#btw the fandoms are in descending order of how much i like them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

acesydneysage · 3 years

Text

The end goal of representation politics, as flawed as it can be, isn't to abolish acting and to have characters only be played by people exactly like them. There's a specific history of oppression that makes certain things problematic. That's why whitewashing is a thing and blackwashing is not.

Cultural erasure is sad and disappointing, but the reason people don't treat it as something as bad as whitewashing is because it's categorically not, it does not have nearly the same history of violence attached to it.

The US doesn't have a history of minstrel shows about eastern Europeans. There isn't a problem with lack of pale skin representation. If what you're interested in is pale skin and not actually a complex portrayal of Slavic cultures, there's plenty of content for you out there.

There can be perfectly valid and respectful critiques, expressed politely. Russians have actually being demonized on Western media, so I understand wishing for a Russian actor, I did too. But it's more a matter of authenticity in the portrayal, having a different type of white guy play Dimitri is not whitewashing. But you can be wary about how good a job he can do, certainly.

As for Rose, I wish her Turkish ethnicity had been actually represented, and you can be black and have Turkish heritage at the same time. That would have been cool, but it's not the actress' background as far as I know. I don't know if casting would be different under different circumstances, without covid restrictions, but it is what it is. I wished she had been Turkish in the movie too, but I still watched it, and I think Sisi will make a beautiful Rose.

To be honest, a lot of Turkish people look white to me, but if their experience is racialized in the US I won't erase that. But I think they look white to a lot of people who are raging right now too, because lots of them are much more focused on the exact shade of Rose's skin than in her actual heritage, funny that. Or they're praising white actresses who are also not Turkish at all. Very intriguing. The things people will pretend to care about in order to dress up their racism in social justice language are astonishing.

And Lissa was never albino, btw. Would be cool to have more rep for that, but she wasn't it. Most other characters are American, and they're descended from Europeans because that's how white Americans work, it's stolen land, they aren't native to it.

Hopefully the writers of the show will do alot of research and know what they're talking about, and portray the slavic inspiration of the books in the respectful and complex way these beautiful cultures deserve.

But you know what other culture the books draw heavily from too? You know what these books written by an American woman that deal with racism as one of their central themes also take inspiration from? The culture and oppressive structures of the country she lived in her whole life.

The oppression suffered by dhampirs is very related to racism and specially antiblackness/misogynoir experienced by people in real life, so using their plight for inspiration while featuring next to no black people in the books isn't great. I'm happy they're changing that at least, it's an improvement. I think the themes of the books could be enhanced by these choices.

The same way, if we get to Bloodlines, if you're gonna have a conversion therapy inspired plot you should have more queer rep. If the main couple draws from the struggles faced by interracial and queer couples, there should be more representation.

The cast looks beautiful and I need to see them actually acting to know if they're good. You're allowed to care about external descriptions of the characters. But in my opinion capturing the spirit of the character is much more important, and real life sociopolitics should be taken into account.

You can't please everyone, and you're never gonna get exactly what's in your head. But most of the fandom is grown adults now, and you should be able to handle disappointment without having a breakdown or harassing anyone. Keep things civil.

#va #vampire academy #rose hathaway #vampire academy tv series #va tv #va tv show #also entitled fan petitions are a sign of the apocalypse #I'm making a petition for more tuxedo cat rep my cat should be oscar #Rapha's VA tag #not Bloodlines

117 notes · View notes

skepticalcatfrog · 4 years

Text

Rules: Pick 10 ships without reading the questions below, then read and answer them.

I was tagged by @its-all-ineffable . This is going to be fun. (These aren't in any particular order, btw. I also don't have the energy to find gifs, plus some won't have them.)

1. Finian de Seel/Scarlett Jones (Aurora Cycle)

2. Kaliis Gilwraeth/Aurora O'Malley (Aurora Cycle)

3. Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

4. Klaus Hargreeves/Dave Katz (The Umbrella Academy)

5. Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place)

6. Stanley Uris/Bill Denbrough (IT 2017 and 2019)

7. Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh (IT 2017 and 2019)

8. Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase (PJO)

9. Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

10. Will Herondale/Tessa Gray (The Shadowhunter Chronicles)

Now, on to the questions:

1: Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you started shipping 6?

Honestly, no. I haven't seen the miniseries or read the book, but I saw both the 2017 and 2019 IT movies. I feel like the subconscious thought that I shipped Stan and Bill was there the whole time, but I didn't really consider it one of my main ships until looking at content for it on Tumblr.

2: Have you ever read a fanfiction about 2?

I haven't! The fandom for the Aurora Cycle is so small, I'm not really a huge part of it. Ironically though, I am writing a fic that's going to have Kal and Aurora as a ship.

3: Has a picture of 4 ever been your profile picture/screensaver/Tumblr?

Nope! I've had the same everything since I made my account on here, and my screensaver has been the same for years too.

4: If 7 were to suddenly break-up today, what would your reaction be?

I would definitely be surprised, because I can see Ben and Beverly growing old together and living happy lives.

5: Why is 1 so important?

Listen. I LOVE Fin and Scarlett. Their dynamic is wonderful, they respect each other, and I'm also a sucker for a good slowburn. I can say with complete confidence that they're my current OTP.

6: Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

I honestly don't really understand this question, but I'm going to answer is as 'do you really ship it or is it a joke ship'. I do ship Aziraphale and Crowley, I didn't really get what all the buzz was about before watching the show, but I understand more now.

7: Out of all of the ships on the list, who has the most chemistry?

I don't have to answer this, because no one can make me. So I'm just going to say all of them and move on with my day.

8: Out of all the ships on the list, who has the strongest bond?

I kind of feel like I have to say Kal and Aurora. Because, you know, that whole soulmate thing. So yeah.

9: How many times have you read/watched 8's source material?

I've actually only read the entire Percy Jackson series once! I've gone back to a book or two, but I've only read the whole series all the way through one time.

10: Which ship has lasted the longest?

I think I'm going to say that it's a tie between Aziraphale/Crowley and Chidi/Eleanor. Because Aziraphale and Crowley have known each other for 6,000 years, but Eleanor and Chidi ended up together in every single redo. Which is pretty awesome.

11: How many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

They broke up once after an argument, and things still aren't quite resolved, but I have a feeling it's going to work out in the end.

12: If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

It depends. With Kal and Aurora, he's a talented warrior and she has mystical powers. But it's the same deal for Percy and Annabeth, just reversed. So I'm going to go ahead and say both.

13: Did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for any reason?

It's been a little while since I've watched the Good Place, so I can't exactly remember, but I don't think so.

14: Is 4 still together?

Um... I'm going to have to say that, no, they're not still together. Unfortunately.

15: Is 3 canon?

Yes! Ron and Hermione are canon, which I am pleased to say.

16: If all 10 ships were put into a couple's Hunger Games, which couple would win?

I'm going to say Percy and Annabeth. Because she's good at tactics and plan-making, and they're both good at fighting. So they'd be pretty unstoppable.

17: Has anyone ever tried to sabotage 10's ship?

I'm not far enough in the series to give this a definite yes or no.

18: Which ship would you defend to death and beyond?

Fin and Scarlett!!!! Maybe just because I'm currently obsessed with them, but there's also just so much evidence pointing to them being canon that I just can't even.

19: Do you spend hours a day going through 1's Tumblr page?

Oh trust me, if there was more content for them I definitely would.

20: If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she'd break them all forever, which ship would you sink?

Kal and Aurora. I've discussed this with a friend of mine before, we just think that their relationship is a little bit boring.

This was so much fun! It took forever, but I really enjoyed it. I'm going to tag @charlunday and @gaylotusthatexists , plus whoever else wants to do it.

3 notes · View notes

fortunatelylori · 5 years

Note

I think one of the reasons some people hate Sansa is that she represents real people, women mostly, during the medieval times. Even now. People won’t be so annoyed with her or call her useless if this was just a period drama. But they added the fantasy side, with dragons and assassins. Along with women that possesses these. Why couldn’t Sansa do the same? Sansa is the reason why I watched GoT in the first place. I saw myself in her. I don’t have dragons or fighting skills, I only have my mind

Hey, nonnie!

I saw myself in her. I don’t have dragons or fighting skills, I only have my mind

This right here is the reason why I love and identify with Sansa, as well. I’ve never been a fighter. Dragons don’t exist. I’ve always been feminine and proud of it. And I was encouraged from a young age to use my brain to get out of problems. Seeing a character like that on screen is interesting for me because it feels realistic and her slow burn arc makes me feel like I can actually see her developing as opposed to having been granted the fantasy equivalent of super powers over night.

I thought it might be interesting if I actually talked a little bit about the reasons why I feel Sansa is such a divisive character within the fandom as well as one that is, frankly, overlooked by most of the GA, despite her growing importance to the plot. Because while some of the reasons can be dismissed rather easily, at least one of them is an issue of execution (particularly within the show).

The issue of femininity, agency and use of sexuality

I’ve grouped all of these together because the root cause for them is the same: Patriarchy, which in turn encompasses such wonderful things like misogyny and victim blaming.

Sansa’s femininity will always be used against her not only because feminine qualities are seen as lesser than masculine qualities (which is why characters like Arya and Brienne get the stamp of approval from misogynists everywhere) but also because she doesn’t “use them properly”. By that I mean that she’s a beautiful girl who does not weaponize her sexuality and, also, doesn’t put out. And within a patriarchal mind-set that’s the ultimate crime. And that’s further exacerbated by her foil Maergery, whose sexuality is her greatest asset and weapon, as well as by D*ny and her use of sexuality in order to flip the tables on Drogo.

Sansa doesn’t do that. Instead, she goes as far as to dare to withhold her sexual favors and affections from fan favorite Tyrion which enrages the truly vile of this fandom. How dare she? Doesn’t she know that if she wants to be a feminine girl, she is obligated to give her body away to the men lusting after her? Why is she so stupid? Look how Maergery is playing the game and has Joffrey under her thumb! That Sansa, she’s soooo useless! I mean, we’ve been watching this show for 7 seasons and we have yet to see Sophie Turner’s boobs! The outrage!

This argument can go die in a ditch. I actually love that Sansa has retained autonomy over her body and has refused to use it in order to get out of problems. I’m genuinely tired of seeing “smart” or “important” female characters depicted solely as either women with masculine pursuits or “enchantresses”. I want to have a cerebral female character who uses her brain to win over or defeat her foes and Sansa Stark is developing in exactly such a character. And I love it!

She’s one of only main characters who isn’t magical

You’ve touched on this in your ask and while I agree that, in many ways, Sansa is meant to represent the reality of medieval women stuck in a system that was working against them at every turn, I do think GRRM did Sansa a disservice by eliminating all connection to magic from her arc.

That’s because all of the remaining Starks are magical to a degree. Bran, of course, is the one with the most magical abilities in the family (and probably in the whole series). However, Jon is pretty magical as well. Not only is he a warg through his connection with Ghost, he is now resurrected as well as the blood of the dragon which makes him, in part, the product of magic. Arya, for her part, is not only a warg but also possesses magical abilities through her Faceless Men arc.

Sansa’s connection with magic was severed irrevocably when Lady was killed and even prior to that, we never see that warg bond with her. In that sense, she’s the plain Jane of the family and thus seen as less important or special. Which coupled with her lack of fighting skills as well as her prolonged victim arc, makes her seem inconsequential and disposable. This is unfair, of course, because in every other respect, she’s a wonderfully developed character (particularly in the books) but this is a fantasy series. I think GRRM should have retained some sort of magical qualities for her.

Tyrion, among the mains, is probably her closest analog because he’s not magical either. However, GRRM has imbued him with almost super-human intelligence (an aspect of his character that his fans blow out of proportion even further). Despite that, however, there is still a tendency to try to make him magical in some way to justify his importance, hence the theory of Tyrion as the 3rd head of the dragon.

She feels like an outdated character

I say “feels” because she isn’t really but the “princess in the tower”/”damsel in distress” archetype that Sansa most resembles has, by and large, fallen out of favor with modern audiences.

They used to be all the rage and writers always had such a female character. Sansa, in a sense, shares literary references with Ivanhoe’s Rebecca or Robin Hood’s Maid Marion. Personally I love those characters but the archetype has been used a lot in the past and almost never done right. It’s become a prop in a classical hero’s journey type plot, instead of a character in its own right and Sansa, on the surface, feels very much like that type of character.

Of course, GRRM has really utilized that archetype in the best way possible and instead of making Sansa a prop, he’s exposed us to the reality of the pretty damsel stuck in a tower, to her drama and her tragedy, to her fight for survival and eventual escape.

But people, by and large, have decided to hate the archetype instead of demanding better stories based on it and because of that, they simply bristle at its mere existence.

The issue of Sansa’s POV in the show

This is, honestly, the reason that pains me the most and it’s really a combination of how the show has chosen to portray Sansa and well as the fact that the show is now further along than the books.

This is one reason where I can’t really place the blame on the audience, particularly the general audience.

For a very long time, I wondered why people weren’t really paying that much attention to Sansa in the show. And I don’t mean youtubers or people on reddit etc. I’m talking about normal people watching this show. I have a lot of friends that watch GOT and love it. They’re definitely not involved in the fandom nor are they specifically fans of one character in the show. They simply love the story and find it entertaining.

We’ve had conversations about GOT from time to time and they’ve never mentioned Sansa once. They don’t hate her, btw. They simply don’t think about her very much or consider her important within the context of the story.

And I believe the reason for this is because Sansa started out as a pawn in the Game of Thrones, an arc that lasted for 4 seasons. That’s a long time for a character to have limited to no agency and also enact change in the plot solely through the machinations of other characters.

However, it’s not an issue that can’t be overcome particularly since Sansa has an ascending arc where she goes from pawn to player. The beginning of her “player” arc is marked by her descending the steps of the Eeryie dressed in her Littlefinger dress. Unfortunately, this is also the moment that marks the creators’ choice of cutting the audience out of Sansa’s POV for long stretches of time.

Since season 5, they’ve played a hide and seek game with Sansa where we get glimmers of her POV for a short time (her marriage to Ramsay, her reunion with Jon) only to be cut out as quickly as possible in order for the writers to play up the Dark Sansa red herring.

I believe this reluctance to make Sansa understandable and transparent to the audience is affecting the way the general audience views her. In order to get a handle on Sansa’s character from season 5 onward, you need to watch the seasons a couple of times, think about her character in depth, read some metas as well as be predisposed to like her to begin with. Honestly, that’s too much to expect from a general audience who simply don’t engage with this show as in depth as we do.

As such the character of Sansa has become, I believe, to most of the GA a mystery wrapped up in a riddle, where questions are raised but never answered, where looks and gestures are left unexplained. The GA is not going to do heavy lifting to get to know this character so they’re simply going to ignore her and focus on the dragons instead.

This is a huge disservice to Sansa, in my opinion. Because she’s increasingly important to the plot but I doubt season 8 is going to make the GA get to know her enough to root for her. I fear that the fate of show Sansa is to be the Ginny of Game of Thrones. People are just going to be utterly confused how this character that the creators never gave them much reason to care about ends up married to Jon Snow and becomes queen.

And that, I have to say, makes me very sad. :(

Thanks for the ask!

#sansa stark

163 notes · View notes

highskycolor · 5 years

Text

Amazon series thoughts

Maybe it’s stupid, but I got so frustrated suddenly by the news that new Amazon series will be about the Second Age. When they posted the first map I got so exited and imagined how wonderful it would be to see the story of the rings forging and handsome Sauron of course. Then I thought they chose the Last Alliance and got kinda disappointed, but eh, at least I was reassured that they wouldn’t distort the more important (for me) story and characters. And now it’s all but confirmed it will include the whole S.A. starting with the creation of the rings because we have Eregion and Numenor on the final map. And I’m so afraid what it will entail in fandom and in the series itself. Firstly, I can’t imagine how they’ll manage to show such a huge time period, while there is literally a couple dozen of pages covering it both in Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales. There will be so much ‘original content’ in the series, and I’m not confident at all in its quality. Sorry, but they hired literal nobodies as a writers. Did these people even read Tolkien books before? Jackson was a huge fan since his childhood at least and already had a certain vision of Middle-Earth when he started filming. I’m not sure Silmarillion stories should even be turned into a commercial project, they have such a different mood from the GOT for example, it’s a grand, poetic, very old-fashioned and high-toned style. Christopher has been against selling the rights to adapt it for years for a reason.

Then for the actors.. I have a kinda established image of Sauron in my head. You know how he often gets depicted as a handsome red-haired in all black clothes with a mischievous smile. And I find that image absolutely logical because he was originally Aule’s Maia, so he is (roughly speaking) one the fire spirits and such hair colour suits him. I don’t want at all them making him look like a typical Jackson-style elf with sleek hairstyle, like he was shown in the Shadows of Mordor. It’s such a boring and unimaginative look for him.

But what I find distasteful the most already is the mad shipping that will FOR SURE emerge after the series airs. Oh god, I mean even Tolkien himself called what Sauron did to Ar-Pharazon ‘seducing’, I’m sure you can imagine how they’ll show it on screen and how many fanart with them we’ll get afterwards. I hate this kind of ship because Sauron deeply despised all Numenoreans with all his Maiar heart to the point of, you know, sending them all to Valinor to get killed. It’s already hurtful to think how many fangirls will ship them like crazy. What’s more Sauron was a prisoner in Numenor which makes this ship a thousand times worse, because you know what it means. I’m not even talking about his ship with Celebrimbor lmao, that’s a given. I’m sure after the series almost everyone will be considering them lovers. This ship is not as bad as the former one, still it’s a notp for me. And I can only hope they won’t make some girl to be his love interest, like they did with a fucking Shelob, just why. I’m also very concerned about Sauron’s character depiction. If they’ll decide to make him an absolutely irredeemable villain that would directly contradict the books. That’s what Tolkien wrote about his personality comparing him to Morgoth:

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness. He did not object to the existence of the world, so long as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics of positive purposes, that descended from the good of the nature in which he began: it had been his virtue (and therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse) that he loved order and coordination, and disliked all confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully that had first attracted Sauron to him.) Sauron had, in fact, been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly and could guess what he would be likely to think and do, even without the aid of palantiri or of spies; whereas Gandalf eluded and puzzled him. But like all minds of this cast, Sauron's love (originally) or (later) mere understanding of other individual intelligences was correspondingly weaker; and though the only real good in, or rational motive for, all this ordering and planning and organization was the good of all inhabitants of Arda (even admitting Sauron's right to be their supreme lord), his 'plans', the idea coming from his own isolated mind, became the sole object of his will, and an end, the End, in itself. But his capability of corrupting other minds, and even engaging their service, was a residue from the fact that his original desire for 'order' had really envisaged the good estate (especially physical well-being) of his 'subjects'.

from the Morgoth's Ring

I hope they won’t show that he alone brought Numenor to destruction, because Numenoreans were already fucked up at the time he arrived on the island. And his rule in Middle-Earth was actually mostly favourable for those countries that he conquered and people genuinely loved and admired him. They should keep this objectivity at least. Also it’s worth mentioning that Sauron mostly ruled over the East regions of Middle-Earth, even the single Nazgul whose name we know was Khamul from Rhune. I want to see the story of Nazgul ‘recruiting’ very much btw. At the same time Numenoreans were literal colonizers in Middle-Earth. Who’s a bad guy here? If you look at it this way, Sauron saved Middle-Earth and people in his army from destruction by offering himself as a captive when Ar-Pharazon came to fight him.

#sauron #tolkien #lord of the rings #lotronprime #amazon lotr

38 notes · View notes

travllingbunny · 5 years

Text

The 100 6x02: Red Sun Rising

This is my second time watching this episode - I first saw it a month ago, together with 6x01, when they leaked, and I’m glad I saw the two of them together, because I had mixed feelings on 6x01, but 6x02 was amazing.

This is what I wanted from season 6, and what I hope to see more of: character-focused episodes with characters forced to deal with their issues and repressed feelings, likely due to weird goings-on on the planet - like Day Trip on overdrive. The episode also had very interesting flashbacks to the history of the people on the planet, descendants of the Eligius III mission, and hints about many of the mysteries of the planet.

The toxin was a great way to shake up the characters and their relationships and for repressed issues to come to light. My theory on why Murphy was the only one who turned out to be unaffected is that the toxin brings our repressed issues and resentments, but Murphy indulges in negativity and bitterness towards both himself and others when he's in the normal state of mind, so he was fine. Instead, he showed the nicer, more heroic side of him. Which, one may argue, is what he is repressing.

Speaking of which, I’m still not sure what exactly to think about Murphy’s complaints against Clarke. Some people have argued that all of them make sense in a way - from Murphy’s point of view, anyway. But the things he mentioned range from perfectly legitimate complaints to things I can’t make sense of. And most of them are incredibly skewed and one-sided views of events - similar to what happens when haters in the fandom try to mount arguments to prove a character is horrible. Like blaming Clarke for Bellamy hanging him, because she kind of caused it by blaming Murphy for Wells’ death (as if it’s hard to understand why she lost it over her best friend’s death, after Murphy had threatened Wells), even though she didn’t expect people to actually try to kill him, and did her best to stop it; or blaming her for tying up him and Emori and planning to test her in the radiation chamber (which was actually done by a bunch of people including Abby, Miller, Jackson, now-dead Roan, and Raven didn’t exactly do anything to stop it except verbally protest), even though she instead decided to test herself and risk her life (and was the only one who volunteered for it - while Emori got another guy tested and killed). And I can’t even make sense of the remark about him being tied up while she was with Lexa, and why he called himself “disposable in her games”. WTF? How is Titus kidnapping and torturing him Clarke’s fault? It’s been argued that he blames her for leaving him with Ontari after she left with the Flame to look for Luna, but that’s not what he said. And I’m really done with people using the nickname “Commander of Death” as an insult. Clarke got it because she did everything to save the Delinquents, Raven, Abby, Kane and others, while Murphy was off on a pointless road trip with Jaha. Also, irradiating Mount Weather was the right decision, because the only alternative was letting the Mountain Men win and kill everyone, and finally, Bellamy and Monty also made the same decision and bear the same responsibility for killing all of the Mountain Men.

So, I’m not sure if Murphy really meant all he said, or was just being a d1ck as usual, venting his frustrations and trying to get a rise out of people. But the moment he saw Clarke trying to kill herself, he did everything to stop her, and later they were saving each other when Bellamy went psycho and attacked them both.

I loved the callback to 3x05 Hakeldama. (”People die when I’m in charge.... Isn’t that what you said?”) Clarke remembers Bellamy's words, even after 6+ years. She was obviously quite hurt and thought about it a lot, even though they've never discussed it since.

Clarke's hallucination reminded me a lot of what ALIE!Raven told her in 3x11 - the same idea of her being poison to others and causing the deaths of people close to her. (Although this time Wells and Finn were not explicitly mentioned - only Jake Griffin and Lexa were - among people close to her that died, but they were arguably indirectly mentioned as Clarke’s hallucination said that people die trying to protect you. The idea that Jake’s actions were motivated by wanting his daughter to think of him as a good guy is something we haven’t heard before. It may be a sign that Clarke does not completely idealize him as she seemed to do. I’ve said in my season 4 rewatch reviews that season 4 (and 3b) mentions of Lexa seemed pretty idealized, but those since have made more sense: in season 5, the mention of Lexa’s betrayal at Mount Weather and long-delayed apology, and now, “Lexa died for the same reason” (wanting Clarke to see her as a good guy) is accurate to what their relationship was like in season 3, which indicates that Clarke is .) On some level, Clarke really has internalized the idea that she needs to save the others from herself, as these are now the things her own subconsciousness is telling her, which she heard as the voice of her mother, telling her to kill herself so she wouldn’t get Madi killed..

It would be interesting to know what exactly Bellamy's hallucination was. He attacked Murphy and Clarke, but he was talking weird/confused stuff about trying to save people. Bellamy's guiding motivation has always been trying to save people, and feeling bad for failing to do it. But I'm sure he also has repressed resentment towards Clarke, even though he forgave her for leaving him last season - he may not have fully forgiven her in his heart. And I'm sure he also has unresolved feelings from the time he blamed himself for leaving her behind and he believed she was dead. He said something weird about how he won't be the one to die this time - but he wasn't. No doubt he's also been annoyed with Murphy quite often, even though they are friends (as of season 5) and we saw Bellamy try to help Murphy to be more positive and love himself in 5x01, but he probably sometimes just felt fed up with Murphy's disruptive and negative behavior. His hallucination seems to have made Murphy a real threat to the group in Bellamy's mind. "I'm saving us, from both of you".

Bellamy also yelled at Clarke, just as he was stepping from the doors of the room where Echo was locked up with Emori, “In case you didn’t notice, Clarke, I don’t need you anymore” - words likely to hurt her as this is something she feared and at one point came to believe during season 5. But it also felt a lot like what we like to call “protesting too much”. Interesting thing to note, Bellamy never told Clarke that he needed her, at any point during the 5+ seasons - it was always Clarke telling him she needed him, or that they needed each other, which he did not deny.

Echo's hallucination and Emori's taunting were both about the fact that Echo is always the follower who does everything for whatever 'master' she attaches herself to. Finally a meaningful character moment for her. The voices she heard were talking about things we'll probably see more of in her flashbacks. She may have an identity crisis and will probably have to try to figure out who she is on her own.

Side note: There is speculation that Echo may have been the one who killed Costia, Lexa's girlfriend, who, as we know, was tortured and killed at Nia's orders and then her head was left in Lexa's bed. This may be the case because the line "Bring me her head" was stressed and repeated twice. At this point, this wouldn't have any bearing on the plot, but it would be a little reveal for the audience to connect some things from the past.)

Emori's hallucination was all about people trying to kill her, which makes sense with her backstory. First she attacked Murphy because she thought he was going to kill her, then she warned Echo and Clarke that Bellamy would kill them all. But she also cruelly taunted Echo, just like Bellamy taunted Murphy and Clarke.

Miller is another person besides Clarke who was turning the violence on himself. During his psychosis, he was yelling that he didn't want to finish like Obika - the man who died last season after being infected by the mutated worms (eww). He was trying to get the bugs/worms out of his skin - which is also connected to his guilt over the things he did and participated in as Blodreina's follower. Jackson also believed Miller had bugs under his skin and was stabbing him to try to get them out. He and Miller were sharing the same hallucination (what is known as folie a deux, shared psychosis, or literally, madness shared by two). As they pointed out in their conversation in 6x01, Miller was the one who did things, while Jackson felt guilty for not stopping things - and not he was trying to intervene save his boyfriend, in his capacity as a doctor.

Clarke and Bellamy are likely to have some interesting conversations next episode, after they woke up, and Bellamy was obviously shocked by realizing what he did to her and to Murphy, and that she had to stab him to stop him.

BTW, now we know what the writers came up with to explain Bob Morley’s leg injury.

Interesting visual of Bellamy, Clarke and Murphy after Clarke had knocked them out all with a gas:

Octavia is in a really bad emotional place. She clearly feels guilty,,but won't admit it, and instead lashes out, blames and antagonizes the others, provoking them to punish her - even kill her. In the season 5 finale, she wanted a redemptive heroic death, but didn't get it. Living with her guilt, admitting her mistakes, changing, that's much harder. She would rather die.

Also, Octavia on her knees, asking for death, was reminiscent of Bellamy in Day Trip during his hallucination. Is Octavia finally going to have the character development he had seasons ago? But first, she needs to realize that sins don't get "washed away" if you're successful in your intention to get your people to their destination, which seemed to have been her guiding idea during season 5 and the reason why she was so obsessed with being the one to take them to Eden.

Diyoza was amazing as always. I usually don't like to use the word "badass", but what else do I call her? She's direct, no-nonsense, a great military strategist, snarky... what's not to love?

Madi had quite a badass entrance, too. We’ll see how she’ll deal with her ambiguous role of being officially a Commander, while the adults are actually making leadership decisions and leaving her behind to be protected as a child, but Gaia found a nice way to make it look different when she agreed with Abby’s decision to leave her in the ship for protection with “You’re too important, Heda”.

Abby showed her ruthless side when she blackmailed Diyoza with the option of not helping with the birth of her child, and when just sat there while Octavia was getting beaten up, and only finally intervened when she was about to get killed, and Jordan and Niylah were yelling at her to stop it... and even that may have been because she had it pointed out that this was what Octavia wanted. She probably has a lot of rage from Kane's clinical death/almost-death that Octavia kind of caused.

The surviving hijacker said that the trees eat the bugs.(They have eaten them all by now) Interesting planet.

The hijackers are all Nightbloods, as you would expect from descendants of the Eligius mission. So who is the radiation fence supposed to keep out? If the people in the woods are red-bloods, how did that happen?

The hijackers were really concerned with the dead bodies, and in a way that seems to go way beyond normal reverence for human remains. Diyoza told the survivor "Newsflash, they're dead", but I think these people have a way of recreating dead people by cloning or something similar - however, they would also need a way to recreate the consciousness, because otherwise, clones are just identical twins, not the same people.

A lot of the evidence for this comes from the flashback, which was really interesting and full of reveals:

The Eligius mission was on the planet 236 years ago, which means they came to the planet before the first nuclear apocalypse, which happened 229 years ago (97 years + about 6 months that passed from 1x01 to 4x13 + 6 years + 125 years).

Josephine Ada Lightbourne (they made sure that we know that’s her name) and her astronaut father (played by Sean Maguire) are strikingly similar to Clarke and her father, and not just physically. She even draws like Clarke. I still think that Lightbournes may be related to the Griffins, If they are not, then this was deliberately done to draw the parallels.

Josephine Ada Lightbourne is also the name of the author of the Red Sun Rising book - even though the book could have only been written after the first psychosis incident that we see in the flashback, and it seemed that Josie got killed by her father during his psychosis, alongside her mother a bunch of other people.

Speculation based on info from the trailers, promo and details about the next episode:

Josephine was a taxonomist, and her boyfriend, Dr Gabriel Santiago, was a geneticist, and the next episode is called "Children of Gabriel"... Gabriel also mentioned that they have embryos for reproduction, which means they brought fully formed embryos to the planet, or created them there. But if they have been trying to replicate dead humans for two centuries (since Sean Maguire's character killed so many of the members of the mission), they have to have some sort of a method of transferring consciousness, too, because otherwise, clones are just like identical twins, not the same people. Russell (JR Bourne), the leader of the people from the Sanctum, is obviously the descendant of Maguire’s character, both because of his looks and because the trailer revealed his last name Lightbourne.

My impression, based on the info from trailers etc., is that Russell's people are elitist, self-righteous a-holes who decide that only some are 'worthy' to live in their "Paradise". But it's interesting that "Lightbourne" means something very similar to "Lucifer" (or vice versa - the latter is "light bearer"). This doesn't exactly scream trustworthy good guys, and neither does the attitude we see from the trailer, or the fact that they dress like people from the Capitol and live in something that looks like a castle from a Renaissance Fair. And if they really do have a way of re-creating dead humans, would put a whole new meaning to the whole Sanctum thing and the divide between those within and those outside (the people in the woods?) that Russell's people have exiled/are not letting in as unworthy! Stakes are really high if they are basically deciding who the chosen ones are with the right to "live forever".

Rating: 9.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 6x02 #red sun rising #the 100 season 6 #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #octavia blake #john murphy #emori #charmaine diyoza #nate miller #eric jackson #echo #echo kom azgeda #abby griffin #madi griffin #gaia #gaia kom trikru

17 notes · View notes

vardasvapors · 6 years

Text

DRUNK LIVEBLOG OF THE AKALLABETH BC I PROMISED @rose-of-the-bright-sea

Uh unfortunately i’m not too drunk since once again my job was to bounce everyone once the party ended but uhhh it is early morning and i’m still not asleep and i did just spend 5 hours dancing and doing shots so...

ANYWAY: first scene of the Akallabeth, remember how the edain were the only Men who fought against morgoth in the war of wrath etc, and when morgoth was defeated the Evil Men who fought for him ran away and conquered all the Stupid Men who were still living in the middle earth area and these men’s lives sucked and were constantly attacked by orcs and monsters and they were dumb and wild and stuff. this explanation is like 20 kinds of LMAO NARRATIVES but also not like, in a lying way, just in a framing way.

otoh the edain got given a giant island in the middle of the ocean as a reward for fighting against morgoth and stuff, osse and aule and yavanna did it. (valar: ‘have an island way out in the sea’ elros: ‘SOUNDS LEGIT’). meanwhile the elves of ME are long-sufferingly granted permission to come to tol eressea because their lives kinda suck. the difference in the tone of the edain’s gift and the elves’ gift is totally not noticed by the narrator but the fact that avallone was build on the eastern edge of tol eressea where it could be seen from numenor is. lol.

there’s this super gorgeous entrancing description of how earendil burned super bright so that he shone night and day and the edain followed him over the calm enchanted sea until they found the island of numenor -- andor the land of gift, elenna that is starwards. however we all know all this incredible rich storytelling stuff isn’t important compared to the tiny scrap of smugness that can be wrung out of making elros hate earendil and/or elves, bc everyone knows that no character’s narrative matters except the feanorians’.

elves of ME also brought all the edain to numenor and elves of tol eressea gave the edain a ton of tools and gifts and stuff to help build their new nation, but you know it’s fun to headcanon elros as a bitter chest-puffing supercilious self-satisfied little prick who finds these elves embarrassing and blinkered and their existence pitiful and tut-tuttingly Wrong. bc that makes sense and is woke for some reason.

the numenoreans became taller than all the sons of middle earth, not all the men of middle earth, so numenoreans are taller than elves. also they didn’t have a lot of kids, bc i guess population explosions on islands with almost no death outside of like 300 years of old age is a Bad Time.

also “and the light of their eyes was like the bright stars” hahahahahahahahaha lmao! kill me! lies down. does not get up.

WHITE TREE FRACTALS

the numenoreans are super cool and get to talk and visit with both elves of tol eressea and elves of middle earth, which seems to lead to the completely inescapable conclusion that numenor is a place where the peoples of all lands can pass messages to one another but this is never mentioned. the numenoreans could totally also have prob defeated the evil human kings of middle earth if they tried but they were totes peaceful -- at an undefined point in time. nice vague timeline blurring bruh.

instead they like, instructed the dumb middle earth men on how to grow grain and grind flour and make stuff out of wood bc uh i guess the middle earth men are too dumb to figure it out, for “the ordering of their life, such as it might be in the lands of swift death and little bliss” hahahahahaha this is the most condescending line in the entire silm it’s great.

then the numenoreans start getting dissatisfied with how they still gotta die and stuff. it’s vaguely described as being something to do with how even their long lives are still not as long as elves’ loves, but every time i read this it reminds me how pissed about mortality i’d be if my great-great-great-uncle who was totally allowed to choose to become immortal kept popping in to talk about how he got to see the cool millennia of my country’s history first hand and debate with my revered ancestral founding king. so.

however the numenoreans totally brush over these sorts of super compelling and sympathetic and valid points and instead just whine about how they’re A Bigshot Kewl Superior Race and HDU Say We Can’t Control Everything If We Wanna, 36 Presents? But Last Century I Got 37! because they’re fucking useless dumbasses.

The valar reply that Aman Will Not Make You Immortal, Yo, and also that elves being immortal and men being mortal aren’t rewards or punishments, which are reasonable points. they then go on to go ‘TBH shouldn’t WE be the ones envying YOU bc you get to peace out of this clusterfuck world, huh, huh whaddaya think about that. also btw the whole mortality thing is some Secret Plan To Fight Inflation eru came up with, and none of us will know it until you and a bajillion generations of your descendants are all dead, lol!!!!’ THANKS VALAR. THAT’S REALLY HELPFUL. GREAT JOB OF ACTUALLY ADDRESSING ANYTHING THE NUMENOREANS ARE BOTHERED ABOUT. KUDOS. i love dumb gods.

the numenoreans are super dissatisfied but instead of anything constructive the king decides to hold his breath and throw a tantrum stay king until he’s totally senile and his son is old, bc of spite, then numenor gets divided into the king’s men and the faithful. the faithful are also bleh about death but assume that the valar have some kind of good reason for what they said, because um, reasons, i guess. no one says if the reasons are more mindless dogma or more a grounding and strengthening faith, but since numenoreans sound like RL humans to a tee it’s probably both. the king’s men aren’t skeptics tho -- they just conquer and enslave and colonize and steal from middle earth, bc ‘the west was denied to them.’ some fans find this to be a ‘yes, but--’ where it’s not the best thing to do but sympathetic and better than those un-nietzschean faithful. i’m gonna assume every single person who finds this nod-worthy is as White as sour cream.

later on Ar-Gimilzor bans the Faithful’s language, sends secret police or smth to find out everyone who is Faithful and forcibly remove them from their homes, relocate them to Romenna, and corral and watch them, call them and the elves of tol eressea spies, chase them out of numenor, and force the faithful leader’s sister to marry the king. some fans still somehow think this was a morally grey and understandable thing to do because secular-culturally-christian libs are vile and have never parsed a history book in their lives.

Tar-Palantir becomes king after being secretly taught Faithful stuff by his secretly faithful mom, but nothing he does to fix things helps and he eventually dies young from depression. His daughter Tar-Miriel becomes queen but her cousin Ar-Pharazon forces her to marry him and give him the kingship instead. exactly how this happened remains unexplained! Boo! I want more details. Anyway Pharazon is a Fragile Masculinity poster boy and when sauron starts causing trouble he decides he’s just gotta go capture him and bring him to numenor to show off and stroke his ego, bc he is an Heir Of Eärendil and Respect Meehhh!! God this guy sounds SO UNPLEASANTLY FAMILIAR DOESN’T HE EH. (parenthetically i am delighted beyond words at how absolutely bang-on it is that the King’s Men, both here and earlier with the convo with the Valar, totally Do Not Mention the fact that they’re heirs of Elros, not just Earendil, bc that would be super inconvenient to their vision of themselves and their mortality grievance!! lol!!! i love it!!!! god!!!!!!!! *fingers and thumb in a circle emoji*).

anyway sauron is super smart and an awesomesauce genre-savvy villain and way too good for pharazon and he flatters him and manipulates him into making him his councilor and convinces him that the valar are lying and and to worship morgoth and slaughter the faithful by sacrificing them on.....hm....altars....as rebels and as scapegoats for all numenor’s Problems(TM)....>_>....lmao tolkien can be really fucking dumb and scattered about his mythology and religion patchworking, and yet the wokeness-masturbating section of fandom is infinitely worse in the most predictable ways.

WHITE TREE FRACTALS (this time featuring bonus BAMF and Super Awesome And Lovable 21 Year Old Isildur......have i mentioned recently how much i hate peter jackson......)

anyway when Pharazon has a mid-life crisis about getting old sauron also convinces him he can become immortal by invading aman, which he should totally do bc The Strong Do What They Will And The Weak Bear What They Must (remember this is tragically admirable if flawed, because it’s defying fate!) and a super armament is built to invade aman and ar-Pharazon’s ex-bff Amandil who’s secretly friends with the Faithful freaks and makes secret plans to sail to valinor to beg the valar to do something and has his son elendil prepare to go to middle earth to see the elves who are hunkered down there doing.....uhhhhh???? probably hiding from numenorean conquest????

but anyway when pharazon invades aman and chases the elves out of tol eressea and then tirion, he has a Uh-Oh I Think This Was A Bad Idea feeling but can’t back down now so he lands ashore and camps out around tirion and then manwe prays to eru to bail everyone out and says he will lay down rule of arda for a minute since he doesn’t know what to do, presumably a la ‘omg dad i fucked up and totally crashed your car,’ and eru solves this by getting ar-pharazon & co buried under a mountain until the end of the world (funny how so few fans ever address this thing re: tirion in valinor fanfic eh? oh yeah i forgot silm fans don’t give a shit about humans), opening up a big crack in the ocean, pulling aman and tol eressea out into space, turning the earth from flat to spherical, and letting the island of numenor get buried under the resulting tidal wave and fall down the crack to wherever. because you know overkill is great! also sauron is too busy doing an Evil Villain Laugh to realize he’s about to get drowned and he totally dies and has to make himself a new body out of Anger and he’s now ugly, which sucks for the fanartists.

anyway manwe saves elendil and his fleet (it doesn’t say manwe, but it does say ‘but the great wind took [elendil], wilder than any wind that Men had known, roaring from the west, and it swept his ships far away...’ which, duh) and they wind up washed up on middle earth, but totally grief-stricken over the destruction of numenor.

I can’t liveblog the rest any better than verbatim so I’ll just quote:

Among the Exiles many believed that the summit of the Meneltarma, the Pillar of Heaven, was not drowned for ever, but rose again above the waves, a lonely island lost in the great waters; for it had been a hallowed place, and even in the days of Sauron none had defiled it And some there were of the seed of Eärendil that afterwards sought for it, because it was said among loremasters that the far-sighted men of old could see from the Meneltarma a glimmer of the Deathless Land. For even after the ruin the hearts of the Dúnedain were still set westwards; and though they knew indeed that the world was changed, they said: 'Avallónë is vanished from the Earth and the Land of Aman is taken away, and in the world of this present darkness they cannot be found. Yet once they were, and therefore they still are, in true being and in the whole shape of the world as at first it was devised.'

For the Dúnedain held that even mortal Men, if so blessed, might look upon other times than those of their bodies' life; and they longed ever to escape from the shadows of their exile and to see in some fashion the light that dies not; for the sorrow of the thought of death had pursued them over the deeps of the sea. Thus it was that great mariners among them would still search the empty seas, hoping to come upon the Isle of Meneltarma, and there to see a vision of things that were. But they found it not. And those that sailed far came only to the new lands, and found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. And those that sailed furthest set but a girdle about the Earth and returned weary at last to the place of their beginning; and they said:

'All roads are now bent.'

Thus in after days, what by the voyages of ships, what by lore and star-craft, the kings of Men knew that the world was indeed made round, and yet the Eldar were permitted still to depart and to come to the Ancient West and to Avallónë, if they would. Therefore the loremasters of Men said that a Straight Road must still be, for those that were permitted to find it. And they taught that, while the new world fell away, the old road and the path of the memory of the West still went on, as it were a mighty bridge invisible that passed through the air of breath and of flight (which were bent now as the world was bent), and traversed Ilmen which flesh unaided cannot endure, until it came to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, and maybe even beyond, to Valinor, where the Valar still dwell and watch the unfolding of the story of the world. And tales and rumours arose along the shores of the sea concerning mariners and men forlorn upon the water who, by some fate or grace or favour of the Valar, had entered in upon the Straight Way and seen the face of the world sink below them, and so had come to the lamplit quays of Avallónë, or verily to the last beaches on the margin of Aman, and there had looked upon the White Mountain, dreadful and beautiful, before they died.

#observe my obsession #akallabeth

37 notes · View notes

spacerainbows · 6 years

Text

Pick 10 ships before reading/answering the questions

chronologically ordered

I found this posted on someone’s blog and even though I want tagged I decided to do it anyway

1. Destiel (Supernatural)

2. Sabriel (Supernatural)

3. Drarry (Harry Potter)

4. Spirk(Star Trek TOS/AOS)

5. Johnlock (Sherlock BBC)

6. Merthur (Merlin)

7. Cockles (Supernatural actors{Misha and Jensen )

8. Jim/Pam(The Office)

9. Stony(Marvel)

10. Spideypool (Marvel)

1 - Do you remember the episode/scene/ chapter that you first started shipping 6?

Merlin was recommended to me by a friend that already shipped Merthur, so I ended up walking into it expecting to ship it. I already shipped it by the end of the first season because they are so reliant on each other and “two sides of the same coin” I call soulmates

2 - Have you ever read a fic about 2?

Yes I have. I actually started shipping it because of fan fiction because there isn’t a ton of fule for it in the show. Way to go random destiel works for getting into a new ship*distant sounds of applause*

3 - Has a picture of 4 ever been your screensaver/ profile pic / tumblr?

Yes it actually is my phone screensaver currently. I’m rewatching TOS and it’s wonderful. My name is based around an inside joke with my brother regarding spirk and the enterprise so I guess that counts for something I found a shirt with the enterprise that had a rainbow trail behind it and my brother said “You know it’s because Kirk and Spock are getting it on” and I said “It’s just the spacerainbows having some fun”. Yeah that probably didn’t need to be said. Anyway…

4 - If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

I’d cry. Cockles is beautiful. The conventions would fall and it would be sad. They are wonderful together and they know it. I would never let this happen. Even if they aren’t actually together*for all that we know* so much could happen if it stopped. Also a good section of tumblr would probably be crying and rage posting.

5 - Why is 1 so important?

I don’t know if this question means important to me or the fandom so I’ll explain my thoughts on both. For me it seems so important because Dean has been alone for most of his life constantly worrying about protecting his little brother. He always needed to be strong enough to protect because there was no one really there to protect him. Then enters Castiel, a celestial being capable of killing thousands in seconds. He’s an angel of the lord who “gripped Dean right and raised him from perdition” He has the capability to protect Dean, but Dean needs to be able to let him. I feel like this took many seasons for him to finally admit and he still doesn’t but through all of it while Castiel looses and regains his mojo Dean is always there for as much as he can. They protect one another. Dean can finally have the comfort he needs. And then there’s Cas. He’s an angel. They appear as emotionless beings that could care less about the world but Castiel isn’t, and right at the beginning in season 4 you could tell that he knew this. He was scared to admit to himself that he could and did feel. The first person he confides in is Dean. Throughout the show he embraces these feelings and grows new ones and learns the meaning of love and family*cried over season 12 episode 12* They’re always there for each other,and even if the show never shows them as anything other than platonic, their still friendship means so much. As for the fandom as a whole, I feel as though it’s provided a focus point and feeling to build. I feel like all good shows have two characters that fit so perfectly, either as friends or lovers, together; just watching the relationship solidify and grow is just showing how amazing character development can be. Then there is the fandom uniting over it. I don’t really care if you ship destiel or not or you ship wincest or samstiel or nothing at all, you still know that it exists and is something that is talked about in the show. The fact that it has come up as a topic in the show itself shows how much it has affected the Supernatural fandom as a whole.

6 - Which one has the strongest bond?

I’d have to say Spirk. Throughout both aos and tos they would do anything for each other. They would stand by each other during death and fight to save each other. Not to mention the Vulcan bonding or honds. #t’hy’la

7 - Which ship has lasted the longest

Spirk. Probably. I mean it’s know as one of the first slash pairings in existence and one of the first to actually start the spread of a fandom gathering and forming around one thing. It’s sometimes called the flagship or the mothership. I’ve shipped it since I was a little kid because I grew up watching tos and the movies. My dad said would say that they were secretly gay for one another as a joke and my small young mind believed him so I got mad whenever they were ever with anyone else and they shipped caried over to when I took to watching it again on my own. And small me also noticed how similar their actions were to straight couples and I asked my dad if they were dating and that’s what led to the secretly gay thing that my dad started saying

8 - How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up I mean.

They never canonically got together and one of them is kinda dead now until further notice. If you want to count when and before Arthur dies because of the fight and his death than sure, but there were other times when they would get with other people and Arthur was kinda married to Gwen by the end of the show so…

9 - If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive? 2 or 8?

2. Sorry Jim and Pam but you’re being pinned against a hunter who deals with zombies on a daily basis-one of the actually less crazy things he’s seen- and an arch angel capable of snapping his fingers and changing things to fit his desires. I think they would be pretty good. Also angels can heal and not die unless killed by an angel blade or in Gabriel’s case an arch angel blade, so unless a zombie can find one and stab Gabe I think they’d make it out pretty unscathed. 10 - Did 7 ever have to hide their relationship for any reasons? I mean, this could be canon, but for all I know it isn’t, soooo i don’t really know the answer but for all we know they could secretly be hiding it right now.

11 - Is 4 still together?

I mean, is you take into account the new information brought from aos you know they’ve known and been friends with each other until Jim’s death. So I can only imagine that if it truly were canon they would still be together because they’d be able to go against time as they’ve done it before for each other.

12 - Is 10 canon?

Na, the only canon thing on my list is Jim and Pam. They are adorable and great btw. I shipped them by the end of the very short first season and all their interactions are adorable and all the stuff they go through to finally be happy together and when the start a family, aaaaaaaaa, it’s just too great.

13 - If all 10 ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

If I had to answer honestly I’d say it come down between 1 and 2 because of the healing capabilities, and then it would be a 4 way suicide. Sam and Dean would never be able to kill each other and I doubt Cas and Gabe would want to kill each other either, so it would either be a battle that would never end or a suicide. Also DON’T THROW MY CHILDREN INTO A PIT OF DEATH i cry

14 - Has anyone ever tried to sabotage 5?

Mary Watson… you know how she ended up. She’s actually great though.

15 - Do you spend hours a day going though 3’s tag

Not as much as I used to but if I get a sudden urge.

16 - If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all up, which ship would you SINK?!

Stony. Sorry, but civil war kinda happened. If that fight doesn’t count as a break up as is for their not canon pairings I don’t really know what does.

52 notes · View notes

donghun-s · 6 years

Text

the very large sp3arb tag

so @sp3arb has tagged me in a total four tags recently and i’m finally getting around to all of them!! tysm for all the tags, meri (btw i love your name?? i think its super cute!) and i hope you learn a bunch of unnecessary stuff abt me lmao (under the cut bc this is a long ass post)

i dont have a name for this tag

1ST RULE: Tag 9 people you want to get to know better

im not tagging anyone bc im bad at things and most ppl i wanna know about, meri has already tagged so

2ND RULE: BOLD the statements that are true.

APPEARANCE: - I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo - I have at least one piercing - I have blonde hair - I have brown eyes - I have short hair - My abs are at least somewhat defined - I have or had braces

PERSONALITY: - I love meeting new people - People tell me I am funny - Helping others with their problems is a big priority of mine - I enjoy physical challenges - I enjoy mental challenges - I am playfully rude to people I know- I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it - There is something I would change about my personality

ABILITY: - I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping - I am a fast runner - I can draw well - I have a good memory - I am good at doing maths in my head - I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - I have beaten at least 2 people arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch - I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES: - I enjoy sports - I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - I’m in a orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in the past week - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in the past month - I enjoy writing - Fandoms are my #1 priority - I do some form of Martial arts

EXPERIENCES: - I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol - I have scored a winning point in a sport - I have watched an entire TV series in one sitting - I have been at an overnight event - I have been in a taxi - I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day - I have visited another country - I have been to one of my favorite band’s concerts

MY LIFE: - I have one person that I consider to be my Best Friend - I live close to my school/work - My parents are still together - I have at least one sibling - I live in the United States - There is snow where I live right now - I have hung out with a friend in the past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone

RELATIONSHIPS: - I am in a Relationship - I have a crush on a celebrity - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least 3 relationships - I have never been in a Relationship - I have admitted my feelings to a crush - I get crushes easily - I have had a crush for over a year - I have been in a relationship for over a year - I have had feelings for a friend

RANDOM: - I have break-danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name that is hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair - I’m listening to a song on repeat right now - I have punched someone in the past week - I know someone who has gone to jail - I have broken a bone - I have eaten a waffle today - I know what I want to do in life - I speak at least two languages [i don’t speak two, i speak one and sign in another] - I have made a new friend in the past year

alphabet tag

Rules: answer the questions in a new post and tag 10 blogs you would like to get to know better

I was tagged by Roxanne ( is it ok if I call you Roxy? I like Roxy) Actually @lxx-fxlix And for some reason it did not give me the notification you did, I was casually stalking your blog when I saw:

A: age? 16 (01 liner)

B: birthplace? North Carolina

C: current time? 7:53 pm

D: drink you had last? Arnold Palmer (half sweet tea, half lemonade)

E: easiest person to talk to? for me, it’s my irl best friend gwen and my best friend on here, krys

F: favorite song? oof i’m super indecisive so i’m just gonna commit to mayday by got7 (it always changes but mayday has stayed on my constantly rotating playlist for nearly six months now; most are on for six weeks, max)

G: grossest memory? uh probably when one of my swim lesson kids tried to eat a bug (they were like four) and i had to make them spit it out into my hands

H: hogwarts house? proud slytherin!!

I: in love? i love a lot of people, but i’m not IN love

J: jealous of people? not anymore, my self-esteem has gotten so much better in past years

K: killed someone? uhm a couple of times in fics (*cough* jinjin in not like this *cough*)

L: love at first sight or should i walk by again? not love but pls walk by again bc i’m probably enjoying your aesthetics

M: middle name? christine

N: number of siblings? one, an older sister

O: one wish? to adopt a kid with no family or an unhealthy one (obvs when older and financially stable)

P: person you called last? my sister called me yesterday morning, and before that i had called my friend to tell him abt a near death experience when i was driving

R: reasons to smile? something good will happen to you, you’ll meet someone wonderful, and there’s always new experiences to happen

S: song you sang last? poet by bastille (an underrated fave)

T: time you woke up? about 8 am

U: underwear color? light heathered grey

V: vacation destination? i’d love to go to greece someday! santorini would be my first choice, and then my great-grandparents old village near thessaloniki

W: worst habit? probs my dermatillia (picking at acne on my face until it bleeds, then picking at the scabs, leaving a bunch of scars that will never go away)

X: x-rays? i got one on my tailbone one time, two years after i sprained it bc my mom didn’t believe me

Y: your favorite food? uhhh most anything tbh; i quite like the honey butter chicken sandwich from pdq

Z: zodiac sign? libra

✨ Fun Facts Tag ✨

Rules for this are:

Have fun with it!

Tag some of your mutuals

1) Favourite colours:

orange!! and after that, any kinds of pastel or muted darks

2) Favourite song at the moment:

lotto by exo has been on replay in my head, my car, and my earbuds

3) Last book you read:

the sun and her flowers by rupi kaur

4) Last TV show you watched:

i tried to watch part-time idol bc hyunbin from jbj was in it, but within the first 15 minutes they set up an unnecessary relationship so i had to nope out of there real hard; i then reverted back to rewatching white collar for the fifth time

5) Last movie you watched:

does john mulaney’s nerflix comedy special comeback kid count?? if not, probably nightmare before christmas way back around christmastime

6) If you have a pet whats their name?:

four dogs: pheonix, kino, midge, and bess; three horses: little man, gem, and andy (ironically i’m allergic to dogs and horses, and my dad keeps buying more)

7) If you have siblings how many?:

one, my older sister

8) Favourite thing to do on a weekend:

i love doing my swim lessons and seeing all my kids!! i haven’t been able to lately bc of the weather,

9) Best tumblr friends:

i only talk to @cheesyramynry on a daily basis, but i have a lot of blogs that i consider friendly acquaintances or casual friends as well!!

10) Favourite thing about yourself:

i value my compassion and empathy above all else; i am very much the mom friend and love to be it

11) Favourite memory:

ah i have so many; i think rn i’m gonna go with this past christmas, bc it was my last one with my grandfather

12) 3 weird habits:

swallowing gum, taking all my pills in descending size order, i tend to mimic how a singer sounds when i sing along to the song (ex: if they have a british accent, i’ll subconsciously sing in a british accent; if they stress certain syllables in certain ways, i’ll do it too)

13) What would you call your style?:

comfortable (stretchy jeans, t-shirts, hoodies) and with a few signature Gay Things (jean jacket, flannels, oversized mens’ button ups, a couple gay/bi pride shirts)

14) Odd talent:

if i have lyrics in front of me to a song i’ve never heard before, i can predict the pattern of the tunes and rhythm and sing along the first time

15) Do you have a tumblr crush?:

literally all of aroha and all of the sk fandom (y’all are the loveliest fandoms i’ve ever been a part of)

the stray kids tag

Rules: answer the questions in a new post, and tag 10 blogs you would like to get to know better.

I’ve decided that in celebration of Stray Kids pre-debut album I needed to create a tag. The ultimate goal for The Stray Kids Tag is to learn about your Tumblr mutuals, and have fun answering the Stray Kids related questions! Here we go:

1: When did you decide to join the Stray kids fandom?

i saw a thread of information abt the suspected nine members before they were officially announced and was like ‘yes i must stan them and love them with all of my heart.’ so uh,,,,, back in august or september??

2: What is your favorite episode of Stray Kids? uhm, i’m gonna expose myself rn and let y’all know that i’ve never actually seen a full episode of the show; as soon as i heard it was gonna be a survival show, i knew that i couldn’t watch it bc my heart was too weak and i was emotionally incapable of becoming too invested while watching it; but from clips, i quite like the episode with the 3:3:3 mission, and also the last episode when all nine were reunited and told they were going to debut together

3: Who would you say is your bias in Stray kids?

my initial one was chan, and they i got rlly confused, and then slowly came to realize that it was jeongin (anything else after that is a fucking mess)

4: Who would you say is your bias wrecker in Stray kids?

literally kill me all of them bias wreck me so hard bUT hyunjin, jisung, seungmin, and chan have been wrecking me so hard in particular lately

5: What line would you want to be apart of in Stray kids? uHHH not dance line bc swimmers have 0 coordination on land; i quite like singing even tho i’m not good at, so probably that, but i can also hit all of chan’s english rap parts in 3racha songs, and keep up with lafayette’s raps in hamilton, and a lot of the english rappers i like too so uh,,, sign me up for rap line too

6: What is the first song you heard of Stray kids? hellevator

7: What is the first song you heard of 3racha? i think it was either hoodie season or runner’s high

8: What is your favorite song on their pre-debut album?

young wings or school life or yayaya (or grr or 4419 or glow or hellevator)

9: What is a concept you’d like to see Stray Kids try in the future?

i love their current optimistic and slightly rebellious teenager concept rn bc its an Eternal Mood; but i always love myself a soft boyfriend concept

10: if you could meet with the members of Stray kids for one day what would you say to them?

how proud of them i am, and how proud of themselves they should be; i would tell them about how they’re saying things that resonate deeply for their fans and i love that they’re talking abt real world problems; i would also make sure to tell them (chan and 3racha especially) to make sure to rest more, and eat well, and take care of themselves emotionally as well as physically; and finally i’d like to tell jeongin how wonderful he is and that he’s doing so much at such a young age (lmao he’s actually eight months older than me but that’s no the point) and to never lose his cute little smile

finally done!! meri, if you actually read all of this, uh thank you????? i hope you now know everything you wanted to know abt me, and probably more than you wanted to know

i’m bad at tagging people, so if you also made it this far and haven’t done some of these tags, choose one, or a couple, or all of them and do them yourself!! just say that i tagged you!!

#mel talks #tags

4 notes · View notes

danfanciesphil · 7 years

Note

Love your writing! A prompt for you: I'd love to see Phil reacting to people saying he doesn't love Dan as much as Dan loves him which I think is stupid??

So, if you’ve read my fic Birthday Sex then you will know that I do not buy into this trope whatsoever, which i must say is a big reason I wrote it. I really just do not see where people are coming from when they say that Dan loves Phil more?? Maybe at the very, very beginning of their relationship it kind of seemed like Dan was a bit of an obsessed lovestruck young kiddo (spoiler: he was) but firstly, it’s important to remember that we don’t get to see everything the two of them say to one another and we already know that Dan tends to share a lot more with the public than Phil does. For example, when has Phil ever (barr his Draw My Life and a few other sparse instances) ever revealed anything serious and personal about himself? Whereas Dan just yesterday opened up about something so deeply intimate that it’s honestly baffling he had the courage at all. My point is that it’s highly, highly likely that there were things said between them behind the scenes that we just did not have any knowledge of whatsoever. I’d draw your attention to the Video That Will Not Be Named as an example, because obviously (if you choose to ignore dnp’s ‘explanation’ and see it as real/true) then it was NEVER meant to be seen by anyone except Dan. Think about that... if youtube hadn’t glitched, that video would not exist to us. How many more videos are there like this one? How many texts and phone calls and private conversations that are probably WAY more schmaltzy and incriminating??

Not only this, but as a follow up point, Phil is older, and he is maturer than Dan. The latter possibly gets less true as time goes on and Dan grows as a person (what a fantastic man he’s becoming I stg im so proud), but certainly up until now, Phil has been the adult of the two of them. Don’t try telling me he acts like a child either, because that’s not the same thing - he’s an entertainer for a family friendly YouTube channel, it doesn’t mean he isn’t a millionaire/business owner/well-educated, successful man. I find it not only silly that people expect him to be fawning over Dan every minute of the goddamn day on camera in order to prove his affection, but just ridiculously unrealistic. He’s a 30 year old man. If he is with Dan, then he’s been in a committed relationship with him for years. They’re over the honeymoon stage. They’re into something far more serious and committed now, and it’s a kind of love that doesn’t need to be shown at all times.

Finally, I just want to add that apart from all I’ve said - neither of them (imo) show much sign of being madly in love with the other at all? I mean, you have to remember that we are a fandom, and it’s so easy to pick apart something and pull out the bits you want to fit your ideal picture. There is evidence of them being a couple, yes, but there’s also evidence against it! Neither of them refer to one another as ‘boyfriend’ or ‘partner’ and I honestly doubt they ever will! Dan is not constantly gooey over Phil, and the same goes the other way around. It baffles me that people can dissect every one of their looks and actions (I’m guilty of it too of course) and come up with these absurd headcanons such as “AWW DAn looks so in love here, and Phil looks so indifferent” because it’s just... it’s just completely ridiculous?? You have nothing to base that on whatsoever apart from a half second clip from a video - the leap to conclusion is beyond crazy.

Idk I am aware i went off on a little ramble here, but this kind of thing is where the phandom descends into a total clusterfucky mess. It’s good to take a breather every once in a while and remind ourselves that the things we do know about the boys is very limited. Our ‘evidence’ from the past is still just a bunch of tweets and videos, none of us know them. I don’t want to destroy any ships, because personally I think there’s a LOT of mystery and confusion shrouding their relationship which could absolutely mean something else is going on, but again, I’m not going to make any mad assumptions about anything because at the end of the day I just don’t know.

ANYWAY. Nothing wrong with writing FICTION about this, and that’s what you’ve asked for, so here my love! Thanks for the question (none of this was aimed at you btw! I know you’re just asking in general about the topic, I just wanted to share my thoughts on it).

Got a prompt for me? Click here! (Please be aware that due to an abundance of prompts, your prompt may take a few days to complete - but thank you all for submitting so far!)

The comment catches his attention, and Phil isn’t sure why.

He’s scrolling through the comment section of the latest DanAndPhilGAMES video, a smile playing on his mouth as he reads everyone’s reactions to Dil’s latest adventures.

It’s a treat he allows himself very rarely nowadays, to look through the comments. As Dan once said, it can be like picking through a minefield. Sure, the vast majority of the comments will be overwhelmingly positive, filled with adoration and appreciation of them both, lulling him into a false sense of security and then BAM! One will jump out, jarring him with its nasty words, or its negative perspective. Reading a mean comment can, even now, when there are literally thousands of nice once to combat it, throw Phil off-kilter for days.

It can make him second guess every creative instinct. It can make him snappy and irritable, or just glum.

This comment, though not exactly mean per se, is one such instance. He tries to ignore it, to just scroll past and move on with his life. It’s just a shipper comment, after all. That’s what he and Dan call them. Around half the comments they get on their videos are from the ‘shippers’. It’s fine. Usually neither of them pay any attention to them whatsoever.

But this one has been upvoted 600 times. It has dozens of replies attached to it, clearly a topic of hot discussion. Phil scrolls back up, gnawing at his lip, and lets his eyes scan over the words again:

It’s so sad when Dan says something funny and looks at Phil all hopeful but Phil just ignores him. Heartbreaking to know that Dan will always love Phil more - ever since 2009. 3

Phil closes his laptop, wishing the words would dissolve from his brain. He shuts his eyes, but they burn behind his retinas, bright and jarring. Where do they get this stuff? Is that truly what people believe?

He reopens his laptop and scrolls back up to the video, dragging the slider over the bar at the bottom of the window, scanning his and Dan’s faces for any signs of what that subscriber had said.

As he scrolls through the video for the sixth time, squinting at the screen, he feels Dan flop down onto the sofa beside him, crunching something. Phil sits up, turning to Dan with warm cheeks, feeling caught out.

Dan raises an eyebrow at him, glancing at the screen. He offers Phil a crisp from the packet in his hands.

“Watching phan videos again?” Dan asks him, smiling.

“Just... checking the comments on the Dil vid.” Phil tells him, and Dan sighs knowingly, placing the crisp packet aside.

“Oh God, what’ve they said now?” Dan asks, shuffling towards Phil in order to see.

Phil wonders if he should even mention this to Dan; it seems like it might be worse for him to know the fans seem to think this way, after all. Inevitably though, Phil breaks, not able to think up a good enough lie.

With some reluctance, he scrolls down to the comment, and waits for Dan to read it, chewing his lip.

“Oh,” Dan says in a strange voice, sitting upright. “That’s... I thought it was gonna be like ‘gay emo dicks’ or something.”

Phil laughs a little, but it’s a hollow, unconvincing sound. “You know that... that’s not true, right?”

Dan looks at him, something small and fearful hidden deep in the recesses of his eyes. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t sound very convinced, and it worries Phil immensely. “You’re my whole world, Dan.” Phil tells him with complete sincerity; Dan looks away, obviously embarrassed by the loaded emotion. “I know it sounds melodramatic. But you are. You’re my best friend, my favourite person in the world. I love you so much it’s crazy.”

There’s a choke to Dan’s voice when he next speaks. “Yeah,” he says again, sniffing. “I dunno where they get their weird ideas, tbh.”

Phil pushes his laptop off his knee, reaching for Dan and pulling him in. He holds him tight, pressing firm kisses into his soft curls. “I’m sorry if it ever comes off that way.” Phil tells him, voice a whisper of itself. “I’m sorry if I’ve ever made you feel that I might not... love you as much.”

Dan shakes his head. “Don’t be stupid.” He pulls away a little, looking up into Phil’s eyes, his smile watery. “I know how much you love me, you sap.”

Phil surveys him carefully, scanning his face for signs of a lie. Eventually a smirk creeps onto his lips, and Dan zeroes in on it, confused.

“Well,” Phil purrs, leaning forwards until their lips brush. “If you ever need a reminder...”

Dan snorts with laughter, trying to wriggle free of his grip. A few kisses later, however, he seems to give in.

#idk what the fic was im sorry #thanks for the prompt bae #prompts #anon #ellen answers

46 notes · View notes

jaylos · 7 years

Text

i hated descendants 2 and here's why

a collection of reasons why i am utterly disappointed in this sequel.

warnings: there will be swearing and negative commentary about these ships: Mal/Ben, Evie/Doug, Carlos/Jane. (so basically all the canon pairings lmao)

buckle up this is gonna be long and salty. (also spoilers, duh) (and i take artistic liberty in the capitalization of words and i like to be dramatic)

also check out other rant posts i made bc they kinda tie in with all of this (reading not required in order to understand it tho): magic ban Rise of the Isle of the Lost my thoughts during my first time watching it Bal

1. Characters

Ok i need to go back to d1 for a second: they already did a bad job on introducing the characters to us there. For exapmle: Carlos and technology. He does that thing where he locates the museum or when he turns off the alarm, but without the first book (the isle of the lost) the fact that he is supposedly a tech genius would've flown over everyone's heads. And this is the problem: the movie(s) rely on spin-off media (the books, wicked world) to explain the characters to us. A movie shouldn't have to do that in the first place, but what makes it worse is that the books and the webseries are inconsistent like no tomorrow and also contradict each other on several occasions. Now that wouldn't be so bad if the movies were enough to solidify the characters, but they're not. They also try to patch up plot holes in the books so they don't have to deal with it in the movies. But someone who hasn't read them might wonder how the pirate crew got their ship, and they're offered no explanation in the movie whatsoever. (i'm pretty sure this could've been avoided with a few tweaks to the script tho??)

What I think happened here is that they simply had too many characters and so basically all of them fell flat because they didn't have time to explore them properly. And what did they do in d2? they dragged that problem with them, introduced more characters who's arcs they could half-ass and got rid of what little personality the original characters had.

We don't actually know shit about them. What are their hobbies? What are their interpersonal dynamics like? What are their struggles in Auradon after a life of abuse and neglect? (i'm convinced that that last one can absolutely be dealt with in a child-friendly manner, but instead they brushed it off almost completely. I say almost because we got a few tidbits here and there but those were about as deep as a puddle on a sidewalk)

1.a. Jay

Why is he depicted as a main character when he has less lines & relevance to the plot than Jane? Even the gotdam dog had some purpose. wouldn't change a thing if Jay wasn't there at all.

l i s ten i love Jay for the character that i made him out to be in my head and through some of the things the fandom has contributed but in canon he is redundant as all fuck.

Also i'm not gonna go into the outfits in this rant bc that's too subjective and is not what contributed to d2 being a bad movie but let's just say i found most of his looks kind of.. off-putting. why they didn't take advantage of Booboo Stewart's beauty is a mystery to me. Especially since his looks are supposed to be Jay's strong suit.

2.b. Chad

He was a completely different character. Not only did his personality shift from deceitful to moronic but his morals changed?? like in d1 he didn't actually play by the rules - he let other people do his homework, and he didn't tell on Evie because he found her cheating wrong but because he wanted payback.

And in d2 he suddenly cares about rules word for word because the writers and the (young) audience already hate him so he can be sexist too i guess. Instead of making him a meaningful threedimensional character that offers a different perspective as the child of a disney hero he was turned into the comic relief and the overdone trope of the jock that lost his status and is now laughed at. Groundbreaking. you hate him i get it i g e t i t. (also stay tuned for the sexism part i'm not done with that)

1.c. Carlos

to get super subjective again: i absolutely hate the direction they went in with his character. why not make him even more nerdy now that he has the freedom to do so? the only thing that referenced his tech stuff was that he supposedly improved their 3D printer. wow. his new hairstyle, the golden headphones etc. were things that don't fit into the impression i got from the first movie and/or the books at all. they didn't even show him tinkering with some device or whatever? how tf am i supposed to believe that he's a techie???

Also in Rise of the Isle of the Lost he is anti-magic for some goshdang reason, but in d2 he asks Mal to help him with magic, which is one of those inconsistencies i was talking about.

1.d. Evie

here's what i would have done with her instead: make 4 Hearts less relevant (do show her sewing and talking about commissions) and let her care for the remaining isle kids from the very beginning. her introduction in d2 could've been her talking about wanting to bring them over, but having difficutly to make it happen (maybe the royal council pushes back or whatever).

instead she spends 6(?) months doing jackshit about the isle kids and only remembers it like halfway through the movie.

1.e. Ben

he just pisses me off. not only is he dismissive and ignorant of Mal's struggles and blames her for when she fails to be perfect, but he is also incompetent as a king, at least when it comes to the Isle. Why the fuck did it take him so long to bring more isle kids over? and why does he need to hear it from Evie first? it was his idea in the first place but then he completely forgets about it for some reason even though he is literally dating a vk. "i guess i've just been busy" with what? being a fuckboy? (also sidenote: there it is again with the "tell don't show" that i've already talked about in the rant about Rise linked above. it's one of the biggest problems i have with the storytelling across all installations in this franchise. Ben is not shown being busy one single time. We're just supposed to believe it because they said so.)

(another sidenote: why the fuck does he have those beast traits, by which i mean all that redundant roaring like i get they want to reference beauty and the beast but do the writers realize that his father was cursed he does not actually have those furry genes)

1.f. Jane

? per s onalit y ?¿?? literally who is she

There's not much to say about the others (some i will cover later when i talk about relationships). Do you know that thing when a character's potential is wasted? In descendants this happens with every last one of them. They're like those cakes that are just for show: they look amazing and tasty but when you take a bite it's cardboard.

2. Plot

pretty basic for the most part, but i personally found the suspense curve really weird. it has two climaxes (? what is plural): 1. the sword fight and 2. at the cotillion. Also i hated that it took place over the course of like 2 days, but that might just be my personal taste. There are some plot holes of varying degrees of annoying. For one, Maleficent probably starved to death in that box because Mal and the writers forgot about her. And her moped is gone, it left, like i should have as well, good-fucking-bye.

Then there's the fact that Mal didn't go back with them because she learned some kind of lesson or grew as a peson or whatever but because she didn't have a choice and they never talked about her initial struggles except "my hair and dress are purple again so it's fine". i mean yeah she said her piece about not fitting in or whatever but we don't actually see it working out after all that trouble?How did the dynamic in their relationship change? who knows.

Then there's the fact that Uma is somewhere in the ocean, she's a giant monster and 100% capable of using magic but no one gives a shit??? at this point i'm willing to bet that in the next isle book it will be explained what happened to her so it doesn't have to be dealt with in descendants 3 and i will scream.

By the way i didn't understand what it was that Ben said that convinced her to retreat, his speech was so lame.

Also the octopus/dragon "fight" was ridiculous. they didn't do shit? Uma was just wiggling around and Mal was floating, which looked stupid because she made flying/gliding motions but stayed in the same spot.

And one thing that really annoyed me is how they only made 5 smoke bombs and then also needed exactly 5. b better prepared u idiots. that whole thing was so weird anyway bc the point was to avoid a fight but it didn't work. maybe it would've worked if they had made more than 5 who knows. and the plan to make them in the first place came completely out of the blue. (-plan? -smoke bombs -k)

Also why did Uma expect the wand to work under the barrier? The only explanation I can think of is that it's because the wand was what created the barrier (although the whole thing about the Isle is that magic Does Not Work and we should have been given an explanation as to why the wand is an exception) but 1. How would Uma know that and 2. If it had been the real wand they could've used it to knock the pirates out or whatever and Uma should've expected that. This whole trade-off thing was sketchy and holey as fuck.

You know what was one of the best things about d1? The parents. I mean this was probably a budget issue but the parents were arguably one of, if not the, most entertaining aspects. and boy could it have been interesting to see the confontation between them and their kids...

The isle was really weird and underwhelming btw. i saw people say it was great bc we got to see more of the isle but did we really? it was just a bunch of disjointed locations and we still have no idea how anything is located in relation to one another, how big it is, or how and how many people actually live there. And why did no one there give a shit that the rotten four were back? most of all Mal, whom the people hated the most for betraying them and becoming a princess. Also why did Mal not go back to her old home instead of this building that was a.. warehouse? their gang hangout?? that came out of nowhere??? correct me if i'm wrong but do they say something along the lines of "we used to hang out here" even once? why was there a bed in there

And hey remember tourney? It's not even like roar was necessary so that they'd have swords? Also it could have been mentioned like "now that tourney season's over we're focusing on roar" but no?? Let's just forget about it like the writers did.

3. Music

not really much to say, except that they used way too much autotune but i guess overall it's an improvement compared to the first movie but it's whatever. the only thing that confused me about what's my name was that in the movie (as opposed to the music video on youtube etc) there was this weird echo that made it sound like it was playing in another tab with a slight lag??

and another thing that stuck out to me was it's going down: the rap parts were already hella uncomfortable to watch but when ben started singing i just about died of secondhand embarrassment it's so bad lmao.

4. The Thing With Lonnie

Don't get me wrong, i love that she got a bigger part and that she's a good swordfighter and whatnot.

BUT:

First of all, why is it even a thing that the roar rule book has gendered language like that? i mean aren't there countless women in auradon who have proven over and over again that they're just as capable as man? why does Lonnie need to prove anything. especially since her mother is mulan of all people???

listen, the exploitation of gendered language has brought forth some great moments (eg: lotr "i am no man") but it's getting old. Girls and women have proven countless times that they can do "anything a boy can". how many times more does it have to happen until we can take the next step?

And it wasn't even handled well in d2. Sure, Lonnie's captain now, but do we really have to wait until d3 (or god forbid the next book in the isle series where the movie can lean back and let the book do all the storytelling work) for something to actually change in a system that is still misogynistic for whatever goddamn reason??

for this sideplot not to fail miserably like it did, what should have happened is that Lonnie changes the rules so that anyone can join the team, because as we were left it was still "captain and 8 men". we did not see the actual change happening and this was a half-assed attempt at this tired old "girl power" shit.

in this kind of storyline we only ever see the first step, we never see the actual progress that follows. it's always just "huh, i guess girls aren't useless after all" it's 2017 get with the program and move the fuck on.

OR just drop this overdone trope and have a team consisting of different genders from the very beginning.

It's time to tell girls that they don't need to prove themselves in order to be respected.

5. Relationships jesus christ here we go

okay okay there is a number of things that get my blood b o i l i n g and one of them is lazy fictional heterosexual romances and boy oh boy is this movie a fucking gold mine in that regard.

5.a. let's take a look at janelos first (don't worry i will talk shit about bal and devie individually as well): it's boring, shallow, if it was a spice it would be flour. look, if you ship it, by all means be my fucking guest. i even encourage you to write fanfiction or do something to make something out of this bland ass mess of a supposed romantic relationship.

it's a perfect example of what is wrong with this kind of fictional romance. first of all i will disregard the books bc 1. the movies shouldn't need the books for that, yadda yadda and 2. they don't do much to save it anyway. so. it's the easy route, the tried and true formular, and that's the problem. he was a boy, she was a girl, and that's enough to make their interest in each other believable, right? the answer is no. it's lazily written and i am tired™. why, how, when did they fall in love? are they even friends? what do they have in common? what activities do they enjoy together? those are all things we don't know, this relationship comes out of nowhere. how did they go from not even so much as look at each other in the first movie to being head over heels for each other? and not to mention, was it worth sacrificing their personalities for? you guessed it the answer is no yet again. Neither Carlos nor Jane receive any character development whatsoever. None. They could have done so much with them (if you hear a strange sound it's me weeping).

And it is replaceable. Change their names and it won't make the slightest bit of difference, because this relationship does not have one single distinguishable trait (in fact it has no traits period) compared to the 87632947 others out there. it is so. generic. and frankly i don't understand how people can settle for it. i mean i get how people can just watch the movie and not care bc why would they, but how does someone look at this and go "yes, this is a well-written romance" ????? ? ? up your standards people.

and now some predictions that came (somewhat) true from that Heterosexual Romantic Subplot Bullshit Bingo i wanted to make for d2 but never finished:

- by the end their relationship won’t have developed like at all, but they dance together to show us that they’ve come sUcH a LoNg waY

- one wants to ask the other out/they both want to ask each other out, but they’re too shy and also the plot keeps interrupting them.

- it will take away screentime they could have used to give them actual character development.

- jane won't receive an arc besides being and obligatory love interest.

- carlos tries talking to her but he stammers and it’s supposed to be cute.

5.b. Devie

Like i get that Doug is jealous bc of his own insecurities but what is hip with the kids in the year of our lord 2k17 is mutual trust and communication. To think that Evie would cheat on him is such an insult tbh?? And why did Evie not tell him where she was going in the first place? i mean granted i could think of a few reasons why she wouldn't but we don't even see her give a shit bc Doug is irrelevant in her quest to go and sing a duet with the person she'd rather be dating. She probably just forgot about Doug like I, the viewer, did the second he left the screen.

Also it's just the same bs again. We don't know shit about their relationship. What is it like? What do they enjoy doing together? What is their dynamic? Doug could literally be a pair of Pradas and it wouldn't make a difference.

But for real tho can we go back on how he accuses her of cheating?? like wow dude that's so gross pls don't present that to young viewers as cute because i assure you it is not.

5.c. Bal (h e r e w e g o)

Ben is such a bad boyfriend omg. I mean i get that he couldn't possibly understand what Mal is going through, but he isn't even trying. She changes everything about herself and he doesn't get suspicious in the least. And apparently they don't talk about anything that matters because 1. Mal can't be honest with him (she dragged all that shit around with her for ~6 months!!!) and 2. he would know more about the isle (but he has no clue).

out of all the relationships in this movie this is the one they should've put some effort into. i mean they succeeded in making Ben look like a dick but that wasn't their intention so i just ended up feeling sorry for Mal for being stuck with him bc it's ~true love~ .

Mal to Ben: "you've always known who we were" he didn't tho?? just bc he gave her a purple dress in that stained glass picture? he could've just told her that instead of letting her suffer for months bc she thought he'd leave her if she was more like herself. and that's the resolution, Mal shouldn't have been worried oh how silly of her! i guess everything is fine after all!

but you know actually their love for each other is totally believable bc they had an emotional and heart-wrenching duet together - oh wait.

A big reason why Sofia Carson and Dove Cameron got a duet is probably because they're professional singers and Mitchell Hope apparently can't get out a single correct note without 10 layers of autotune but when the story is about true love saving the day shouldn't that aspect get a little more attention? i mean don't get me wrong i like that the duet between mal and evie is there at all (but hey @disney make it gay you cowards) bc the friendships between the characters and especially the vk's don't get nearly as much attention as they should.

not to go on a tangent about how hand-holding and forehead-touching can totally be platonic but put next to Ben and Mal who Do Not Do That it makes their romantic relationship even less exciting. like, i don't know why i should care about it.

also while typing this i realized that it's not really that different from other movies and i thought hey, maybe i'm being too hard on it, but then i remembered that 99% of all canon heterosexual romantic relationships are bland and boring and i need writers to try harder (or try at all) because i am bored to death by the same shit over and over again.

i know i'm wasting way too much energy on this but i was already too invested in descendants so might as well go all the way amirite. i just had to get it all off my chest. if you need me to elaborate on anything feel free to message me.

and the first movie wasn't all that good btw, it is trashy in a way that was enjoyable, but the second one is just trash.

so yeah all in all that script was just straight up a pile of garbage consisting of washed-out tropes and no amount of bright colors or catchy songs can save it.

#disney descendants #descendants 2 #descendants 2 spoilers

37 notes · View notes

acesydneysage · 2 years

Text

I posted 100 times in 2021

44 posts created (44%)

56 posts reblogged (56%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.3 posts.

I added 543 tags in 2021

#rapha's bloodlines tag - 89 posts

#sydney sage - 69 posts

#bloodlines series - 69 posts

#sydrian - 66 posts

#adrian ivashkov - 60 posts

#bloodlines - 57 posts

#vampire academy - 49 posts

#va - 49 posts

#eddie castile - 19 posts

#adrian x sydney - 16 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#if there's a least one post by somebody else in between my posts that means i'm not clogging up a tiny fandom's tags with my nonsense right

My Top Posts in 2021

One of the greatest tragedies in Bloodlines was that they had to abandon the Ivashkinator before we had a sydrian sex scene in it

64 notes • Posted 2021-07-12 23:30:40 GMT

Adrian Ivashkov: You’re a solid person, Sage. You’re easy on the eyes, if a little skinny, and your ability to memorize useless information is going to totally hook in some guy.

Also Adrian Ivashkov, around 3 minutes later, after putting on his clown makeup: “My God, Sage. Your eyes. How have I never noticed them?” That uncomfortable feeling was spreading over me again. “What about them?” “The color,” he breathed. “When you stand in the light. They’re amazing . . . like molten gold. I could paint those . . .” He reached toward me but then pulled back. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

66 notes • Posted 2021-07-09 22:30:52 GMT

86 notes • Posted 2021-08-31 20:52:59 GMT

Sydney Sage's actual job was to Gaslight people so she could Gatekeep the supernatural world, and she was a total Girlboss! Meaning she looked strong and hypercompetent, but she was part of an organization that was ultimately very problematic and that was doing some evil things like torture

Adrian Ivashkov: Manwhore, Manipulate, Malewife. Self-explanatory.

88 notes • Posted 2021-07-06 03:11:58 GMT

I love this, and I always have to spend at least half an hour searching every time I want to see it, so I'm posting it.

Bonus, also from Richelle's Twitter:

I'd love to know how the New Year's Eve party and Sydney's surprise party went ^_^

Did Adrian find a way to fake getting arrested? Did he go out and get himself arrested for real? Did Sydney know the whole time? We'll never know.

164 notes • Posted 2021-08-04 21:34:22 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Rapha's Bloodlines Tag #I just love Sydney Sage a lot okay

6 notes · View notes

anghraine · 7 years

Note

Would you mind elaborating on your thoughts re: parallels between han/leia and jyn/cassian? I was reading your tags on it and they are glorious (and so is your fic :DDD) Thank you!

Heeeh, sure!

(The tags in question are here.)

The Jyn-Han parallels are definitely the most overt and widely acknowledged, so I’m going to start with Cassian-Leia.

One of Cassian’s most piercing lines is “Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us live it.” And it’s difficult to think of anything that could better describe Leia Organa. It’s the essential tragedy of Leia’s character. She doesn’t die. She just lives and lives and lives it, and when danger signs crop up again as a fifty-something general, she doesn’t palm the fight off on someone else but consumes herself in the cause all over again—if she ever stopped, which, not really.

(You know that if Cassian had lived, he’d be right there the moment that Leia came calling. RED, Star Wars edition.)

And, like Cassian, the cause has been the cornerstone not just of her adult life but her entire life. Leia is the natural daughter of one of the founders of the Rebellion and Darth Vader. She is adopted by one of the other founders. She’s brought up in the heart of the Rebellion. She’s an Imperial senator at around sixteen, not because she has any flair or liking for legislative politics, but as a shield for her activities as a covert agent of the Rebellion—again, shades of Cassian. We don’t know when, exactly, Leia got involved with the Rebellion, but she’s a hardened Rebel agent by her teens, refusing to reveal her secrets under torture or even genocide.

Speaking of genocide, it’s hard to think of a character who more profoundly “lost everything” than Leia in ANH. We don’t get as close an examination of its effects with her, despite her prominence over three movies (*hiss*), but we certainly get enough to see its effects. Leia’s horrific loss only intensifies her dedication to the Rebellion, to the point that she’s completely consuming herself in it come ESB. Her conviction, her sense of duty, her relentless determination—that’s where her grief goes. Just like Cassian.

Leia is also the hardest of the main three, I’d say, despite Han’s pretenses to it. She’s not the most brash; that’s clearly Han. She’s not the angriest; it’s Luke who loses his mind in rage, never Leia (fandom reductionism aside). But Leia is tough, and abrasive, and doesn’t stop at much in pursuit of her ends. She’s judgmental of the less committed and the less capable; she can be intensely self-righteous, without feeling the high of righteousness that many other characters do, the sense of glory. She just believes so, so much, and she’s willing to throw everything she has into the service of that sharp-edged idealism.

On top of that, Leia is tightly linked with hope. There’s the famous That boy was our last hope -> There is another—Leia as the true last hope. There’s the bittersweet hopeful ending of ROTS, with baby Leia on doomed Alderaan. There’s Leia’s single-minded dedication to the plans and explicit description of them as the last hope. And of course, there’s Leia in RO and her one word—hope. Yet it’s not that Leia is at all positive by temperament. We don’t see much in the way of silver linings from her; if anything, she tends to the doubtful and fatalistic (as does Luke btw). For Leia, hope is an ethical approach to the world, a conscious moral choice.

For me, it’s best understood through another fandom—JRR Tolkien. Tolkien distinguishes between forms of hope in his various works. Probably the most prominent exploration is Frodo vs Sam. Sam has “hope unquenchable,” an innate optimism that is never quenched by his suffering and loss. It’s a matter of staying true to the integrity of his character. But Frodo loses all sense of optimism, and yet trudges on through sheer belief and endurance, even though it ultimately breaks him. Leia and Cassian are much more the Frodos of the equation.

Meanwhile, it’s clear (and has been repeatedly admitted) that Jyn’s character is essentially based on Luke and Han rolled into one. She definitely has Han’s devil-may-care, I-take-orders-from-me attitude. She never exactly says “I’m not in this for your revolution,” but the sentiment underlies plenty of what she does say. And that attitude is at least as fundamental to the clash with Cassian as Han’s is with Leia (and Luke).

There’s some fandom bullshit about Jyn “stealing” Cassian’s line that rebellions are built on hope. That’s stupid. But I do believe it matters that Cassian is the source.

There’s a criticism (I think a fair one) that we don’t really see how Jyn and Cassian get from their ideological showdown to his intense faith in her and her swerve to hopeful idealism. But it’s evident that Cassian, without relinquishing a sliver of his ideals or commitment, pulled his eyes from the skies enough to really consider the living people around him and work towards balancing the two (a struggle that dominates Leia’s life).

And I think that’s the significance of the fact that her big speech on hope, on hope as action, includes a word-for-word repetition of what Cassian told her. Jyn’s hope is born from his. And this happens pretty directly after Cassian lashed back at her over her self-interest and apathy. I don’t think she’s just parroting him; her feelings about him are in general much too complex at this point for that, even if it were at all characteristic. And it’s—

Well, let’s go to Han for a moment. His actions are overwhelmingly driven by the self: self-preservation, self-interest, and the people who matter to him personally. While he more or less supports the Rebellion in theory, he’s propelled into action not because he believes, but because he loves people who do. (As a sidenote, he seems to be drawn to those sorts of people; Chewie, Luke, and Leia are all hardline idealists, and in a twisted way, so is Kylo Ren.)

We see some of this with Jyn. She is there for personal gain (her freedom) and over her personal relationships to Saw and especially Galen. It’s hard not to feel that her father’s work and sacrifice is a significant motivation for her swerve (as she is a significant part of Galen’s motivation!). But even after the message, she remains very much in ME AND MINE mode until the fight with Cassian. While he isn’t the source of her newfound belief, IMO he is the clear inspiration for it.

I don’t think Jyn is someone who bothers much with abstractions on her own (again, like Han). But she has a sort of subterranean idealism that leads her to impulsive acts of principle like trying to protect the little girl at Jedha. Her instinct isn’t going to be “save the galaxy,” it’s going to be save this person right in front of me. Unlike Han.

People, actual living individuals in front of her, matter more than abstract conglomerates. But when someone bothers to make her understand—even as furiously as Cassian did—she can translate personal benevolence onto a broader scale. At heart, she wants to believe in something, and the conscious, disciplined ethic of hope in those around her can kickstart her own good will into good will for the galaxy. And it becomes not just borrowed vision, but a heartfelt one of her own.

That’s actually most like Luke. He’s an idealist at his core, but also often descends into fatalism or apathy. Early on, his Call to Adventure is framed specifically in terms of the fight against the Empire. Far more than Han, he supports it—he’s eager to hear about the Rebellion and freely admits to hating the Empire—but nevertheless, he rejects it in favour of personal concerns. His own family needs him, and it’s so far away from here. That is very, very close to Jyn.

Also like Jyn, he has an innately kind, generous personality. But it’s very much in the personal, immediate sense. His own commitment to the Rebellion is propelled by the Empire’s destruction of his life, his intense preoccupation with his father’s legacy as filtered through Obi-Wan, but most of all, Leia’s example. From the first he’s both deeply concerned by her and inspired by her. But again, it’s not that he simply adopts her ideals. He develops ideals through, among other things, her influence. I think what goes on with Jyn and Cassian is fundamentally the same thing.

(It’s worth mentioning that Luke ultimately wanders out of the Rebellion to follow his own spiritual path and connect with his father. Both of these are in line with Rebellion goals, but that is a happy coincidence. This isn’t to say that his belief in the Rebellion is shallow, because I don’t remotely think it is, but Jyn is ultimately more dedicated to the cause as far as we see. Now, Jyn also dies early in her potential character arc, and I think it is very, very probable that she would have the same struggle and, where urgent, choose the people she loves over serving the cause. Nevertheless.)

The end result, I think, is that Cassian as a clear variation of “the Leia,” with Jyn functioning as the Han and the Luke, creates a similar but very distinct relationship from Han/Leia. Like that one, there’s a mix of raw attraction and quickly developing respect vs radically different priorities and ideologies. But Jyn/Cassian is at all points milder than Han/Leia and much more, hm, symbiotic. Certainly so after their conciliation—from that point, there’s this bedrock of mutual faith, a deep affinity and tenderness that’s more like Luke and Leia’s relationship.

Jyn and Cassian don’t just accept each other’s differences. They actively close the gap between their personalities, that mutual influence bringing out the latent similarity beneath Jyn’s self-absorption and Cassian’s ruthlessness. It allows them to recognize themselves in each other and easily sync up, even after knowing each other such a short time. Han and Leia, a married couple of thirty years, can never cross that gap. They love each other, they try to be gentle and tolerant with each other, but as we see in TFA, it’s not something they can seriously maintain.

#ishipallthings #respuestas #nice things people say to me #anghraine's meta #leia skywalker organa #cassian andor #han solo #jyn erso #luke skywalker #otp: welcome home #han x leia #the skywalker twins #*squints*#just in case i guess i'll go #hanleia critical #star wars #genocide for ts

60 notes · View notes