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mademoiselle-red · 1 year

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TC reread chapter 3, some thoughts

(Be warned: if you like Andrew, it’s best to just ignore this post and keep scrolling. I’m not a fan of this character and I don’t hold back on my opinions here)

Both Laurie and Ralph started their careers at the bottom of the army & merchant navy hierarchies despite having an “educated” accent. Another similarity and shared experience!

When Laurie asks to see his x-rays, the charge-nurse replied “I know what you are, reading your notes and getting half-baked ideas. Shakespeare says a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” This reminds me of Ralph’s story about Alec admonishing him for reading medical anatomy books. No wonder Laurie’s like: there’s nothing wrong with that 😤😤😤

“No one discussed what he had really felt; they took it out on other things.” Yep. True for like everyone in this entire book 😂

Poor Laurie, fighting the drugs because he nearly outed himself on that ship when he was drugged out of his mind, called Ralph a “dearie” and turned him down with a flirty smile 😏 (I wonder if he ever decides to call Ralph “dearie” again, perhaps while they are on holiday, lying on the deck of a little sailboat? “Yes dearie, I’m ready this time” 🤗)

Also, Laurie remembers finding Ralph’s concern for him on the ship “very flattering” and “reflected that he [Laurie] was filthy and unshaved”, and thus proposes “some other time” 😏👀 Like, Ralph is hovering over him, desperately hoping he might still make it out alive, and Laurie is lying there, casually revealing that he’s been considering the bearded man in front of his as a potential lover and decided that he can’t do it now because he hasn’t shaved yet and his leg is a mess 😅 (but also, an early hint that Laurie will be hesitant to date Ralph because he is afraid of being not good enough for Ralph 😭😭😭)

Love the water = queerness metaphor in this book. Laurie the champion swimmer, not wanting to swim because it is not allowed 😭

And after the surgery, Laurie is doped out of his mind, all inhibitions removed. The first we see this happen, he thinks about sex with the bearded captain (Ralph), the second time we hear about this, he recites queer poetry and invites a nurse to bed, and now he is rambling to Nurse Adrian about how “there was a man at school” with whom things would have been different from his failed relationship with Charles. Laurie’s horny-ness for Ralph is so sweet 🥹. And then telling her “it was all wrong the way they treated him” 😭😭😭

“Exit a quiet tidy patient […] enter, somewhere else, a young man with a lame leg and an unanswered question. Vital statistics have this new character something like fifty years’ expectation of life.” I like to imagine that with the stability of Ralph’s love, care, and companionship, Laurie will live to a ripe old age 💪

Laurie makes up a whole life story for Nurse Adrian, “bumpy tennis court […] a wire-haired terrier you couldn’t show” all based on her “schoolroom smile”. I write her as a repressed lesbian in one of my WIPs 😅😅😅

I love how Laurie gives Sandy a flirty smile out of pure boredom. He obviously delights in the expressing his queerness and in casually flirting with another man (as long as there are no social consequences for him)! Hilarious how he convinces himself later that he can live a chaste life. If Laurie had become a sailor like Ralph, he would absolutely go cruising in bars in foreign ports and pick up men with that dazzling smile of his. (Omg perhaps in an AU where it is Laurie who has an affair with Hazel and gets expelled….)

Also Laurie, just because you are masc4masc does not mean you can look down upon femme folks 😤😤😤

Poor Laurie crying under the covers after hearing Major Ferguson’s discussion with the visiting surgeon and understanding that he’ll be disabled forever: “Then he slipped down in bed […] soon he was able to blot his eyes on the sheet and come to the surface again” 😢

“You know, my father wasn’t faithful to my mother.” Thinking about Laurie’s abandonment trauma, and his tendency to abandon ppl before they can abandon him: Andrew prolly seemed like a “safe” choice because he seems to have no romantic prospects (he doesn’t even seem to have any close friends except Laurie). Meanwhile Ralph is popular in the queer community, he seems to have lots of romantic prospects, so Laurie felt like Ralph didn’t really need him for emotional & romantic fulfillment (until he read the suicide letter). After all, like Madge, he “was one of those that know what a man needs.”

Ugggghhhhh the book is so boring without Ralph 😩😩😩…..two more chapters to go….😫😫😫

“It was Nurse Adrian […] he felt at once that it was she all the time whom he had really wanted […] she had none of that awful knowingness; one could take one’s time with her, hesitate, and she would only be grateful.” She is innocent of queerness, has nice hands, fair hair, and BLUE eyes, and Laurie helps her with the washing up in the kitchen in the evening 👀. It’s a little sad how Laurie just replaces her with Andrew and abandons their budding friendship once he has found an equally innocent and Ralph-looking male version of her.

Also, I think the 1953 version of this chapter makes it more clear that Laurie feels very terrible and guilty about having killed people in the war. That is why he thinks it’ll be “embarrassing” to meet the C.O.s, whose hands are “clean” of blood. It is a crude metaphor, but both Laurie and Ralph have participated in both queerness and the killing, while Andrew has declared himself morally above acting upon queerness and killing Nazis. Although he “dirtied” his hands for a good cause, Laurie is feeling very down-beaten and guilty after Dunkirk, so it’s quite understandable that Andrew’s “clean” moral position seems quite aspirational and superior.

But I don’t find Andrew any more virtuous than the other characters in the novel. His moral “cleanliness” from standing above the violence is basically non-interference, doing nothing as people suffer. This doesn’t make him more virtuous or morally superior to those who were willing to get their hands dirty to take a stand against fascism. I think choosing pacifism when your country is under attack is really just choosing to escape into an illusion: the pacifist’s hands are clean indeed, but his boots are drenched in the blood of those who died because of his inaction.

Laurie and Andrew’s interactions are such fertile ground for finding Ralph/Laurie clues 🔎, like Andrew wearing a grey flannel shirt on the day Laurie first sees him. Ralph was also wearing grey flannel when they kissed in the study, on the last day Laurie saw him. And we later learn from the old photograph of Ralph that it was love at first with Andrew because Laurie recognized 19 year old Ralph in his appearance.

“The brush with Willis had fortified Laurie’s self-confidence.” Andrew’s social vulnerability and inexperience gives Laurie ample opportunity to provide protection and guidance. Like Ralph, he needs to be needed. He especially needs this ego-boost after losing both the war and his leg.

I know I’ve said this many times in the past, but I find it so telling that Laurie is jealous of the much older Dave for being Andrew’s mentor & father-figure, rather than any of the young Quakers, who’d make more reasonable romantic prospects for Andrew. He doesn’t want to be Andrew’s partner or equal, he wants to replace Dave as Andrew’s pederastic mentor.

In the 1953 edition I’m reading, Andrew whistles the Enchanter’s Theme from Swan Lake after Laurie mentions Tchaikovsky. The enchanter makes the protagonist mistake the black swan, the impersonator, for the white swan, his true love. Similarly here, Laurie does not realize that his sense of deja vu & love at first sight is because Andrew resembles Ralph, his true love.

The meeting with Andrew reminded me of that Twitter meme about how there are two kinds of ppl you’ll meet: those who are kind to you and those who are nice to you. Nice people are polite and considerate about all the little things, but unwilling to make any kind of personal sacrifice to help you when push comes to shove. Kind people may be a little blunt and severe when you first meet them, but genuinely care about your wellbeing and are willing to go through a lot of trouble to help you.

Laurie and Andrew are nice to each other, while Laurie and Ralph are kind to each other. Laurie will do anything for Ralph, once he knows what Ralph needs from him, but cannot ultimately bring himself to disavow his emotional truth & love for Ralph to let Andrew have his cake and eat it too. Ralph, however, is willing to sacrifice his dignity and happiness to give Laurie what he wants, while Andrew is unwilling to compromise his pride and moral dogmatism to understand and fulfill Laurie’s emotional needs.

Also, I will go into it in more detail once I get to chapter 15, but Andrew’s final letter to Laurie is rather rude and presumptuous. He thinks he can ask Laurie to disavow his love for Ralph and his own emotional truth, without offering Laurie anything in return, not even a continuation of their chaste friendship. Fuck off!

(This reminds me: I should write a fic where an older Laurie digs out Andrew’s letter from a box of his old things, reads it, and is like: “oh dear! I’m so glad he broke up with me. Saved me from so much future heartache. And now I have Ralph 🥰”)

#the charioteer

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 2: Germ Free Generation (Annual, #117-120)

Hello all you happy mutants! And welcome back to my look one of my faviorite runs of one of my faviorite super teams by one of my faviorite comic book writers!

For those of you just joining us.. it’s been a while. I did the first instalment of this retrospective back in early January as a present to my friend for christmas, as he had never read E is for Extinctoin and what with this run being vital to the current, utterly brilliant Krakoa era of X-Men. But with both Black History Month and Valentine’s day, February had no real room for this one and march ended up being just as crammed with me doing essentially the entire della arc of ducktales in one month. I didn’t mean for this retrospective to get pushed so far back, but since I gave up doing weekly coverage of Final Space I had some room on the schedule so this retrospective is back with a vengance with two entries this month and hopefully at least one a month afterword to keep it at a decent clip.

Last time I covered the background of this run and didn’t really find much for the issues after, so I won’t have to spend as much time on background.

So since i’ts been a few months, a refresher is probably in order

PREVIOUSLY, ON X-MEN: Our merry mutants enterted a marvelous new era. As Charles redidciated to the dream with new equipment and a new uniforms our hero encounter a new villian: The Mysterious Cassandra Nova, a powerful telepath who used an uwitting patsy from the trask family and a defucnt sentinel factory to slaughter the mutant nation of Genosha, killing 16 million mutants in the most horrific act of genocide against mutants ever known. And the fact there has been more than one genocide against mutant kind MIGHT, just MIGHT be the reason they blackmailed for peace with life saving drugs instead of helping willingly and freely in the current comics. Just maybe.

Cassandra was captured by the X-Men soon after but escaped and nearly got a hold of Cerebra only to be stopped thanks to a combination of former enemy, genoshan resident at the time of the genocide, and that bitch Emma Frost who snapped her neck and Charles himself who uncharacteristically shot Cassandra in the head. That night Charles took a bold step over that would change the X-Men forever and told the world on live tv:

While all of this was going on we got caught up on the team’s personal struggles, currently consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast and Wolverine with Emma joining as of the issue we’re about to cover. Beast is grappling with a secondary mutation that makes him look like Aslan, the jesus of narnia and all lions. Meanwhile Scott and Jean are grappling with their non existant sex life as Cyclops possesion by Apocalypse shortly before this story has severely rattled him and caused him to close himself off emotionally.

So that’s where we pick up. Our heroes are now no longer hiden saftely in the shadows from a world that hates and fear them but are out front and center with the world watching. And we’ll see both how that helps their cause and how it puts them directly in the cross hairs under the cut. Content Warning: This review discusses Transphobia and a scene involving a school shooting. If either of these are a trigger for you or something you do not want to read about please skip this part of the retrospective for your own well being. Thank you and have a lovely day.

The Man From Room X:

We have three stories today: an annual that introduces our final team member and the main villians of our next arc, a one off that moves the main plot for the first 12 issues along, and a three part arc about said villains. Before we get into the Annual, I have to talk about it’s weird gimmick: The issue is entirely sideways. I don’t mean it’s bad though some parts are problematic I mean when bought it’d be on it’s side and in my trade I have to flip the whole thing over on it’s side to read it. It’s just a .. weird choice. Not the weirdest thing about this issue somehow but not unexpected from Grant as they like to play with the formula.

We open in said Room X, a location in China where a mutant named Xorn is kept and showed off to a mysterious group of dickweeds in suits representing “Mr. Sublime”. His jailer, General Aao Jun,, shows him off as most bad guys would : By undoing his helmet and thus disntegrating two innocent children just by looking at them. Sublime says they have a deal.

Meanwhile also in China the X-Men are there for a funeral and Emma and Scott trade insulting questions back in forth: She mocks him about his lack of sex with Jean lately and he brings up her criminal past. As for why Emma’s still with the x-men.. it’s out of pragmatisim. WIth Genosha gone, the x-men are the saftest faction to throw in with.

As for why the X-Men are in China, Charles has rapidly expanded his operations now he’s public by setting up X-Corps, a multinational humantarian aid organization dedicated to helping mutants in need wherever they sprout up. He’s set up offices in Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Mumbai and Melborne.

He’s also half assed it, at least for the Hong Kong office and only gave them two employees: Domino, who those of you not as familiar with the comics may remember from deadpool and Risque.. who I honestly had never heard of before New X-Men and frequently forget existed. I just looked her up for the first time and she’s a minor mutant who was an associate of X-Force and Warpath’s love intrest. She could compress matter causing it to implode. My assumption here is that Morrison simply picked a minor mutant at random for the job.

But yeah naturally with only two mutants charged with, according to domino “All of asia” went horribly and the x-men are there for Risque’s funeral and to find out what happened. Unsuprisingly it’s tied into our cold open: Risque had found evidence of a mutant trafficking operation and died fighting them off and Dom is naturally f eeling in over her head since said operation involves the chinese goverment, who according to her exccute most mutants at birth and John Sublime and his cult.

We soon see a press confrence from this asshole and find out what his deal is: Sublime is the head of the U-Men, a group that belivies they are a “third species” of mutants trapped in human bodies that deserve to have the surgery to make them into mutants, and thus wear weird suits until the world is pure and allows them to have surgery for it.

Yeahhhh this.. this is really fucking uncomfortable and is going to be present throughout today’s piece so let’s just go ahead and rip that band-aid off: The U-Men come off as HIGHLY transphobic. They use terms similar to trans people call themselves trans species and are trapped inside a body they don’t belong in. It’s VERY uncomfortable to read as a result and something that hadn’t really sunk into till thsi reading but once it had.. oh god does this not age well.

The one thing that keeps this from runing the run and Grant Morrison as a whole for me.. is that I do not think for one second it was intentional. Grant themself is genderqueer, nonbinary and a cross dresser. None of this means they CAN’T be prejudice, being Queer does not magically make you immune to being prejudiced. But before this Grant had the genderqueer sentient street Danny the Street over in doom patrol and a trans main character in his book the invisibles, Lord Fanny. And given New X-Men’s biggest flaw as a whole is clumsy early 2000′s unforutnate implications such as a good chunk of the things about Cyclops affair with Emma, we’ll get to that at the right time, Angel in the next arc and Dust, who was introduced as from afganastan wearing an outfit not seen in the country and speaking a language not spoken in the country. Grant didn’t make these mistakes TWICE, it’s why I still have respect for them, and this won’t be the first or last comic i’ve forgiven for being stupid for it’s time. But I will still call Grant out when I see it. Just because I respect an author just because they changed my life does not mean I won’t call them out when they fuck up. And if they prove to be truly vile, have harmed someone or what have you I will cut them the fuck out of my life. I’ve done it with JK Rowling, Warren Ellis, Brad Jones and Joss Whedon. I would do it with Grant if I truly belivied they were transphobic and instead didn’t just write something very stupid without thinking the metaphor through 20 years ago.

So anyway back to the comic book bollocks as Wolvie and Dominio prepare for an infiltration and flirt a bunch. We also find out Jun is a mutant himself with a power only Grant could dream up: his skin, hair and what have you that falls off him turns into a naked golem for a bit before expiring. And if you hadn’t read this issue before reading this review, yes that actually happened. While the first arc had a BIT of Grant’s trademark batshit insanity, the series REALLY starts to pick it up from here: This issue has a mutant with functioning star for a head, a poorly thought out bucnh of sci fi new age organ theives, and a general whose power is “makes naked clones out of his dandruff”. Oh and his fondest wish?

I just... I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how you respond to an old man’s weird murder fetish that he tells a somehow even creepier cult leader while said cult leader is paying him to buy a star man, and their both surronded by the creepy old guy’s skin golems that weirdly look like mudokons. Look i’ve read Grant’s entire utterly bonkers run on doom patrol. I’ve seen a man who looks like a question mark use a bicycle that makes everyone high like their on LSD for president. And THIS is what breaks me.

So while.. THIS is going on, Dom and Wolverine plan to do it all night long on the professor’s credit card, no really he gives all his professors carte blanch to use school fun, and inflitrate, Dom through the elvator this horrorshow just took place in and Wolvie james bond style. Also I gotta say I REALLY love how Morrison writes Domino. She’s wittiy, entertaining and her power is as awesome as always, super luck if you didn’t know. It’s a real shame he didn’t add her to the team: She wasn’t on any other x-teams, with X-Force having been rebranded into X-Statix by this point. She would’ve been a fun addition to the cast.

Naturally wolverine is found out.. but that was the entire plan, for him to serve as a distraction then cut his way to domino while she steals something from the vault. As for the rest of the X-Men, Cyclops, Beast and Emma are all downstairs in the parking garage and find a secret entrance. Jean is not on this trip and that’s a major plot point for this run. This is where Risque died.. and it only get’s worse when Hank goes inside, finding a bug like child, basically htink a giant caterpillar but with tons of human arms inttead of legs with her wings cut off.

Thankfully as Logan and Dom escape above, the U-Men are dumb enough to storm down bellow.. and while they incapacitate beast with some launched tiny knives, designed to incapcicate but leave them in tact for harvest, Emma beats the shit out of them and get the info out as only she can....

Granted she could’ve just turned back to normal and used her telepathy.. but what fun would that be? Plus they have blockers and you know CUT UP A FUCKING CHILD. SO yeah fuck them, let emma have her fun.

Thanks to her they find out the U-Men are a front for illegal organ harvest, and while they can’t prove sublimes attached Emma suggests killing him. Good idea but Scott suggests the lighter approach and we find out what Dom stole, a key, something Emma can psychcially scan. She warns it might take her a bit to get something.. only to be flooded instantly and we find out who the man in the box was. Shen Xorn... i’ll let emma tell you more herself.

It’s stuff like this why, despite some serious flaws like the U-Men debacle and some stuff to come, some I mentioned above other that’s just with the plot that i love this run. Morrison just gets how to really tell an x-men story and the real tragedy of being a mutant. That just for being diffrent, you get shut out, or in this case thrown into a box when you could’ve and should’ve been something more. As emma turns herself to diamond to deal with the psychic backlash, Beast has some solemn words to share.

That night Scott rests in his bedroom while presumibly hearing some truly horrific and sexy things next door while talking to jean before clocking out.. only for Emma to head in in a sexy dress with champagne. What happened? Well we won’t know for sure for most of the run.

The next day the U-Men prepare to load and we get some scrap of what the idea was supposed to be: John talks to Ao Jun about his procedures. We see wings crudely sewen to his back and his throat implaants hurting “But one day I will fly”. THe IDEA is their supposed to be lunatics, people who envy mutantkind but don’t actually respect their culture or their sense of personhood. It’s not the worst idea and had Grant not used trans termnology for htis, it would’ve been a great one. I think he INTENDED for them to be coopting the idea of being trans and what not to maks their true intentions.. which is problematic due to debates like the ones on bathrooms where a lot of transphobic asshats make the bad faith argument a bunch of people are going to pretend to be trans to assault people.

We’re.. we;’re not even to the main storyarc yet.

But things soon go wrong as Xorn’s starhead starts to collapse into a black hole, with no solution as the x-men took the key to his helmet.. and assault the compound. Turns out the star collapse thing is Jun’s revenge on humanity for lockig him down here and he gets his neck snapped. Scott has a solution though.. and it’s stuff like this why I fucking love Scott Summers and get annoyed when people call him “boring”: He realizes Xorn is comitting sucicide.. so he’s going to talk him out of it. Not just for everyone else but he deserves to live. And while Emma points out only logan among htem knows chinese and she can’t get through to Xorns’ head due to the way his brain works, Scott has a simple workaround: Use the nearest chineses speaker to teach Scott chinese. So.. with that he talks to Xorn.

And that my friend is Scott Summers. A man who faced with powerful man whose given up, whose lost all hope... convinces him he can still go on. That living’s better than dying.. and that it does get better. The issue closes with Xorn basking in the sunlight for the first time in decades while Domino sweats having an extremley powerful unknown mutant out in the world. Scott’s already thought of that.. and signed him up with the x-men. Granted it won’t be until our next article that he actually fully joins the team, but w’ell get to that next time.

This issue is great... while the U-Men stuff is pretty bad and isn’t going to get better, the tale of xorn is excitiong, Aao Jun is an intresting antagonist and the sideways gimmick suprisingly works. So now we’ve finshed our apitizer let’s get on to the main course.

Danger Rooms:

We open in well.. the Danger Room with Beast training a new student.

This is Beak. Beak is my faviorite character Morrison came up with and one of my faviorite X-Characters. Beak is a bird like boy who can fly, it’s just a struggle and due to looking diffrent and not having the most impressive power has very low self esteem. It’s also part of something Morrison took a concerted effort to do: introduce more mutants with genuinely odd apperances and drawbacks. Like we saw with Ugly John last time and Aao Jun in the previous issue, Morriosn really likes adding weird mutants but he also uses it to give a genuine downside to being one. While this isn’t NEW to x-men, Morriosn upped the scale and number of characters like this with weird powers and apperances. We see a bunch of human passing ones too but the backgrounds just jammed with all sorts of unique designs and students. It’s also the point where the school became far more crowded like the movies, a good call on my part both to help those coming in from the movies, and to help sell the mutant baby boom going on. After all it wouldn’t make sense if the school was just about 5-7 students and a bunch of grown adults doing superhero stuff like usual would it.

But we get to see that Hank is a good teacher, as he reminds the boy that he’s getting better and won’t be an x-man overnight, and worries about him to the professor, wanting the boy not to slip through the cracks, figuratively, and not to feel like an outcast.. especaily here. But Hank dosen’t feel blue for long, metaphorically he was blue long before he became the lion minus the witch and the wardrobe, as he has a date to night.. and so does Charles.

Or rather he did.. his girlfriend trish, a long time love intrest of his and a reporter.. breaks up with him. Over voice mail. While in washington. And the reasons she gives are not great

Yes Hank’s transformation is radical.. but not only was it not his choice... she’s being a coward, sending the message it’s okay to dump someone because hteir a mutant or because they happen tobe diffrent and that efffects your career. Again it’s moments like this that make the run soar over the more awkward bits.

Meanwhile Logan’s off doing logan stuff, i.e. gazing at a deer. Wow. Jean followed him. Both notice a space ship: Despite recently outing himself as a mutant, leading to an increased number of students and a bunch of rioting morons at the gates, Charles has decided NOW’S a good time to take a vacation to the Shiar empire. As for why Jean’s really out here, her marriage to Scott isn’t doing so good and while Logan encourages her to stay it’s just not that simple: Her telekenisis is coming back, stronger than ever. She feels the most alive she’s been while he’s shutting her out and feeling his deadest. She tries to turn to logan for comfort but he shuts her down. Just wait two decades jean... he’ll open up to a threesome. In all seriousness though having Jean try and come onto Logan .. will backfire slightly on later storylines. But we’ll get to that eventually.

In the basement Hank is studying Cassandra or rather a virtual version of her since her body is naturally in storage. And he’s found out something disturbing: She’s Charles Genetic Twin.. oh and it gets way worse. The Professor’s weird behavior? Barely staffing the hong kong office, leaving suddenly with rioters t the gates, outing himself? About that...

Cassandra tourtures Hank with the possiblity he’s devovling and then tries to mind controlli him into cleaning himself with his diploma when Beak enters. The good news is this allows hank to shake off her control and tackle her, showing off why hank mccoy is fucking awesome in the process.

That is the Hank McCoy I know, love.. and miss dearly. The one we’ll probably never get back sadly after what others did and what Percy’s had to do to reconclie with all they did.

Unfortunately beak being around means cassandra can force him to beat beast into a coma with his bat. She plans to tear Charles dream down around him and make him watch.. and cryptically says he tried to kill her. She then cheerfully leaves Jean in charge.. and talks about just how much damage one could do with an entire interstellar empire in the wrong hands....

This issue is also excellent and sets up the next two arcs nicely while giving us a nice peak in hank’s head. Great stuff. The artist also hid the word sex in a lot of the images see if you can find them.

Germ Free Generation Issue 1:

So now we get into our main story for today. This story and the one before it were drawn by Ethan Van Sciver whose a talented artist.. but also highly contrversial for being a conservative. I myself.. don’t know what he’s said or did, though calling himself “Canceld Superstar’ on twitter really isn’t a good sign. So I really can’t comment on it but I also know someone would mention it if I didn’t bring it up and if you know what he did please enlighten me.

So we open with a school shooter who also scooped out a guys eyes and is part of the U-Men. He get shot by the swat team while making his speech> it’s an effective opening but one that’s become more uncomfortable to read with each passing day due to school shootings going up and up in number. And mass shootings in general and I... I need a second. I need something to relax me

Thank you Stoopy. Your doing Odd’s Work.

So the news reports on this and we soon see how Jean watches the news.. by using Cerebra to read the minds of every person on the planet. Neat. Everyone’s talking about them. We also get a hint for later as we hear on the suicide of one martha johanson who wrote the note in her own blood. She’ll be important later.... and I mean that both in the context of this retrospective and for the fact she’ll go on to be part of x-men in perpetuity.

This is also where another great concept of Morrison’s pops up: Mutant culture. After all mutants are a minority, they should have their own culture. It’s something Hickman’s era has taken and ran with, but it’s a damn good idea and one that it shoudln’t of taken almost 20 years for someone else to use given Decimation was undone way back around 2012 in Avengers Vs X-Men, aka that event half hte articles on the mcu around the fox sale used as either their image for the article or asked about happneing. And yes that is a pet peeve of mine: while I do think like Civil War AVX could use a movie version to make it better, I don’t think it’s an event that could be done right away and would have to be almost entirely redone anyway given the context for AvX is entirely couched in decimation i.e. something NO ONE wants in any x-adaptation.

So it turns out while watching the news in a next level way Jean is also talking to Logan. “Stay out of my personal fantasies”. Yeah I .. I don’t think your ready for a hairy canadian dry humping a transformer.. specifically killbison. And yes.. that is an actual transformer and why yes, I have been waiting to bring him up.

And he is , and I am not making any of this up, part of a group of decpticons known as the breastforce. Your life is better for knowing that and you are welcome.

Anyway as you’d imagine a genocidal old woman in her brothers’ body leaving the X-Men to fend for themselves after having a teenager bludgeon one into a coma after publicly outing them with a rabid bunch of bigoted morons at the gates has not gone great. Henry is still out and despite the short staffing Jean needs logan to stay where he is as he’s close to an emerging mutant and within range to go get her.

Emma of course has never been so fucking irate in her whole life and is plotting various forms of psychic tourture with the help of her proteges the Stepford Cucokoo, 5 teenage mutants who functoin best as a unit and are easily some of MOrrison’s most prominent additions to the x-cast. Unlike a lot of the x-kids, they’ve been featured prominently in every era of x-men after this including the current one.

Jean decides for a less “Make them hate us even more” approach, but no less pissed off, opening the gates and going out directly to chew out the assembled bigoted morons, pointing out the ones carrying “Mutants Go Home!” signs are especailly dumb as this IS her home. And while she dosen’t point this part out, it’ the same for all of them: most of the mutants are either adults who choose to live here, teenagers who along with their parents choose to live here, or in the majority teens who have no where else to go due to either being abandoned by their families or it being way to dangerous for said families for them to stay due to bigoted assholes like the ones holding mutants go home signs.

A member of the press asks if she’s willing to talk to the media and she refutes most of his bullshit allegations: He asks if their building an army, she and Scott respond they are not and are simply educating mutants and protecting them. When he counters with the fact their living weapons and wearing uniforms... she counters with the fact she’s wearing them to protect herself, rightfully, from people like her, and the x-men are an aid orginzation going where needed to protect the world and while asshole points out no one apointed them.. jean shuts him down by pointing out there are no mutants in goverment and a genocide just happened, so someone has to do the job. Another random asshole tries to pipe up with “Genosha declared war on us” and Emma senses this is just going to go round and round and round and simply presses the assembled mob’s “bliss buttons” in their brains to knock them out. Non violent but honestly warranted: A dangerous part of bigoted assholes is they’l bring up racist bullshit to try and couch it like an actual conversation. None of these complaints really hold water if you looked at the x-men’s history for more than 5 minutes. Yes Charles is training them to fight and yes hte ingial class was an army but every class since has only been trained for self defense: they still got into adventures and what not, but it was usually by their own choice or because they were thrust into them by circumstance. Xaviers is exactly what jean said and endudgling these morons, while good on paper, only makes them seem legit.

Jean retreats to the infirmary where she’s on the verge of breaking down from the sheer weight of everything. Cyclops proves that despite not being the best husband right now... he still loves his wife, offering to go look into Sublime with Emma and hoping Hank wakes up. Turns out his mind for now is a big blank room.

So she can’t get any info off his skull, and neither of the two think what happened with Beak adds up. Something is up here. Their also coming down with colds which will be important later. And just as important.. Magneto is becoming a symbol among people and merch sales with his image are on the rise. We then get this.

So Jean is trying to be a supportive, honest wife, and while the questions incredibly insulting.. his answer is equally so. Spoilers, as mentioned we do get an answer long after this.. and they did not. So Jean is wrong to be suspcious, at this point, but is at least trying to be polite about it and gave him the benifit of the doubt.. and Scott basically said he slept with her without actually saying it despite not having to. You could’ve said “no we did not have sex, we simply talked all night”. It’s not ENTIRELY better given the horrible state of their relationship right now, but it’s still better than HEAVILY implying he rocked her body to the break of dawn for no damn reason.

So we meet our next major addition to the cast Angel Salvador, an abused teen who is a mutant.. and whose abusive and molesting step dad beats her and throws her out over this. The scene’s a bit overdone, coming off like an after school special.. but it’s what happens AFTER that’s truly heartwrenching.

A poor scared teenager clutching herself, finding herself homeless alone and desperatly wishing she wasn’t what she was. It’s just a striking image and shows how well Grant uses the mutant metaphor. I could easily see myself in that position had my parents not been good peopl and had I come out far sooner as bi. The idea of desperatly hoping your not what you are simply becaus eof what hell it brings, despite all the joy it can bring too. . it’s heartbreaking to hear.

Naturally though things don’t get much better as the next morning the U-Men have found her, calling her a freak and successfully kidnapping her.. if only because while she uses acid spit to escape, she flies into a power line.

We then get Sublimes meeting with Emma and Scott and a BETTER use of teh u-men as while Grant made the horrible mistake of calling them “transpecies”, seriously what the fuck were you thinking, the way sublime frames it here is a MUCH better, much less accidently bigoted concept.

The idea isn’t bad: A group of humans jealous of the mutants powers, blatantly ignoring the horrible downsides and mountain of persecution that comes with being one. Grant just made the mistake of couching in in Trans metaphors, clearly trying to have the U-Men steal from Trans People too as a way to make themselves seem legit. And I say if you want superpowers.. fine.. wanting to be a superhero or a mutant is fine, the issue with the U-Men is their copoting a culture, trying to be part of mutantkind without having any of the drawbacks and by actively butchering them. It’s why the concept HAS shown up elsewhere; it’s not TERRIBLE, Grant just made a bad creative choice that’s only gotten worse as Transphobia has ramped up further and further.

Sublime denies it when our heroes bring up Hong Kong.. but naturally he’s simply just keeping them talking long enough to bring out his trump cards, an army of u-men and a brain in a jar he uses to incapacitate them.. and announces his plan to use the school as an organ farm for his third species.

Meanwhile Logan finds the U-Men in their truck preparing to rip angel apart.. and given he snikit’s soon after.. i’ts very clear whose REALLY about to get ripped apart.

Germ Free Generation Part 2:

Part two begins wth Sublime monologoging about how Mutantkind are just cattle to them and reveals the brain is martha’s, her sucicide having been faked and her brain currently being controlled to use as a weapon.

So while Johnny monlogues we find out what happened with Wolverine last issue he didn’t cut up the guys yet as they fired their little flichete guns at him... it was about as useful and effective as you’d expect and the massacre you were expecting occurs. Though in a nice bit of reality the fact wolverine’s soaked in blood and just killed a bunch of blood shockingly does not make the already frighttend teen feel he’s safe and she spits acid on him. Logan pours some stuff on the acid, figuring rightly a black ops murder farmacy would have something to counteract it and tells her she’s safe now .. and tells the guy behind him not to try it. He’s stupid and does anyway and likely gets a claw to the head off panel.

They go to a diner to eat and find a local asshole who threatens them with a shot gun to leave once angel uses her power to digest and goes on a rant about how he snapped his own son’s neck to prevent him being born a freak. Just.. fucking hell this arc is not good for my depression. We get some more angst from Angel and whiel her dialouge is not the best, i’ts a too bit mark millar flavored edgelordy for my taste and if I wanted that i’d go read Ultimates or Ultimate X-Me, her pain is real and Logan helps her through it.

Back at the Mansion the U-Men are on their way to strike, whlie Jean unaware continues to buckle under the weight of all the shit she’s had to deal with, feeling SOMETHING is making them weak with the colds and something worse is going on and thus tries going to Beak’s mind instead and gently helps talk him through it, showing her grace and empathy.. and in return finding out Charles was the one responsible. The alarms flair up and Jean tries calling the police now that’s an option.. but it goes exactly how you’d expect.

Also a second artist took over for this issue and the next Igor Kordey. He’s fine, but not nearly as good as Quitely or Van Sciver and it shows. Meanwhile Beast awakens and heads for the body drawer with Cassandra’s body, and professor’s mind in it.

However Jean’s finally had enough and got her second wind. She’s outgunned, outmanned and left to her own devices. And she’s fucking fed up with it. She steels herself and assembles the students. This is obviously a last resort.. but some of them can defend themselves and their going to need to. But today they won’t be learning.. they’ll be teaching and as the U-Men call them defensless Jeans simply asks “Are you sure about that?”

Germ Free Generation Part 3:

So we come to the finale of this arc. Angel is once again an ungreatful brat to logan and he opts to just leave her there if sh’es going to be like that pointing out being a mutant sucks, it’s going to keep sucking.. and she needs to deal with it instead of lashing out at him and herself over it.

We get back to the U-Men, one of whom is utterly flabergasted they want to him to cut of Cyclops head... only for Emma to awaken.. and take back her regular form meaning she has her telepathy back. The only reason they were able to get her ealier is she was in diamond mode which is stronger but lacks that, a nice way to check and ballance her new powers. She quickly takes them out and disables Martha.

Back at the school we get one of Jean’s definting moments for me and a true chance to show how badass she can be. Before this while Morrison wrote her well, and his version’s still my favoirite, she didn’t really get to do much and was motly in the background. This arc has been her time in the limelight, having trouble grappling with all the stress of running this place by herself.. and emerging from it stronger, more capable and ready to kick some racist weirdo ass. She tries a few diffrent tactics first, having a mutant with a voice power project it to make them think their san invisible army and having the cuckoos fuck with their heads but when both fail, Jean REALLY gets to show off. Thier blade ammo gets turned into a cool looking 3 dimensioinal shape with her telekneisis, and in a cool moment and a wise use of something gross makes the only one of them with useable powers throw up, before issuing a badass boast, wreathed in flames all while she crumples their guns into uselessness. and tears open their suits.

Bad ass.. and logan and Angel arrive just in time for the cecendo as hte u-men flee in terror

The Phoenix has been Reborn. Jean Grey has risen from the ashes and returned to full power.

Meanwhile Sublime is pankcing.. and it gets worse when Emma shows up, fully enraged after all of this and has some words for him.

Iconic. Emma prepares to drop him out of a building but Scott rightly tries to get her to back off, pointing out the pr nightmare it’d create and the fact that they have enough evidence ot shut him down. Martha however has other ideas and gets him to let go of his own accord, falling to his death.. but given he’d aranged a stunt for the press apparently this gives our heroes deniability and Martha her revenge.

So we end this three parter as Jean revels in her new power, and Beast returns with an announcment:

Final Thoughts for Germ Free Generation: This arc is pretty good if forgetable. The struggle of Jean to run the school herself and her rising from the ashes of her own pain at the end with the power of the phoenix at the end is fantastic, finally both giving her a chance to shine.. and a worrying sign for her friends given what her phoenix force copy whose memories she has a copy of, long story, did is awesome. The other parts are okay and ehhhhhhhhh though. Scott and Emma’s investigation into the u-men while having a really good climax, is pretty standard x-men stuff, and Wolverin’es trek with angel is just okay with Angel being highly intolerable during this arc, with Morrison trying a bit TOO hard to make her a “realistic” teen instead coming off as horribly unplesant. She’s supposed to just be lashing out but comes off obnxious as a result. That said this arc does furhter a lot of Morrisons best idea and introduce more, and is a great setup for our next arc, which we’ll get to in two weeks. Soooo

Next Time On X-Men: We find out just what the hell Cassandra Nova is, what her plans are, and what happened with her and charles as our heroes come down with a cold as the might of the shiar empire bears down on them. It’s IMperial in two weeks.

Next Time ON This BLog: Speaking of long Delayed Projects, I finally return to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as a young Scrooge starts his prospecting career, learning the ins and outs from a rich new mentor, and finding the price tag striking it rich comes with. Raid a copper hill with me tommorow.

If you liked this review, subscirbe for more, join my patreon, and if there’s a comic you’d like me to cover suggest it in the comments or outright comission a review from me via ask. See you at the next rainbow

#new x-men #grant morrison #cassandra nova #shen xorn #beast #hank mccoy #jean grey #cyclops #scott summers #wolverine #logan howlett #angel salvadore #beak #barnell bohsk #the stepford cuckoos #the u-men #john sublime #marthan johanson #ethan van sciver

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ashenpages · 3 years

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Current Fic Ideas & Emoji Voting Key

Quick disclaimer that I’m a romance writer in all aspects of the term, so most of my fics will contain mature content. Engage at your own risk, you know the rules, you’re responsible for curating your own experience of the internet, blah blah blah. This post serves as a current mock up of fic ideas I’m either actively working on or considering working on next. You can drop me an ask about any of them, or just vote via the emoji combo I’ve assigned them.

Voting lets me know you’re excited about an idea and makes it more likely I’ll actually work on it. You can vote anytime, there’re no deadlines or winner announcements, just me gauging your interest by what I see in my ask box most often.

You can also ask me about the original stuff I’m working on currently. The current WIPs are Medusa centric and the emoji for them is: 🐍

- Lupin: 🤑🤠💍 These are all oneshot ideas, between 5-15K each. If you want to vote for a specific idea, send me the emojis and the number of the idea.

Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon always play rock-paper-scissors after a big heist to decide who’ll give the group a striptease, and who will get showered with money. Based on a piece of fanart that is basically this sequence of events in a 4koma (except in their version Jigen loses and in mine, it’s Goemon). (written, just needs editing)

Zenigata cuffs Lupin four times, and Lupin steals his heart. Very NSFW conclusion. Zenigata is the most caring lover you’ll ever find. Lupin is as thirsty as usual and twice as intense. (written, just needs editing)

Jigen protects Lupin from poison darts during a treasure hunt in an Aztec temple, and Lupin nurses him back to help--forcibly, since Jigen is a horrible patient. Born from my desire to spoil Jigen and talk about what ridiculous domestic husbands these two are. (WIP)

Born from the idea that Goemon and Zenigata probably couldn’t be an item, my brain decided to come up with how I could write for them. Goemon’s teaching an ikebana class as part of his training, and Zenigata shows up as a student on forced recreational leave for his health from the ICPO. Zenigata wins the samurai’s heart through flowers. But what happens when Lupin and Jigen find out? (Only good sexy things, I promise. These beans are in a healthy polycule--be gay, do crimes)

Trans!Lupin and Trans!Jigen premise: Jigen cares for Lupin after the master thief has top surgery, since Jigen has Been There and Done That. Caring, sweet, and a little sexy. Lupin is a much better patient than Jigen.

- Sonic Vampire Novelist Coffee Shop AU: 📚☕💐

Shadow is an immortal vampire who has seen the world change for the worse too many times. These days it feels like he only lives for his coffee dates with Rouge, another immortal who loves each new era they encounter, warts and all. He has to admit that the book series she got him into speaks to him, at least. If someone in this era can understand him without meeting him, it can’t all be bad. But he hardly expected the goofy blue barista at the new coffee place to understand him the way those books do.

This is a novel length romcom romp with some big feelings about what it means to watch as things change, grow, and die. Expect lots of Big gothic feelings from this one, emotionally charged kissing, and overly-adoring sex. But also expect shenanigans from everyone in the coffee shop, which include Rouge, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, Cream, and more.

- Sonic Blazamy: 💖🌸💎

Amy Rose has been in love with Sonic for a while.

Or has she?

When the Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, and Silver are trapped as the fuel sources for Doctor Eggman’s newest evil scheme, Amy teams up with Blaze, Rouge, and Cream to save them. With Sonic out of the picture and Amy fulfilling his role, was she ever really in love with him? Or did she just want to be like him?

This is a novel length epic romance with lots of competent women and lots of romantic Blazamy content. Expect flowery hopes and dreams, badass self-actualization, and glancing hand touches that give way to cuddly and sweet sex.

- Persona 5: 🗡🍛☕

After bringing down the Metaverse twice, Ryuji didn’t think graduating high school and figuring out what to do with his life would be so hard. Akira’s back in town, and the gang’s more-or-less all in Tokyo, but everyone else seems to have a plan while Ryuji just floats. How’s he supposed to change the world when he’s not a phantom thief anymore?

This is a novel length fic that addresses how powerless one can feel being just one person in the face of all the corrupted systems and bigotry the world has to offer. It’s about holding on to what you believe in, working through the doubt, and fighting your way to a better tomorrow with the power you do have. The whole gang is queer, featured relationships being Mako x Ann, Ryuji x Akira, Futaba & Yusuke as platonic life partners. Akira is polyamorous and omnisexual, Futaba’s asexual and aromantic while Yusuke is demisexual and very romantic, Makoto’s a lesbian, Ann and Ryuji are bi, and Haru’s pansexual, demisexual, and aromantic. They’re one giant band of queer Phantom Thieves, and even if they’re not really doing the Metaverse thing anymore, they’re still gonna save the world!

Also, I’m gonna make Makoto not a cop. That super didn’t age well. Zenkichi and his boss can work on making them better/abolishing them for other better organizations.

- Hades Game: ❤️‍🔥💀

Oneshot. I just really need to elaborate on the threesome you can have with them in-game, okay? Healthy and canon poly relationships are so few and far between, so often I have to do a ton of groundwork to explain why it’s working in the fic, but NOT WITH THESE KIDS!

Get ready for Meg helping Zag and Than be better at expressing their feelings, lots of kissing, and probably pegging.

- Castlevania Animation Trevor/Sypha/Alucard: 🧛🏰🛌

Castlevania gave Alucard a threesome last season, and I just really need S4 to give me him being taken care of by his partners. They’re probably not going to give it to me, so I’ll need to do it myself. This is just an everybody loves Alucard oneshot, with the gang’s signature banter (to an extent), Sypha being sexy, and Trever being remarkably sincere. This fic is gonna feel like that Ann Hathaway picture with Trevor kissing Alucard and Sypha holding the end of Trevor’s whip while she leans her head on Alucard’s shoulder adoringly.

- Devil May Cry Nico/Lady/Trish: 💋✨😈

Nico’s gay, okay? Like really, really gay. And Lady’s bi and not into men who make her pay bills, but very into women who make amazing guns for her and demonesses with hearts who fight by her side. Trish is ace, but loves people and is pretty attached to Lady at this point. Plus it’s cute when Lady blushes and says nice things like they’re insults. I don’t have super solid ideas for them yet, and I envision these more like a polycule where Lady’s with Nico and with Trish but they’re not with each other more than seeing it as a threesome, but who knows what might happen. This is probably 1-2 oneshots depending on ideas, but might turn into a series of oneshots if people are interested (or I can’t control myself and inspiration strikes).

- Post FMA:B Blind Roy & No Alchemy Ed: 👀👑🙏

This is actually an old novel-length fic I wrote ages ago and didn’t post that didn’t turn out well because I was new to writing sex when I first wrote it. The plot is good, and is all about Roy learning to work with his blindness to reclaim his ambition of being Fuhrer and changing the system to something that actually cares for its people. He and Ed reconnect, fall into bed, and both set about working through their respective traumas about being “useless” having lost their sight/alchemy. They go to Xing as an ambassadorial party to offer Amestris’s collaboration on Al and May’s Alkahestry experiments--and uncover a plot that might threaten both kingdoms.

- Age of Calamity continuity Mipha x Revali: 🦚🐟💘

The first time Revali noticed Mipha, it was in the heat of battle. She stole his mark, taking them down with a flurry of quick blows from her spear. Violence rained from her like water--and then she healed him on her way to her next battle. No questions, no conditions, just pure kindness. The usual need to measure himself against those around him was quiet in her wake. And Revali couldn’t understand it. But how to get to know more about her? A fish and bird may fall in love, but where would they live?

This fic could be a oneshot or novel length depending on how far down the hole I fall. I need it to cover time, but it could be done in linked vignettes or with actually covering events in detail. I may elect to do a oneshot just to get it done and out of my system faster. So much fic to write, so little time.

Expect trans!Revali, polyamorous Zoras, scary competent Mipha, songbird Revali, love confessions that are made up entirely of berating Link for not loving Mipha the way she wants him to, and breaking these characters a little outside of their assigned roles in BotW and Age of Calamity. Background Link x Zelda, and Urbosa x Zelda’s Mom.

- Epic desert romance about Urbosa and Zelda’s mom: 🏜🏝⚡

I just think Urbosa should kiss women and Zelda’s mom should get more development and maybe a name or something. Also, lightning imagery/metaphors/play.

It also went way over my head that Riju wasn’t Urbosa’s daughter the first time I played BotW, so now I want to write about the Gerudo queen who refused to produce an heir. The Gerudo are fascinating and have a very interesting cutlure, but I think it could be examined from a nonbinary perspective that rejected pregnancy and wanting to find a husband. Not in like a hateful way, but in a way that examines if that’s really right for everyone. There’s that shop in town that sells Voe armor, after all. Maybe finding a husband and having children isn’t something you have to do if you don’t want to. And Urbosa really doesn’t want to.

#sonic the hedgehog #Lupin III #persona 5 #Devil May Cry #Hades Game #Castlevania #fma #Breath of the Wild #age of calamity

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risksilica5-blog · 3 years

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Early use of the expression seems to be a lot more usual in Australia/NZ and UNITED STATES than England. The earliest clear reference I've found is for 'Goody Goody Gumdrop Ice-cream' which was marketed by the Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlour shops in their early years, which was late 1940s/early 1950s in U.S.A.. Somewhere else it is recommended that Reward Goody Gumdrop Gelato first showed up in the USA in 1965. There likewise appears to be a typical use the expression for ice-cream consisting of gumdrop sweets in New Zealand. Using the reward gumdrop expression alike speech would almost certainly have pre-dated its usage as a branding tool for ice-cream.

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This is an adaptation of the earlier expression to be 'all over' something or a person definition to be obsessed or absorbed by. A similar expression to the 'affordable match' metaphor is 'around him/her like a breakout' which is flexible in terms of sex, and again likens individual interest to something certainly 'on' the sufferer, like a suit or a rash. I'm keen to find the earliest use of the 'affordable fit' expression - please tell me if you recall its use prior to 1990, or far better still can recommend a substantial renowned very early priced estimate example which could have established it. Chambers Thesaurus of Etymology differs a little with the OED in recommending that charisma replaced the earlier English spelling charism around 1875. The preference of the 1953 Much shorter OED for the words charism as well as charm recommends that prominent use charm came much behind 1875. Chambers says the Greek origin words are personal appeal and also charizesthai, from charis as well as pertaining to chairein, meaning rejoice. According to Chambers once again, the adjective charismatic appeared in English around, from the Greek charm, indicating favours given.

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Words likewise appeared early in South African English from Afrikaans - more evidence of Dutch beginnings. This table meaning of board is just how we obtained words boardroom also, and the popular very early 1900s furniture piece called a sideboard. See likewise the expression 'sweep the board', which additionally refers to the table meaning of board. Numerous recommendations have actually been mentioned in Arabic and also Scriptural writings to suggest that it was originally based on Center- and also Far-Eastern custom-mades, in which blood rituals symbolised bonds that were more powerful than household ones. ' The blood of the commitment is stronger than the water of the womb' is an explanation priced quote by some analysts.

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If anybody recognizes of any type of certain references which may support this concept and also to connect it with the Black Irish expression please inform me. This usage is more likely to be a misunderstanding and misuse of an earlier definition of the 'black Irish' expression, based upon black significance angry. for the birds - useless, unstable facts, unacceptable or trivial, implying that something is just for weaker, unintelligent or minimal individuals - American origin according to Kirkpatrick as well as Schwarz Thesaurus of Idioms. Decharne's Thesaurus of Hipster Jargon actually recommendations a quote from the Hank Janson novel Chicago Chick" 'It's insane man,' I informed him, 'Genuine insane. Strictly for the birds.'" - yet doesn't state whether this was the original usage. Maker's Dictionary of Expression as well as Myth definitely makes no mention of it which suggests it is no earlier than 20th century. The term alludes the small minds of birds, as well as expressions such as 'bird-brain', as a metaphor for individuals of limited intelligence. amateur - non-professional or un-paid, or much more lately an insulting term meaning unprofessional - the word stems from the same spelling in Old French 'amateur' significance 'enthusiast', originally meaning in English an enthusiast of a task.

Earliest use of break definition good luck was primarily U.S.A., very first videotaped in 1827 according to Partridge. boss - manager - while there are misconceptions suggesting beginnings from a particular Mr Boss, the actual derivation is from the Dutch 'baas', implying master, which was taken on into the United States language from Dutch inhabitants in the 17th century.

Incidentally Brewer also suggests that the Camel, 'ruch', became what is currently the Rook in chess. It seems that playing cards were initially called 'the Books of the Four Kings', while chess was called 'the Video game of the Four Kings'. Maker likewise mentions a reference to a specific Jacquemin Gringonneur having actually "repainted as well as guilded three packs for the King in 1392." Unassociated yet remarkably, French jargon for the horse-drawn omnibus was '4 banal' which equated after that to 'parish stove' - what a fantastic expression. Bottom likewise mentions a kick up the backside, being an additional technique of propulsion as well as ejection in such conditions. Partridge/OED suggests the luck element most likely originates from billiards, in which the initial shot breaks the initial development of the spheres and also leaves either possibility or difficulty for the challenger. This feeling is supported by the break meaning break or leisure, as in tea-break.

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resting duck - very easy target or something that is prone or defenceless to assault- an allegory from shooting field sporting activity, in which a resting or hatching duck, would certainly be an easier target than one flying in the air. Oddly there is extremely little etymological referral to the extremely typical 'sitting duck' expression. doolally - mad or crazy - initially an armed forces term from India. Soldiers at the end of their term were sent to Deodali, a town near Bombay, to wait to be delivered residence. The hot climate, aggravation and dullness triggered odd practices among the delayed soldiers, who were claimed to be dealing with 'doolally touch', which was the complete expression. In the late 1600s a domino was a hood, attached to a cape used by a priest, likewise a shroud used by a female in mourning, as well as later a domino described a cape with a mask, put on at masqueredes. This was from French, stemming initially from standard spiritual Domino references in priestly language.

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Interestingly the old Indo-European origin word for club is glembh, very similar to the origin word for golf. expat/ex-pat - individual living or working abroad - the contemporary 'expat' (as well as increasingly hyphenated 'ex-pat') expression is commonly believed to be a reducing of 'ex-patriot', yet this is not real. Around 1800 the migrant word came to be made use of as a noun to indicate an expatriated person, but still after that in the feeling of a banished individual, as opposed to one that had willingly moved abroad. The early use the expatriate word described the loss of citizenship from one's homeland, not a short-lived or relatively easy to fix situation. Making use of migrant in its contemporary interpretation seems to have actually begun around 1900, as well as was popularised by Lilian Bell's unique 'The Migrant', regarding rich Americans living in Paris, published in 1902. Purely talking for that reason, the proper type is deportee, not ex-pat.

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In 1968 the pop group 1910 Fruitgum Firm had a little UK graph success with a song called Goody Goody Gumdrops, and also there is no doubt that the expression was strongly developed in the UK, U.S.A. and Aus/NZ by the 1960s. There is some association with, as well as certainly some impact from the 'Goody Two Shoes' expression, in that the meaning is essentially buffooning or putting down a gain of some type. Golf is a Scottish word from the 1400s, at which time words gouf was also made use of. Related to these, kolfr is an old Icelandic word for a rod or blunt arrowhead. All these derive eventually from Proto-Germanic kulb, in turn from the old Indo-European word glebh. The primary point of view recommends that words golf perhaps entered Scottish language from Dutch, where comparable words were made use of specifically describing video games involving hitting a round with a club.

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dead end - dead-end road, a road shut at one end/blind alley - this extensively utilized English street indicator and also term is from the French, meaning the same, from cul and also cavity. By the way, calling someone a 'cul' in French equates to the disparaging English term 'arse', given that cul also means the bottom or behind of an individual. I am informed also that cul de cavity is regarded as a rather repulsive expression by the French when they see it on British street signs; the French use instead the term 'deadlock' by themselves dead-end street indicators. The orginal usage originates from the French créole, from Portuguese crioulo, related the Portuguese verb criar, to increase, from Latin creare, indicating produce. The name 'Socks' was instead pronounced the winner, as well as the feline properly named.

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A supposed John Walker, an outside staff of the firm Longman Clementi as well as Carbon Monoxide, of Cheapside, London, is one such individual referenced by Cassells vernacular thesaurus. scam - deceive deliberately - the hoodwink word is initial recorded in 1562 according to Chambers. It simply stems from the actual meaning and also make use of to describe covering the eyes with a hood or blindfold.

It particularly connects to individual enthusiasms and also feeling of fulfillment or fate. The fulfillment of personal objective - past academic and adult conditioning. A basis of analyzing whether you've maximized your life, when it's far too late to have an additional go. As at September 2008 Google lists 97 uses of this word on the whole web, yet most/very a lot of those seem to be typing errors inadvertently signing up with words life and also wishing, which do not count. I'm open to tips or insurance claims of first usage and also source. Occasionally you can see the birth or early advancement of a brand-new word, prior to virtually any person else, as well as definitely prior to the thesaurus. If you are reading this in 2008 or perhaps very early 2009, after that this is perhaps one of those events.

Words mews is in fact from Falconry, in which predators such as goshawks were used to capture rabbits and various other game. Falconry came to be exceptionally preferred in medieval England, and was a much-loved sporting activity of aristocracy till the 1700s. Mew was initially a verb which defined a hawk's moulting or losing plumes, from Old French muer, as well as Latin mutare, suggesting to change. Mew then came to be a name for the hawk cage, and also described the technique of keeping a hawk shut away while molting. The imperial stables, initially established in Charing Cross London in the mid-1200s, were on the site of hawks mews, which triggered the word mews to transfer to stables. lifelonging/to lifelong - something meaningful yearned for every one of your life/or the verb sense of longing for something for your whole life - a lately progressed portmanteau word.

Today's metaphorical expression as well as definition 'to trick' established in the early 17thC from the earlier use of words to indicate 'hide' in the late 16thC. Her change is qualified by her having just a single shoe when inadequate, and also being provided a pair of footwear, which marked the beginning of her brand-new discovered as well as obviously enthusiastically self-proclaimed pleasure. The expression could be from as much back as the mid-1800s, given that 'goodie/goody' has been used to describe yummy food since then, which would have lent extra relevance to the significance of the expression. Also, words gumdrop as a name for the range of chewy sugared gum desserts appears to have gotten in American English speech in around 1860, according to Chambers. Nevertheless it's more probable that prominent use of goody gumdrops began in the mid-1900s, among kids, when mass-marketing of the sweets would have increased.

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Charisma, which most likely grew from charismatic, which grew from charm, had mostly trembled its spiritual associations by the mid 1900s, and also progressed its non-religious meaning of personal magnetism by the 1960s. Even more information concerning the origins as well as interpretations of personal appeal is on the personal appeal web page. Maker's view is that playing cards were developed from an Indian video game called 'The 4 Rajahs', which follows the idea that the roots of playing cards were Eastern. In The Four Rajahs game the having fun items were the King; the General (referred to as 'fierche'); the Elephant (' phil'); the Horsemen; the Camel (' ruch'); and also the Infantry. Likewise Brewer claims that the Elephant, 'phil', was exchanged 'fol' or 'fou', indicating Knave, comparable to the 'Jack'.

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Chambers in fact contains a whole lot even more information about the variations of the diet words relating to food especially, for instance that words dietician appeared as late as 1905. It is interesting that the original Greek definition as well as derivation of the diet - training course of life - relates so strongly to the modern concept that 'we are what we eat', which diet regimen is so very closely connected to how we feel as well as behave as people. The modern-day diet regimen word currently resonates plainly with its real original definition.

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The images of a black cloak and also mask eye-holes subsequently gave the motivation for the dominoes video game to be so-called - in both languages the video game was originally called domino, not dominoes. Surprisingly, the name of the game showed up in Italy also later on, around 1830, from France, full circle to its Latin origins. So, while the lord as well as master origins exist and also no doubt aided the adoption of the name, the exact organization is to a black cloak as well as mask, as opposed to lordly supremacy or the winning objective of the game. Words came into the English language by concerning 1200, and 1450, from the Greek, via Latin, then French. The diet meaning assembly was likewise affected by Latin dies significance days, relating to journal as well as timing. cellulite treatments produced the German tag as it shows up in the words for assembly, Reichstag, Bundestag, and Landtag.

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The terms 'cookie collapsing' (pertaining to breasts as well as sexual intercourse - use your imagination), 'cookie duster', as well as 'cookie crumbs' (Bill Clinton's ruin) extend the the sex-related connotations into even more salacious region. The paradox is naturally that no-one would have been any the smarter concerning these significances had the Blue Peter monitoring not sought to shield all of us. Using words idea - as a metaphor based upon the round of thread/maze tale - referring to addressing a secret is initial taped in 1628, and also previously as clew in 1386, in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. The allusion is to the clingy as well as apparent nature of an inexpensive suit, most likely of a tacky/loud/garish/ unappetizing layout. When it comes to adulation there may also a suggestion of toadiness or sycophancy.

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grellsuke · 5 years

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do you have any good lgbt manga recs? i just finished shimanami tasogare and loved it

yes!!!

Authors:

yuhki kamatani - the author of shimanami tasogare! kamatani is x-gender (and ace!) and thoroughly incorporates lgbt characters into their works. the others aren’t like focused on the lgbt experience like how shimanami is, but they’re all wonderful and beautiful and have lgbt characters and i highly, highly rec them.

akiko morishima - a lesbian mangaka who i really like! she’s really good abt tackling the traditional stereotypes in yuri manga as well as writing stuff about older characters and frankly discussing sexuality and shit. she also has works that are not yuri manga-centric but iirc a good chunk if not all of them still have lgbt characters, so they’re worth checking out as well! (she does have a few works with some fuckshit in them tho, fair warning)

takako shimura - i don’t personally know what her sexuality is (tho shes a woman, i know this), but shimura is pretty well-known for her lgbt works. wandering son and aoi hana are probably her most famous, at least over here in the west! she also tends to incorporate lgbt themes into her works that don’t center on lgbt characters as well.

ebine yamaji - another lesbian mangaka! yamaji’s works are very... realistic, usually about lesbian working through things. there’s a lot of trauma and a lot of sadness in her works, as well as sexual content, and i really love her art. i haven’t read ALL of her works, but what i have, i’m enamored with. they’re sad but rarely TRAGIC.

hiyori otsu - i don’t actually know otsu’s sexuality, but she’s a shoujo ai/yuri mangaka who writes a lot of genuinely sweet stuff. her works tend to very much be on the softer side of things, even if they can be bittersweet, and i’ve really enjoyed all i’ve read by her. it’s nice to just, be able to read a simple and nice lesbian manga without any major angst or tragedy or even sexual content sometimes, you know?

Autobiographies:

honey x honey by sachiko takeuchi - a slice of life little manga about the author and her girlfriend! it is abt a decade old, which you can see some of, but it’s a really cute peek into their lives and japanese lgbt culture. there ARE sequel(s?), but i unfortunately haven’t managed to find any english translations for them. if you do, let me know!

my lesbian experience with loneliness by kabi nagata - i own this manga! i keep it squirreled away in the bottom of my desk and pull it out every few weeks or so because it’s deeply, deeply relatable to me. the first time i read this manga i sat down and cried because i felt it deep in my soul. absolutely rec!!! there’s also a sequel, my solo exchange diary.

the bride was a boy by chii - a cute little manga about a trans woman named chii, recounting her early years up to her current life, her transition and how she met her husband (+ abt their relationship). it’s super cute and sweet, and very informative!! an absolute rec!!

i was born the wrong sex! by mayufu konishi - i haven’t quite finished this one yet, but this is a highly informative manga about a trans woman heading to thailand for her surgery! it’s extremely extremely informative about every single step of the process, and the author is an absolute delight, so it’s one i’d absolutely rec.

our journey to lesbian motherhood by emiko sugiyama/koyuki higashi/hiroko masuhara - have you heard of the lesbians that got married in disneyland tokyo? this is them!!! this is their autobiographical story of, well, their journey to lesbian motherhood! it’s very good, i definitely enjoyed it - it IS a sequel to another manga by them, but i sadly couldn’t find an english translation anywhere… it’s completely understandable without having read it, though!!

fictional manga:

my brother’s husband by gengoroh tagame - this is one i haven’t read myself, but is pretty damn high up on my ‘next to read’ list. the author is a prominent gay bara author - this is his first dabbling into more family-friendly series. he’s also recently started another family-friendly one called our colors that may be worth looking into as well!

whispered words by takashi ikeda - it’s been a good long while since i’ve read this, but i really enjoyed this when i was younger! (has it already been almost 8 years since it ended?? i feel old) it’s about two lesbians who are best friends - one of which is secretly in love with the other. unfortunately, she’s very much not her friend’s type. :( i vaguely remember some kind of weird crossdressing shenanigans with one character, tho, so tread lightly with that.

koimonogatari by tohru tagura - if you liked shimanami, this is also probably right up your alley! it’s a very realistic manga about a boy finding out that one of his classmates is closeted and gay - and he promptly decides to tell no one because he’s not an asshole, which leads to him being one of this boy’s main confidants. it realistically deals with the homophobia that gay people face, as well as the main character’s slow realization that he’s not necessarily straight, either (or at least, that’s my hypothesis - it’s still ongoing!!). i really enjoyed it.

lonely wolf, lonely sheep by fuka mizutani - two women with the same name, same birth month, and same injury end up meeting by complete coincidence at the hospital. i genuinely adore this manga and all it is. despite it only being one volume long, it deals with heavier topics such as depression, self harm, homophobia, and iirc even suicide. it’s really, really good though and i wish all the best for them.

kono koi ni mirai wa nai by morihashi bingo - i recommend this one tentatively, as the last two chapters are not yet translated (as of 1/11/19), but i enjoyed what was there. despite the label as BL on many sites, this story is actually about a trans woman (tho there is also a gay man in the manga!). the note left off on the most recent chapter, chapter 10, was a very uplifting note that she is not alone and that how she feels is completely, utterly normal, and i have hope for the last two chapters! the art’s really pretty, too, and the metaphors. but again - who knows what could go down in the last two chaps. fingers crossed!

i hear the sunspot by yuki fumino - PLEASE read this one. this manga is about two college-aged young men who end up meeting when one LITERALLY stumbles across the other. kouhei, one of the boys, is hard of hearing - and the other boy, taichi, starts taking notes for him in class in exchange for lunch, and thus begins a friendship that will blossom into romance! it absolutely gets in depth on the hoh/Deaf community in Japan, and is definitely informative - and the guys are just genuinely so sweet (as well as the other characters!!!) and I wish them all the happiness. it’s STILL ONGOING so like, warning on that, but i’m really enjoying it so far. i think there’s also a movie based off it!

cirque arachne by nika saida - this one has some sexual elements to it, so fair warning on that, but i really enjoyed it! it’s a single volume manga about two acrobats that fall in love. the art was cute and i genuinely liked the characters, quite a lot. would definitely rec.

yuureitou by tarou nogizaka - i have not actually read this manga, but it’s another that’s amazingly high up on my to read list. it’s a supernatural horror manga, and the main couple is a trans man and a cis man! i’ve heard good things about it - from people i know personally, as well as just in general - and it’s one i can’t wait to check out.

ohana holoholo by shino tarino - i FEEL like this one is completed, but if it is, the translation isn’t done. either way, i did love what i read from this! ohana holoholo is about a bi woman raising her son along with her ex-girlfriend and their neighbor, nico. it’s really good, one that i HIGHLY recommend, and one of the woman is implied to be trans, too! (fingers crossed they explicitly state it please please please-) overall, i absolutely rec it, please check this out!

no. 6 by atsuko asano/hinoki kino - who HASN’T heard of no. 6? no. 6 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the government is, well, the government. it involves two young men working to take it down alongside others and they fall in love. and one of the other characters is non-binary! ...honestly that’s probably the best i can describe no. 6 because WOW is it a wild trip. it’s a wild trip that i highly, highly recommend though! you want gays taking down the government alongside killer bees and a magical bug goddess? this is the manga for you. please read it.

asagao to kase san by hiromi takashima & bloom into you by nio nakatani - two shoujo ai manga centering around high schoolers that i haven’t actually read yet, both of which recently got animated adaptations!!! i have heard genuinely fantastic things about both of them (ESPECIALLY) the latter, and bloom into you is actually next on my reading list. they absolutely sound fantastic and i can’t wait to read them!!

seven days by rihito takarai/venio tachibana - a two-volume manga about two high school boys. every week, a boy named seryou goes out with a different girl - he treats them very well, showers them in attention, and then promptly breaks up with them at the end of the week because he didn’t fall in love with them. out of curiosity, his upperclassman, shino, asks him out one week - and thus begins their seven day romance. i really loved this, i really really did.

tamen de gushi by tan jiu - it’s an on-going webcomic about how two girls, qui tong and sun jing, meet and fall in love. the characters are all absurdly fantastic, from the two girls to all of the supporting characters around them, and it’s an absolute TREAT to read. i would highly rec it, there’s some lovely shenanigans in there.

last but not least, i highly rec manga written by the year 24 group. this group was a non-formal group of female mangaka in the 1970s that really revolutionized and influenced the shoujo manga genre. many of their works are considered classics today, with works such as kaze to ki no uta, claudine...!, the heart of thomas, and shiroi heya no futari among them. a lot of their works really dug in and examined sexuality and gender, and you can find some of the original shounen ai, shoujo ai, and trans manga among them. i’m a sucker for the classics, and i highly recommend them. i honestly could have listed every single of one these mangaka in my recommend authors list, but decided it was just easier to promote the group as a whole. the best for last, you know?

hope this helps, anon!

#Anonymous #long post #lgbt manga #manga recs #lgbt anime #fucking long post im sorry you probably didn't expect this essay

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adamwatchesmovies · 4 years

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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

It’s been a long nine years waiting for the follow-up to Sin City, but if you’ve been anxiously waiting, you’ll be happy with this sequel. Nearly everyone returns for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, with the only notable exceptions being Michael Clarke Duncan, who died in 2012 and Devon Aoki whose character is now portrayed Jamie Chung. It’s got the same tone, feel and eye-popping style. Who cares when it was released?

In Basin "Sin" City, men are either noble but flawed heroes with a mean streak and prone to love at first sight, or vile beyond all words. The women beautiful beyond belief, but either deceptively dangerous or victims. Nearly everyone carries a gun, few can be trusted and once set upon a path of vengeance, few turn away.

This anthology film is shot in stylish black-and-white with a few color accents. The violence and sex are over-the-top. Most characters speak in tough-guy monologues. It’s film noir cranked to the max.

In Just Another Saturday Night, Marv (Mickey Rourke) turns the table on some rich punks who set homeless people ablaze for fun.

Frank Miller must've kicked himself hard for killing off Marv in his “origin” story (seen in Sin City) as he's frequently spotted in prequel stories (his own, or others'). This short tale further establishes his “condition”, develops the personality of Sin City (the actual city, not the movie) but mostly serves to display some frat boys getting eviscerated. A nice intro, though it’s noticeable that a number of years have elapsed since the first film. Mickey Rourke's aged quite a bit.

The second story is an original one, featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a gambler who can’t lose... until he wins against the most powerful man in the state, Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) that is. For his victory, Roark makes him pay but this simply sets the gambler to settle a score.

Of the two new stories featured in Sin City 2, this is the better one. Instead of yet another protagonist falling in love with a beautiful dame, or a grizzled veteran going to war, we’ve got something new. It’s about a different kind of revenge, a metaphorical and monetary victory. Joseph Gordon-Levitt provides a fresh face that feels right at home in this world. It’s a close call, but I’d say it’s the second-best story.

In A Dame To Kill For Dwight from The Big Fat Kill is shown pre-extensive facial surgery (portrayed then by Clive Owen, now by Josh Brolin). It begins with him reconnecting with his old flame, Ava Lord (Eva Green). She’s bad for his health, but he can’t resist. She lets slip that she’s a prisoner of her new husband via his brutal enforcer, the hulking Manute (Dennis Haysbert).

The film's high point, it’s all kinds of gratuitous, but no one will complain about Eva Green's character, who seems more comfortable naked than clothed. If the series' exaggerated tone hasn't been made clear yet, this will do it as it's packed with sex and violence. This story contains plenty of fun twists, action and manages to remain unpredictable despite being a prequel.

The final story is a follow up to That Yellow Bastard. With Hartigan (Bruce Willis) dead, Nancy (Jessica Alba) is unsure how to proceed. The Roark's son is dead, but his father is still out there. After failing to take him down on her own, she asks Marv for assistance.

This is the weakest of the stories, which is unfortunate. It's neat to get a sequel to the first film, as opposed to another prequel or parallel story but Nancy's not much of a character. It’s just ok for the most part and then recuperates some points right at the end, which is absolutely terrific. Unfortunately, It still doesn’t quite finish with the punch you’d like.

Because of the last story, this stylish follow-up by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller doesn’t rise up to the same level as the original. Does this make it bad? no. The casting is once again excellent, the stories interesting and the visual style feels just as fresh as it did the first time (even with the abysmal Frank Miller-directed The Spirit basically ripping off this series' tricks). The 3-D is actually quite good as well, particularly during the action scenes and opening credits, which are very cool. If you’ve been waiting impatiently to see A Dame to Kill For, it satisfies. (3-D Theatrical version on the big screen, September 9, 2014)

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ettadunham · 5 years

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A Buffy rewatch 5x10 Into the Woods

aka Team Buffy all the way

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And today’s episode does a fantastic job with its characters, and portraying conflicts in a way that’s understandable from all perspectives… But I’m still with my girl, Buffy on this one. Stop putting your issues on her.

You know, I always say that I’ll be quick and short with these posts, and then I end up trying to organize my thoughts about Buffy’s depression over two hours anyway… This time though, I really do got a time schedule, so if this post ends on a half-thought, just know that I’m probably running to catch my train for my vacation trip as you’re reading this.

So let’s talk the episode. I was actually sort of reminded of Dead Man’s Party with this one, as the poster child of blaming Buffy for dealing with her trauma by distancing herself. However, Into the Woods is a much needed improvement on that scenario, as Buffy’s rebuttals on Riley’s ultimatum are given the necessary weight, and she gets to go off and express her feelings about him putting the blame on her for his actions.

(Both episodes have also been written by Marti Noxon - you can always count on her for your ugly self-reflective arguments and dramas.)

When she tells Riley that this is all she can give to him, this is the whole package, and if that’s not enough for him, then that’s not on her and they got some serious problems… I felt that. Especially as this is a period in Buffy’s life where her depression is starting to affect her life more and more. There’s quite a large part of me that just wanted to give a big old fuck you to Riley right there and move on.

And yet I also get what Xander was trying to say when he convinced Buffy to try and give it another shot. Sure, we can talk about all the textual ways in which Xander relates to Riley, and what this scene might mean from that angle… But whatever else is going on there, Xander’s speech comes from a genuine love for Buffy. He wants her to be happy and not to make a decision she might later regret.

Because as much as Riley’s ultimatum is bullshit, as much as it’s not on Buffy to make that decision for him… Sometimes, we have to compromise for the people we love, and let go of our egos. We can’t always wait for the other to take the first step to mend our conflict.

The problem is that Buffy is especially wary about those compromises after Angel. To recap, season 2 and season 3 was basically one big lesson for her about not losing herself in another relationship. So yeah, it’s no wonder that Riley feels a distance from her.

But this is who Buffy is now. Someone who learned to rely on herself, to not make one person the center of her universe. Someone who is going to be struggling with depression for the rest of the series. I don’t think that she could be who Riley wants right now, and I kinda hate that we are making her feel bad about that.

Especially since Riley’s problems go well beyond Buffy. He made Buffy the center of his universe, because he’s lost his previous purpose in life with the Initiative, and he can’t handle that he is not Buffy’s whole world in return. There is some commentary here about ex-military and veterans too, who decide to go back to war because they can’t find their place back in society… But I do feel like most of that gets lost with all the relationship stuff.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing; this is some meaty relationship drama after all. But there was some potential for other angles too for sure.

Speaking of emotions, I’ll also be the first to admit, that the ending with Xander’s speech to Anya, and then Buffy walking home got to me. It’s a great speech, so much so, I don’t even take issue with the “you make me feel like a man” part. This is Buffy the show after all, and for Xander, being comfortable in his own type of masculinity is kind of a biggie. It also makes a nice full circle with the last scene in The Replacement between Xander and Riley.

Earlier in the episode, Buffy accuses Xander of treating Anya the same way she does Riley, but Xander is actually ready to take those first steps towards Anya. Both Xander and Anya are willing to compromise for each other, and that’s what makes their relationship work at this point in time.

Meanwhile, as far as Riley goes… He’s been a character that I always wanted to like. He gets a lot of flack just for being a love interest opposing other more popular ships, and that makes me automatically want to go into protective mode over him… But the truth is, much like all of Buffy’s love interests, he’s terrible in his own unique way.

He’s always been insecure about his masculinity with Buffy, and he never really got over that. There’s a whole lot of casual sexism and entitlement that comes with his package too, and worse, he rarely seems to be self-aware enough of those. I just also feel like he’s not in the right mindset right now to be in an adult relationship, and I wish that he expressed that more to Buffy, instead of putting her in the impossible position of making his life choices for him.

And while there’s a lot I was able to sympathize with in this episode, that whole shtick about Buffy “needing some monster in her men”? Give me a fucking break. It puts Riley into this Nice Guy light, and portrays Buffy as a Bad Boy magnet, and you know what, fuck that. There are plenty of reasons why this relationship is falling apart, and Riley not being “enough of a monster” or whatever the fuck he and Spike were going on, is not one of them.

I liked seeing a bit of a darker side to Buffy here though. Good old Marti knows how to bring out the ugly in the characters you love, and Buffy burning down the house, and then killing the girl that was feeding on Riley as she was running away… That was some quality repressed rage.

(Just don’t think about the sex work metaphor with those vampires…)

Oh yeah and the first 10 or so minutes with Buffy’s mom’s surgery? Once again, all the feelings. Buffy and Joyce’s wig talk was a delight as well.

We’ve also got a bit of an intro to the next episode, with Anya calling out Willow for mocking her weirdness. So that one should be fun.

See y’all in a week or so.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

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werevulvi · 5 years

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I hate my chest... situation. I know I fucked up my ribs real bad from my 5 years of binding (and I used sports bras additionally under the binder, literally just to have a barrier with softer fabric against my boobs, I didn't think anything of it) but it was alright, for the most part, for the next 4 years after my top surgery when I didn't bind anymore. I'd only occasionally get random chest pains and random moments of not being able to take deep breaths, but it was just a few times per year and didn't bother me much. But now since detransitioning, I've been wearing bras again. And god damn... for these past 11 months that I've been doing so, my chest situation has increasingly worsened by the day.

I know I've been mentally resisting trying to get over my top surgery regret cause I just really, really badly wish I had boobs again. What kind of cruel fate is this?! Hating my boobs from the start of puberty, then trying everything I could to be fine with them, then sexually assaulted by my fucking boyfriend so to the point I wanted to rip them off my chest and swore to never let anyone touch them again... and kept that promise. Then bound them for 5 years as I despised them, then I finally got top surgery that I had been waiting for and anticipating... only to regret it at 9 days post-op when I first saw it. Then stuffing that regret away for 4 years until I detransitioned last year, when I released those feelings.

I cried my fucking heart out for months in a grief so heavy I've never felt before. And now realising I can't wear my breast forms most of the time. I need to wear them less and less...

Especially sports bras and underwire bras are the worst. But I tried buying an extra soft mastectomy bra that's said to even be fine to sleep in but even that one is hurting really bad. Getting implants might not put too much strain on my chest in and of themselves, but I really wanna get back to karate again. And I'd have to wear a sports bra for that if I'd have boobs again, but I can't if it restricts my breathing like this. So this is where I'm at now, if I'm gonna have to choose between boobs and karate... I can't let my dysphoria kill my dreams. Not any more.

Now this sure is a tight fucking spot to be in with no damn wiggle room in either direction. I have to try to overcome my chest dysphoria and top surgery regret, cause there's just no way around it. I can't ignore my physical health for the sake of my mental health anymore. Cause if I do, it'll just backfire on me eventually. I can exercise just fine without anything constricting my chest, like just wearing regular loose clothing, but that means I can't have boobs then. Why... why should I have to choose between boobs and my dreams? Don't even get me started on how "unfair" it is, I don't care. It's cruel, that's what it is. It's simply cruel. I begged to all the damn gods and godesses any which where to please not make me choose between those two. I guess they didn't care. I wish I hadn't dug up that regret last summer. I wish I hadn't let myself grieve. Cause at least it was bearable when I could pretend that I was fine with my chest being flat, during those 4 years between 2014 and 2018. Oh, what a waste. All of it.

This will be hard to get through, as if it wasn't already. Cause I never once liked it being flat, I'll surely struggle to find ways to live with it. But I do think it's possible. Oh come on, I've gotten this far, I believe pretty much anything is possible at this point. But I also believe I'll need to go through a living hell to get through it. And knowing I'll actually willingly open that door to yet another hell and force my way through it... you don't fuck with that kind of willpower. So I know I can do it, it's not that. I just... really hate this situation. I've already been wearing my boobs less often, and even been outside without them twice this past week. I know I can do it again. And again. Although I don't wanna face my mom pressuring me about my "gender identity crisis" if/when she sees me dressed up but without boobs (likely for driving me somewhere). None of of her damn business! Out of all the people picking at my looks, strangers included, her comments are the worst. So what if she doesn't think it's socially acceptable or whatever for women to be hairy, have deep voices or flat chests, so fucking what?! She gave birth to me and changed my diapers as a baby, she if anyone knows I'm female. I wanna tell her to just fuck off about my looks, body and style, but instead I just keep resorting to trying to explain and only failing better each time. How can a gnc woman keep ragging on her gnc daughter for not being gnc in the "right" or exact same way? I don't understand!

If she had grown up in my generation she probably would have transitioned too and then ended up asking herself what was the point of it all, like I did. Or at least that's not at all unlikely. So how the hell can she rag on me for not wanting to mutilate my own body even further, but in a feminising direction instead? That's the part I can't understand. Isn't coming to terms with BOTH my female biology AND the changes I made to its exterior the best possible route I could take? But I think she's in denial about how she herself stands out with her own gnc looks, cause me standing out in a crowd really seems to be the torn in her side.

I don't even understand where her views are coming from, if it's closer to radfem or old school conservative views of gender but with a liberal "do as you wish" leaning. Not knowing her perspective on what she even thinks makes me a woman or a man or whatever she even sees me as, makes it kinda hard to explain my perspective on it. But it's possible that her reluctance to accept my way of being gnc could be her thinking I in some sense "became" a man through my transition, and that I won't "qualify" as a woman again in her eyes unless I'll start looking like one again. If so, she can take that stick and just jam it in a little farther. Cause that's bullshit, and I would not be afraid to straight up tell her that. But I do not know if that's what her stick is about.

I know I'll look at those cute feminine tops and dresses in my wardrobes that require boobs to look good cause of how they're sewn, with a sinking feeling in my chest of how can I ever wear this again? I'm a femme by heart, fuck knows no damn clothes fit my broken body anymore! Nothing is designed to fit a flat chest and wide hips. Literally nothing. And I look dumb. My chest doesn't match my curvy ass, and I hate that. It looks so bad. Like I've got a male upper body and a female lower body. But I don't wanna cut up my ass to match my chest, that would be even dumber, and I like my ass. I feel like a table with unevenly long legs whobbling around, but I've come to a point where I've realised I can't just keep cutting its legs so now it just has to be uneven like that. And now I can't even put a book underneath the shortest leg to keep it steady anymore, cause that's the metaphor for my fake boobs. Anyone else feel like a whobbly table which's legs has been cut too many times to irrevokable unevenness, or is that just me? Well, tight tank tops with some cute lace details or pattern fit my upper body quite nicely even with just the flatness underneath, and I can always wear any skirts cause they're really "one shape fits all" and I love that about how easy it is to wear skirts. Tied blouses are neat too (unless I tie too hard), and open tunics. Most cardigans and feminine jackets work as well. Stretchy bolero's will fem up any outfit. Jewellery and makeup will too, of course.

And the bonus: if me not having boobs will somehow make me less likely to be perceived to be a trans woman, I'll fucking cheer halleluja. Cause sometimes I'd just rather be perceived as a regular gnc dude cause at least then people don't tend to think I'm an oversensitive TRA ready to dislodge their heads from their shoulders if they'd accidentally misgender me or say something "offensive." Male is male regardless of how you twist and turn it and how it identifies. To be seen as a fake woman is no fucking better than be seen as a straight up man in a flamboyant style. They're both just as damn incorrect when applied to me, but people do tend to have a better attitude when they think I'm just a straight up man in a dress. So if I have to choose, that's the better of those two options, seriously. But it's a damn difficult decision to put my boobs away for good. It feels like I'm living the twisted nightmare version of my childhood dream. I wanted to be a feminine man so badly. Now this detrans femme lesbian who can't pass as female anymore reality freak show, feels like some kind of twisted nightmarish version of that childhood wish. Oh I always knew that sex dysphoria sucked... but I never could have imagined back then, that it could suck quite this bad. I'll never get away from it, never entirely. Cause no matter what I'll always have to live with the consequences of my transition.

Now this is no joking matter, I know that, but I can't stop laughing at this truly miserable outcome. Cause I know I can't truly grasp it. It's bewildering.

#me venting #ok to rb #detransition #letting out my emotional frustrations #top surgery regret #detrans woman #chest dysphoria #damaged ribs #breast reconstruction #difficult decisions

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lightsandlostbells · 5 years

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Druck season 2, episode 3 reaction

Manfred-Wolfgang is gonna haunt my dreams, I’ll never see a tractor the same way again.

Episode 3

Clip 1 - Road trip!

The girls are loading up the car for their trip, and of course Kiki rolls up with a large suitcase rather than the overnight bag or whatever that everyone else has.

We have this exchange where Kiki’s like, “Unlike Amira and Sam, I need all these hair supplies.” Kiki, what the hell? You can chalk it up to ignorance on her part (and I mean, it is ignorance) but she does come out with such racist remarks. I did say I liked Kiki a few episodes ago, and that it wasn’t because I thought she was a great person, but because she felt like a real person, and I want to stress that idea is solidly in effect here, lmao. Because I do think she feels like someone you could plausibly meet in real life, so as a realistic character she works - but when she says stuff like this, it’s whether you would want to meet her.

I think Kiki comes across a lot harsher or more mean-spirited than Vilde because the actress plays her as more assured, less naive in the crap she’s saying. Vilde could say some very ignorant things, but Ulrikke played her as more sheltered and unsure. Sometimes she did come off as more confused rather than judgmental about issues related to Islam. Which is not to let Vilde off the hook, or Kiki either, just why Kiki strikes a lot of people as worse.

Amira asks Kiki whether she thinks she doesn’t groom her hair because she wears hijab. Sam chimes in talking about how expensive her hair care is. I’m glad that they had them respond to Kiki’s comment - her remark was probably there in the first place as an educational moment for the audience. I do think Druck could stand to let their messages affect Kiki more, show her reconsidering or taking it all in, so we see she’s actually learning. Like we don’t see Kiki really reacting to Amira and Sam’s responses, so for all we know they just flew right over her head.

Mia points out that they’re going to a cabin, no one’s going to see them. Kiki says Hanna and Mia don’t get a say in this - I guess because she thinks they have great hair? I get why Sam would say this about Hanna and Mia (which she does) because they have “acceptable” white girl hair and don’t face the same level of scrutiny and judgment, but I’m not sure why Kiki would say that since frankly she also has “acceptable” white girl hair. Although in her eyes, her hair is probably anything but acceptable, so that’s why she said that, I guess.

The girls talk in the car. Kiki starts talking about Alex again. Oh God, I forgot this is the part of the story where Vilde is just like … unbearably hung up on William. More than usual. Kiki starts talking wistfully about Alex’s party, She’s hoping girls from another school aren’t invited to the party, probably jealous and paranoid they’ll steal Alexander away. Oh, the irony, when the real threat to her relationship with Alexander is behind the wheel!

I get the feeling Mia said breast surgery was passé as another attempt to dissuade Kiki, since that seems like something Kiki would care about.

Sam says there’s nobody in the area on Tinder. Amira mentions the Muslim dating app, Minder. Lmao, how much does Amira know about Minder?

Sam got a Tinder match with a 47-year-old farmer looking for love (but no one-night stands). LMAO. I assume Manfred-Wolfgang will be playing the role of Kasper this episode, although I hope that he will NOT show up to creep on the girls or make out with Sam in the season finale.

I wonder if the pic they used for Manfred-Wolfgang is some dude who works on the show or is related to someone, or else he’s some hapless stock image model who doesn’t know he’s been used as a thirsty farmer.

Hanna didn’t know ONS meant “one night stands” so it feels kinda like a departure from party girl Eva of S2 Skam. Though I guess it took a few episodes for her to get on Tinder, lol. In general, I have a hard time seeing that route for her. Unless this is meant to be foreshadowing of a sort, and Hanna is gonna go for those ONS to get over Jonas.

Mia is texting Axel about their deal, asking when he’s going to break up with Kiki. Kinda risky texting when Sam is right next to her in the passenger seat. Also, damn, this is gonna get messy if Alex breaks up with Kiki, and it’s gonna be messy if he doesn’t.

The girls dance in the car to Drake’s “In My Feelings” which contains a direct shout-out to a Kiki. It’s extremely cute, though sometimes you gotta wonder why some of these girls deal with Kiki (like Sam and Amira).

There’s a new scene during the credits. It’s of Mia walking through the halls of the school, texting, a small smile forming on her face. So that could be anything, really, but it’s probably from Alexander.

Clip 2 - Sweet potatoes

We’re at the cabin! Mia is peeling sweet potatoes. Kiki walks in, complaining that Alexander isn’t replying. GOD. If his method of breaking up with her is just to ghost again….

Kiki is excited about the raclette cheese, except, as Mia points out, it’s not vegan. Kiki seems disappointed. Seems like that vegan thing isn’t working so great in practice as it is in theory for Kiki.

Now we have Druck’s take on the famous potato scene. Kiki asks whether sweet potatoes have a lot of sugar, and Mia explains their nutritional benefits. I so approve of Druck’s continued endorsement of sweet potatoes. Maybe Big Sweet Potato is what’s funding the additional promo and production this season.

Kiki gets especially excited about hearing that they help you have a good complexion and fewer wrinkles. That’s always seemed a smart inclusion of Noora/Mia, since Vilde/Kiki cares so much for appearances.

Kiki wants to know how Mia knows all this about sweet potatoes, but before she can reply, Hanna comes in and says the girls are contacting Manfred. DUDE. I kinda don’t approve of that. No good can come of that. You think he’s just a harmless lonely middle-aged farmer and then suddenly this cabin trip becomes a horror film because he’s actually a serial killer.

I think my favorite version of this scene is still the original, because Noora’s slow way of talking really helped, actually - it made it feel like every piece of information was sinking in for Vilde. But I’m really glad they kept in this scene, because clearly Kiki needs to hear this.

Clip 3 - The future is full of dongs

The girls are doing this fortune telling activity where they drop lead into water and read the shapes for their futures. Mia gets some kind of penis looking object which sends the girls into giggles. Kiki says that it looks exactly like Alexander’s penis and OH NO, Mia gets a little less giggly, it seems. Kiki tells us a little too much about the shape of Alex’s dick for my liking.

Amira says it means more sex, please. Mia is like, nah, it’s an eggplant, it means more vegetables, please. Eggplant is maybe not the counter argument to penis you think it is, Mia.

We get a shot of Mia twirling that eggplant/penis between her fingers and girl I hope you’re just really hungry for aubergines. But really, the lead has predicted the probable outcome of S2.

Amira reads the meaning for eggplant - you’re a sensitive person, the world is bad and everyone wants to do you harm. Hmmm. Well, that’s a little extreme, but does fit a little into Mia’s worldview. Or at least we’re supposed to think it fits into Mia’s worldview, and she’s inclined to think poorly of Alex or whatever, except he actually IS a creep and she is right sooooooo.

Kiki says it fits Mia, no doubt thinking about Mia being so unfair to poor Alexander and his eggplant penis.

It’s Kiki’s turn. She gets what she thinks are obviously breasts. Kiki is looking at Mia but Mia does not seem thrilled with Kiki’s prediction, either.

Mia says they’re supposed to be metaphors. Amira’s like, what deep metaphors, penis = sex. LMAO.

Mia reads off Kiki’s meaning: “It’s easier to implement one’s ideas if you really support it. You can make honest promises as well.” Kiki has a revelation: of fucking course this has to do with Alexander! She supports him but has never truly told him! Oh, Kiki, no. Amira shares my reaction.

Sam’s like, I think Alex got the picture by now. Personally I think everyone in the world has the picture by now.

You know, even apart from Alex being Alex, Kiki automatically relating the prediction to ANY dude instead of relating it to herself is pretty sad.

In other sad but expected news, Hanna shows the girls that Jonas has been posting pics with a girl. Okay, we knew this was coming, we gotta get through this separated phase, but damn, this is like the Eva/Jonas remake pairing I most want back together.

Time to break out the vodka! Side note, but I wonder what the idea was to have Mia drink alcohol in this remake? I don’t mind it at all, it’s just a notable difference from the source material, especially in this season when it’s a mild plot point. Are we going to find out later?

Sam’s turn has her getting a mansion. Hanna reads the definition for house: Even though life is exciting the way it is, there’s a wish for more reliability and stability. Your wish will be fulfilled soon. Clearly that means Manfred is coming to sweep Sam off her feet!

OK, seriously though, I kinda do want to see Sam hook up with a Kasper-like figure. I think it’d be fun. Maybe behind her party girl ways, Sam wants something a little more stable. I mean, that would kind of fit! In the first season, she said she’s never slept with the same dude twice.

Clip 4 - Alex ruins everything

It’s almost midnight! The girls head outside, light some sparklers. Mia gives a speech about the year is almost over, the year that they all met each other, and the year they might depart already after they graduate. Awww.

You know, even outside of us as viewers maybe not getting more Druck (FINGERS CROSSED) it’s sad in-universe that these girls didn’t get more time together! I mean, the Norwegian girl squad met toward the beginning of their first year. They had three years, almost their whole high school experience to hang as a squad. German girl squad met last March, basically, so they’re just having a little more than a year together.

Mia’s speech on their different paths: Amira might become federal chancellor, Sam studies fashion design, Kiki will become an influencer? (said with some uncertainty, and the girls kinda laugh about it, so it’s not that serious), Hanna … Mia doesn’t know what to say for Hanna, and Hanna chimes in that she’ll be unemployed. Which fits with her character, and tbh I don’t think it’s terrible for her not to have a game plan for the rest of her life right now. A lot of people don’t have it all figured out at 17 or 18.

When asked about herself, Mia hands off the “mic” to the crew boss. Kiki says all the girls are so important to her and she can count on all of them (lmao, the irony is potent). Group hug time!

With only a few seconds left, the girls count down to midnight and pop open the champagne. They hug and kiss and it’s a beautiful, triumphant moment for the girl squad - not that they really did anything, but that they’re all together and happy. They were losers and alone and they found each other. They light sparklers and celebrate, it’s lovely and joyful. Nothing can ruin this moment!

Hey, you know what could ruin this moment? Alex. He messages Kiki, who goes off to read it. Mia looks after her, concerned.

As the girls head back to the cabin, they hear Kiki crying. Not just crying - outright sobbing and wailing as if in immense pain. They run to her. Kiki gets out, red-faced, that Alex broke up with her. That’s right. On New Year’s Eve, at midnight, he sent her a message saying he was interested in another girl. The girls are appalled and take Kiki inside to get her a drink. Mia stays behind, looking distraught and muttering, “Shit.”

All right. Dudes.

First of all … Mia knew this was going to happen. I’m not letting her off the hook because this was the end game of her actions. BUT I doubt she expected Alex to break up with Kiki in such a bad way. I mean, via a voice message, on New Year’s Eve, at midnight? I’m sure she thought he would at least talk to her in person, and not with such poor timing. Like frankly she expected too much of him.

Second, how the FUCK is Mia supposed to fall for Alex after this? How the fuck are we supposed to like Alex? What the fresh hell is wrong with him? This is cruel. Look, people celebrate on New Year’s Eve, they cheer and drink and party at midnight. It’s meant to be a feel-good time, a moment of hope for the coming year, and Alex knew Kiki would be celebrating with her friends, I’m sure. It was wrong and insensitive of him to send that message when he knew she would be in a celebratory, happy mood. Either he’s dumb as fuck and didn’t realize she’d be upset, or he didn’t care about ruining her fun evening. He should’ve broken up with her BEFORE the trip, when he knew he was supposed to, to give her time to recover with her friends, OR saved it until after she’d come back and the high of the party had faded a little.

Also, what is that mention of the other girl doing for Mia? That’s clearly a nod to her, but does she think Alex just said that as an excuse or is there meant to be more behind it?

Clip 5 - Kiki goes swimming

It’s the morning after and we see the remnants of the party, lots of empty bottles. It’s raining, I’m sure no doubt reflecting the mood of the party - symbolic of the celebration getting rained on by Alexander’s breakup message.

Mia wakes up. The other girls are still in bed - I think that’s Amira with her hoodie pulled over her hair, which is a nice way to respect the actress being a hijabi while showing her asleep with the other girls. However, Kiki’s the only one missing, so Mia gets up to look for her.

She goes outside calling for her, and has a moment of panic when she sees Kiki in the lake. Yeouch? That must be cold as hell? Kiki’s awake and conscious, though. She calls out gleefully to Mia.

Mia’s like, are you crazy? But it’s Kiki’s New Year’s resolution to go ice swimming/swimming in cold water, because the balance of the temperature burns more fat. Mia’s like, what fat, because (as we see Kiki in her swimsuit) Kiki is clearly very thin. Kiki says it’s not about weight, but fitness and strength. New year, new me!

Mia says, here’s your cape, Superwoman, handing Kiki her robe. There is a shot of them that would be perfect if they were gonna kiss, just saying. She tries to warm Kiki up as they go inside. Again. Just saying.

I liked that they used the cover of “Where Is My Mind?” at the start of the scene - besides any deeper meaning, the song was inspired by the writer’s experience with scuba diving, and the lyrics refer to swimming.

Yeah, right now? I feel like the best outcome of this season is that Mia essentially chooses Kiki in the end, not Alexander. I don’t even mean that in a romantic way (although I wouldn’t say no to that). But Alexander has been a major ass to Kiki so far this season in a way that William wasn’t to Vilde in S2. They’re going to have to do such major work to get Mia and Alexander to a place where Mia can be with this dude. I mean, admittedly, I’m not a fan of this pairing in any incarnation, so it’s already an uphill struggle for me. I think we’ll get Mia/Alex endgame but right now it feels like such a jarring outcome. But I’m also aware that we haven’t gotten most of the major scenes with them, such as the More Than This clip, or ... hm, that’s kind of the biggest one until they’re supposed to kiss for the first time, lol. And the one where William decided to give some money to refugees in exchange for Noora’s attendance at his fundraiser, which was supposed to be him showing that he’s a decent person, I guess.

I think we see here too that Kiki’s body issues didn’t go away once Alex broke up with her, although it’s the morning after and he did it in such a hurtful way that I don’t think you can say it didn’t contribute to her doing this. Like it’s too recent, too raw. But I’m aware that Kiki’s going to keep this up with or without Alexander in the picture.

Clip 6 - The party fizzles out

It’s later in the afternoon and the girls are huddled outside. Turns out Jonas didn’t get back to Hanna, either. Disappointing, not surprising. They are broken up so he can do what he wants, I’m just rooting for these kids in the long run. He still has her nose.

Sam says, I’m never drinking again. The girls smirk, but Sam is serious. She sexted with Manfred yesterday. YIKES. She did it while drunk and has now deleted Tinder. Good idea.

Amira gets a text as Mia suggests a hiking trip tomorrow. Amira says she has to leave tomorrow morning, as she forgot about an appointment with her family. When Hanna asks what kind of appointment, Amira doesn’t really answer. Hmmm! So is this like Isak’s “family dinner”? It’s not really a family issue, but something else?

They were supposed to stay the whole week so there’s some disappointment. Kiki says she’s going to exercise one way or another, either it’ll be here hiking or she’ll be at the gym tomorrow. Hanna says they don’t ALL have to leave, clearly bummed. Sam says if they leave, they can go to Carlos’ party. Kiki has a special invite! I bet Hanna didn’t want to go back so she didn’t have to go to Carlos’ party and see Jonas there.

Sam’s like, uhhhh, I have another reason for leaving. She sent Manfred their location and he may be showing up any moment. Tbh if I were those girls my ass would be flying up off the chair and throwing my shit in the van so I didn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of Manfred, or you know, not wanting to find out if he was a murderer, but they’re just like, OK, we’re leaving, and keep chilling and drinking their coffee/tea/whatever. You guys are going to stay in this cabin when Manfred’s on the loose? None of you are surviving that horror movie.

Clip 7 - Amira has a secret

It’s the drive back the next day. The mood is considerably less upbeat than the way there. Hanna looks at the picture of Jonas and his girl on IG again. Sam blocks Manfred. Kiki looks at the message notification from Alex.

Amira gets a call. It’s “Pavel.” Who is that? Pavel wants to talk about something. Amira quickly hangs up. The girls look at each other but don’t say anything or ask Amira who was that. Amira doesn’t seem like she wants to talk about it. Soooo … place your bets. Does Pavel have to do with the Jamilla storyline? What about German Even - it’s around the time he’d be going through heavy stuff, would Amira be aware of that through her brothers? Or is he connected to the German balloon squad somehow? Is it some dude she met on “Minder” (doubtful, but just throwing it out there because who knows)? Something completely different?

Cool that Amira has a subplot this season, though! Hopefully not a replacement for an actual Amira season. Druck is doing well enough that they’d be foolish not to renew the show. Case in point, this scene was trending on YouTube and non-viewers were deeply, deeply confused as to why, since not much happens in this clip, lmao.

I love Hanna and Sam blatantly and immediately texting each other about Amira’s mysterious call when they’re sitting right next to each other.

Clip 8 - Laser tag party

Disappointingly short Friday clip, though I can’t complain too much since Druck has been feeding us so well during the week. I just want more of these squads!

Mia and Hanna suit up for laser tag. More tension with Hanna about Jonas. Hanna mentions that she heard Carlos has a crush on Kiki - which seems obvious to anyone paying attention - and Mia says it’s a good match. She’s probably like THANK GOD, ANYONE BUT ALEXANDER.

Kiki fixes herself up, checking her teeth and hair in the mirror, so you know she probably had seduction in mind.

Where’s Matteo? I realize it probably came down to actor availability, but in-universe what if Matteo is going through some shit now? What if this is when he leaves home?

We see Kiki drinking out of a flask - I hope that doesn’t mean she had to get a little drunk in order to make a move on Carlos, like she wasn’t comfortable doing this otherwise. (Liquid courage was probably a factor.)

Laser tag! Hanna and Jonas knock into each other AND SHE TAGS HIM OUT. She was pretty merciless.

Kiki tags Carlos out and he puts a hand over his heart, lmao. Then Mia tells him where Kiki is and Kiki pulls him into a kiss. She wishes him a happy birthday and then tags him out. Cold! But OK, not the worst thing in itself. It’s in the spirit of competition? IDK.

After the game ends, Carlos calls Kiki over and says they could hang out, and she says no, we couldn’t. She just wanted to make out. Did he think they were a couple now? Oh, Kiki, no.

Look, she’s not obligated to get into a relationship with anyone - she is free to make out with whoever she wants and keep it at that, but it’s a thoughtless move to do that to Carlos on his birthday. She’s doing what Alex did to her, dragging someone down when they’re supposed to be celebrating. I get why she’s doing it. She’s acting out, trying to regain some power over the hurt and helplessness that she feels. She probably feels desirable getting Carlos’ attention like this, after Alex snubbed her.

I think Mia looks at this and thinks, YES, Kiki’s strong, she’s moving on! She doesn’t realize that it’s a symptom of the hurt she’s feeling.

Social Media/General Comments

We got lots of happy, cute NYE pics and videos. Matteo posts something that’s tagged #burn2018totheground which might be a joke and might be an indication that his year sucked. Not much fun considering the latter option, which we all know is accurate.

We do get to hear Alex’s breakup message to Kiki. He said he wanted to tell her so she can start her new year right. Ummm, more like she can start it depressed and miserable, but OK. He said if there was a misunderstanding, they were never together, it was always casual. He likes another girl, it’s something serious. He doesn’t want to see her for a while, but wishes her a happy new year.

HE GAVE HER A MAJORLY EXPENSIVE VOUCHER FOR BREAST SURGERY. DOES THAT NOT INDICATE SERIOUSNESS IN A RELATIONSHIP. WHO GIVES A VOUCHER LIKE THAT TO A FLING. I’m sorry but talk about mixed signals.

And the other girl he’s talking about is obviously Mia, and I mean, if he has real feelings for Mia and not for Kiki, it’s fair of him to break up with Kiki, although that doesn’t mean he should expect anything from Mia.

Lmao, wishing her a happy new year after that. I guess we know Alex thinks it’s best to hurt people to drive them away, and he wanted to make it as bad as possible for Kiki so she couldn’t forgive him or whatever. But … this is selfish as fuck. When he said that before about thinking it’s better if Kiki hates him, it’s about hurting her to make it easier for HIM, not for them. He’s okay with causing them extra pain FOR HIS SAKE. This is not some benevolent gesture on his part to get Kiki to move on, because if he had her best wishes in mind, he would not be going on a date with Mia behind her back.

I mean we have to acknowledge Mia’s role in this but we can’t let Alex off the hook just because Mia was instigating a lot of this drama. He went along with it. He could’ve kept being like, “Fuck off, Mia,” when she told him to stay away. He never had to bring a date with Mia into it even as a suggestion.

Carlos’s invite to Hanna for the laser tag party singles out the blonde with the ponytail aka Kiki. Hanna wanted to know if Jonas would be there. When Carlos asks if there would be a problem, Hanna’s like, nope. Lol. Bullshit.

The Druck team got drunk and gave us Sam’s sexts with Manfred.

Manfred complimented Sam’s “exotic looks” in his chat with her so lol, don’t feel sorry for him for getting ghosted. And he did flirt with an 18-year-old, which may be legal but is still creepy when you’re a middle-aged man.

Sam’s sexting with Manfred consists a lot of her asking about his tractor and if she can drive it, what color it is. He says it’s a green John Deere. They are really into this tractor talk. I’m sorry but LMFAO.

Sam drifts off for a while and OH GOD when she comes back she asks him what he’s wearing. Manfred: Pajamas, but I can change that real quick ;))) I hope he means change into some farmerly overalls.

Ugh, and Manfred talks about how he’s always wanted to hook up with someone dark-skinned, ewwwww. Even as the conversation moves away from the tractor talk, we still get a lot of metaphors as Sam compares her breasts to the humps of a camel (pretty sure she was cuddling up to Carmen as she wrote that) and Manfred compares his dick to a grain silo. I am both entertained and scarred.

Not a fan of how Carlos and Jonas talk about Kiki in their text but OK, as long as it’s all talk and not reflected in their actions, I am going to set that aside for the moment. For now.

There’s a text about the graduation magazine committee, which includes Jonas, Matteo, and Amira. Amira seems to be doing some organizing for the group. That wouldn’t be her big secret, would it? That seems pretty straightforward and not something she needs to hide from the girls. It might have something to do tangentially to that, but not the whole thing.

I continue to be on board with this season. I seriously don’t know where it’s going: I’m sure it’ll end up with Winterberg, but on a clip by clip basis, I don’t know what to expect, and that makes it so much more exciting! Feels like when OG Skam was airing and we had all our predictions on what would happen next; with Druck S2 we do have a general outline of what to expect, but we’re more actively engaged than if this season was more of a close remake. I think it especially helps for the section of the fandom that dislikes Noorhelm, because we’re still waiting to see what happens instead of being like, ugh, that scene again.

It was cool that they managed to center the cabin episode around another holiday. That’s a feature of S2 that kinda just doesn’t work if you’re redoing it, like Skam France did their version and it was cute, but also ... is it necessary in the remakes, really? Here they got in the cabin girl squad bonding while making it relevant in real time, as well as adding their own spin on the events. No Kasper, instead we got Manfred. No Ouija board and spooky happenings, but some plot-related development.

Now I’m curious about how the remaining episodes will proceed. If we go off Noora’s season, we have some big Mia/Alex scenes where they get to know each other. What about the sexual assault aspect? Is that going to be featured or will that be a victim of only getting 10 episodes rather than 12? I think OG S2 is overly long, personally, and you can easily cut some elements for a neater, more focused story (like I think you can cut the whole thing with the Yakuza dudes, and that would reduce some of episodes 7, 8, and 12). I think the sexual assault storyline would be a shame to lose, but I also would want it to get the right amount of focus and not be shoehorned or rushed.

We did not get the slumber party scene this episode! When is that coming?

I’m not German so feel free to correct me or clarify stuff.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

#druck reactions

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papabirbdev · 5 years

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Being transgender makes reading some fantasy/sci-fi stories absolutely wild.

Back when I had no internet and nothing to do, I and my parents read a lot of the “vampire” romance novels by Lynsay Sans. They were okay, not really what I liked to read, but good escapism. Anyway, so the “vampirism” in those books is caused by nanobots, and there’s a bunch of weird affects for the romance/erotica aspects of stuff, but one of the things about the vampires is that after you’re turned, you’re kept at your most 100% conventionally attractive possible form, and all damage is healed. Old scars? Gone. Have fun getting your lips re-pierced all the time (something I think was brought up in one of the books). I think Twilight vampires had something similar, too, back in the day? And it’s also ambiguous whether you can even be gay by the weird nanobot rules (there’s some weird soul mate plot stuff with the nanobots too for Every Single Book in the series), though I think there was at least one implied or cameo gay couple, so maybe. But anyway, what I keep thinking? Sure would be a bitch to be transgender and have all your surgeries undone and be the most attractive form of your assigned gender because of the nanobots, or even have your queer identity destroyed altogether by the nanobots “fixing” your brain. Sure is fun to constantly feel unrepresented in weird dumb romance novels.

Then there’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which I read this semester for my creative writing class. Absolutely great novel. Pretty okay for representation, no explicitly LGBT+ characters that I know of in the first book, but an overall X-Men metaphor representation vibes. (On the other hand, since the author can explicitly write about one of the characters being a Jew persecuted during world war II, I think other explicit representation of poc and LGBT+ should really be added if it isn’t already in the later novels, which I do not have yet.) But anyway, so - spoilers- there’s the ladies who can turn into birds, and only women can be born with that power, right? And I’m over here like, but what about trans women? What about trans men? Is it based on your biological sex or your biological gender identity? What if you didn’t know you were trans, but were a male born with the bird-shifting power, and later realized you were a woman because of its gender specificity? Would you be constantly misgendered by other bird ladies if you were a transman who can turn into a bird? Which, as a transmasc person who really loves birds, is a very tempting OC situation to explore sometime.

I just think that in fantasies with gender-segregated powers or magic vampirism/werewolves/whatever that “make your body perfect and young forever”, LGBT+ themes could reaaaally use some more exploring. Actually, any exploring at all - I haven’t seen it happen in anything I’ve read. I’ve encountered very few LGBT+ characters in the novels I’ve read over my life - Rick Riordan being the one that makes me happiest, since it’s LGBT+ characters in young adult fiction, and an explicitly genderfluid character as well as explicit mention of nonbinary kids existing. none of his stuff that I’ve read deals with weird sex-segregated powers or “perfect airbrushed body forever!” themes, though; and I ache to have these themes explored, to have my questions answered. Ugh. I’m gonna have to write my own stories to explore them, I guess.

#personal #transgender #nonbinary #lgbt

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spiritualesoterichighlevel · 5 years

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Myths of the Brain

1. We use only 10 percent of our brains. This one sounds so compelling - a precise number, repeated in pop culture for a century, implying that we have huge reserves of untapped mental powers. But the supposedly unused 90 percent of the brain is not some vestigial appendix. Brains are expensive - it takes a lot of energy to build brains during fetal and childhood development and maintain them in adults. Evolutionarily, it would make no sense to carry around surplus brain tissue. Experiments using PET or fMRI scans show that much of the brain is engaged even during simple tasks, and injury to even a small bit of brain can have profound consequences for language, sensory perception, movement or emotion. True, we have some brain reserves. Autopsy studies show that many people have physical signs of Alzheimer's disease (such as amyloid plaques among neurons) in their brains even though they were not impaired. Apparently we can lose some brain tissue and still function pretty well. And people score higher on IQ tests if they're highly motivated, suggesting that we don't always exercise our minds at 100 percent capacity.

2. "Flashbulb memories" are precise, detailed and persistent. We all have memories that feel as vivid and accurate as a snapshot, usually of some shocking, dramatic event - the assassination of President Kennedy, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attacks of September 11, 2001. People remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, what they saw or heard. But several clever experiments have tested people's memory immediately after a tragedy and again several months or years later.

The test subjects tend to be confident that their memories are accurate and say the flashbulb memories are more vivid than other memories. Vivid they may be, but the memories decay over time just as other memories do. People forget important details and add incorrect ones, with no awareness that they're recreating a muddled scene in their minds rather than calling up a perfect, photographic reproduction.

3. It's all downhill after 40 (or 50 or 60 or 70). It's true, some cognitive skills do decline as you get older. Children are better at learning new languages than adults - and never play a game of concentration against a 10-year-old unless you're prepared to be humiliated. Young adults are faster than older adults to judge whether two objects are the same or different; they can more easily memorize a list of random words, and they are faster to count backward by sevens. But plenty of mental skills improve with age. Vocabulary, for instance - older people know more words and understand subtle linguistic distinctions. Given a biographical sketch of a stranger, they're better judges of character. They score higher on tests of social wisdom, such as how to settle a conflict. And people get better and better over time at regulating their own emotions and finding meaning in their lives.

4. We have five senses. Sure, sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch are the big ones. But we have many other ways of sensing the world and our place in it. Proprioception is a sense of how our bodies are positioned. Nociception is a sense of pain. We also have a sense of balance - the inner ear is to this sense as the eye is to vision - as well as a sense of body temperature, acceleration and the passage of time. Compared with other species, though, humans are missing out. Bats and dolphins use sonar to find prey; some birds and insects see ultraviolet light; snakes detect the heat of warmblooded prey; rats, cats, seals and other whiskered creatures use their "vibrissae" to judge spatial relations or detect movements; sharks sense electrical fields in the water; birds, turtles and even bacteria orient to the earth's magnetic field lines. By the way, have you seen the taste map of the tongue, the diagram showing that different regions are sensitive to salty, sweet, sour or bitter flavors? Also a myth.

5. Brains are like computers. We speak of the brain's processing speed, its storage capacity, its parallel circuits, inputs and outputs. The metaphor fails at pretty much every level: the brain doesn't have a set memory capacity that is waiting to be filled up; it doesn't perform computations in the way a computer does; and even basic visual perception isn't a passive receiving of inputs because we actively interpret, anticipate and pay attention to different elements of the visual world. There's a long history of likening the brain to whatever technology is the most advanced, impressive and vaguely mysterious. Descartes compared the brain to a hydraulic machine. Freud likened emotions to pressure building up in a steam engine. The brain later resembled a telephone switchboard and then an electrical circuit before evolving into a computer; lately it's turning into a Web browser or the Internet. These metaphors linger in clichés: emotions put the brain "under pressure" and some behaviors are thought to be "hard-wired." Speaking of which...

6. The brain is hard-wired. This is one of the most enduring legacies of the old "brains are electrical circuits" metaphor. There's some truth to it, as with many metaphors: the brain is organized in a standard way, with certain bits specialized to take on certain tasks, and those bits are connected along predictable neural pathways (sort of like wires) and communicate in part by releasing ions (pulses of electricity). But one of the biggest discoveries in neuroscience in the past few decades is that the brain is remarkably plastic. In blind people, parts of the brain that normally process sight are instead devoted to hearing. Someone practicing a new skill, like learning to play the violin, "rewires" parts of the brain that are responsible for fine motor control. People with brain injuries can recruit other parts of the brain to compensate for the lost tissue.

7. A conk on the head can cause amnesia. Next to babies switched at birth, this is a favorite trope of soap operas: Someone is in a tragic accident and wakes up in the hospital unable to recognize loved ones or remember his or her own name or history. (The only cure for this form of amnesia, of course, is another conk on the head.) In the real world, there are two main forms of amnesia: anterograde (the inability to form new memories) and retrograde (the inability to recall past events). Science's most famous amnesia patient, H.M., was unable to remember anything that happened after a 1953 surgery that removed most of his hippocampus. He remembered earlier events, however, and was able to learn new skills and vocabulary, showing that encoding "episodic" memories of new experiences relies on different brain regions than other types of learning and memory do. Retrograde amnesia can be caused by Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury (ask an NFL player), thiamine deficiency or other insults. But a brain injury doesn't selectively impair autobiographical memory - much less bring it back.

8. We know what will make us happy. In some cases we haven't a clue. We routinely overestimate how happy something will make us, whether it's a birthday, free pizza, a new car, a victory for our favorite sports team or political candidate, winning the lottery or raising children. Money does make people happier, but only to a point - poor people are less happy than the middle class, but the middle class are just as happy as the rich. We overestimate the pleasures of solitude and leisure and underestimate how much happiness we get from social relationships. On the flip side, the things we dread don't make us as unhappy as expected. Monday mornings aren't as unpleasant as people predict. Seemingly unendurable tragedies - paralysis, the death of a loved one - cause grief and despair, but the unhappiness doesn't last as long as people think it will. People are remarkably resilient.

9. We see the world as it is. We are not passive recipients of external information that enters our brain through our sensory organs. Instead, we actively search for patterns (like a Dalmatian dog that suddenly appears in a field of black and white dots), turn ambiguous scenes into ones that fit our expectations (it's a vase; it's a face) and completely miss details we aren't expecting. In one famous psychology experiment, about half of all viewers told to count the number of times a group of people pass a basketball do not notice that a guy in a gorilla suit is hulking around among the ball-throwers. We have a limited ability to pay attention (which is why talking on a cellphone while driving can be as dangerous as drunk driving), and plenty of biases about what we expect or want to see. Our perception of the world isn't just "bottom-up" - built of objective observations layered together in a logical way. It's "top-down," driven by expectations and interpretations.

10. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most overinterpreted research in the history of science purports to provide biological explanations for differences between men and women. Eminent neuroscientists once claimed that head size, spinal ganglia or brain stem structures were responsible for women's inability to think creatively, vote logically or practice medicine. Today the theories are a bit more sophisticated: men supposedly have more specialized brain hemispheres, women more elaborate emotion circuits. Though there are some differences (minor and uncorrelated with any particular ability) between male and female brains, the main problem with looking for correlations with behavior is that sex differences in cognition are massively exaggerated. Women are thought to outperform men on tests of empathy. They do - unless test subjects are told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as or better than women. The same pattern holds in reverse for tests of spatial reasoning. Whenever stereotypes are brought to mind, even by something as simple as asking test subjects to check a box next to their gender, sex differences are exaggerated. Women college students told that a test is something women usually do poorly on, do poorly. Women college students told that a test is something college students usually do well on, do well. Across countries - and across time - the more prevalent the belief is that men are better than women in math, the greater the difference in girls' and boys' math scores. And that's not because girls in Iceland have more specialized brain hemispheres than do girls in Italy. Certain sex differences are enormously important to us when we're looking for a mate, but when it comes to most of what our brains do most of the time - perceive the world, direct attention, learn new skills, encode memories, communicate (no, women don't speak more than men do), judge other people's emotions (no, men aren't inept at this) - men and women have almost entirely overlapping and fully Earth-bound abilities.

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astrolovecosmos · 6 years

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The 8th House and Surgery/Death

So I am going to dive into medical astrology + the 8th House. The 8th House in terms of death now-a-days usually symbolizes an emotional, spiritual, or possible death of identity and rebirth. In medical astrology the 8th House can determine surgeries and death. I don’t know if this is comforting or not, but know that this part of astrology is less spiritual and magic than it is based on medieval science. You can always try to look at these interpretations as metaphorical. For newer planets this is a mixture of modern medical astrology and predictive astrology interpretations.

Surgeries 💉

Aries in the 8th House: Associated with head, face, and possibly brain surgery.

Taurus in the 8th House: Associated with surgery involving the throat, neck, thyroid gland, vocal cords, and ears.

Gemini in the 8th House: Associated with possible surgery dealing with the respiratory system. Surgery or mending of hands and arms.

Cancer in the 8th House: C-section or other surgeries needed during childbirth, breast surgery, and some older interpretations mention skin-related surgeries, possibly skin-grafting.

Leo in the 8th House: Associated with surgeries with the heart, spine, and lower back.

Virgo in the 8th House: Associated with surgeries within the abdomen, intestines, spleen, and nerves.

Libra in the 8th House: Associated with kidney, lumbar, and endocrine surgery.

Scorpio in the 8th House: Surgeries with childbirth and fertility have been mentioned for this position, although Cancer might be more associated. Possible surgeries with genitals, bladder, urethra, and rectum are possible. Anything that deals with hormones can be here too.

Sagittarius in the 8th House: Associated with sciatic nerve, hips, and thigh surgery. There are some translations that mention eye surgery. I’ve seen some mentions of brain surgery.

Capricorn in the 8th House: Associated with knees, skin, teeth, possibly spine, and bone surgery.

Aquarius in the 8th House: Associated with shins, ankles, legs, circulatory system, and brain surgery.

Pisces in the 8th House: Associated with nerve and foot surgery and also has a connection to brain surgery.

Sun in the 8th House can indicate ease in healing from surgeries and invasive procedures or even healing naturally.

Moon in the 8th House can indicate a surgery that is life-changing, mostly within emotions. This could be a loss of movement, a lifestyle change, etc. Hopefully it is something helpful but feelings of rage, regret, or grudges can form from the procedure.

Mercury in the 8th House can indicate a fast recovery from surgery. This can also indicate someone who mentally deals with the surgery and recovery very well and flexibly.

Venus in the 8th House is suppose to be favorable for pain somehow. Maybe they almost enjoyed being drugged during the procedure or maybe they didn’t feel a lot of pain during recovery. Venus in this House, when it comes to surgery has an association with physically improving and maybe aesthetically. Venus here could also attract others while they are sick or recovering to their aid or general connection.

Mars in the 8th House can indicate turmoil or struggles during surgery and recovery. There is a battle going on within a person’s health. Mars here can indicate a good success rate for “winning the battle”. Sudden or aggressive reasons to go into surgery can appear here.

Jupiter in the 8th House has a connection to good luck in surgery and recovery. This planet can also indicate a slow and gradual recovery. When diving into deeper sides of the planet surgery may be life changing for personal growth.

Saturn in the 8th House can indicate struggle in surgery and recovery. However unlike Mars, this one has a lot of heaviness and possible negativity to it. Recovery can take a long time and have plenty of setbacks. Health can seriously mature a person within this position. This individual could have bad luck with surgeons and doctors, could be skeptical of healthcare, or refuse to get the help they need in a timely manner.

Uranus in the 8th House could try new or uncommon procedures. There is an association with avoiding surgery. An interesting association with self-surgery! Also one could go into surgery without really needing it.

Neptune in the 8th House has an association with being unaware in surgeries. An example could be someone already unconscious going into surgery. Surgery when too young to remember. There is an association with having a relationship to anesthesia, maybe allergy, really liking the sensation, or awareness.

Pluto in the 8th House is associated with fast-paced surgeries, extreme trauma surgeries, possible risk of death or permanent damage, but also sudden, maybe miraculous turn-arounds or recovery.

I’ve read that MC in the 8th House can have a connection to surgery and death. IC in the 8th House can indicate a third-party/outsider emotional trauma to loved ones surgery. This is a loose translation.

Death 💀

For body parts and physical damage/ailments look to the parts of the body associated with each sign. Many of them were listed above.

Sun in the 8th House can indicate a natural death, old age.

Moon in the 8th House can indicate death surrounding a lot of emotion. Maybe someone passed with a lot of issues not resolved, could connect this to murder or maybe an innocent executed. I’m sure we could add more to the list but keywords are grudges, sorrow, hurt, anger, regret. This could also be a death that is heavily sad for a family and community. Of course I would think so many deaths are like this anyway.

Mercury in the 8th House is interesting because it indicates a carefree or easy death. A death free of regrets. There is also associations with good awareness and communication among those they left behind.

Venus in the 8th House has death surrounding peace, painless, and justice. This could also translate to acceptance among loved ones.

Jupiter in the 8th House has good luck tied to it but this may be more for the people left behind. Acceptance or new wisdom could come of the person’s death. A gradual death is associated but some also mention this being a more painless death, maybe more so in the mental realm.

Mars in the 8th House indicates a death that is sudden, violent, or aggressive. This can also be looked at as a sudden death for loved ones, something they did not see coming. There is the association of loved ones harboring a lot of anger due to their death.

Saturn in the 8th House indicates a painful death or one that is very tragic somehow. This position can also indicate that loved ones really, really struggle to move on or that their death spreads negativity to others. Possible connection to dying in old age. Connection to others forced to be more mature, self-reliant, or practical due to the person’s death.

Uranus has an interesting association with predicting their own death, awaiting it, or causing it, but it doesn’t indicate that they meant to cause it, so I wouldn’t necessarily point to suicide. The death can be strange and it can also be quite unpredictable/sudden. There is a slight association for dying for one’s beliefs. Also great change can come from this individual’s death.

Neptune in the 8th House has a strong tie to dying in one’s sleep or somehow being unaware of passing. There is the association of their death being a sacrifice for others. Others could be unaware of their death for a long time. Missing person or body can be associated here.

Pluto in the 8th House has ties to suicide, to sudden death, to death that really shocks others, and a death that transforms others. There is a lot of darkness that can surround one’s death here. Their death could set a chain reaction for loved ones. This can also be seen as their death making other people stronger.

I’d like to note Pluto and Mars are associated with “barely escaping death” too. Of course we all have to go one way or another.

-Virgo and Libra are associated with poison or choking. Virgo can be associated with allergies or food poisoning. Taurus has a connection to choking too.

- Cancer and Scorpio have connections to death during childbirth.

-Due to how new asteroids are there isn’t much written about them in the 8th House and death, but some theories: Ceres: Could act a lot like Venus in indicating a “painless death”. Juno: Could indicate the death of a spouse or due to a spouse Lilith: Has a connection to violence and sex Vesta: Possible work accident, stress induced, could have a tie into some interesting sexual or gender themes. Pallas: Getting injured or death doing what someone loves, maybe due to defending someone, or getting hurt/dying for a cause, someone’s death could inspire wisdom or a new task for those left behind Chiron: Has a connection to wounds being healed or re-opened due to one’s death or from other’s death.

Newer planets: Pluto Neptune Uranus Alternative translation for older astrology: Pluto- Mars Neptune- Jupiter Uranus- Saturn

If you are freaked out don’t worry, I was too when I looked up my own chart. Again, as a disclaimer, the 8th House and “death” is almost always looked at as metaphorically.

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ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes · 6 years

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Get To Know You Better Part 29

Summary: Gabrielle has a nine-year-old son who is a huge Captain America fan. He notices one of the actors on the subway and loudly points it out to her. That’s when Gabrielle realizes that actor was the man she had a one-night-stand with the week before.

Chapter Summary: Gabrielle tries to ease the tension in her family’s mind even for a brief moment.

Warnings: None, just shameless flirting.

“Did you notice how Gabriel and I basically have the same name?” I scrubbed my makeup off my face, getting ready to head to bed.

Sebastian glanced over at me as he was in the middle of brushing his teeth. “You didn’t realize that ‘til now?” He gave me a strange look as if I were the one with toothpaste around my mouth.

“I guess I was just excited James had a crush, I didn't make the connection.” I shrugged and dabbed some face cream on once I got rid of the last traces of my mascara.

Sebastian rinsed the toothpaste out of his mouth but missed a little bit. “That was the first thing I thought of when we met him. I thought it was kind of funny.”

“Alright, it took me a while but I see it now. It is funny.” I smiled and used my thumb to wipe the toothpaste off the corner of his lips. “If only your fans could see you like this.”

“Human?” He chuckled and raised an eyebrow. "Not just a handsome face?" He teased.

“Domesticated.” I ran my fingers over the stubble on his cheeks, silently hoping he was planning on growing out his beard again. “A housecat, not a tiger.”

He grinned and purred, pulling me close by my waist. “I’m not a housecat behind closed doors, Mrs. Stan, you of all people should know that.”

“You’re more like…an old tiger in a sanctuary.”

“Old?” He looked aghast. “You wound me, Gabby.”

“Last time we had sex, you zonked out seconds afterward. You didn’t even cuddle with me.” I reminded him.

“I was subconsciously cuddling with you. And you wear me out, I’m not old, I’m…well taken care of.”

“I remember when we met.” I sighed wistfully. “You had stamina for days…”

“We didn’t have a kid back then.”

“That’s true. I had a better body back then.” I pouted, pretending to be hurt.

“What, no, no, no, that’s not what I meant. You are still gorgeous. I’m saying we used to get more sleep than before.” He squeezed my hips and tilted his head to touch his lips to my neck. “You’re my beautiful, amazing, strong, sexy, alluring, attractive, goddess…” He kissed me between every compliment.

“I was just kidding.” I giggled and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Stop flirting with me, we’re already married.”

“Man, you know, when was the last time we took a shower together…”

“Cut it out, you’re not getting lucky tonight, Sebs,” I replied with a playful look. “We need to get up early tomorrow, we can't stay up late.”

Sebastian sighed and buried his face in my neck. “I want this to be over with.” He knew we had to meet with the principal and superintendent of James’s school the next morning. "I'm sick of trying to jump through hoops with them to get some justice for James. I just want it to be resolved."

“I do too, dragul meu.”

I felt the tension in his shoulder lift a little when he heard his little pet name I had learned. “I love when you call me that.” He murmured softly against my shoulder.

“Well, thank your mother, I picked it up from her.”

“Yeah, but it’s different when you say it.” He lifted his head. “It’s sexier.” He smirked.

“Again, flirting’s not going to get you anywhere tonight.” I reminded him and tapped his nose.

“Daddy!” Stela called down the hallway. “Story!”

“Oh boy, I’m late for story time. Duty calls.” He pecked my cheek and headed to our daughter’s room.

I smiled but I felt worried and anxiety over the next day. I was afraid the necessary actions wouldn’t be taken. I just wanted James and Gabriel, along with anyone else in the LGBTQ+ community in the school to feel safe.

============

James was still skittish even a week after the attack. He stayed home, receiving homework from friends and mostly stayed inside. The weather was getting colder, but I still wanted to get him out of the house. I felt it wasn’t healthy for him to stay cooped up, afraid of the world.

He wouldn’t admit he was afraid though. He kept trying to keep on a brave face.

I poked my head into his room. “Hey, baby,” I said softly.

James looked up from his phone. “Hey.” He nodded. The bruise around his eye was starting to turn yellow and fading. His nose and jaw were healing and thankfully he wouldn’t need surgery to correct them.

“Dad, Stela, and I were going to go for a walk. Do you want to come? Maybe you can invite Gabriel to come along?”

“It’s cold out, mom.”

“That’s what jackets and gloves were made for.” I gave him a look. “Come on, Sebastian is dying to play football with you again.” I coaxed.

He sighed and glanced down at his phone. “Alright.” His thumbs flew across the screen. “I’m asking Gabriel.”

I smiled at my victory. “Alright, let me know what he says and we’ll go.”

==========

Stela held my hand tightly as we walked through the park. “Gabe, sing more songs for me.” She demanded.

“Stels, you need to ask nicely. Gabriel is not your personal radio.”

“That’s alright, Mrs. Stan.” Gabriel smiled. “I’ll sing for you later, Stela, okay? I’ll sing more Shawn Mendes for you, you like him don't you?”

She sighed and gave in, something she rarely did. “Okay.” She agreed.

We arrived at our favorite spot and I sat on my usual bench to watch the boys play. Stela sat on the grass next to me, waiting patiently for me to take out the Barbies we’d brought to keep her occupied.

“Do you play football, Gabriel?” Sebastian asked and tossed James the ball.

“No, I play soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring.”

“So you’re coordinated with your feet and hands.” Sebastian nodded. “Impressive.”

“I like watching James play though. He’s really good.” Gabriel smiled at his boyfriend.

“You’re better at soccer, he plays striker and almost made varsity this year. He scores the most goals on the team.” He returned a goofy smile, totally smitten. I watched, glad that despite all James was going through, he didn’t break up with Gabriel. He stayed true to his heart and that was so important to me.

“Well, we’d love to come to one of your games and support you. I promise we won't be embarrassing like we are at James's games.” Sebastian started tossing the ball back and forth with them both.

I moved to the grass to play with Stela a little bit, letting the boys do their thing. After a while, Sebastian came and joined us. “Oh boy, those kids have so much energy, I can't keep up.” He groaned as he sat down. “I’m going to need some of that icy hot stuff on my shoulders.”

“Aw, poor daddy.”

“Poor daddy.” Stela mimicked.

He chuckled and shook his head. “Maybe a kiss will make me feel better.”

Stela reached over and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “Love you, daddy.”

“Oh, I feel better already, thank you,îngeraș.” He smiled and lay down on his stomach to play along with the dolls. “This one’s a vet right? I forget her name.”

“No that’s the doctor, Jenny. This one’s a teacher, her name is Becky.” Stela continued telling Sebastian each of the names and the professions her Barbie’s had.

I glanced over at Gabriel and James. They were laughing as Gabriel tried to hog the ball away from him. James wrapped his arms around his waist and left a soft kiss on Gabriel’s cheek.

It made my heart melt knowing they weren’t hiding. They were resilient and even if the world kept beating them down, they wouldn’t stop being who they were. I couldn’t have been prouder.

==============

Note: This is me realizing I gave James’s boyfriend the male version of Gabrielle. I named him that mostly because I wanted him to be a gay angel in a metaphorical sense. Too late to turn back now.

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kinetic-elaboration · 5 years

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February 5: Thoughts on The 100 2x03 Reapercussions

I am very tired and I should sleep but instead I’m going to bring my The 100 rewatch project out of hiatus yet again with Episode 2x03: Reapercussions.

I miss Anya so much!!!!! This is mostly my Dichen Lachman obsession showing but also the way she gives Clarke that ‘yeah, whatever’ look when Clarke says she’ll get her out of the cage... your Grounder fave could never.

The show honestly peaked with S2 and after this it should have abandoned all attempts at edginess because nothing will ever be more Pure Nightmare Fuel than the Mount Weather Grounder Cages.

Clarke/Anya: the ship that almost was.

So when Clarke takes Anya out of the prison room, she opens a door that says “End Containment Area” and underneath that it says “U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Mount Weather Containment Protocol.” And people really thought JRoth made this up omg learn some history.

Considering how they left things (Anya literally trying to kill her and all her friends) it’s actually pretty impressively selfless and magnanimous on Clarke’s part to not just rescue her, but immediately and unthinkably rescue her. On the other hand, Anya feels some remorse for leaving her people whereas Clarke’s like ‘here are some clothes [even though those random bandages are holding up pretty well??], let’s get a move on!’ (I know she intended to come back for them and she was being smart and practical but from the pov of, say, Jasper or Monty, this is cold as hell of her.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: early S2 Clarke is Peak Clarke: smart, sly, practical, brave.

Byrne mentions Earth Skills teacher “Davis” as being part of the search team for Bell et. al. My question: how many Earth Skills teachers did they have lol?

I fucking love this crashed-ship aesthetic omg I forget how much I love it and then I see it again....

“On the Ark, you did anything you wanted, without a second thought about the consequences.” Like mother, like daughter.

I ALSO miss Jasper and Maya. I’m probably like the lone person out there who still remembers them fondly but they were basically perfect because they were sweet but with the potential for a lot of darkness as well, my favorite combination.

WHERE’S MY ART SCHOOL JAYA AU?

So actually fun fact, that isn’t how the art work would have been stored in Mount Weather. They had special containers for the paintings to protect them and like a special cart thing to transport them quickly from their old homes to the bunker I read a book.

No one ever characterizes him this way sufficiently imo but Monty is really quite uptight in a way. Like first: don’t cockblock him man. And second: just chilll. This is probably why he used to smoke weed.

“Trouble? It’s Clarke. Whatever she’s up to, I’m sure she can handle it.” I mean.... he’s not wrong.

Except for the part where she’s covered in dead bodies. But even then...

So I always felt like the main point of the Reapers was as kind of a zombie police force for Mount Weather: to keep the Grounders scared of the Mountain, so they won’t poke around in it too much. Though of course they also collect Grounders, which is helpful, since the Mountain Men can’t walk that far from their home base (and, as stated, they probably want to keep most of that area Grounder-free anyway). But it occurs to me now that a third use of the Reapers is like dead-body collectors? The Mountain dumps the dead bodies out the trap door, and the Reapers take them away and eat them. So gross and efficient all at once. Mount Weather’s motto basically.

Murphy and his creating-a-distraction stones are still one of the funniest jokes this show has ever pulled, though if it were a quicker reveal after “something like that” it would be funnier.

Never mind, Bellamy appearing out of the bush is true underrated comedy gold,

That said, I feel like everything outside of the Mount Weather and Clarke stories here is filler.

Love! That! Ship!

Major Byrne says that Kane is on the verge of losing control of the camp but... I dunno.... everyone seems to be working together pretty well? Maybe if they had diversified the cast a little, not in terms of yet more Grounders but, like, non-leaders of the Ark, that would be more clear????

Okay, well, admittedly, when the Grounder prisoner is brought in they do start a mini-mob, lol. Also one of the delinquent’s fathers is shot, it would be cool if we knew who he was?? ETA: and then he dies and Abby’s like “does he have any family?” lol he just said that his son was one of the 100 so like obviously he does??

The costuming people, like the set people, really are the geniuses of this show. I love Clarke and Anya’s outfits, and Clarke’s hair somehow being both grungy and beautiful like THAT’s the apocalypse style I wanna see.

Also they absolutely 100% would have gotten together in the S2-S3 hiatus if Anya hadn’t been killed off.

“You saved my life because you needed me” IS true but she also did it absolutely without hesitation, even knowing Anya really quite truly hates her, so this speaks either to some foolhardy bravery mixed in with her practical thoughts, or just straight compassion, or both. I guess that sort of is a Clarke thing. She can be a grudge holder (seriously don’t tell me she isn’t: Wells????) but her grudges are NEVER more important than hard-nosed practical problem-solving.

Time for some gratuitous torture. Honestly, I like Season 2, it’s probably my favorite season, but it has some MAJOR filler problems. Like when it’s good it’s THE BEST but then other times it just doesn’t know how to fill 40 minutes so it resorts to pointless diversions (like Bellamy rappelling down the side of a mountain to save a character who is literally never seen again? for some reason?) or just straight out ugly violence for screaming’s sake (Raven’s surgery, Raven’s Grounder torture, Abby’s shocklashing, etc.) Like honestly I can’t even watch this. I’m just gonna browse tumblr until it’s done.

The Arkers really like the concept of “confessing” don’t they?

Like okay I’m not done WHAT IS THE POINT of this? It all but kills the whole Kabby vibe (I still lowkey ship them but sometimes I think...why?), it’s truly painful to watch, and it has no plot purpose AT ALL not even world-building because, lol, we know the writers don’t care to flesh out Camp Jaha in any real way.

Murphy is taking such sad glee out of instigating Finn’s madness/violence. The Luci of The 100 for sure.

This Bellamy story line is boring though I’m sorry. Some of these scenes (the Clarke or Mount Weather ones) I could watch a million times but this is like... kay, I know what happens already. So.

“There are some lines you can’t uncross.” I mean I think this show has actually shown that’s pretty untrue since people get over almost everything pretty fast. There’s always another horrific thing to do and/or experience!

Yeah my bitterness is seeping in.

Anyway when you come into an interrogation knowing what the “right” answer is, you’ll never learn anything, take note, stupid teenager boys + U.S. law enforcement.

Like honestly this Grounder is 500000x smarter than they are. He saves himself and rains gunfire and destruction upon his enemies. (Well, saves himself for a few minutes--but at least he got to cause harm to those he hates!)

“You thought I was the crazy one, huh?” Was Murphy ever crazy, though, or was he just coldly vengeful?

Speaking of coldly vengeful, Byrne could have been a potentially interesting character? Maybe? I’m not really into the type but as I said I want more Arkers wherever I can find them. And Kane needs real opposition. I have sympathy for him to a degree, but I also think he ultimately weakens rather than strengthens himself.

I love when Monty calls bullshit on stuff. “I can’t see Clarke? Try and fucking stop me, bitches.”

Jasper has such a big heart. Truly the emotional core of this friendship.

I like how Kane speaks as if his “diplomatic mission” of adults is so vastly different than Bellamy and Finn just going off on their own I mean, Byrne is little better than Finn? They’re both easily frustrated and fond of torture? It’s just that Byrne understands a chain of command--barely--that’s literally it.

How does it make literally any sense at all to shocklash a person one hour and make her the Chancellor the next? Like you’ve just encouraged the populace to think of her as nothing special, not above the embarrassing public application of extreme pain--but yes by all means expect them to fall into line behind her leadership. I mean I guess this sort of works if she was already somehow beloved (I guess I’m supposed to just believe that?) and now more sympathy has been generated for her--but such sympathy would seem to come at the expense of Kane. It would seem to be the opposite of what he, or really Byrne, was going for with that disgusting display. But whatever memory is a fiction I guess.

And they have this swelling-music romantic eye-fuck goodbye like??? He was just beating you!! JUST NOW!

What I’m getting out of Murphy advocating for killing the Grounder: first, he has a clear, cold, practicality not unlike Clarke, and two, he still thinks of the delinquents as his friends--how sweet. Two days ago he was killing them, holding them hostage, and stealing their ammo before a huge battle but still. Bygones.

This is not a great ep. for Bellamy leadership lol.

Finn executes a man, while wearing Clarke’s watch, in the place they had sex. Seems...symbolic?? IDK it’s late lol.

I miss Nyko a lot but also now that I’ve seen (part of) Slasher I’m not entirely sure I can ever see Ty Olsson in the same light.

Wouldn’t it be funny if they were literal brothers? Because I always assumed this was metaphorical but...was it? WAS IT?

Weird note to end on, I know. If patterns hold, it’ll be another 2-3 months before I do this again but I’ll try to be a little more on the ball about it.

#the year 2019 #2019: fandom thoughts #2019: the 100 s2 #the 100 #the 100 rewatch

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