#anyways i could talk abt these for twelve years i just love it when characters bring each other up

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

some of my fav underrated quotes abt/tangential to wigfrid from the other survivors bc. im feelin kinda goofy and i wanna have a collection of these

walter:

warly:

wanda:

maxwell:

webber:

wendy:

willow:

wilson:

wolfgang:

wurt:

wx:

[dxppercxdxver]

this isn’t meant to be taken particularly seriously but i’ve decided i wanna spitball my thoughts abt the saf to rr timeline on here

because of the proximity of the timelines (1957 to 1961 and 1973 respectively) and the knowledge that all respective agents must have been working for their agencies for several decades beforehand, clearly spectrum formed before any characters from the a.s.s. of saf could have had a hand in their operations, which is fair enough

honestly they would probably have to operate pretty much independently of each other, but it’s definitely implied the us government is vaguely aware of spectrum but it’s not worth their time to Get Involved, so it may very well be on cynthia’s radar but like. not her monkeys not her circus kind of thing

i think the most convenient way to get them together would be like. spectrum’s rogues gallery has a few ties to chimera so they’ve kind of been on spectrum’s radar for the last few years or so, but things really come to a head in the late 70s and curt, who’s well into his deserved retirement at this point, is contacted by spectrum being like “Hey You Faced Chimera And Lived Come Consult With Us” and is basically dragged into traveling to twinford to assist with the villain of the week

also continuing on my stupid train of “curt and hitch wound up on a similar mission when they were junior operatives and were A Thing for about a year before scheduling and various professional conflicts broke them apart although it was on amicable terms and now they don’t really know what the other is up to” i just think it would be So Funny for curt and hitch to be catching up in the canteen late some night tracking down clues and figuring out what they’ve been up to in the ~20 years since they’d last seen each other and just. blinking in some strange non-surprise at what in the hell their exes have been doing

curt: got damn near married to an agent from mi6, left him to die, fell into an extreme guilty spiral after his death, came back to find out the big bad Was that former agent, had to kill him, has been covertly operating outside the a.s.s. for years to take down chimera while wading through awful grief (and also his friends are in gay love)

hitch: got a boyfriend and girlfriend, girlfriend forced to kill boyfriend, they break up, hitch acquires approximately six children while working through his own guilt, surprise the boyfriend isn’t dead oh wait yes he is, gets two new boyfriends, and he still has six kids

i just think they should be friends dammit

miscellaneous other thoughts: barb and froghorn are bristly at first but once their autisms Click they’re Inseparable like they’re talking constantly; lb wants to hire susan but unfortunately susan still very much is working for cynthia (lb puts in a request to hire susan on a temp basis and through that cynthia and lb become gay people pen pals); mrs. mega finds herself adopting about twelve more people, including lb, which she doesn’t know how to handle (mrs. mega also tries to put tatiana with hitch when it’s clear curt’s not interested)

anyway that’s all i got for now :)

[lovely-v]

LOTR (films) Review

So I finally watched the LOTR films (20 years later). I’m super excited to review these because I read the books very recently so I feel at least a little prepared to voice some opinions. Overall I loved the films, here’s a very long (but by no means exhaustive) compilation of my thoughts, which are of course, totally subjective:

(Warning: a lot of me saying “well, actually, in the book...”)

THINGS I LIKED

- Casting! not much to say here, I thought the casting was great. One of my favorite actors that I didn’t think i’d have a huge opinion on was David Wenham as Faramir. I was kinda ambivalent on him when I saw pictures but i thought he did a great job. he showed his quality.

- Music. so much has been said about the films on the music front. I can’t offer too much original insight but when a bit of the Shire theme started to play as Frodo tries to make his way up Mount Doom I cried a little.

- Boromir and Aragorn. I liked the scene where they interact a little in Rivendell. I also like how Aragorn saves Boromir in the Moria battle and gives him this little nod of friendship. I think the films did a great job portraying the dynamic they have where Aragorn is clearly suspicious of Boromir’s motivations but grows to respect him to the point where he doesn’t even blame Boromir for being corrupted by the ring because he understands that, at heart, Boromir is a good person. 

- Sam and Frodo in Osgiliath. I expected to be kind of annoyed with the way this plot point played out (I knew ahead of time that it strayed from the book), but I actually liked it a lot. As I’ll say later, there’s some gripes I have with the way the films extremely play up the disagreements between Frodo and Sam, but I loved the scene where Frodo pulls the sword on Sam and then seems so defeated when he realizes what he’s done. I was pleasantly surprised by how emotional this scene made me. It’s admittedly A Lot, but it was done nicely, especially in conjunction with Sam’s “there’s good in this world” speech.

- Treatment of the ending. I almost think I should dislike the ending as it is in the movies, but my heart is soft and I like that they sugarcoated it a bit. I know the whole point of the Scouring of the Shire and Frodo’s depression conveys a lot about war and trauma and I think that is important, but after watching these things for twelve hours I just wanted Frodo & co. to be happy and I was kinda relieved that they cut the Scouring. Does that make me weak and perhaps bad at film analysis? yes. do I care? no. I was also very glad that the movies didn’t portray how depressed Sam was about losing Frodo in the end. Yes, he cries, but when he walks home to his family he seems happy and in the books that scene came off so much bleaker. I definitely liked the lighter tone.

THINGS I WAS NEUTRAL ON/DIDN’T LIKE

- Arwen. (Neutral) I don’t hate her, I don’t love her. I think the story she and Aragorn have is compelling and I 100% get why the filmmakers decided to add it to give her character more depth, but it felt misplaced at times. maybe it’s just because it was the only storyline I didn’t know in depth, but the scenes with the Arwen/Aragorn flashbacks felt a bit confusing and disorienting. Don’t have anything against Arwen as a character though, I think she’s pretty alright.

- Gimli. (Complicated thoughts) I want to start off by saying I don’t dislike Gimli. I like him a lot! I just think the movies did him a bit dirty. He had some good movie-exclusive moments, but I think his character really fell into this place of being the butt of too many jokes. Would have liked to see some more serious Gimli development, especially with his relationship to Legolas. Their friendship felt too much like subtext here, whereas it’s explored far more in the books.

- Two Towers Pacing. (Didn’t really like). The pacing of TTT was...weird. maybe I’m going into this with a closed mind because of the books, but it was odd to have the movie begin with Frodo and Sam and then have them only appear for a few rapid scenes after that. I think the fact that a WHOLE LOT of what happens to Frodo and Sam in TTT is moved to RotK is what makes it feel that way? In the books, Two Towers ends with Sam discovering that Frodo isn’t dead from Shelob’s sting, and I was surprised by how long it took the movies to get to that part. However, I will give the films a little leeway because I think they needed Frodo & Sam content for RotK, since most of what happens in that book is them walking through Mordor basically starving and dying. Doesn’t make for great cinema I guess, so they had to put the whole Shelob/Cirith Ungol saga into the final film. Still, I think there’s a weird lack of Frodo and Sam’s presence in TTT.

- The go home/missing bread arc. (Full of rage abt this one) yeah. so. my criticism of this is gonna sound pretty tired because people complain and complain about this part of RotK. but I’m gonna complain some more!! I don’t think the split between Frodo and Sam does anything for the plot. I really don’t. I guess it emphasizes the fact that Sam doesn’t understand how much Frodo is projecting onto Gollum, but it’s just. unnecessary angst? They had enough angst in the Osgiliath scene! Which I actually liked! And it simply doesn’t make a lot of sense for Frodo to suspect Sam of eating the bread when Sam had already offered Frodo his own food and made it clear that he would very much starve if it meant making sure Frodo could eat. But what I hate most about this scene is not that Frodo gets mad and tells Sam to go home. No. It’s that Sam actually... thinks about doing that? he actually? goes down the staircase? emotionally this is bad because Sam clearly cared enough about Frodo to follow him this far, to nearly drown for him, so why would he leave now. Practically this is bad because 1. how would Sam get out of Mordor alone and 2. where would he go. He turns around almost immediately, yes, but what was his plan. where was he going. why.

THINGS I LOVED

- For Frodo! This line, and every other shoutout to Frodo. In the books, they didn’t really actively talk about/worry about Frodo (and Sam) as much as they do in the movies. I like that they talk about Frodo more in the movies! I like that they’re thinking about him! I know it was implied that they were in the books, but I really like how it’s shown here. I think it gave a more complete picture of how much they all care about him on a personal level in addition to just needing him to succeed from a pragmatic standpoint. 

- Merry and Pippin! I feel like Merry and Pippin were so well rounded in the films. I’ve heard criticism about them being turned into comic relief characters (which they always were a little bit) but it honestly didn’t feel that way to me. They had a bit of a rough start because the films didn’t make their motives for going with Frodo as deep as the books did, but I think that by TTT they were absolutely amazing characters in every scene. In RotK their respective arcs hit really well and the scene where Pippin is singing to Denethor? *chef’s kiss* poetic. beautiful. sad. idk man I just feel like I have such a newfound appreciation for Merry and Pippin.

- Parallels! people have pointed out the parallel of Frodo and Sam’s hands before (drowning scene/mount doom scene) and I love how the movie did that. Just stunning. Also! The moving of the Smeagol & Deagol scene to RotK surprised me because in the books it was like,,,at the beginning of Fellowship, but I think the placement of it in the movies really helped emphasize the similarities between Smeagol & Deagol and Frodo & Sam (and how much Frodo fears this similarity.) There were a lot of other well done parallels between storylines and a few bits of dialogue that were repeated with great timing, but I can’t remember all of them at the moment.  

Edit: here’s one I remembered! when Frodo wakes up after being rescued and sees Gandalf, he says Gandalf’s name in a very similar tone to the one he used at the very beginning of Fellowship. It was a nice little subtle connection.

- I can’t carry it for you...alright this is self-indulgent. everyone knows I love this line. I’m just so glad it made it into the movie intact. Sean Astin’s delivery was amazing. I cheered. My mom cheered. It’s a raw line and it makes me feel secret emotions...like if shrimp colors were feelings. that line makes me feel shrimp feelings. idk i’m so tired i just watched twelve hours of movies this review is decreasing in quality by the minute but i’m about done for now anyway

Various silly afterthoughts

- I would have liked to see Sam kiss Frodo’s hands at least once. This happens 50 thousand times in the books, they could have given me one scene. one little extended edition scene. Please Peter Jackson I’m dyin’ out here

- They literally made Gollum so hateable. kinda the point yes, but I was so on board with Sam’s murderous rage. I know why Gollum’s a profoundly complex character, I know why Frodo pities him, I know why murder is bad, but I too would throw hands with that creature. also he literally body shamed Sam so much what was that skdjksdjksd. Sam is lovely. let him commit a small homicide. 

- the scene where merry and pippin drink the tall boy juice (as someone once referred to it in the tags of one of my posts)... not accurate to the books (since they don’t ever drink it with the end goal of getting tall) but so accurate to life. if I found some water that made me taller than my friends? let me at it

- Frodo panicking when he falls into the spider webs. so real bestie. i felt just as panicked watching that. i am terrified of spiders and Elijah Wood did an amazing job doing exactly what i’d do in the situation. yelping a lot and falling down.

- I feel like it’s never stated that Sam’s a gardener (or at least that he’s specifically Frodo’s gardener) until he tells Faramir he is. Did I miss this. Or do they really never say.  are you just meant to know. are you just meant to pick up gardener vibes from him.

*

This has been a very chaotic lotr movie review. Thanks for reading.

[carlyraejemandtheholograms]

How abt 2, 14, 20, 31, 39 and 49 for the OC asks? ^0^

First I’d like to say that I’m sorry it took me approximately eight years to answer these, anyhow here we go

2. Do you have a personal favorite among your OCs?

Oh my god, I absolutely do. Naasir Siirel has been my favorite for forever now, he’s dramatic and silly and he develops crushes easily and often. Also, he tries too hard to seem cool and he’s actually a really dorky nerd. I thought that maybe I was going to be able to try and at least shift my focus to another character for a little while and then Dani just had to go and write me the World’s Only Perfect Piece of Writing about Naasir and Boluvi and so I’ll never be able to escape.

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory

Okay so it’s not exactly tragic, but I’m going to talk about Henri Louis “Henry” Chastain anyway (he’s pretty new so there’s not a lot of in depth story here though). Okay, so the deal with Henry is basically just that when he was like twenty two when he ended up coming into contact with a magic user who had a grudge against his family (for a reason I have yet to establish) and so this magic user cursed him to live out the rest of his life as a cat. He held out hope that he would be able to sort things out for only maybe like a month or so before the hopelessness really set in and he just decided to try and find a good gig somewhere as a house cat. He ended up going to live with Amelia Taggart and her son Alistair who was five at the time where he spent the next twelve years of his life and of course over that time he was presumed dead and his family was absolutely devastated. So some time during that twelfth year Alistair ended up befriending Ezra Brody who also ended up getting cursed (with magical empathy, but I’ll leave that explanation up to Dani) and so they worked out a way to lift Ezra’s curse via a one time use spell or something and they went back to Alistair’s house to do it and because Henry’s curse was a bigger deal his was the one that was broken. It was probably kind of terrible and because he was a cat for so long he still sort of retains some cat-like attributes (like being able to see well in the dark etc), but I mean he ends up married and has three kids (which I like to call the cat babies) so things work out for him.

20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?

Alright, so I have a few OCs who sing, but how could I pass up another opportunity to talk about Naasir? So I don’t really know that I have a headcanon voice for him, but I do know that every single time I listen to any MIKA song I immediately think of him, so if he were to sing anything it would definitely be something like the songs MIKA sings.

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

Okay, I’m terrible and not very fond of this question so I’m just going to go ahead and link you right back to the last time I answered it, even if that was like forever and a half ago. Here.

39. Introduce any character you want

Obviously I have to introduce Alistair because he’s the newest. Alistair is like seventeen and he’s got a broken magic pocket watch that randomly sends him to various times at like any moment. He’s pretty terrible and with the exception of his hardworking mother, Amelia, he doesn’t really care about anybody else unless it really affects him in any way. He’s got like almost no respect for authority and he just does whatever he pleases a lot of the time so he gets in trouble at school pretty often and because of this they cut him a deal that if he competes on the school swim team they’ll be more lenient with his punishments (he’s a really good swimmer). His father walked out on him and his mother when he was like five so he has been known to take out his aggression towards his absentee father on other adult men, he’s working on it though. He only ever listens to the same three songs. He will bite directly into ice cream. He likes to go fishing and he loves helping his mother cook (he’s very good at it too, years of practice). His mother runs a small inn and they keep chickens in their backyard and he’ll do pretty much anything she asks him, but not without being a little bit of an ass. And he and Ezra meet when Ezra moves to the small town they live in and he accidentally gets caught up in one of Alistair’s little time traveling escapades and they don’t really mesh well at first (in fact not long after that Ezra punches him in the face), but Ezra keeps real close tabs on him, because Alistair (who he sometimes calls Tag) is his only link to magic and he’s really into it. They spend a lot of time together and eventually they end up boyfriends. We haven’t really worked that part out yet, but I’m sure it will be great.

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes?

After giving this very serious question all the very serious thought that it deserves I have come to the decision that it has to be my new terrible time traveling son, Alistair Taggart. He’s really kind of a distressing person and it fits perfectly into his personality.