#but i want it to be funny and kind of low stakes

[shewolfofvilnius]

There is a huge part of me that is curious about dragon age because I love BG3 so much. But idk anything about it? Also none of the characters strike me as interesting (or attractive....) Maybe you could tell me what you like so much about ? maybe talk about the characters so I can give it a chance? I want to like it! but I just don't know!

I DIDN'T FORGET

So for me the first draw of Dragon Age is the incredible lore and worldbuilding that goes on in the games and books. It's arguably just as fleshed out as a setting like the Forgotten Realms despite just being three (soon four) video games and about a dozen books/comics. There's centuries of history. Ancient ruins. Environmental storytelling for days. A little visual cue in the first game that's referenced in optional banter in the third that pays off in the fourth (FIFTEEN years apart). I really appreciate that the first game, Dragon Age: Origins, only exposes you to part of the story. The game's set in a pestilence known as the Fifth Blight, and you're the plucky young adventurer that the grizzled old veteran manages to recruit out of a bad situation just before the end. And you and your friends are all that stand between victory and oblivion. But right off the bat there's storytelling about love and loss and prejudice and honor. There's a noble character who dies, leading to a coward being killed as the stakes are built. (There's also a dog you can pet, and moments to show kindness during armageddon, like a prisoner who just wants a sandwich before he dies, he hasn't been fed.)

And the banter is funny (if some of it's aged a bit unwell), and the gameplay really encourages you to get in the head of whatever character you want to build. Yes you can be the cliche prince charming. You can also be the sibling of a prostitute to pay the bills until your sister lands a high profile john who catches feels for her. From the start it's equal measures hopeful and bleak at the same time. (And as you invest in YOUR character emotionally, you inevitably emotionally invest in your companions too.) And gradually the world gets bigger. A character whose town you watch get destroyed becomes the protagonist of the second game, and they hook you in to. They're a refugee, a very timely story, and if they're a magic user, then they're an especially persecuted refugee. But you still make friends amidst the hopelessness. More of the world gets revealed. You have FUN, somehow. Characters from past games recur, either as cameos or in one very specific case as a high profile recurring character in 3 out of the 4. And you become so glad to see them as they represent continuity of story.

It's a game about family and faith and the lack thereof and prejudice and love and how one counters the other, about how persecuted people often pay the price of things that happened before their ancestors' ancestors were born, and that tomorrow should always be better than today.

That's thematic, though. Maybe you take a shine to Isabela the Pirate and Aveline the Guard Captain (maybe Merrill the blood mage elf, too). The three women basically form one of the best depictions of big/middle/little sister trios I've ever seen in a game. What starts out as cold hostility becomes banterful compassion and love. A lot of folks fell for Solas, an elven apostate whose every word is couched in three mysteries and two half-truths but seems to know way more than he's letting on. When you find out a horrible secret about the honourable Grey Warden Blackwall, do you leave him to his fate, try to redeem him, deliver a sufficient consequence, or outright torture him.

And you won't like everyone. The odds of you liking both the spirit-possessed mage Anders and the anti-magic elf Fenris in the same play of the same game are low unless you metagame it. And sometimes the games even rewards you for someone hating your ass or vice versa, and THAT'S organic. But being mean or having a negative interaction isn't some edgelord thing either, it's just "sometimes people don't get along" or "something you just need to punch someone"

You get to laugh at the tough stern warrior Cassandra getting absolutely beside herself wanting to know what happens in a book that it's writer, another of your companions, hated writing - and that even Cass herself calls smutty literature. Another character, The Iron Bull, is faced with a choice: His found family and the freedom to be who he's become, or the belief system he's known his entire life and that expects him to conform.

Does your character sacrifice? Does your character make the streets run red with blood? Is all you want to make people feel inspired and in something bigger than themselves? Even playing three (soon four) wholly new characters, you get to truly role-play and emotionally invest in these little blorbos, maybe even more strongly in Baldur's Gate. When a character returns you weren't expecting, is it joyful or melancholy? Can your character handle a confrontation of everything they've ever known.

And in the newest game, there's a baby griffon.

I love Dragon Age. The lore is expansive beyond sanity for a franchise with it's commercial output. The characters feel alive, and the game tasks you to emotionally invest in order to reap the maximum reward and suffer the strongest heartache. Plus, in many cases, when the game doesn't tell you, say about your character? You get to roleplay and use your imagination so, so strongly.

[merge-conflict]

I really want to do a rashoman style “tell the same scene from multiple perspectives” fic but the problem is that it requires it to be a busy scene with a lot of characters that would be interesting and/or funny to recount.

[reitheist]

every episode I think about dropping bucchigiri but I always watch the episodes that come out because I like Matakara and Senya and the other characters because if it depended on this boring protagonist with boring motivations I would have already abandoned it Oh and it's impressive how much Matakara has persevered with Arajin.

it's true, matakara has the patience of a saint.

for now i'm a bit conflicted with arajin. he definitely has annoying qualities. I think if he genuinely develops as a character then it'll be worth the occasional second-hand embarrassment. for now he's a decently funny caricature of a specific type of high school boy. unfortunately im a very character arc-oriented person, so I'm always focused on hoping ara makes changes in the back of my mind, which can take away from me just accepting that right now he's a comedically pathetic teenager lol

i don't know if im in love with bucchigiri yet, but i do get a lot of enjoyment watching it. i adore the absurd setting and characters, how little it takes itself seriously. it gets quite a few laughs out of me every episode. however, I think to get fully attached to it i need to see more pathos in the storytelling going forward.

bucchigiri is half 90s era harem slapstick and half dramatic sports anime. it shows quite a bit of love to the first genre, but i think it would be to its benefit to lean harder into the latter as it wraps up. bucchigiri has flirted with doing actual drama briefly, but not quiiiiiite enough for me to take its emotional arcs completely seriously yet. i don't want complete melodrama or anything, just a genuine attempt at payoff for all the things they've hinted at.

[roughentumble]

interviewer to cavill: excited to have you back[as superman], we all want man of steel 2

me: GSMHSJSNSKSNKS??? what would that even look like at this point.... ..... . ..

[variousqueerthings]

okay I watched good omens s2 yesterday with my partner, and I was genuinely very surprised -- I think if you've grown up through superwholock/merlin/the 100/teen wolf type shows where (with the exception periodically of doctor who) you kind of had to make up the good show that something could have been in your head, that colours a lot of your viewing, and to be honest I thought season 1 of good omens was a fine little piece, honoured the book while modernising it somewhat, it was a nice, fun, low stakes time, with a couple of things I might have wanted a tad different but nothing overall awful.

so I was seeing all this meta and gifsets and discussion, while I was waiting to give s2 a watch with my partner and thought "ah, people have made up the good show in their heads again" not that I assumed s2 was going to be a bad show, but that people were taking extra deep plunges into possibilities, the way fandom does, and that was fine. I knew there was a big ol kiss, I had a sense of some kind of argument at the end, and that it was setting up a s3

I also knew that mainstream reviews were calling it (politely) self-indulgent and dependent on whether or not you enjoy david tennant and michael sheen having a good time for just under 6 hours

all in all, expectations of a somewhat mainstream show without too much to think about, a nice, fun low stakes time, moving on...

(EDIT: AND THEN I WROTE A LOT OF WORDS SO YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT MY REACTION WAS QUITE DIFFERENT)

as it turns out it seems these things that were being written on tumblr were discussing the actual text of the show and not things you could extrapolate if you squinted and tilted your head a little to the left as I'm so used to doing, so in fact there is much to think about!

and my first thought was "this is like when you read early discworld books that ask a question like a joke, only to find that over time the answer to that question becomes very serious (and also can be funny at times of course)." how terry pratchett would pick and pick at tropes and notions and social ideas and go "oh now hold on, this seems strange..." starting way back when he thought it was odd that women warriors always seemed to be dressed in metal bikinis and then realising he hadn't done a good enough job of subverting the trope, simply by depicting it and calling it a bit silly

why do goblins always get treated as the villains? what's with this divine succession of kings business? where are the female dwarfs? who do we treat as disposable?

good omens season one went: "haha what if heaven and hell were intensely incapable, bureaucratic, corrupt, and uncaring of the work they did, and we took an angel and a demon and had them actually care? wouldn't that be... a bit silly?" (and it was)

good omens season two went: "what are the consequences for caring when the people who have power over you are incapable, bureaucratic, corrupt, and uncaring? what are the forces that supersede systems built on fear, ignorance, and violent conformity? can people change and break out of/challenge/break down these structures by caring?"

and this was set up with a neat little sleight of hand (to reference aziraphale's switch-and-bait in the episode with the nazi zombies), because the majority of season 2 does feel a bit indulgent: hey, remember those two wacky angel-and-demon characters? watch some more wacky things they did through the ages, watch them take a sojourn through 1827 Edinburgh and do a magic show during the Blitz, and... stop the death of Job's and Sitis' children (actually maybe that whole segment ought to have been what they call "A Clue")

see them try to figure out a kooky mystery, all the while setting up a cute little same-gender romance on their street. watch as everything points towards a happy ending that's all about the two of them realising what they've been to one another all these thousands and thousands (and thousands and thousands) of years- but hold on. lest we forget - and the show has made this point over and over - there are powerful people who control them, who hurt them, and who plan on hurting others, throughout the whole season, and as it turns out they know what they've been to one another for far far longer, and know how to pull their strings...

season 2 then, has to show us these things, not because they're indulgent (well, maybe occasionally, but the apology dance is still important), but because in order to make the ending a tragedy, we first need to understand, properly, the impact that they have had on each other. we need to understand that Aziraphale relied heavily on Crowley to be his moral compass and leaned on black-and-white thinking in order to deal with things, because if it's all grey then where does he fit and what has it all meant and heaven has to be the good guys, even as Job's and Sitis' children are ordered to be killed, it's all he ever had...

and Crowley was always an anchor, needed to trust that Aziraphale was different, needed to bend to every whim that Aziraphale has, because otherwise what's his worth in all this? After having been already deemed worthless by the heaven that Aziraphale needs to believe in?

and that, simplistically described, is the narrative that we're seeing in s2, and alongside that the ways that the changes they have upon each other are noticed, and monitored, and placed under suspicion, and finally... broken up, not by the clumsy, brute force that's been attempted over and over again, but by a promise to return into a violent, controlling system and to "make it better from within"

and all of this is wrapped up in two queer relationships + a third queered-within-the-text relationship that creates the inverse of how it ends for Aziraphale and Crowley (so far). queer love -- whatever shape that has -- is explicitly the shape of non-conformity within this narrative, including within the symbolism of angel-and-demon love of Gabriel and Beelzebub, which in the context of the systems created is considered queer (and one can argue till the cats come home about casting cis actors, about angel-and-demon notions of gender/romance/sexuality, but the "queerness" comes from building something non-conforming to the systems they exist in), and enforced by the explicitly our-world-definition-of queer romance that Nina and Maggie have going on (which, while less high stakes, still contains the background controlling relationship that Nina initially is in)

all of this to say, that I disagree that s2 meanders, or that plotlines happen for the sake of showcasing Aziraphale and Crowley without purpose, or that characters get sidelined (I'd say it sets up a whole host of interesting characters to further get into actually), or that it's strictly mainstream easy-access narrative that's just an excuse for the main creators and actors to get back together.

the love is the point, and this show takes its time to show the love (and the unequal boundary-setting, and the fact that one of them has an undiscussed tragic backstory, and the desperation to belong again, and the fear instilled by oppressive systems, and and and), so that we understand why those last 15 minutes happen the way that they do

it's sleight of hand, and like all good magic, you don't notice until it's happened

[absolutebl]

Best & Worst BLs of 2023

My Top 15 BLs of 2023 are (in order)

1 Our Dating Sim

Korea Viki

Nerds in love, deadlines, gaming, teasing, pining tiny idiots, casual affection, linguistic oops, ADORABLE. If you haven't watched this, it's a must. A perfect short form KBL, an office set reunion romance featuring geeks that really suits 8 eps with no fluff and no chaff. Just comforting and yummy.

I adored every aspect from the casting to the pristinely simple premise to the quietly smooth execution. Sure it’s low stakes, but that makes it high domesticity and extremely warm and gentle. This is a fuzzy blanket of a story - a cozy BL. It lives in my rewatch pile and you know what’s best about it? Every single episode is in that pile. There’s no skipping with this one, it might be good natured and calmly sweet but it’s tight and the pacing is excellent.

Also recieves my 2023 award for best giggle.

2 I Cannot Reach You

AKA I Can't Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai

Japan Netflix

This classic friends-to-lovers BL is everything Japan does best. Angsty. Emo. Aching. Driven by real thirst. Yamato is deeply in love with his childhood bestie, Kakeru, and has been for ages, unable to hide his ungainly damaging high school need. He wants Kakeru in every way possible and it oozes off of the screen.

Kakeru is silly and a little simple, but not frenetic or overly camp about it. He is earnest, and genuinely wants to keep Yamato in his life which means giving a romance (and gayness) a fair chance. We watch him realize his affection and what form it can take in a truly authentic way.

This show was impossibly kind to both of its lead characters and I felt almost honored that I got to watch something so lovely and rare play out on my screen.

Also wins the best thirst award.

These were the 2 BLs that got 10/10 from me in 2023. The rest of these got 9/10 from me.

3 My School President

Thailand YouTube

GMMTV gave us a classic high school set Thai BL with tropes like messy boys singing their feelings that made this one Love Sick for the modern age with all the gentle sweetness and pining ache, but none of the dated damaging tropes or issues. Who let my BL be this wholesome and funny? My favourite GMMTV BL offering to date. And yes, I've watched them ALL.

Received the Namgoong award for best wingman 2023.

4 I Feel You Linger in the Air

Thailand grey

IFYLITA is an exquisite BL, from filming techniques to narrative framework. Steeped in history and family drama this is an elegant and classy BL. The main couple (both as a pair and individuals) were excellent, particularly Bright (Yai) whose eye-work acting style is a personal favorite of mine. It's a marker of how great it was that it's so high on my list despite the ending which was very much not what I wanted.

Additional accolade, sexiest moment of 2023 - (the oil scene).

You could try to fight me, but you'll have no grip.

5 Kiseki: Dear to Me

Taiwan Gaga & Viki

The plot is totally ridiculous and slightly unhinged. There’s a gum-ball machine of cameos, elder gay rep, great chemistry from all pairs (everyone is queer), and a KILLER side couple. It involves all the tropes under a very offhand framework of gay mafia gangs + food = love. As a result Kiseki is a poster child for Taiwanese BL, and I happen to love Taiwanese BL. Bonus? They also managed to END IT WELL, which we cannot expect from Taiwan.

Best side couple 2023!

(thank goodness Taiwan made this list!)

6 Jun and Jun

Korea Viki

A delightful office romance about an ex-idol who joins cubical life only to find his new boss is his first love. With a snappy (sometimes even raunchy) script, enjoyable sides, a pretty as peaches cast, and descent chemistry this show made up for in style what it lacked in substance. I like fluff. I loved this. I smiled every moment I was watching.

Best flirting 2023.

AKA "the tongue knows" award

7 The Eighth Sense

Korea Viki

This one is a bit chewy and sticky and less perfect than most KBLs. It’s got a bit of an age gap, country boy/city boy, stellar acting, complex characters, and leads with great chemistry and tension. This isn’t in the KBL bubble, there’s sharp edges and lots of triggers. For a BL the darkness of the content left me feeling unsettled (which is the only reason it didn't get a perfect score) but it has a glorious ending and that counts for a lot.

2023's most likely to appeal to non-BL watchers.

8 Unintentional Love Story

Korea iQIYI

The lead, Gongchan (maknae of B1A4) is a fucking GIFT, who carried this show. He was luminous with extraordinarily expressive eyes, which he used to carry a killer plot and challenging role. Forced into a totally understandable betrayal, falling in love despite himself, put into a corner he can't get out of, the AGONY, the eyes EMOTING at us in PAIN. Driven by external conflict, social tension and pressure this story seems simple but it's actually refined and quite complex. I loved this show.

Best story structure 2023.

9 My Personal Weatherman

AKA Taikan Yoho

Japan Gaga

This is classic yaoi of the kind that really only works from Japan. Basically: boys who fell in love in college end up living together but both are so repressed they actually don't realize they're in love. It's high heat is well done, but it leaned into the "why don't they just talk for fuck's sake?" which is exacerbated by the fact that they're already fucking. Sure is sexy tho.

Best use of props 2023 for the shower of sheets.

10 Our Dining Table

AKA Bokura no Shokutaku

Japan Gaga

Lonely salaryman and talented cook gets accidentally adopted by a college kid and his little brother. It’s a quiet & cozy little parable of found family alleviating loneliness. It's lovely & sweet with the romance beats used to build a family relationship, not just couple intimacy. Special.

First prize for domesticity.

11 Laws of Attraction

Thailand iQIYI

This is a great gay suspense thriller with several solid couples, fun plot, killer characters, queer rep, and a happy ending. It’s tons of fun and I had an absolute blast watching it.

Charn wins my favorite character of 2023.

12 La Pluie

Thailand Viki

This BL takes to task the fated mates trope and what it means to have love chained intimately to predestination. It’s about how faith in destiny before choice diminishes the authenticity of emotion, relationships, and connection. This is a high concept to examine through the lens of a BL. With good chemistry and decent acting all around, plus some excellent high heat and representation of consent and a few other rare tropes, this one has to (like it’s sibling show My Ride) earn high marks.

Most interesting concept 2023.

13 The New Employee

Korea Viki

So good, SO QUEER, so soft, a near pitch perfect office BL with conflict derived from that setting. Also found family and a lesbian bestie. This is what I wanted from this new crop of office set KBLs ALL ALONG. Rainbow rice cakes forever!

Best overall queer rep from Korea.

14 Step By Step

Thailand Gaga & YouTube & Viki

This was Thailand’s answer to The New Employee, and everything I loved about that show I loved about this one. This was an office romance between stern boss and sweet subordinate that felt more authentic to an office environment than previous Thai BLs of this ilk which added tension to the narrative and character development.

Chot wins best queer character 2023.

15 Love Tractor

Korea iQIYI

Most of this country-set BL had me feral for the beautiful broken city boy and his hot young farmer. Hyung romance, puppy/cat pairing, open frankness meets jaded reserve, language play, water hose frolicking, only one bed = all my favorite silly tropes.

Biggest "he so pretty" gasp of the year award.

10 Worst BLs of 2023 (that I watched)

My Blessing

My Universe: Casanova Begins

Boyband the series

Cafe In Love

Chains of Heart

Hit Bite Love

Only Friends

Senior Love Me

The Luminous Solution

The Promise

Yes, you read that right. I know I'm against the flow but I really did not like Only Friends. Everyone's taste is different.

However I DNFed faster and more BL's this year than ever before, so that means my 10 worst probably aren't quite reflective...

10 Probably Actually Worst BLs (I dropped 'em)

My Story

The Day I Loved You

Beyond the Star

Crazy Handsome Rich

Dinosaur Love

House of Stars

Mr Cinderella 2

Love Bill

Stormy Honeymoon

The Star Always Follow You

Codicils in General

I only carefully track/watch Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Other countries are not fully represented.

My Numbers

So my spreadsheet chronicled 138 BLs that finish airing in 2023.

101 = watched & reviewed

2 = still in the docket (WDYEY2 & Love Syndrome III)

15 = CNF (could not find)

20 = DNF (which also accounts for how few very low scores I handed out in 2023 as opposed to previous years, I just stopped watching). Speaking of which...

Ratings spread

(# of stars. #of BLs given that rating)

0 (see the DNFs instead)

2 - IT'S DEPRESSING they killed the gay, save yourself

7 - I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM WATCHING AND NEITHER DOES IT

7 - FATALLY FLAWED but still basically BL, however… do we want to support this kind of behavior?

9 - WATCH IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO but don’t expect much, it’s a total hot mess

17 - WORTH WATCHING BUT FLAWED probably around the ending or in narrative structure/cohesion or censorship

14 - RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS i.e. isn’t quite BL, convoluted, not strictly HEA, too short/long, or chemistry issues

30 - RECOMMENDED some concerns around tropes (like dub con) or story structure but still satisfies as BL

13 - ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED probably a few pacing issues or one flaw

2 - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED faithful to tropes, happy ending, good chemistry, few flaws, high rewatch potential

(source)

[cantgetworsethanthistbh]

dumping more of my stancest feels here because i cannot NOT think of them. i read journal 3 for the first time this week and its great because Ford acts like stanley's biggest hater which is pretty fking funny (if not absolutely infuriating at times because omfg stfu you smug prick)

but the moments like this get to me

Ford being blinded by his quest of grandeur, accolades and praise for world changing discoveries, so obsessed with greatness, being the first name people remember, and all the other things his npd-isms tells him he wants.

And then there's "reminds me of camping with my brother. i wonder what he's up to..."

i mentioned in my previous post that stan acts quite a lot like the anchor to ford's boat, keeping him grounded and most importantly, safe from both the bitter and the sweet kinds of evils. but he also represents something so much simpler to ford too: the simple desires he represses so much because its not "good enough" for someone special like him.

he resents stan so much because he represents a "block" against that percieved good enough success he wants, the obstacle that made it impossible to get in a fancy college, become the world renowed researcher, the one who wanted to destroy his journal's and lifes work (even though it was the better, safer option if Bill really WAS that dangerous, which he was) that could still make him famous. because if ford's not "praised and weird" then he's just "weird" and being "weird" was nothing but a pain his whole life that kept him rejected and isolated from the masses. and stan prevented him from that.

(btw "maybe he can prove himself to me" is nasty work my god ford is a douche lmao)

a lot of his projections of something greater comes through with how he treated dipper in the show (his whole spiel in damvtf) and fiddleford in journal 3 where he looks down on the happy life that fiddleford had with his wife and child and saying he was "wasting his talents" making computers. and like, we all know by the way he takes them on high stakes adventures they're not as prepared for compared to him (and end up causing more trouble than not by doing so), he's trying to fill a gaping hole left by someone else. we all know this obviously, we all know what we ship here, but what i came to appreciate the most about it is how much that gaping hole exists in the low stakes

everytime ford is thinking during the "down time" moments, his thoughts always drift back to his childhood, and one person who represents it.

childhood memories, making fun of stans favorite snack, scribbling out a design of the stan o war, whenever Ford lets his mind wander it expresses such an intense yearning for the past before he became obsessed with wanting something more. these are his most utmost and most unfiltered thoughts, which is why he scribles them away or and writes in code. and the fact that he directly says they are about NOT getting married, followed with "wondering what he's doing right now", painting the picture of what his most ideal idylic life is. wanting a return of something lost. wanting Stan back more than anything.

he finally accepts that his dream never really changed, just the same as stan's and so they saild off together for the rest of their days, in ford's own words (which ironically sounds like a marriage to me either way so tough shit ford)

[sciderman]

I'm sure you've talked about this aspect before but didn't the budget get slashed right before filming for DP1 + TJ miller utilized his studio for extra unpaid work on the effects? They were HUNGRY back then so it HAD to be good and they lost that hunger 😔💔

Like the DP trilogy as a whole is like insane on paper. Leaked test footage, securing the R rating, the last minute multimillion budget slash, RR trying desperately for like a decade to get it made, etc.

It's not quite awe inspiring but also not quite a cautionary tale. Somewhere in the middle?

tim miller is the producer / director for deadpool 1 ! tj miller is... someone else. both of them are t-millers that the deadpool movies like to forget. but yeah, the deadpool budget was slashed mega and it's why wade kept forgetting his ammo bags (hilarious)

im so sorry but the low-budget charm of deadpool 1 and how they worked around it to create something so funny and charming despite all it's drawbacks - vs bottomless wallet and bottomless cameos creating something so utterly charmless with disney - yeah. it's exactly what i was worried about.

the first movie was better for it having such a small cast of characters. the action was better for it not having an unlimited budget and unlimited ammo and no real weight or stakes.

all the budget constraints made a better movie!

and yeah - the lack of faith in deadpool working meant that the team behind it wanted to prove themselves all the more. they couldn't phone it in. it wasn't guaranteed butts in seats like we're at right now. deadpool got cocky. ryan got cocky. the writers are cocky, and know that they don't need to do much at all to make audiences happy. all they have to do is put enough f-bombs and enough cameos and enough comic-faithful costumes in there and that's kind of it.

[thedroneranger]

Say My Name

Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Précis: You and your crew enjoy playing games with the aviators at the local navy bar. You may have finally met your match...

Note: Stumbled across a meme that inspired this one. Hoping you think it’s as fun and light as I do—enjoy!

Warnings: 18+ only, smut.

Word count: 3.0k

It was innocent enough. Meet someone, introduce yourself with a fake name and see where the night takes you.

The game was even more fun as a civilian in a Navy bar bursting with aviators. They had no shame introducing themselves with their call signs, taking you home and never speaking to you again. Why should I?

I have to admit: It was a lot of fun. Made things feel low stakes. The hookups were a mixed bag, but that was part of the fun. 

The following week, you reconvened at the bar to brag about your time between the sheets or, at the very least, share a funny bit you gleaned as compensation. 

Since the bar was about as transient as the LAX airport, it was rare to run into someone twice. Plus, by now, we knew the Regulars—Regs for short. They, on the other hand, couldn’t be bothered to remember us.

An in-game challenge we liked to issue each other was running into Regs and seeing if they remembered us. You lose, you buy a round. You win, your drinks are everyone else’s problem for the rest of the night. 

This week was no exception. Skye, real name, had saved seats at the bar for Jane, real name, and I. Perfectly timed, the bartender delivered our drinks as we sat. 

Upholding our tradition, Skye arrived first, so she shared her conquest first. She had caught the eye of a tall, sun-kissed pilot, call sign Rooster, that lived up to the implied innuendo. For the first time, Skye wanted, no needed, a Reg! Our resident one-hit wonder, she refused to touch the same pawn twice. 

Meanwhile, Jane went home with a handsome guy, call sign Harvard. The three of us chuckled as she proceeded to rant about how he must’ve been a nepo baby to get into the country's most elite university. That, or all the jet fuel really killed quite a few brain cells. Thank goodness the head between his legs required only blood flow—it did not disappoint. However, she would rather watch paint dry than have to attempt to hold a conversation with him again. 

Now my turn, the pair looked at me expectantly. Both saw me leave with a suave blond pilot, call sign Hangman. 

Hangman was one of the smoother pilots I’d met. He stumbled upon me alone, sitting at the bar, Skye and Jane elsewhere toying with their catches.

“This seat taken?” He had a faint southern drawl. 

“All yours,” I responded. The bartender arrived with my drink, and Hangman wordlessly ordered his own. 

We looked at each other. His eyes were a stunning jade, and his smile was absolutely lethal.

Thankfully, I’d been told time and time again my grin was just as fatal. I let myself pretend that was the reason he was looking. Throughout the night, his gaze would drop to my mouth often. Occasionally, it would drift down my neck and sometimes lower.

His beer arrived and we continued to banter. Finally, an opportunity arose to exchange names. “Hangman,” he said, tipping his beer bottle toward me. 

“Alex,” I lied as I touched the edge of my drink to his. “Friends call me Lex.” I winked as I sipped my beverage.

Part of the fun was how long you could keep their attention or how often they got distracted by an easier target. I had to hand it to Hangman, I did not peg him as a blinders-on kind of guy, but he was. 

As the night wore on, we sat closer and closer. Surprisingly, I had not noticed when he hooked his foot on my barstool and was subtly inching me toward him.

My elbow was resting on the bar, our bodies turned mostly toward each other. Hangman had just delivered a punchline to an actually funny joke that made me genuinely laugh. 

“You know,” I looked at him through my lashes, “your accent gets thicker with every beer.”

His megawatt smile appeared. “The drawl is how I draw ya in.” He winked and knocked my knee with his. 

Damn, he was charming. 

If I hadn’t been sitting at the bar with him for the last couple hours, I’d find it hard to believe this funny, affable human was the same cocky asshole shit-talking his friends and sharking their cash in darts earlier in the evening.

Last call crept up on us. We stayed in our seats as we closed our tabs—a true gentleman, Hangman insisted he pick up my drinks. 

“Nightcap at my place?” He offered as he finished his signature with a gallows stick figure. A chuckle escaped me as I nodded in response. “What?” he inquired, cocking his head a little.

My eyes still on the receipt, I subtly gestured my chin in the same direction. “You’re really into your call sign.” He smirked, his deep dimples making an appearance as we vacated our seats.

“Only here,” he responded. “Makes the bartenders smile—I like to leave this place in good humor.” His hand slipped to the small of my back as we walked out.

He insisted he drive my car to his place, so I could leave at my leisure. He’d get his from the bar in the morning. 

“I’m surprised you live here.” I initiated conversation as he drove. I watched a smile tug his features. 

“Well, I wasn’t completely honest.” He stole a quick glance at me before putting his eyes back on the road. “I’m staying at a buddy’s house. He’s out of town while I’m in town, so he lent me his place. Allows me to avoid the barracks, and I return the favor when he’s in my neck of the woods.” He paused. “Have you ever been?”

It was the politest way I’d ever been asked if I were a tag chaser. “To the barracks? I have not had pleasure,” I responded. Sarcasm coloring my tone. 

“You’re not missing anything,” he quipped with a wink. I smiled mostly to myself. The rest of the ride was silent between us but not awkward. The radio was our soundtrack until he cut the engine in the driveway of a quaint little bungalow. 

As I exited, Hangman came around to shut the door and take my hand. We walked to the house, and once inside he left me to my own devices while he snagged some beers from the fridge. 

Hangman handed me a longneck as we settled into the couch, me tucked into his side. After some small talk, our beers almost empty, he was leaning toward me. His eyes locked on my lips. “You know,” I said as he continued to close the gap between us. “You’re much more of a gentleman that I was expecting.”

His signature smirk appeared. “There’s still time for me to not be a gentleman.” He pressed his lips to mine. Eagerly, I forced him back so I could climb into his lap. One palm rested on his chest, while the other tugged his locks. 

He groaned as I rolled my pelvis into his and roughly pulled on his lower lip. Playfully, I sat back, biting my own lip and batting my lashes. Hangman’s hands settled into the back pockets of my jeans and kneaded my backside. “Something tells me you're trouble.”

Our smirks mirrored one another. “Aren’t you lucky, you get to find out firsthand.” I leaned in for one more kiss, before slipping off his lap. Zero hesitation, he popped up, grabbed my hand and led me to his room. 

We barely crossed the threshold, and Hangman was peeling his shirt over his head. I mimicked his action, and we slipped our pants off at the same time. He watched as I slowly stood to my full height. His eyes wandered the length of my legs and then studied the tiny swathe of fabric covering my apex. 

As he looked, I turned so his eyes followed the curve of my thighs to my buttocks and then up my back. I was looking over my shoulder at him as he realized my bra was dangling from my index finger. My smile widened as the garment hit the floor, and then I sashayed to the bed.

He watched me sink onto the mattress. Knees wide, I let my legs dangle over the side and leaned back on one palm. The other was busy kneading my nipples to taut peaks. 

Even in the dim light of the room, I could see his pupils were completely blown. He sauntered over and stood between my knees. Tilting my head up, I met his gaze. Staring down at me, he tangled a hand in my hair. My eyes fluttered closed, waiting for his next command. 

Instead, he untangled his hand from my trusses. Eyes open with curiosity, I kept his gaze as he sank to his knees, resting his palms on the tops of my thighs. We never broke eye contact as he kissed each of my kneecaps. 

My breath hitched as his calloused fingers ghosted up my legs and curled around the sides of my panties. Almost involuntarily, my hips lifted so he could slip the garment down. Hangman took his time sliding them off, letting his fingers trail the entire length of my legs. Settling himself, he looped one of my legs over each shoulder. The position forced me to lie further back and prop myself on my elbows. 

I chewed my lip as he nosed and kissed along my inner thighs. His smirk appeared as he got closer to where I really wanted him. “As a gentleman, I’ll make you come first.” A wet, hot kiss punctuated his statement.

Before I could retort, he spread me with his fingers and suctioned his lips around my bundle of nerves. If it weren’t for his hand anchoring my hip, my entire body would've come off the bed. “Oh, fuck!” I nearly shouted as his fingers slipped down to my soaking hole. 

He pulled away, tugging my clit before letting it go, to watch his thick fingers languidly sink into me. Every come-hither motion had me seeing stars and the band in my lower stomach pulling tighter. Coupled with him lapping my core, I was nearly over the edge. The final push was a string of phrases, including ‘just like that’ and ‘good girl’ leaving his mouth.

I sat up and squeezed my eyes shut as my orgasm rippled through me. Hangman slipped from beneath my legs and settled beside me on the bed, ushering me to lay back down. Prolonging my peak, he scissored his fingers and enjoyed my walls tightening around his digits.

Finally through my high, Hangman removed his fingers. That disappointingly empty feeling washing over me, I opened my eyes to see him cleaning my arousal from his hand. “You’re sweet,” he said as he pulled his fingers out of his mouth with a pop and looked down at me. 

My hand went to the back of his head to pull him down for a kiss. Sloppily, I licked his mouth and sucked his lips to taste myself. We broke apart. “Mhmmm, needed to confirm,” I explained. His smile appeared as he pushed his lips back to mine.

Hangman growled as I sank my teeth into his bottom lip. Breaking the kiss, he slipped off the bed to grab a condom, rolling it on as he came back. He grabbed my ankle to position me at the edge of the bed so his length was resting against my throbbing apex.

The backs of my thighs rested against the front of his. He still had a hold on my ankle, while my other leg hooked around his hip. I watched as Hangman laid my leg against his chest. Then he toured the length of it until his hand came to rest on my hip. 

We kept eye contact as he leaned forward. “It’s my turn.” His hand slipped between us to guide his length into me. A hissed deflated my lungs as he seated himself. Girthier than his fingers, he gave me a few seconds to adjust.

Every couple of thrusts, his pace increased. Now verging on brutal, he hooked my legs around his arms as he planted his palms on the bed for more leverage. I couldn’t help the moans that escaped my lips as he relentlessly drove into me. 

“Taking me so well,” he complimented. “That’s a good girl, Lex.”

Lex? 

Who the fuck was Lex?!

My body reacted before my mind, and my open palm connected with his cheekbone. Hangman’s hips stuttered, but only for a moment. “What was that for?” he asked between thrusts. 

Fuck. 

I’m Lex.

I forgot…

Fortunately, Hangman seemed none the wiser. “I need to know so I can do it again,” he clarified, smirking. 

“Shut up,” I ignored his question. “Put your hand around my neck.”

“Choke you?” he rephrased. 

Whining, I clawed at his wrist. “Yes, please!” 

He obliged, placing his palm over the column of my throat. His thumb, fore and middle fingers applied pressure to the sides of my neck. A hum buzzed up my throat and my bottom lip disappeared between my teeth as he applied pressure. 

The only sounds in the room were both of us panting and skin against skin. His hand had since left my neck and was cradling my head, fingers curled in my hair, while the other was planted beside me on the bed.

One of my hands reached between us to draw tight circles on my engorged nerves. Occasionally, I’d slip my fingers into a V around his base. “Yes, keep your hand there,” he instructed. I obeyed, squeezing rhythmically. A drawn out ‘fuck’ left his lips as his hips stuttered while he came. 

Hangman buried his face in the crook of my neck, but kept his pace to encourage my second orgasm. His hand replaced mine between us. The calluses of his thumb added just enough sensation to push me into my next pleasure wave. “Fuck, I love when you squeeze me.” His pace slowed at the same rate as my aftershocks.

Hangman uncurled himself from me, and I whined at the loss of heat and sat up. He threw me his discarded t-shirt before wandering to the bathroom. A minute or two later, he came back with a warm washcloth and, kneeling in front of me, gently cleaned me up. 

Offering his hand, he pulled me to standing. Then, before returning to the ensuite bathroom, he turned down the blankets and motioned for me to climb in. 

Jokingly poking a finger to my chest, I looked over my shoulder and then back at him. “You want me to stay?” 

His signature smirk reappeared as he walked over to me, standing close enough I had to look up at him. “Can I tell you a secret?” I nodded, waiting. He bent down so his lips met my ear. “I’m a cuddler.” He whispered, and then placed a chaste kiss at the top of my jaw, before dipping past me to the bathroom.

By the time Hangman came back, I was nestled into his bed, postcoital sleepiness settling in. He draped himself over me, wrapping an arm around my waist and slipping his leg between mine. The last thing I remembered was him pressing kisses to the back of my neck. 

A few hours later, I stirred to find myself tucked into Hangman’s side, him on his back. My head and hand on his chest, and my leg looped over his. His arm was slack in the valley between my hip and ribs.

I wanted to stay there with Hangman. Kiss him awake and then convince him to go to breakfast, but that wasn’t part of the game.

Begrudgingly, I slipped from his grasp. However, I had decided I was keeping his t-shirt. Collecting my clothing, I slipped on some pants. Then, I crept over to the bathroom to make sure I was somewhat presentable. Gathering the rest of my belongings, I hopped into my vehicle and headed home. 

Keeping up the facade, I left the longing details out of my story as I wrapped it up. Jane and Skye were both ready to jump on me with a million questions.

However, instead, their attention was drawn behind me. Confused, I swiveled in my seat to find Hangman leaning against the counter, looking right at me. 

“Hey, stranger.” My heart definitely skipped a beat. 

His gorgeous grin appeared as he stood to his full height and leaned closer to me. “Hey, stranger,” he repeated. “Left without a trace on Saturday.”

“Is that not what you wanted?” His gaze was intense, yet I couldn’t look away. 

“Not at all.” A drink arrived for him, and he winked at the bartender. “I was hoping we would go out for breakfast.” He sipped his beer. “Exchange phone numbers.” He paused again. “Real names.”

I’d been had. 

He smiled at my silent confirmation. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked in a lower voice. 

Hangman leaned further in to whisper into my ear. “And ruin such a hot moment?” We pulled just far enough apart to look each other in the eye. “I was sad when you weren’t there for Round 2 in the morning.” 

I couldn’t help but grin. Heat filled my cheeks, as I looked at my shoes for a moment. 

“Instead of you toying with another flyboy’s heart tonight, I’m going to buy your drinks and get to know you…” he trailed off. I finished his sentence with my name, which he repeated with a grin. 

“I knew you weren’t a Lex.” He winked. “I’m Jake, by the way.”

“Hi, Jake. Nice to meet you.” I winked back before taking a sip of my drink.

Jake let out a hearty laugh that squinted his eyes. 

Skye’s hand brushed my shoulder as she and Jane vacated the area. They both gave Jake little waves. In exchange, he relayed soft thank yous.

He pulled my stool as close to his as possible and looped his arm around the back. “Well,” he looked down at me, “now that I know your name, I want to know everything else.”

“Good thing we have all night.”

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[vintagetvstars]

Wayne Rogers Vs. Alejandro Rey

Propaganda

Wayne Rogers - (M*A*S*H, Stagecoach West, City of Angels) - "He just had this warmth and gentleness to him that made him sooo attractive no matter at what age..." Full text propaganda below the cut.

Alejandro Rey - (The Flying Nun) - With its mostly female core cast, The Flying Nun may be an odd property to source a Hot Man from, but look at him. As debonair playboy Carlos Ramirez, Rey had to meet the difficult task of being suave and sexy but also really over the top, continually exasperated, and funny, and he delivered so well. He's hilarious as a foil to Sally Field's earnest Sister Bertrille, Carlos essentially being her combination best friend, low-stakes antagonist, shenanigans victim, and (according to some fans) maybe love interest. Though primarily acting for comedy, Rey's also able to handle scenes that require more warmth and subtlety, and he just looks divine. The eyes and the profile alone are enough to make you forgot the ridiculous late-60s fashions he wears.

Master Poll List | How to submit propaganda | What is vintage? (FAQ)

Additional propaganda below the cut

Wayne Rogers:

He just had this warmth and gentleness to him that made him sooo attractive no matter at what age. If his good looks and his charming smile (and those curls ahh!) aren't enough to convince you to vote for this nice, funny, 6ft tall man, then let me hit you with some random information What i adore is the duality of this man! First he served his duty in the navy and was about to study law when he accompanied a friend to a theatre play one evening and was so amazed by the art of acting that he decided to achieve an acting career instead. When he wanted to leave MASH after only three seasons -although the contract said for him to stay much longer-, they couldn't do anything about it bc he hadn't even signed it in the first place (there was a paragraph in it that he strongly disagreed with). If that isn't badass idk what is! And later in his career, not only did he act, write and produce all kinds of TV, movie and stage productions but he also started a successful financial business. Also (at least when he was older) he supposedly went for a swim in the sea EVERY morning. Btw when he was still getting started and was financially struggling, he shared a flat in New York and an overcoat for auditions with (also still struggling) colleague Peter Falk

Alejandro Rey:

[lazuliquetzal]

Comedy Is A Lie: I’m Going To Explain The Joke And It’s Going To Make Everything Worse

A buddy asked me why I cut a good joke from one of my fics and my immediate answer was “it killed the tension,” which, upon reflection, is a pathetic answer that is mostly inaccurate and does not even come CLOSE to how much thought I put into comedy in my writing. So I guess I’m going to write this out and excise the demon of over-explanation. 

Part The First: What Is Funny

The biggest thing I try and keep in mind when writing editing comedy (and anything, really, but especially for comedy) is rhythm. Lots of parts to rhythm! Most obvious is the word-to-word/sentence-to-sentence flow. Timing is a really important aspect of verbal comedy, which is why performance is a good medium to use. You get to control the delivery of every sentence and the spaces in between. But when you’re writing, you have significantly less control over how a reader will interpret the rhythm: all you can do is word your sentences as best as you can and give them rhythm cues via punctuation. (This is why I use so many em dashes and commas… I'm working on that…)

The other part to rhythm is on a more macro scale. There are jokes that will roll along with the flow of a story. For me, these are jokes that don't deviate from the context of the scene too much. They connect one subject to the next, or they build off of each other (a ‘yes, and’ sequence, for example). Alternatively, the joke is delivered in a really understated way. Like passing off something objectively batshit as status quo. Either way, they flow!

Then there are jokes that will halt a scene in its tracks. These are jokes that recontextualize a situation, or make a particularly large leap from the current topic. Or, you've been setting up for this punchline for a while and this joke is payoff. Or the joke is just really, really funny. These are the kind of jokes where you need to give the characters (or the reader) a beat to process them. Sometimes. We’ll get back to that.

Part the Second: How Is Funny

So the point of all that rhythm stuff is that comedy has a flow! If every line is a witty one-liner, none of the lines are witty one-liners! If every joke is a one-hit-KO, you have left your reader unconscious. Basically, if you are constantly being #Funny, you become repetitive and predictable, and that is the death of tension (and humor is a tension-driven element). 

One way to think of comedic pacing is setup (AKA building tension) and punchline (AKA payoff). It’s a balancing act: the more you build up tension, the more satisfying the payoff is going to be, but if you spend too long building up, you start dragging. You want the reader to think, “I can’t wait for the punchline!” and not, “oh my god, PLEASE get to the punchline already.” 

Fun way to make the tension last longer is to put all those flow-y connector jokes along the way. The reader’s anticipating the Joke, so by giving them little jokes, it meets their expectations in little ways so that they don’t get too antsy.

Hey, what’s tension, you ask?

Part The Third: Why Is Funny

When I read a book, there are two emotions that get me to turn the page:

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I’m curious!

I know X is going to happen, and I’m anticipating it!

That’s tension. (Something something semantics—I’ve never taken a creative writing class, I don’t have a vocabulary) 

You can have the calmest, low-stakes fluffiest fic in the world but as long as your readers are experiencing either curiosity or anticipation, Congrats! You have tension! I, however, like putting readers on fast-paced rollercoasters, so that’s the lens through which I’m tackling this section, which is: how do I use jokes in a story structure context? What purpose does a clown serve?

I mentioned earlier that some jokes are bricks to the face: they demand to be processed. Most of the time, I put high-impact jokes in places where I need the story to “reset” in a way: force a beat so the reader can process both the joke and the plot. That’s using humor to release tension. Literally. Laughter relieves stress.

But! You can also use those jokes to make the tension even worse! If you drop a bomb and immediately press forward, no processing allowed, you get stressful comedy. You want to laugh, but also a bunch of other stuff is happening and it feels kind of rude to laugh, so you get stressed. Sometimes humor can undermine a climactic moment, but if you use the right joke in the right spot you create shrimp emotions. If you’ve read DotF ch8 you know what I’m talking about.

Jokes also just make for good plot points? A lot of jokes are built on recontextualization. Everybody loves a good twist/reversal/surprise in a plot. Just make a joke and re-frame it, and bam! You’ve plotted! (Everything I’ve ever written started off as a joke.)

Wait, What Was The Question?

Why did I cut the joke? It was a waste of a brick to the face. It was too referential, it required the audience to know/agree with something completely unrelated to the story, it didn’t build upon what I already established. It ruined the rhythm.

I need to emphasize that, despite all my Thoughts on this, the way I appraise my jokes is 80% vibe-based. I probably could have kept the joke, and it would have been totally fine. But I would know. I would know that my intended rhythm is broken… it would haunt me until the end of time…

[familyabolisher]

Elaborate on poor things? Haven’t seen it, just curious

i think caden does a great job at getting at the heart of a lot of its problems here. some of my own thoughts on top:

for a piece which clearly wants to work with the materials of frankenstein and dabbles in broader gothic tropes especially in its final plot beats, it really just -- it wasn't very fucked up at all! i think probably the worst thing we saw happen was bella killing a frog in the first half hour. the gore was unspectacular and the plot was profoundly low-stakes -- the film utterly fails in crafting any kind of a sense of tension, such that you're never really afraid for (or of!) bella, never seriously concerned that something bad is actually going to happen. it was all just a fun little romp through europe.

the humour was either just straight-up asking the audience to laugh at how a character telegraphed as disabled moves and communicates, or, like, marvel-type jokes that felt unnatural and forced. i don't think a single joke landed for me. it's not a black comedy because it's not black enough and it's not a straightforward comedy either because it is simply not funny. a better version of this film would've been a) more fucked up and b) funnier, with those two elements complementing one another very well, but -- well. Sad!

lanthimos thinks that making big, unwieldy gestures towards every discourse of the nineteenth century he can think of is the same as interfacing with them at the narrative level. we've got: science and religion! class struggle! sex work! humanism! enlightenment idealism giving way to socialist thought! misogyny! we've got class inequality and a very faint outline of imperialism, helpfully telegraphed by showing some starving brown people on-screen in a yellow filter for all of about five seconds. but none of these are actually engaged with -- they're thrown in as empty signifiers, as if to say, very vaguely, It's The Late Nineteenth Century, Big Ideas, We All Know About Those. nothing changes in bella's material conditions at the end of the film, save for like, the presence of her Black lesbian socialist lover. that's not engaging with what Blackness, lesbianism, socialism ought to problematise about bella's life and worldview; it's tacking the fact of those things on as a footnote and calling it development.

speaking of enlightenment-style idealism, the film makes very little effort to problematise bella's desire for self-improvement, and how that self-improvement comes about specifically through becoming articulate and acquiring greater motoric skills. as i said, the film takes a turn towards (very shallow depictions of) socialist thought once the action shifts to paris, but the underlying suggestion that bella's 'self-improvement' to the ends of making herself, essentially, less disabled was to her benefit is never challenged. this combined with the extent to which the film's aforementioned shit humour rested heavily on expecting the audience to laugh at bella speaking and moving oddly or saying something out of place &c. left a v nasty taste in my mouth.

the premise is stupid sorry. like it's just utterly inane. frankenstein for the most unimaginative people alive. for that matter, most of the plot beats are ridiculous and lazy -- the final arc, with the arrival of her old husband and the return to her old house, was very much giving "the deadline is at midnight and we still need to fill this last half hour and we've got nothing to put here so let's just whack out the first plot we can think of." like, it was incredibly rushed, ridiculously heavyhanded and patronising, and unable to add anything of substance to the piece (which, to be fair, nothing in that film was at all substantial, So Like).

it's misogynistic slop with a lazy plot and no real interest in engaging with the ideas it vaguely raises for five seconds. it's aesthetically decent, i guess, but like ... anything can be aesthetically decent. it's v easy for a film to look pretty and apparently v difficult for it to actually do anything substantial.

[plusultraetc]

👀👀 you mentioned a sports festival rant?

YES Sports Festival rant!! When I answered this ask about MHA favorites, I 'jotted down a couple of notes about the Sports Festival' which turned into like. A 1.5k word essay. In my defense, this arc truly does have it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. There's so much to talk about here that 1.5k words doesn't even begin to cover it!!

The Good:

So until now I have been a predominantly anime fan who occasionally reads the manga when I need a quick refresher on something, or I just want to reexperience a chapter through a slightly different lens. That being said, I haven't read through the Sports Festival arc in its entirety, so my opinions are based on the anime, and in the anime, this is genuinely such a fun arc to watch. It has a similar low-stakes-high-energy vibe to Joint Training; the audience is properly introduced to so many new characters and their quirks; and there are some really great emotional beats throughout (shoutout to Todoroki vs Sero. I am HAUNTED by the entire stadium in awe of Todoroki's instant-win juxtaposed with Midoriya thinking 'In that moment, he looked very sad to me.' That split-second moment where Todoroki wonders if not using his father's quirk really makes him any less Endeavor's son? HAUNTED.)

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE PART OF THE ARC: Aizawa & Present Mic's stand up comedy routine in the commentator's booth. They had no reason to be as funny as they were. 'There you have it folks, Eraserhead is a terrible teacher' I mean. I did write a fic about the circumstances leading up to the comedy routine and it is,, not super lighthearted but let's ignore that for now and focus on the silly. I WILL SAY, something else Sports Festival does is constantly remind me that characters like Aizawa, Mic, Midnight, and All Might are products of UA and, in turn, of pro hero society. Those first three especially are products of an All Might-centric pro hero society, which adds another messy layer to the things they are willing to accept and even encourage. Huge brainrot about the pro hero house of cards balanced on the wobbly table that is All Might forever!!

Midoriya is really at his most Midoriya in this arc also. I personally think Izuku is at his best when his ingenuity and empathy are the focus (these are character traits that imo become less and less prominent as the show goes on and his focus shifts to becoming stronger. You can probably pinpoint the exact moment where his priorities change (at least I think so?) and then you could probably write an essay about trauma and responsibility and cry). ANYWAY, early Midoriya is Very Worried All The Time about doing exactly as All Might says, which is why it is so so important that he does not win the Sports Festival. The Festival is kind of a microcosm of the pro hero world, with the medal ceremony being the parallel/precursor for hero rankings. Coming in first place/being Number One is a big big deal in this arc, as always. Izuku's most impactful moment is when he prioritizes something (or someone) else over that coveted first place medal, in spite of how badly he wants to impress All Might and be worthy of his legacy. He was just a really good bean in this arc okay???

The "Bad" (but no less interesting!):

As wonderful as it was to see the pro heroes come to the rescue at USJ, the Sports Festival is here to remind us that, in so many ways, this world is a dystopia. It's not just because of the Hunger Games-esque nature of watching children fight each other & broadcasting it worldwide for entertainment and profit. When you think about it, the Sports Festival is kind of like college-level sports, just with superpowers and high schoolers (there's even a recruitment aspect. It's literally like MHA college football). And sure, fighting each other with superpowers is considerably more violent than your average sport, but they do have people with healing quirks like Recovery Girl on standby. Even serious injuries can literally be undone in seconds. What makes the college sports-ification of hero school so weird is the 'hero' part. Like, not only are you already indoctrinating your future heroes (who have so much relatively unchecked power & responsibility as pros) into the hero/celebrity culture super early on, but the students are competing to impress current pros, secure a good internship, and further their careers. Like. You're essentially teaching them that being a good hero = putting on a good show. Maybe if the point wasn't to 'win' an internship it wouldn't be so strange to me but as is? Wild. Really fun bit of worldbuilding. I am spinning it in my head like a carnival prize wheel.

I also want to take a minute to talk about the medal ceremony here. I thiiink that Bakugou being chained to the podium is meant to be comedic(?), kind of a 'look how mad he is, they literally had to drag him out here' moment, but the conflation of hero/villain imagery in this scene. Omg. Again, the medal ceremony is like a mini hero ranking (that he has won!!!) but the only other time we've seen a muzzle-like thing like the one Bakugou is wearing is on a villain in the first episode. To bring that back at this moment?? The bars of my enclosure. The bars of my english degree. Agh.

I actually mentioned this around the time I posted that very silly Sports Festival fic for Monoma’s birthday, but can we talk about how 1-A IMMEDIATELY turns on each other during this arc? Like?? They’re a MESS. Obv the writing reason for this is that there needs to be competition to make this competition arc interesting (and it succeeds!) but 1-A’s immediate willingness to go for the jugular gets Really Awkward when you realize they are literally the only class that does this—and, what’s more, that there is literally no reason for them to do this. Unnamed 1-C student #3 is right: the other first year classes are only participating in the Festival to make the hero students look good. We know this because the first challenge—the obstacle race—is literally designed to eliminate non-Hero Course students from the competition. Even if hero students didn’t have (generally) more powerful quirks and more training than everyone else, the very first obstacle in the race is the Hero Course Entrance Exam robots—ie, a challenge the hero students have already beaten, but that disqualified students from other courses from admission. Even deliberately hanging back and doing recon, 1-B is able to get all of their students through the obstacle race. Then, after the Cavalry Battle, we see 1-B once again demonstrating a level of maturity and support that the vast majority of 1-A severely lacks. I know I sound like Monoma rn, but I think this has a lot to do with the fact that, as we continue to see throughout the series, 1-A takes a lot of their cues from Midoriya and Bakugou and, to a lesser extent because he’s so quiet, Todoroki. Later, this is a good thing, because the mini big three pushes their class to be the best they can be, but here, these three characters are in shambles—insecure and off-kilter and desperate to prove something, and that energy very much spreads to their peers--which I personally think is great bc it makes for good TV and leaves lots of room for character growth!

The Ugly:

You have no idea how tempted I am to just put a picture of Stain here. He would deserve it for what he did to my man Tensei. I actually love Stain as a villain but SPEAKING OF WHAT HE DID TO MY MAN TENSEI.

The show tells you how important the Sports Festival is. Everyone treats it like it’s the Olympics, except fifty times more important. UA students are scouted by pro heroes and agencies during the event, and putting on a good show can literally change the course of your career (just as doing poorly can ruin it before you even get a chance to graduate). More sports analogies! This makes sense. But the thing is, countless pros show up to watch the event in person. Even more provide security. Literally my first thought was, if I was a criminal I would commit so many crimes during the Sports Festival. Who tf would be around to stop me? And then I had a good laugh because we actually see Shigaraki watching the Festival and I was like ‘oh, there isn’t a spike in villain attacks because the villains are watching it too lol.’

But THEN, Tensei gets attacked by Stain ON THE DAY OF THE FESTIVAL. So there are still heroes out hero-ing and villains out villain-ing, and it’s probably way easier to do the latter when everyone from All Might to Endeavor and beyond are watching teenagers beat the tar out of each other. But you’ve gotta scout those future interns and sidekicks so what are you gonna do!! Once again, the Sports Festival is a microcosm of pro hero popularity society—it’s this insulated little bubble where everyone is so worried about how they look, where they ranked, who they beat to that podium, while the real world carries on outside. Iida himself is distracted by that shiny first place medal until Stain attacking his brother body slams him back to reality.

[malacandrax]

Hi! I really look up to your art a lot and I had a question for you! How do you do studies when you find art hard to do? (Ex. Low motivation, lack of ideas, or simply art feeling like a chore, even when you want to do it.) You have such a good handle on body structure and your posing shows so much personality though it, but I'm sure there are times when art feels idle or empty. Do you have a process for working through that? To keep studying?

Thank you, thats so sweet! <3

Honestly I kind of do studies the most when I AM feeling uninspired or lost, they make me feel like I've made something good and ‘worthwhile’ even if I couldn't think of something else to draw or didn't feel like working harder on drawings from my head.

Maybe that's also a part of it- to me studies are easier than drawing from imagination and I find them kind of chill and rewarding. I imagine when I started out studies were probably a lot more frustrating!

I also have spoken with a friend about this and I'm maybe quite lucky in that visual information sticks in my head quite well, almost every time I do studies I find it immediately helpful. Like the other day I drew a behind the head angle, and then found it useful right after, drawing Astarion.

It doesn't last forever though, my memory fades and I have to refresh it again with studies until it eventually becomes more concrete.

I also don't really force it, I do art for my job during work hours and I usually (lately) feel like drawing after work or on weekends, but if I don't feel like it I try and do some other hobby or watch stuff. Sorry though, I know this isn't exactly answering the question!

I guess sometimes I want to want to draw, so I start and see how I feel after ten minutes, if I want to keep going or not, that's maybe the best advice for doing anything when you're feeling meh. It also helps to identify What you want to work on, i have a list in my head of stuff I feel weakest at and I find having it broken down like that helps it feel less like a mountain. Like … things I've picked out lately are :what legs look like sitting in chairs, and heads tilting at different angles. To be honest another thing I've been trying to work on is getting more personality into my poses, it's funny that you compliment just that when I feel it's something I want to work on! I suppose it's a never ending journey haha. I've been reading 'drawn to life' and trying to take the ideas of not just copying reality, but getting more of the essence of it than the technicals!

Saying that sometimes the low stakes 'draw photos that come up on ur dashboard' is fun, in contrast to a focused approach! Or my fav is pausing on movies and drawing that! It takes the worry out, like cool no scrolling for an hour looking for something that will be Perfect Learning Material, just draw something.

Anyway this is very long and I hope it helps ;;;

[deusvervewrites]

honestly i think that AFO's "trys to kill midoriya even though he knows that midoriya's got to stay alive for him to get OFA" thing can actually be attributed to his "thinks everything runs on superhero comic logic but specifically the logic where he wins" thing.

because after all, whoever holds OFA is supposed to be the hero of the story! Obviously, this plot armor is how the quirk/user always manages to survive, and this will protect the current user until either AFO can steal the quirk or they can dramatically pass it on. <- (sarcasm) (unfortunately how i think AFO's brain works) (because this is the only reason that makes his stupid plans make sense to me)

Basically AFO doesn't comprehend that a OFA user can die at any time, not just when the quirk is passed on/he takes it himself/or the situation is deemed narratively dramatic enough. hes gotten extremely lucky on this part, that the story (the manga itself, not the story that AFO believes in) actually needed OFA to be passed on and for midoriya to mostly survive the murder attempts.

It is kind of funny to me how trying to be genre-savvy in mha technically works sometimes and occasionally makes for very interesting characters and moments that play on or subvert well established tropes (i am a monoma enjoyer and i find his technically correct observation that he, himself, is a side character and more specifically a low-stakes antagonist/heel both kinda funny and very intriguing in how this affects his frankly abysmal mental health and how it plays into his "performance"/facade of who he is that he presents to the rest of the cast) (also that somewhat recent moment w kaminari thinking that his "line"/"part" was to be the guy who 100% believed in the protagonist and cheer him on but he was genuinely and realistically worried about midoriya instead) BUT for the most part. It just makes characters act stupid as hell. And its especially funny when they are actually completely wrong about the general role that they play/what tropes are actually in action.

Now that im thinking about it. the fact that characters trying to think of their lives as a story, specifically a superhero story, is an in-universe flaw because they are supposed to be actual people in-universe and run the risk of greatly misunderstanding people and brushing off others issues/depth because they are not actually supposed to be in a written story in their universe. Yet they are technically right and can occasionally predict outcomes due to the fact that mha itself can't subvert every trope if it wants to stay as a superhero story. Is very interesting and both fun and maddening at times to witness. I feel like i didn't word this thought too well but besides that. Layers upon layers here. some of those layers are ridiculous but hey.

In conclusion because oopsies this ask came out much longer than i thought it was going to sorry for dropping this brick in your inbox -

Attempting to be self-aware is a massive hit or miss thing to actually work out in a character's favor in mha. And when AFO tries it. He makes stupidly convoluted plans that genuinely shouldn't work. Solely because he thinks that is how being a supervillain works. The fact that the plans actually work doesn't change that everything afo does is stupid as hell once you actually think about it.

One of the big ways that AFO is demonstrably an idiot is because this is genuinely how he thinks

[obstinaterixatrix]

In this romantic Boys' Love manga, sparks fly when a salaryman who's given up on love reunites with his crush from high school.

Kanade feels like he's living under a constant storm cloud with his unfulfilled life. Stuck working a typical office job and keeping himself closeted, he's convinced there will be no sunny days ahead. But those monotonous days are suddenly interrupted when he reunites with Mashiro, an old classmate he harbored hidden feelings for! Finally, Kanade has found a bit of sunshine in his gray, dreary life with Mashiro's arrival. With a chance to get to know each other again, could this be Kanade's second chance to find love with the one who got away?

this is a romance that involves a reunion between former classmates. I was so excited that this got licensed, it’s one of my low-key faves because I love miserable office workers and I love men with problems. the main character is a gloomy avoidant guy and the love interest is a pretty brash optimist

I wish the preview went just a little further because in the next few pages, the main character’s response to his crush confessing to him is to say ‘are you an idiot’. and the love interest’s response is to be like ‘I am literally going to bother you so much forever until you believe me unless you Actually Say With Your Whole Chest you’d hate that’ it’s really funny

I’m a little ambivalent on how a coworker situation was handled, with one coworker pushing the main character to be honest and essentially out himself and fully reject someone else—depending on how I’m feeling, it’s either a little misguided and using false equivalence to push the main character a certain direction, or it’s an interesting clumsy situation that emphasizes the main character’s need for growth through well-meaning but flawed ensemble characters…

what I really like about the series though doesn’t show up until end of volume 1 and midway into volume 2—it’s a bit of a role reversal because it’s actually the gloomy guy who realizes Oh, My Boyfriend Has Problems And I Have To Look Out For Him. to spoil things a bit, the love interest’s mom has… clearly some mental health issues, and I was kind of impressed at the balance the author struck between ‘negative impacts on the love interest’ and ‘acknowledging care for an important family member’. It’s pretty hard to hit the nuance of wanting to maintain contact and not completely cut someone off when they do things that are hurtful, but I think the author was pretty successful (especially since the emphasis is on the love interest Establishing Boundaries And Taking A Step Back)

anyway, it’s a series that’s good for low-ish stakes slice of life romance with a satisfying level of heated drama. I hope volume 2 comes out quickly…!!