think is the best I have ever read. It’s absolutely epic.”

Still, attempting a straight re-telling of Les Miserables is a gamble given how widely the musical, and Tom Hooper’s award-winning 2012 film, are adored. With atmospheric smoke billowing across Brussels’ picturesque Place du Beguinage – which stands in for Paris in the BBC version – director Tom Shankland admits that Les Miserables done “straight” could easily be serious and sombre. It is, as he puts it, “a story of characters going through unbearable events and then dying.”

But this is an adaptation by Andrew Davies – of Vanity Fair, Pride & Prejudice and War & Peace fame – so there’s a lightness of touch, wit and levity amid the tragedy and a youthfulness and freshness of tone, too.

Fantine steals the show

“People will be able to fall in love with the story all over again because we’re telling it in a completely different way,” adds Shankland. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the character of Fantine, played by Lily Collins. Any fans of the film will remember this tragic figure selling her hair and teeth to support her daughter. The scene Collins is about to shoot, however, sees Fantine hanging out with her girlfriends and having fun.

“I think what’s different about this is that you get to see Fantine have a good time,” she says. “In most other renditions you start at the bottom and she’s already suffering. But this shows what it would have been like to be surrounded by other young women. It’s a fun time, sunny, and I get to fall in love!”

It’s something of a relief, given Collins had to film the end of Fantine’s story first. “It was snowing, there was wind and rain, and I was wearing next to nothing,” she recalls. “My head was shaved, I had no teeth, and Fantine has to beg for her life. I had to go manic and be like an animal, almost, to get that scene right. There was no vanity involved; it was raw, visceral, grotesque, even. I had to leap at it, it was so intense.”

A modern retelling

Fantine’s character arc is probably the best indication of the ambition for this version of Les Miserables; intense and gut-wrenching, yet tender and engaging. It draws on all the best traditions of a BBC period drama, but is cinematic in scope, and never cosy.

“Some people have asked why we aren’t making a modern version of this story, but in some ways we are,” says West. “Valjean is like the best, baddest, strongest superhero. He’s done 20 years hard labour, he chooses the hard path every time because he wants to be a virtuous man. It’s hard to make a righteous person interesting, but the way Hugo wrote him, we see this man struggling daily with doing the right thing. Also, it’s a more racially mixed cast than it might have been historically. We’re playing it like it’s modern-day London, in a way.”

It’s incredibly refreshing, certainly, for Jean Valjean’s nemesis, Inspector Javert, to be played by David Oyelowo – and elsewhere Adeel Akhtar is the evil Monsieur Thenardier. “The cities I’ve lived in – Lagos, London, Los Angeles – are places full of different kinds of people, so I want to reflect that in anything I do,” says Oyelowo. “For too long we’ve had a very narrow point of view, but one of the things I’m most proud of in this show is that it’s a reflection of what Europe actually looked like, as opposed to an entirely white world.

“Hugo doesn’t write about race, he writes about humanity, that we all engage in and with. The thing I’m really proud of is that I grew up in the UK watching period dramas, with images that didn’t necessarily reflect who I am, but were resonant to me. Now, my 12-year-old self can have the same experience, but more so. Modern-day drama has to be inclusive and say something about the time we’re in, too.”

An 'urgently relevant' show

Oyelowo points out that Les Miserables is set in a time when the ruling classes were under very real threat from the working classes, where a seismic, revolutionary shift was happening socially, politically and religiously. “I think that’s very pertinent to the way the world is now,” he says. “You can look at any country in the West whose policies favour the rich over the poor and there’s a resonance.”

The show’s fellow executive producer West is similarly keen to tease out the modern relevances of a 19th century story. “I was struck that Valjean goes into public service for the public good,” he says. “The overall premise of Les Miserables is ‘look after the poor’, but today we’ve become very disillusioned with politicians, and that’s a shame because a lot of them are good people. That’s what democracy is based on – if we don’t believe that there are such things as public servants, but that everybody is in it for themselves, then democracy dies.”

West pauses. “Phew, that was a bit strong!”

Perhaps he’s winding back from getting too deep and meaningful about Les Miserables, because for all Shankland talks about making the show “urgently relevant”, he also admits that Davies wanted to place at its core a “beautiful hopeful story about people who are trying to find their way, to be good, to find out what it takes to be a parent.”

'The elements I love the most are the tender bits'

Davies savours the tender moments in the story the most. “I think I probably concentrated first on Jean Valjean and Javert. I got that duality established then started looking at the rest,” he says. “Actually then, the elements that I love the most are the tender bits; Fantine’s story in the early stages will be a revelation. Jean Valjean learning to be a father was something that moved me a lot.”

All of which comes together to form a show in six parts that gives one of the great monuments of world literature exactly the kind of love, care, attention and – crucially – compelling entertainment that it deserves. The songs aren’t missed, because the story is so fresh. And, as West looks across Place du Beguinage at a crowd of perfectly attired extras assembling for the next scene, it certainly feels like he’s part of something special.

“You know, you can easily get boxed into period drama as an English actor, so I avoided it for a long time,” says West, who played an American detective in gritty crime series The Wire and more recently Noah in The Affair. “Now, though, I’m having a blast. I’m luxuriating in the fact that the plots don’t endlessly twist on a phone call, and seeing all the horses, the costumes, the fighting.

“With most modern drama, there’s a tendency to do less, show less, until eventually you’re doing nothing. The sort of naturalism I do in The Affair wouldn’t really work here. You’ve got to be more theatrical, bigger, somehow. Like I say, Les Miserables is epic.”

Les Miserables is broadcast on BBC First (OSN) from January 13 at 9pm. (x)

[aion-rsa]

Lansky: Harvey Keitel Gives a Gangster Legend a Subtle Farewell

https://ift.tt/2STssJD

“My reputation has a habit of preceding me,” Harvey Keitel’s Meyer Lansky explains toward the beginning of Lansky. “When they don’t know you, they put labels on you.”  Writer-director Eytan Rockaway’s biographical crime feature is a no-frills, selective retelling of a notorious figure, which works because it puts a recognizable face to that label.

Nicknamed the “Mob’s Accountant,” Meyer Lansky knew his numbers, and Rockaway’s film only suffers when it hedges its bets. It begins with a grand promise to portray Lansky as he would have liked to have been portrayed in history. The recollections and the stories work very well when they stick to the gangster of the title. The low-budget, independent feel brings an immediacy, and more rebel street cred than the risk-taking former crime beat journalist at the center.

Sam Worthington is a little too nervous too much of the time as David Stone, the author who is conducting the interviews. He is holding something back from the moment he meets Lansky, and we have to wonder why Meyer would agree to spill his guts to such an obvious wild card. It is more confounding why Lansky would forgive the guy for going behind his back, just because he “likes” him.

Stone is loosely based on the real-life story of the director’s father and the interviews he conducted before Lanksy died. The man who interviewed Lansky had to have been more likeable than the fictitious Stone. The writer here judges Lansky as he tells even the most personal stories. There is an incriminating tone to too many of the follow-up questions. He’s like an American Piers Morgan, almost always looking for a fight. “Does that help you sleep at night?” he taunts his subject after hearing the details of an execution. Lansky says at the beginning he wants to control how history paints him. He wouldn’t have allowed this line of questioning to go that far. He would have smelled a rat.

Some of Stone’s backstory could have been clipped in favor of more recreations. This is Lansky’s story, and we’d love to hear more of it. Or see it. We get a glimpse of young Meyer, the child on the street learning to lay line bets at crap games. But we only hear the famous story of how “the wandering Jew” stood up to Lucky Luciano’s (Shane McRae) gang of teen toughs when they “politely asked him to empty his pockets.”

Most of the film is functional exposition. It is not particularly artful, but it gets the story across. A few shots are as well-framed as Miller’s Crossing, but some of the historic recreations have the feel of the crime scene reenactments found in true crime television specials. Except for the gore.

There are some wonderfully queasy bits thrown in, like a simple thumb in the eye during the routing of the Nazi Bund from New York. Viewers might even be tempted to avert their eyes from a few of the visuals. Again, they are not artistically rendered, they are strictly functional, and not gratuitous. There is no overkill. Nothing is done for specific shock value.

John Magaro, who plays young Meyer Lansky, will be playing young Silvio Dante in the upcoming The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark. He brings humor into the part, obviously relishing his scenes with David Cade as Ben Siegel. The pair bring the feel of an easy camaraderie.

“Look at me when you fucking die, you double-crossing sack of shit,” Siegel spits as he stabs the boss of all bosses on Lansky’s order to “make him feel it.” It’s become one of my favorite gangster movie lines of all time. It could easily slide out of the side of Joe Pesci’s mouth as Tommy in Goodfellas. Not all the dialogue is up to that level of gangster homage, but this also works to the film’s credit.

Young Meyer’s romantic scenes with Anne, played by AnnaSophia Robb, are also quite effective. Robb’s reading of the line “so, truck rentals?” is filled with bemused mirth and flirtation. But their more contentious and violent scenes together, as the marriage goes through several downward spirals, are not as convincing. The acting is solid throughout, but we never really believe Magaro could actually bring himself to hit her. Lacking the visceral malice, the actor is, perhaps, too nice a person. Again, this works in spite of itself, as it makes Anne’s electroshock therapy scene that much more intense.

The real reason to watch this is Keitel and witness him do what he does best, become a character. Keitel, who enlisted in the marines at the age of 16, has played in the same mean streets as Lansky since he first hit cinema. He may or may not be acting in any of the scenes, nor does he have to in order to capture the essence of Meyer Lansky. Every memory he recalls can be his own, he can react from a memory of life or his life in the cinema. 

In the gangster movie world, Keitel is Lansky. As much as Al Pacino could lay claim to being a Lucky Luciano of film, or Robert De Niro can call a Genovese title to himself. They didn’t play those characters, specifically, but they fill the same roles in the gangster movie hierarchy. They overthrew the old guard, the Bogarts, Cagneys, and George Rafts, who walked the same streets or drank in the same speakeasies.

Keitel is relaxed, tanned, and comfortable in Lansky’s skin. When he threatens Stone at the onset of their arrangement, his amiable glint disappears, but only for one moment of laser focus. Then he gives a foreshadowing of the clemency he will grant. To the director, this is just a passing tone to give depth to a change in scene, but Keitel throws almost imperceptible curveballs.

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“The only winners in life are those that control the game,” Lansky declares at the top of the film, and Keitel owns this movie without having to get up from his seat at the diner. Stone is right when he pegs Lansky as a complicated man and says his book isn’t “about one man, it’s about the 20th century.”

Lansky makes a good case for the claim, and could have carried it out, even on the tight production. Maybe especially because of it, some of the best mob movies were low budget affairs. It comes up short, but gangster fans should not miss it. The performances are enthusiastic and the history is there.

Lansky hits select theaters and will be available On Demand on June 25.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3j7P6s6

[bluethepaladin]

This is probably a really weird ask but, do you have any book recommendations?

ooooOOOOOOoooo boy, oh buddy oh pal, this is the best ask I’ve ever gotten. Little do any of you know, I am an extreme book geek, I haunt all the book festivals, I regularly maintain my relationships with the publishing houses, and I frequent author’s conferences and writer’s workshops. Partly because I’m prepping my own manuscript and partly because I love books so much.

I real a lot, like 200 books a year on a bad year, so if you’re looking for something more specific, you just have to say so!

Here are some top ones that I think are great reads that I recommend from a variety of genres in no particular order.

And I Darken by Kiersten White

No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets.Lada despises the Ottomans and bides her time, planning her vengeance for the day when she can return to Wallachia and claim her birthright. Radu longs only for a place where he feels safe. And when they meet Mehmed, the defiant and lonely son of the sultan, Radu feels that he’s made a true friend—and Lada wonders if she’s finally found someone worthy of her passion.But Mehmed is heir to the very empire that Lada has sworn to fight against—and that Radu now considers home. Together, Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that strains the bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

In the final days of a falling Saigon, The Lotus Eaters unfolds the story of three remarkable photographers brought together under the impossible umbrella of war: Helen Adams, a once-naïve ingénue whose ambition conflicts with her desire over the course of the fighting; Linh, the mysterious Vietnamese man who loves her, but is torn between conflicting loyalties to his homeland and his heart; and Sam Darrow, a man addicted to the narcotic of violence, to his intoxicating affair with Helen and to the ever-increasing danger of his job. All three become transformed by the conflict they have risked everything to record.

In this much-heralded debut, Tatjana Soli creates a searing portrait of three souls trapped by their impossible passions, contrasting the wrenching horror of combat and the treachery of obsession with the redemptive power of love.

The Host by Stephanie Meyer

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading “soul” who has been given Melanie’s body, didn’t expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.As Melanie fills Wanderer’s thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she’s never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.

The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

Magic, adventure, mystery, and romance combine in this epic debut in which a young princess must reclaim her dead mother’s throne, learn to be a ruler—and defeat the Red Queen, a powerful and malevolent sorceress determined to destroy her.On her nineteenth birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa. But though she may be inexperienced and sheltered, Kelsea is not defenseless: Around her neck hangs the Tearling sapphire, a jewel of immense magical power; and accompanying her is the Queen’s Guard, a cadre of brave knights led by the enigmatic and dedicated Lazarus. Kelsea will need them all to survive a cabal of enemies who will use every weapon—from crimson-caped assassins to the darkest blood magic—to prevent her from wearing the crown.Despite her royal blood, Kelsea feels like nothing so much as an insecure girl, a child called upon to lead a people and a kingdom about which she knows almost nothing. But what she discovers in the capital will change everything, confronting her with horrors she never imagined. An act of singular daring will throw Kelsea’s kingdom into tumult, unleashing the vengeance of the tyrannical ruler of neighboring Mortmesne: the Red Queen, a sorceress possessed of the darkest magic. Now Kelsea will begin to discover whom among the servants, aristocracy, and her own guard she can trust.But the quest to save her kingdom and meet her destiny has only just begun—a wondrous journey of self-discovery and a trial by fire that will make her a legend … if she can survive.

The Martian by Andy Weir

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive — and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Allire Saenz

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun.When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy? A Michael L. Printz Award Honor book that was called “a fiendishly-plotted mind game of a novel” in The New York Times, Code Name Verity is a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Achilles, “the best of all the Greeks,” son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods’ wrath.They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Andrew “Ender” Wiggin thinks he is playing computer simulated war games; he is, in fact, engaged in something far more desperate. The result of genetic experimentation, Ender may be the military genius Earth desperately needs in a war against an alien enemy seeking to destroy all human life. The only way to find out is to throw Ender into ever harsher training, to chip away and find the diamond inside, or destroy him utterly. Ender Wiggin is six years old when it begins. He will grow up fast.But Ender is not the only result of the experiment. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings, Peter and Valentine, are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. While Peter was too uncontrollably violent, Valentine very nearly lacks the capability for violence altogether. Neither was found suitable for the military’s purpose. But they are driven by their jealousy of Ender, and by their inbred drive for power. Peter seeks to control the political process, to become a ruler. Valentine’s abilities turn more toward the subtle control of the beliefs of commoner and elite alike, through powerfully convincing essays. Hiding their youth and identities behind the anonymity of the computer networks, these two begin working together to shape the destiny of Earth-an Earth that has no future at all if their brother Ender fails.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

In this enchanting tale about the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening, two hapless city boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for reeducation during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation. As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, they find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman

Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon, Asta, live with his parents at the Trout Inn near Oxford. Across the River Thames (which Malcolm navigates often using his beloved canoe, a boat by the name of La Belle Sauvage) is the Godstow Priory where the nuns live. Malcolm learns they have a guest with them, a baby by the name of Lyra Belacqua …

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

A searing and profound Southern odyssey.In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.

Artemis by Andy Weir

Jazz Bashara is a criminal.Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you’re not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you’ve got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she’s stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.But some can never stop searching for answers.Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?An inventive debut in the tradition of World War Z and The Martian, told in interviews, journal entries, transcripts, and news articles, Sleeping Giants is a thriller fueled by a quest for truth—and a fight for control of earthshaking power.

American War by Omar El Akkad

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. Telling her story is her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during war – part of the Miraculous Generation – now an old man confronting the dark secret of his past, his family’s role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson

The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

The Leavers by Lisa Ko

One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.” But far away from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother’s disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind.Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It’s the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away–and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.This powerful debut is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee

Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men.But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy.Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

These are just some good ones that I’ve read or reread recently! Let me know if you need more, or are looking for something from a more specific genre! Chances are I can find you something good to read!

[kenbunshokus]

sic itur ad astra

gen, ichiji and sanji-centric, character study entry for @32daysofsanji; prompt: family

Humans can make out patterns out of nothing. Like discovering shapes in the cloud, or images between the stars. If you listen to static noise long enough they start to form meaningful words, even when there isn’t any.

This is the closest approximation to how Ichiji feels things.

It is almost fascinating, then, for him, to watch Sanji, who seems to feel everything with his entire being, so visceral and open and raw.

(ao3 & disclaimer)

i.

Ichiji is happy.

He is approximately 78% sure about that.

The 22% exists within that assessment because, well. Ichiji grew up with a significant number of scientists and doctors declaring that he does not have emotions—does not possess the capability to even form one—and there are only so many times you can hear about something before you start believing in it.

Ichiji supposes there is merit to that line of thought. He certainly does not feel things, in the most common definition of the word. He is familiar with the concept human feelings, the wide array of emotions that lie between the so-called Happiness to Sadness spectrum, but he never quite knows where he falls on that scale at any given point in time; he just knows that he does.

Humans can make out patterns out of nothing. Like discovering shapes in the cloud, or images in between the stars. If you listen to static noise long enough they start to form meaningful words, even when there isn’t any.

This is the closest approximation to how Ichiji feels things.

“What about Sanji?” He asks into the receiver, ignoring the buzz of celebration around him as another empire falls in the face of Germa’s might.

“He’s already here,” one of the soldiers answers through the transponder snail, and Ichiji feels a smirk tugs at the end of his lips.

There are shapes in the drifting clouds, words in the drawn-out static noise at the back of his mind.

“Oh? How fun,” he says. “I can’t wait to see him.”

“Liar,” Niji spits out, but what does he know.

The stars say Ichiji is happy, so he is.

+

ii.

“We weren’t always like this,” Reiju says, and Ichiji has heard this one before from her. “We weren’t born without emotions.”

He turns a page of the book he is currently reading, almost too quickly, the papers rustling noisily against each other. “This is me…caring.”

Reiju is undeterred. She always is. “They did this to us when we were young; younger , in your case. It’s like—“ she bites her lower lip, clearly frustrated, before settling with, “remember, when you were six, and all of us visited a village in an island in West Blue? They had this celebration where they carved faces on pumpkins?

“They had to scoop its insides,” she continues. “One of our soldiers took this knife, its blade the size of a man’s forearm, and he scooped out the insides of the pumpkin. Seeds and juices slopped out of the pumpkin, leaving it hollow and empty.”

He doesn’t say anything, and waits. Reiju shakes her head.

“That’s us,” she says, finally. “That pumpkin is us.”

Ichiji never quite likes metaphors; never sees the point of it. “What are you trying to say, Reiju?”

“Sanji is different,” she says, and he thinks, oh . This is where this conversation is going, after all. Unsurprising; their forced reunion after thirteen years of pretending the other party does not exist allows a lot of old grievances to resurface. “Sanji isn’t like us; he isn’t empty . He doesn’t deserve to be pulled back into—” she gestures at the spacious room around her, the mahogany door and the marble floor, as if there is something wrong with them. “ This .”

“It is what our father intended for him,” Ichiji says, because that is what their father said, and their father’s words are absolute. “He should be grateful that he, who was born a mistake, can finally be of use to this family.”

“Sanji was not a mistake,” Reiju fires back. “That was the whole point. Were you even listening?”

“It’s semantics,” he points out, rationally. “A mistake is a mistake is a mistake; no amount of metaphors can change that. He was intended to do one thing, and he could not achieve that. Wouldn’t that what you call a mistake?”

The fact that Reiju does not have anything to say to that is telling.

+

iii.

The scientists, among other things, taught them all chess. It is part of their war strategy lessons, a feeble attempt to make them remotely interesting to six-year-olds. It yields mixed results—Yonji never managed to understand the rules; Niji threw temper tantrums every time he lost, which happened more often than not; Reiju and Ichiji picked it up just fine.

Sanji loved it.

The first thing they learned (for chess, for war strategies, for everything ) is how to win. The key to winning, they taught him, is to understand your opponent.

Ichiji never won a single game against Sanji.

It can get frustrating, trying to understand Sanji. They are similar—they are brothers , born on the same day—but looking at Sanji is like looking into a broken mirror; his reflection all splintered up, cracking at the edges.

He asked Sanji, once. How he kept winning, when he was so terrible at their war strategy lessons. Whether he cheated.

I think, he remembers Sanji saying, meek and shy and subdued. With chess, you have to make sacrifices to win.

He knew that. Just like war tactics. The key to chess is to sacrifice everything you’ve got except your king.

Sanji shook his head at that. Sacrifices are only easy in chess. In life, if you sacrifice something, you are losing a little bit of yourself, too. There is no point in a victory if you’re a lone victor. He looked down at his hands, and said, almost to himself, You can be a king on an empty chess board, but you can’t lead a kingdom without its people.

Baffling. Downright foolish, really.

And now, years later from that day, Sanji is standing before their father once again. Ichiji has heard of his exploits in the New World, how he defeated Yonji without breaking a sweat, and yet here he is, shaking like a leaf and looks oh, so, very small.

“In the event that you insist on challenging my orders,” their father declared, holding up a picture of a chef from East Blue, “I have it on good authority that this man will meet an untimely death.”

Sanji sucks in an audible breath, all the bravado he’s been boasting gone from his posture—shoulders slumped, head hung low. Ichiji chuckles to himself at the sight. It is so obvious, now that they are older.

The key to understanding Sanji is that he is too afraid to sacrifice too many pieces on his board.

+

iv.

It is the anniversary of their mother’s death.

They hold a ceremony every year, without fail. It is a nationwide affair—flags half-mast, citizens clad in black, people looking solemn on the street. Above, dark clouds start to gather over their floating kingdom, accompanied by the ominous rumbling of thunder. Beneath their feet, waves crash against their ships, and the ground trembles.

It is the only day that their father cries.

It is the only day that their father looks weak.

Ichiji does not understand the sentiment; everything about their mother always feels distant, detached, like hearing a song he has forgotten the lyrics to, or trying to recall a dream he once had a long time ago. There is a certain kind of urgency to it, a part of his consciousness telling him listen, listen, listen , but the voice is muted, almost faded.

This is also how Ichiji sees himself nowadays. And probably has been for a long time, now that he thinks about it. He does not feel like he has the inherent ownership to his limbs, from the strands of his hair down to the soles of his feet. Distant, detached. Everything pales in comparison to his father’s will, or the objectives of today’s mission.

Sanji asked him once, when they were kids. Why are you doing this to me?

And the answer to that has always been: he does not know.

When your world is narrowed down to your father’s wish and the commands from anyone who is rich and willing to pay enough, soul-searching questions like, why are you doing this? or, how do you feel about this? tend to take a back seat. Ichiji tries not to dwell too much on those.

Maybe Reiju was right. Maybe he was not always like this. He remembers sitting at the edge of his mother’s hospital bed, laughing to a joke she was telling animatedly, and there was something swelling, underneath his ribcage, a loud lub, lub, lub ringing in his ears at the way she smiled—

Or maybe not.

It would not have changed a single thing. The chess pieces were never his to sacrifice. Their father’s words are absolute.

+

v.

“You got into a fight with Sanji again,” Reiju says as soon as she walks into his room. It is a statement, not a question. Almost accusatory.

Ichiji does not bother to look away from the window. “Yes,” he agrees. “Though ‘fight’ would be a gross exaggeration when our dear little brother could barely put up a struggle, even after all these years.”

Reiju tenses, but does not argue. When he catches her reflection on the window, her shoulders are slumped, and she looks tired.

“Why are you doing this, Ichiji?” She asks.

“He disobeyed our father’s order,” Ichiji says. “He attacked Niji over that pathetic excuse of a chef.”

“You know what I meant,” she presses. “ Why are you still doing this to Sanji?”

Ichiji tilts his head, genuinely confused. The static noise in his head refuses to churn out a single word. “We both know neither of us have the answer to that question.”

Reiju sighs, and Ichiji shares the sentiment.

If trying to understand Sanji is frustrating, trying to understand Reiju is downright exasperating . With Sanji, he knows, at least, that they are fundamentally different—Sanji is the mistake, the failure, the dud. Reiju, however, should be familiar. She should be the same as him. But instead she seems to perceive things differently; like they both have lost the same puzzle pieces, but Reiju still knows how the big picture looks like.

Lightning strikes, illuminating the room for a split second.

“Are you hurt?” Reiju asks. For a moment, he can’t see her eyes, can’t read her expression. “Or do you just want to hurt someone else?”

Drops of rain begin to fall, outside. “Yes,” he answers.

+

vi.

On the day of the wedding, there are guns pointed at their heads, close enough that Ichiji could feel the metallic chill of the barrels against his temple. Their father is crying (weak, weak, weak) and in that moment two thoughts are formed, unbidden, in Ichiji’s mind, among the static: one fact he already knows, and one fact he begins to learn.

One fact he already knows: the chess pieces were never his to sacrifice.

One fact he begins to learn: he is one of those chess pieces.

Ichiji cannot bring himself to get upset by the revelation, just like he cannot bring himself to get upset by his apparent and inevitable demise. Death is part of war, he has been taught; of life, of anything. They have erred in their judgment on Big Mom and they are paying the price. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And it’s not like Ichiji wants to die, but he does not exactly have a say in this. In the grand scheme of things, if you look at it in all the right ways, he never really had a say in anything, really.

He cannot bring himself to get upset about this, either.

(The voice, far-away and buried, tells him, listen, listen, listen— )

He suddenly thinks of Reiju’s story. He supposes he can finally understand why the empty, hollow pumpkins are smiling.

+

vii.

Sanji is standing tall on the table, looming and imposing in a way he never thought was possible for that particular brother of his. Ichiji looks up (up, up, implying that he is below, to Sanji, out of all people) and realizes that he does not understand Sanji—his actions, and his reasonings, and his everything.

After all they’ve done. After all they’ve done to him.

It’s a whirlwind of actions after that—one of the Strawhats hands him their raid suits as Big Mom’s army approaches, and it’s a flurry of swings and kicks and groans before he finds himself almost side by side with Sanji as their enemies circle them warily.

“I don’t get it,” he tells Sanji, because any time is as good as any.

Sanji clearly disagrees, because he gives Ichiji a look that is equal parts exasperated and baffled. “This is—what the fuck, this is a shitty time to talk about this.”

“You hate me,” Ichiji goes on talking, because he’s never good at listening to Sanji anyways.

“I hate you,” Sanji agrees. “You’re a scum.”

“Then why should it matter to you that I die?”

Sanji’s kick falters at that, and he misses a soldier; Ichiji punches the lucky soldier in the face to get the job done. “I don’t,” Sanji says, and he sounds like he’s struggling with his own answer. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Didn’t you say so yourself?” Ichiji points out, almost parroting Sanji’s earlier words. “I’m a scum. I deserve everything that is coming to me.” The static is getting louder in his head, and he can’t make out anything from it no matter how hard he tries. “I don’t understand why it should be a big deal to you if I die.”

“Stop saying that,” Sanji grits out. “Stop saying that you’ll die.”

There is another battalion of Big Mom’s soldiers advancing, swinging their blades towards them. Sanji does a spinning kick to bat their blades away, and they don’t talk for a moment, focusing on the enemy’s forces. It is not quiet—there are loud gunshots and louder screams on the battlefield—but Ichiji thinks there’s a certain kind of silence descending in the space between them anyways, suffocating the air.

As their enemy dwindles, it is Sanji who breaks it.

“There’s this—thing, okay. This thing, where you’ve made a lot of mistakes, and done horrible things, and I hate you for it. You don’t get a free pass on that. I fucking despise you for it,” Sanji says, voice trembling imperceptibly; it sounds a lot like he is spitting out poison, acid dripping from his tongue. He takes a moment to take a long, shuddering breath. “But there’s also this thing, this thing where other people made your mistakes for you. This one—this one isn’t on you.”

He points at Vinsmoke Judge, across the battlefield. “This one is on that bastard.”

“That’s semantics,” Ichiji says, almost an echo of his past self, because he doesn’t know anything else anymore. “A mistake is a mistake is a mistake.”

Sanji shakes his head. “A person is not a collection of their mistakes.” He glances at Straw Hat Luffy, grinning widely even in the middle of danger. Sanji must have seen something in Straw Hat, because the edges of his expression smoothen into something softer. “That is not what they taught me.”

Ichiji looks at the man before him. Strong and proud and tall, steel in his spine. He thinks of the small little brother in his memory, bruised and battered, and wonders if they are even the same person.

“Who?” He asks, almost in a whisper; the static turns into a buzz, and then a low hum.

“My captain,” Sanji says, and then adds, like an afterthought: “and my father,” and they both know he is not referring to the man who cried pitifully across the table at the wedding.

The key to understanding Sanji, he always thought, is that he is too afraid to sacrifice too many of his pawns. He holds onto them, like a little kid, stubbornly clasping his hands together so that none of the pieces would slip through his fingers.

He was wrong.

The key to understanding Sanji is that he doesn’t see people as chess pieces to sacrifice.

+

viii.

It is the day after their mother’s death.

The funeral just ended, and the children are free from their lessons for once—everyone is still grieving, too shell-shocked to continue with their daily lives. Ichiji doesn’t quite understand, but he isn’t about to question father’s decisions.

He finds Sanji at their room, crying noisily into his pillow. Ichiji ignores him, and walks towards the table at the center of the room instead. There’s an open chessboard on it, its pieces still placed in an unfinished game, stopped prematurely when they heard the news about their mother’s death.

“Do you want to play?” Ichiji asks. “I think I can beat you today.”

There’s a choked sob from Sanji’s bed. “We just," Sanji mumbles, voice muffled by the pillow covering his face. "We just came home from mom’s funeral."

Ichiji starts picking the pieces up, resetting the board. “This is me...caring.”

He expected Sanji to get angry, to start throwing those weak punches of his, but when Ichiji looks up Sanji is looking at him with an odd expression.

“Ichiji? You’re…” Sanji says, but he does not finish his sentence.

Sanji rubs his face, wiping his tears, and climbs down the bed. “Okay,” he says, and starts setting the pieces together with Ichiji. “I’ll play with you.” His tone sounds like he’s indulging Ichiji, like he’s doing this for Ichiji. It’s annoying.

When Ichiji touches his cheek, it is wet.

Ichiji scrambles to rub his eyes, erasing the pinpricks of tears that form at the edges of his eyes. It’s not like it means anything to him—he doesn’t feel things, not in the most common definition of the word. The tears won’t stop falling though, and he has to ignore the way something in his chest feels like it doesn't fit quite right, humming with a solid ache around his sternum; and he thinks how he doesn’t quite know where he falls on the scale of emotions at any given point in time, but he knows that he does. He knows that he does.

+

ix.

The sky is bright and blue and vast, and the Whole Cake Island is disappearing into the horizon.

Ichiji stands on the railings of the Straw Hat’s ship, ready to fly back towards his own. Sanji is standing not far from him; to see him off or to kick him off, he isn’t sure. Sanji does look like he’s going to do the latter sooner rather than later.

So he tilts his head towards Sanji. “What do you want me to do?”

Sanji frowns, nose scrunched up in disgust. “Why the fuck should I care?”

“It is a fair question,” he points out. “Loathe that I am to admit this… I am still indebted to you, after all. We all are.”

Sanji bites down on the cigarette between his teeth, hard. “Don’t ever show your shitty face in front of me again, then. That’s all I give a shit about. Hell, do something that isn’t hurting other people, for once.”

Straw Hat Luffy must have overheard their conversation, because he cranes his neck towards them, holding a hand on his hat to keep it from falling. A grin, quicksilver and free, flashes across his face.

“Well,” Straw Hat Luffy says, like the answer is easy, like the answer has been there all along. “What do you want to do?”

The question punches a breath out of him.

What he wants. That’s funny. Ichiji never thought about that.

Sanji must’ve sensed something from him, because he starts walking threateningly towards Ichiji. “Don’t start getting all philosophical on me, just get your ass off this ship and never come back again!”

Ichiji looks up at the sky. Listen, listen, listen.

For the first time in his life, Ichiji smiles.

[wubwubnparmaham]

I was tagged by my lovely Lexy, and fine. @avocadolouie

rules: list the first lines of your stories. see if there are any patterns. then tag 10 of your favourite authors!

Only You Can Be My Alpha:

Louis has never liked being an Omega. Ever since his first heat at the unsuspecting age of thirteen, he has been chasing ways to run from destiny.

As if it wasn’t enough to despise what he was born into, he couldn’t even be what he was correctly. He had never once submitted to an Alpha, even when confronted with their commanding and ensnaring vocal timbre—the howahkan—and ordered to comply directly in his face. Howahkan is the clinical term for that dominant, horridly loud and snappish raise in tone that is incessantly utilized to bring disobedient Omegas to their knees in shame. An unbreakable vow; inescapable order; to every Omega who hears it. Every Omega, save for himself.

Alphas couldn’t control Louis and they hated him for it, but it almost made him laugh—their hatred was nothing in comparison to the searing inferno of disappointment the Omega felt for himself. Nevertheless, the Alphas made the rules, and everything under the sun was their call. Thus, here he was; alone (abandoned) in the middle of a tiresomely overgrown forest, muttering to himself and scrounging the leafy floor for any supper he might find.

It Started With A Forest:

“Ana!” Johannah shrieked when she busted in the door of a locked closet, falling against the wall in horror.

“Take him,” Anastasia begged from the floor, holding a baby Nikita to Johannah before it was too late.

“Shit,” Norman cursed, taking in the bloodied conditions of their friends and falling to his knees in shame. “Ana, Dmitri…I’m so sorry. We didn’t know, we swear we didn’t—”

"We know,” Dmitri chuckled, cutting off with wet and red tinted cough. “To be fair, we didn’t know about you guys either. They got to us a while ago…the silver is in our bloodstream, we’re not gonna make it. We don’t blame you two for what your comrades are doing, don’t ever bear the weight of that guilt, it’s not yours to burden yourself with. Please, will you take Nikita to America?” he asked desperately, wrapping his arms around his shaking wife. “Raise him, teach him to be good, keep him safe.”

Johannah dropped all of her weapons and took Nikita, wiping her tears with her sleeve and trying to calm the wailing baby, even though the sounds of battle outside were probably traumatizing.

“Some hunters you are.”

Affairs of Royalty:

“I saw the new kid today!” Niall whisper-screamed to Louis as he flew into his seat.

Niall and Louis were the absolute best of friends that could ever potentially exist. More so than any other two beings on this planet could ever hope to be. Just the fact that they existed to each other was enough, but they’d come to find they were perfectly compatible in almost every way.

As soon as they’d started high school, they’d found each other on the first day. It was a shock to see someone of their own species in such a human-inhabited school, so they’d ran to each other and fiercely hugged until the bell rang, and then a while after that. Now fours year later, they were seniors—and the hugs hadn’t stopped.

Love Endless (The Road to Recollection):

“Faggot!” Louis heard being snarled behind him, giving him even more incentive to keep pounding his feet on the forest floor. He doesn’t even know how it came to this. One minute he was calmly riding his bike home after an undeserved late-night detention session at school; the next, he was being chased by his high school’s football team, probably on their way to guzzle beer and tip cows in Old Man Marley’s animal farm.

Was Louis gay? Yes, of course he was. How these assholes had managed to clock it was miles beyond him, though. He’d never gazed in longing at these particular brutes, he’d never had a boyfriend, nor had he taken part in any public displays of affection with members of his own gender that any bystanders could have been witness to. He didn’t have magazine cutouts of John Travolta or Shaun Cassidy taped anywhere in his locker, regardless of how much they belonged there, and he kept the neon bell-bottoms to a bare minimum.

Life was interesting for a ‘faggot’ in 1973. Little by little, the fight for fair and just equality was brewing—with minor successes here and there—but that meant the backlash was now stronger than ever before. With more blinding rays of acceptance on the rise, huge waves of hatred followed in the shadows, spewing from everyone that felt ‘threatened’ by love.

One of the best examples being right behind him, in the form of Troy; a chump of a football team captain with a bad attitude, horrendous grades, a majorly crippling alcohol problem, and buckets of introspective shame.

Love Endless (Path to Permanence):

It was amazing that not much had been able to shock Louis this far into his wild ride of a life. What he’d just heard had obliterated that barrier, but let him remind you of the past events that had paved the way to his present time.

He’d stumbled across a presumably haunted mansion after getting chased through the woods by his high school’s hate-fueled football team, and took brave shelter inside. The interior had fascinated and enamoured him, and the estate itself had served as the perfect and most interesting escape from the rain, but it hadn’t been haunted—merely occupied.

An unknown voice had shouted at him to get out—the command unspokenly laced with after-threats that Louis hadn’t wanted to stick around to hear—and he’d left as soon as he’d gathered the strength to do so. But something in him hadn’t been able to leave it behind. He’d returned the very next day to scope out that magical place of fairy-tales, regardless of it being more the villainous dark castle of such stories, and found the mystery case of a lifetime.

He routinely invaded day after day, learning more perplexing things about the invisible owner with each new room he peeked in. Such findings had directed him to the only theory that made any sense, whilst at the time, making no sense whatsoever—that the owner was immortal. And possibly the vampiric kind.

Love Endless (Trail to Transcendence):

Like your dreams. Like your happiest, most fulfilling and visceral dreams—the ones where nothing goes wrong and all the peace in the world is had with the use of a simple smile. If you're a vampire, that was a mere piece of the feelings associated with blood-drinking, and the cataclysmic gift of vitality you received upon intake. It contrasted to the dregs of immortality like yin and yang, showing you each time just how dead you really were. The revival almost never felt real; a beating heart and warm skin felt wholly apart from you in those first few moments, submerged under the unseen but coarse fabric of reality. The two existential halves you dwelled in at once—that ever-present line that cut you straight down the middle: Life and death.

Those lucky enough to have life all the time would never understand what it was like to lose it. To lose everything that ties you to nature; to time, and the species you once were. Not that Erakus regrets his turning, nor does he resent his Grandfather for bringing it upon him without warrant, but sometimes vampirism can be more of the ‘curse’ itself, rather than the cure to the age-old curse of inevitable death. There were times when immortality was one of the worst disadvantages you could possibly have.

And sun sickness is a great example of that.

Love Endless (The Bridge to Barbarity):

I’M NOT TELLING YOU !! LOLOLOL :D

ALRIGHT. Idek why I did this, lol. But I have done the thing and hereby tag @icanhazzalou because I know you have a lot and it’ll be funny to make you sift. unless you’ve already done it. in that case, this never happened.

[entergamingxp]

Doom Eternal review – the same orgiastic thrills with a creeping weight of story • Eurogamer.net

“Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie,” the original Doom’s programmer John Carmack once wrote. “It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” A connoisseur of sleaze might object that story often makes for sexier porn – after all, story tends to involve chemistry, atmosphere, suspense and all the other emotions that distinguish intimacy from the act of banging together genitals to spark a human being. Still, if we’re going to liken games to pornography, and assuming it’s the more kinetic kind of pornography you’re after, I heartily recommend Doom Eternal: a looping video compilation of oversized guns and fists plunging into squelchy orifices, spurting along at 60 frames a second.

Doom Eternal review

Developer: id Software

Publisher: Bethesda

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out March 20th on PS4, Xbox One and PC, coming later this year to Switch

2016’s accomplished reboot was already quite the debauch, its firefights punctuated by leering close-ups of skewered hellspawn, its heavy metal soundtrack always building to a crescendo. Eternal turns up the heat even further, allowing you to dash and flip your way around arenas that are newly fixated on the vertical axis. Dripping organs are wrenched out of, then stuffed back into, demon torsos; chargeable alt-fires scream for release; health orbs spatter the ramps and chokepoints like – well, you get the picture. The environments often look like the work of an adolescent H.R. Giger who’s just got into AC/DC. Aside from silvery Protoss-ish fortresses and some seriously down-at-heel office blocks, you’ll wander labyrinths of squirming flesh, using runes to unclench toothy sphincters and shearing pop-up tentacles in half with your shotgun.

Some, of course, will soberly insist that all of this is just good, honest, videogame violence – clean, upstanding fun with absolutely no over- or undertones whatsoever. And to these people I say: when I am walking down the shaft of an enormous spear, straight into the pierced belly of a reeling, gaping titan, it is difficult to argue that there isn’t some kind of metaphor in play. “Rip and tear”? More like rip and splooge.

Carmack’s porn quote (which he has since qualified a little) epitomises the view that narrative in games is always an imposition, a foreign body carried over from film and literature. It’s a view that has been roundly debunked. The thing is, though, Eternal does have a story, somewhere in amongst the parade of demon O-faces, and while that story is lightweight by Zenimax game standards, it feels hopelessly grafted on. Having thwarted Hell’s invasion of Mars, the legendary Doom Slayer must purge Earth itself of diabolical interlopers, setting out from a gothic orbital station turned customisation hub to a series of ravaged cities, factories and temples that feel on loan from Gears of War. In the process, he must also tunnel back into a startlingly eventful past, sitting through flashbacks and wrangling with old allies.

The 2016 game was a thrilling reimagining of the speed and ferocity of 90s Doom combat, but it also magnified Doom’s narrative trappings, adding in cutscenes, audio diaries, codex entries and mid-mission dialogue – a curious reversal of one of id’s key decisions with the original game, which was once planned to include a sizeable narrative component written by co-founder Tom Hall. Eternal adds yet more to the load, expanding the cast and redoubling the emphasis on lore.

The cutscenes are now a mix of first and third-person, which means the Slayer is a fully tangible human being – one you can, moreover, trick out with unlockable outfits and weapon skins – rather than a pair of enormous fists twitching beneath your aiming reticle. He feels enclosed by the fiction, rather than, as Christian Donlan put it back in the day, like a man who is also playing Doom and who shares your resentment for anything that gets in the way. There’s some effort to explain the character’s superhuman prowess, with one scientist suggesting that you represent humanity’s rage to survive, as opposed to humanity’s love of making Cacodemons pop in slow motion. The Slayer even has a voice these days, though I think he strings together maybe five words in total.

True, our man in green never looks happy with all the attention, stomping impatiently through cinematics while other parties monologue at his retreating head (if they’re lucky, that is – the fate of most speaking roles in Eternal is to be ground up like tuna). Nor are you required to listen to the audio diaries, or dip into the codex. But these elements drag on you nonetheless, like the lakes of purple goop that stop you running or jumping in certain levels. They’re a deflating reminder that you are no longer here just to indulge your baser instincts. Conversely, the developer’s guilty awareness that people don’t play Doom for the narrative means that when you do dig into the world-building, you’ll find it to be scanty and by-the-numbers: a set of tired references to ancient races, legendary battles and fallen cities.

Still, if visceral gratification is the goal, Eternal amply delivers. The combat is once again about ceaseless pivoting between attack and retreat, care of a raucous battlefield ecology which sees you ripping ammo, health and armour refills from your prey rather than just searching for medikits or finding somewhere to cool off. Stun a foe and you can execute them for a smidgeon of health. These executions double as windows of rest, with other demons easing off till you’re done rearranging your victim’s anatomy. They can also be triggered from metres away, warping you to the target without even the courtesy of a transitional animation, which means you can use them to escape or get behind a mob. Bisect demons with your trusty chainsaw, meanwhile, and you’ll be rewarded with a geyser of ammo, restocking all your weapons in one dollop. You’ll need plenty of chainsaw fuel to carve up the bigger demons, but you’ll always have enough to carve up the smaller “fodder” demons, who spawn endlessly throughout each battle till the larger demons are slain.

This hyper-aggressive resourcing style forces you to close the gap with foes who are, in any case, very good at running you down. Some, like the minion-summoning Archville, are closer to terrain hazards, but the underworld’s legions are light on snipers or artillery; pretty much everybody, from the podgy Mancubus to the serpentine Whiplash, is hell-bent on getting in your face. It sounds like chaos, and often is, but there’s a lot of science to Eternal’s combat, and solid artistry to how the key variables are conveyed from second to second. Ammo, health and armour drops are colour-coded; staggered enemies flash blue, then orange when they’re about to recover. The game’s audio is similarly readable, once you acclimatise to the roaring heavy metal soundtrack. You’ll learn to follow the progress of the battle by ear – be it the tink of a cooldown gauge, the belch of a Cacodemon that has just swallowed something explosive, teeing it up for an execution, or the nasal howl of a charging Pinky.

New variables include an ice grenade, mapped to the trigger, which lets you flash-freeze whole groups to interrupt otherwise lethal offensives. You can also light foes up with your shoulder flamethrower attachment, causing them to spit out armour parts and further motivating you to fight at close quarters when you’re hurting. The most important change-up, however, is your newfound agility. Besides availing himself of launchpads, the Slayer can now perform aerial dashes, scuttle up laddered surfaces, swing from monkey bars and use a Super Shotgun-mounted grapple line to yank himself towards or past enemies.

This encourages showboating reminiscent of anti-gravity duels in the sadly-forgotten Lawbreakers. You might grapple somebody, fling yourself past them while firing your shotgun pointblank, then double-jump to a monkey bar, hurling yourself at a stunned Pain Elemental, then drop neatly onto a launchpad while switching to your Heavy Assault Rifle so that you can carpet the arena in micro-missiles. The weapons are by and large entertaining rejigs of DOOM 2016’s offerings, with two upgradeable alternate-fires per gun that lend themselves to different tactics and different opponents. Your shotgun, for instance, can serve as either a sticky grenade launcher – useful when trying to shoot the turret off a Cyberdemon – or a buckshot-firing Gatling gun for crowd control.

Inevitably, the charm of Eternal diminishes the further you travel from these firefights. Its grander story component aside, the game is slightly over-burdened with customisation systems. Besides tracking down weapon mods in levels themselves, you’ll equip runes for perks such as slow-mo when you aim in mid-air, together with Praetor Suit upgrades such as the ability to suck in health drops from further away. There’s a knack to combining Rune perks, especially when tackling “Master” versions of levels that have more punishing enemy spawn patterns, but the role-playing systems aren’t novel, and the associated menu-diving bogs down a shooter that’s at its best in the thick of the bloodshed.

What really saps Eternal, however, is the predictable way the campaign once again breaks down into combat bowls and platforming stretches that feel like they’ve been stripped at random from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. There are collectibles to unearth, some tucked in high alcoves or behind smashable walls, together with optional hidden battle chambers, but the alternation of shoot-out then jumpy bit then shoot-out is the same throughout. Boss battles are the biggest change of tune – the final clash is a doozie, a gruelling two-phase affair in which your nemesis looms over the layout like the world’s angriest D&D player. But some of them are just annoying, a question of repeating a tactic to whittle down a health-bar. It’s revealing that the game offers you a layer of all-but-indestructible Sentinel armour after a certain number of deaths, though Eternal’s accessibility is otherwise refreshing: dropping the difficulty doesn’t cost you anything in terms of progress, and you revert to the previous difficulty once the bossfight is over.

It’s worth remembering that old school Doom wasn’t just a series of one-man massacres. It could be ominous and anxiety-inducing. It had monsters you could hear through walls, shambling about in the guts of the level, and concealed partitions that slid open without warning. It had a narrative, just about, but it didn’t try to root the weirdness of its concept or spaces in lore, and its secrets were as much about enjoying the possibilities of virtual architecture as securing a power-up. It was a world of alarming corners and optical tricks that deformed and shifted simply because it could. For all its abundance of things to find, you don’t get quite the same feeling in DOOM Eternal. At times, it feels like the levels have been designed backwards from the completion screen, with its grocery lists of optional treasures and encounters. You might argue that 3D worlds are simply less surprising on the whole in 2020 than in 1993, but that’s to ignore the work of countless DOOM modders whose creations, made using id’s original engine and tools, continue to startle and intrigue today.

The missing link in this review is multiplayer, which is offline for the moment, but which already looks like a step up from Doom 2016’s ramshackle online. It’s a strictly asymmetrical affair, with one player starring as the Slayer while the others control one of five demon breeds from the campaign. As a demon, you can summon AI-controlled hellspawn with the D-pad, so victory is presumably as much about mob strategy as dealing damage yourself. Which sounds like a pleasant way to cool off once you’ve tired of the sweaty embrace of a campaign that, for all its breaking of Carmack’s ancient maxim, has a shot at being one of the best you’ll play this year. Still, Doom Eternal leaves me undecided. The game is fundamentally the 2016 reboot again with new props, and its dogged commitment to Doom’s narrative universe is as baffling as the firefights are exhilarating. Is this really all Doom can be, nowadays – a cascade of collectables, unwanted cutscenes and the spectacle of a gurning demon face, forever?

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/doom-eternal-review-the-same-orgiastic-thrills-with-a-creeping-weight-of-story-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=doom-eternal-review-the-same-orgiastic-thrills-with-a-creeping-weight-of-story-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[psotu17]

Water Mill, NY

USDAC People’s State of the Union Story Circle

Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY

January 27, 2017

Circle # 1

Facilitator: Martha

Storytellers: Sarah, Annie, Sylvia, Bastienne, Star, Tricia, Bill, Erika

Notetaker: Jillian

FIRST ROUND

Martha: Martha shares that she runs an after-school program where a majority of the children attending are Latino, many of whom come from families who were first generation immigrants to the US. Additionally, around 90% of her staff members are Latino, about half of which are undocumented. She states that there is a lot of fear surrounding the new administration, and that she personally feels visceral terror about these changes. Martha expressed this in a conversation with one of her co-workers. After having several discussions about these feelings, the co-worker said that she has heard enough, and that Martha should just get over it. Martha was not connecting with the sentiment expressed by her co-worker until she heard an NPR special. The speaker expressed that even though there is this widespread anxiety about Trump’s election, it is in actuality the same-old-same-old. The minority groups who feel now threatened have never truly felt safe under any administration. They always felt like they were the outliers. This perspective helped her understand her co-worker better.

Sarah: Sarah has a moral dilemma because the family accountant, whom they had for several decades, voted for Trump. Sarah’s friend asked her if she was going to keep working with them. Sarah told her friend that we are all so much more than a vote. She believes in spreading tolerance and compassion.

Annie: Annie finds herself back in the Hamptons after spending 6 years on the West Coast. She has been living out East since her mid-20’s, but a few years back she had the urge to move to northern California. Living in Oakland allowed her to experience diversity within her community. Since moving back, she has noticed that the [Long Island] East End has changed so much, particularly in terms of having authentically diverse neighborhoods. She feels that the East End now serves as a destination for affluent people to come and vacation. Sarah feels like there is a great disparity between the populations in her area. They are made up of what she describes as the “haves and have-nots”.

Sylvia: Sylvia recalls a moment where she was sitting in a circle with three older women. One of the women was explaining that she grew up in the south, and was surprised that until she saw the movie ‘The Help’ she didn’t realized that the black people in her home weren’t there as guests. They had a different purpose.

Bastienne: Bastienne talks about her experience as an artist and photographer. While working abroad, she reflected upon her view of her own country. She felt like she was living in the land of possibilities but everything felt so disparate. Our country feels very unequal, and a lot of people are feeling estranged. She has the conviction and hope that we will evolve from here. Yet, how do we make our voices heard? How do we fight for our civil rights?

Star: Star decided to travel to Washington DC the day before the Inauguration to see what Republicans who voted for Trump look like. She wonders if she has been blinded by the insular culture from living in Manhattan, that she has not met many people with opposing views. On her way to Washington, she met a man in a train car, who identified himself as a British secret soldier. He was a part of a covert operation with 6 other men working for the CIA in secret. He had been pulled out of the mission because of a brain tumor and cancer in his spine. Star finds it interesting that there is a disconnect between the truth behind what the CIA is doing and what we are publicly made aware of. These soldiers operate undercover and are sworn to secrecy for their whole lives. We will never truly understand the sacrifices or struggles that they have been through.

Tricia: Tricia lives in Sag Harbor but is originally from Pittsburg [of Greek descent]. The day after the election she learned that a local Greek Orthodox Church baked cookies for the homeless. In need of an outlet, and emotional release, she went to work, volunteering to make Greek butter cookies. For four hours she folded dough with a Greek orthodox woman, who spoke very little English. They didn’t have much of a conversation, but enjoyed each other’s company and baked together. The next day the mood shifted, and people started to engage in a more political conversation. This whole process was therapeutic for Tricia. She felt that connecting with her local community, and finding solidarity with her peers, helped her cope.

Bill: Bill just got back from traveling to India and Jordan. He feels that all of the countries in Asia are more aware of what is happening in our country than we are. He is worried about the current political status of our nation, especially for his Latina relatives. He is in his seventies and he has never seen politics this extreme in his entire life. He is used to spending time in an isolated area in the Orient where everyone agrees with him. Bill went to several events around Martin Luther King Jr. Day and says that the black community also feels that the current state of affairs is way more extreme than in the past.

Shared Themes:

Tolerance and compassion for others’ opinions.

Haves and Have nots.

Real diversity.

People have been lead stray.

What is patriotism?

Making one’s voice heard.

Isolation vs belonging.

Concern for our country.

Fear.

Reflection:

We want to understand how did we get here.

Extreme—the most afraid we have ever been.

Using a simple and physical action, like baking, to meditate and medicate.

Feeding someone else is a wonderful way to relieve heightened fear.

The need to cling to something cultural, and someone that thinks like you.

The need for comfort.

What’s next for the action and vehicle for change?

How do we activate?

It’s important to still like our country.

SECOND ROUND

Sarah: Sarah was nervous about taking a trip to visit her husband’s family in Phoenix. They are conservative Republicans and she is unsure of how their interaction will be. The relatives they are visiting have a transgender son. They were not fully supportive of their daughter’s decision to transition. The doctor said, ‘you are losing your daughter, do you want to lose your son?’

Star: Star said that the happiest day she ever had was when Obama was elected President. It is hard to adjust after that feeling. During this election process, she felt that after 18 months it will all be over, but this is not necessarily the case. The influence of the media during this election has affected all of us deeply. It has become apparent that peoples’ points of view, and political stances, are affected by where they get their news from. We have all become spectators because of the media.

Erika: Erika is an interdisciplinary educator, who worked as an art teacher in Corona, Queens. During her time spent at her school, she befriended the janitor, Mary, who was originally from Oaxaca, Mexico. They would frequently speak about farming techniques, agriculture and education. Erika initially felt pretty confident in her knowledge about farming and sustainability but after many discussions with Mary, it was clear she still had a lot to learn. Erika expressed the sentiment that it feels disingenuous for her to be teaching farming to children, when Mary has used these farming techniques to provide for her family. She explains that there should be more of an awareness of cultural tradition and practice, and that we still have a lot to learn from one another.

Tricia: Tricia tells a story about how one of the first things she did when she moved to Sag Harbor was attend the Hamptons Film Festival. She decided to see the film “Legs” about the controversial public art sculpture by Larry Rivers. What she loves about film is the range of emotions and reactions that manifested as a result of the sculpture’s public installation. She finds it interesting that everyone has their own passionate feelings but we all share the same spaces.

Bill: Bill reflects upon the fact that six people in the U.S. own more wealth than half the world. We have great medicine and inventions, yet the nature of the human species is to be greedy… The government should be in charge of dividing the wealth.

Martha: Martha works in Springs, in a very diverse neighborhood.  She says that it is a joy to look at the next generation of East Hampton, with an ethnically mixed community. Yet, there is so much hostility towards other ethnic groups. She recalls a moment where she was sitting in the dentist office, and her dental hygienist was complaining that a lot of the newcomers to the community don’t speak English. Martha shares that she thinks it is great that these people are pursuing an education here. This gives the hygienist a new perspective.

Annie: Annie is worried about her elderly parents. She explains that we have all different kinds of medication to keep people alive, but not necessarily sustaining a great quality of life. How long can pills keep us alive? Additionally, the cost of assisted living is very expensive. We are all facing challenges as we age.

Connected themes

Trying to connected with others.

Living in the same village with a lot of different perspectives.

The nature of being human.

Reflection

What is the role of our political system? Does human nature create the political system?

We are a flawed species capable of great beauty and atrocities.

Thinking about the effect we have on other living things.

[myfandomrambles]

Rory Gilmore Character Analysis

Facts

raised by a single mom

basically abandoned by her father

grew up in a small town who adore her. Functionally like an extended family

huge reader

Family financially struggled when she was little

highly devoted to education

Goal oriented when she is young

Wants to be a journalist and travel

Highly obsessed with media of all kinds, a shared interest with her mother

Somewhat of a wallflower as a teen 

attended an elite preparatory school for last three years of high school

Tends to do whatever is asked of her, most common with her grandparents going against her upbringing and mothers lifestyle

deeply competitive with her main Rival in school (Paris)

Excellent in academic settings

Displays a willingness to be in unhealthy relationships with her BF’s

Believes in a strict pattern in her life and rejects changes 

Has visceral reactions to rejection, like with Mitchum

Learned to fit in well with an elite culture

Struggled in her work

Analysis:

Rory overall was a combination of natural gifts, communication issues, commitment and a girl who faced very little criticism.

Rory's relationship with her mother Lorelai is the deepest defining connection. Her taste in media and food come from her mom, as well as her struggles to form competent romantic connections. Lorelai instilled an independent identity as well as a fun-loving idea and a love of laughter. Lorelai also shaped Rory by acting as much of a friend as a parental figure, part of this was having trouble ever telling Rory “no”, or that anything she did was wrong.

Rory grew up with a very strong extended family in the form of stars hollow. Mia was a grandmother figure more than Emily when Rory was very young. Sookie acted as an aunt figure to Rory often, was at all the parties, baked the birthday cakes etc. Lane was her very close friend throughout her childhood. Lane appreciated Rory and Lorelai as an escape from her strict home life. Rory was influenced her in musical taste by lane, as well as her seeming to be Rory’s only friend around her age in stars hollow.

Luke was a large part of Rory’s life way before he dated Lorelai, often playing a fatherly role. He consistently made meals, helped with birthdays, giving presents, taking care of Rory when she was ill, fixing up the girls house, being deeply protective and attending her big events. Rory struggled with her lack of a father but seemed to really appreciate luke even going to him when she was struggling during her and her mother’s fight. 

The rest of the town: Ms Patty, Babette Dell, Morey Dell, Fran Weston, Bootsy, Gypsy, Taylor Doose, Mrs Kim, Jackson Belleville, Andrew & Kirk Gleason were all very important in Rory’s upbringing teaching her different things, keeping her in books. The town at large loved Rory as a kid and into her adulthood. They all come to birthdays and throw her a bon-voyage party. 

Being surrounded by a large extended family in the form of the town gave Rory a kind of cushioned experience with how people treat one another. Even if she wasn't intensely popular at school the town at large prop her up, told her she was wonderful and basically never told her that she was wrong. She was the darling of everyone. Rory was deserving in some senses, she was kind and helped with the town but she struggled to learn how to deal with other people realistically, expecting things to always go well and others not to take advantage of her.

This along with being naturally gifted academically made it very hard for Rory to deal with any rejection, we see this when she isn’t perfect at college and then in extreme form with Mitchum Huntzburger.

Rory’s love life was a mess, Her relationship with Dean was fine enough in the beginning but Rory overlooked the part of that that weren’t healthy. The unhealthy behaviours grew overtime instead of exceeding good parts, this ultimately leading to them having an affair and dean hurting his wife. Her relationship with Jess started off as a kind of forbidden romance against the wishes of society byt their similar inability to express their wants and needs ending up leaving both of them heartbroken. Logan and her relationship was mostly healthy in terms of 3aking each other happy and was the best communication. In slightly less oductive he was also a large part in her embracing the white collar society vs the lifestyle of stars hollow. He also enables worse impulses though doesn't nesscary enforce then.

Rory slid into higher society better than her mother ever did. She was close to her grandparents than might have been healthy they expected a better Lorelai and in many ways, that’s what they got. Rory learned the functions well, attended elite schools and dated a Huntzberger. Rory, in the beginning, so conflicts averse she did as she was told, and then adopted much of that lifestyle by choice later. This society allowed her intellect to continue to be praised as well as her looks and luck of birth. 

Rory broke down twice around not living up to her and others expectation. The second time landing her in jail and listless in her purpose. This dates back to her never being told know and perfectionist tendencies.

Inbetween the end and AYTL we see she burned out early and was fine cheating on her boyfriend (who she treats real shitty) by sleeping with an ex who was engaged. She falls back on her most destructive tendencies forgetting that even with her natural gifts she had actually done the work when she was, young.

Overall Rory is generally kind and willing to help others, her lack of communication and relationship skills were often detrimental to her. Her overstated belief in her own raw talent and tendency to deny the obvious made her professional life struggle as well.

ADHD:

RSD

hyperactivity

hyerintrsists

hyperfixating

needs a schedule to function

attempts organization but has trouble sticking to it

outbursts of emotion

rambling

impulsivity often masked my anxiety

difficulty in social settings

strugles to understand her emotions

Bolting

Anxiety:

perfectionist

easily overwhelmed

needs things done in one way

fear of expressing emotions

escapism through books

struggles to define her needs in relationships

can be a pushover especially when she is younger

over organize

easily stressed out