#but it also means rewatching a bunch of stuff I just saw last week

[cesium-sheep]

demyx has a phone???

[after-nine-at-the-oasis]

AAAAH WAIT IT'S THE FALL FINALE?? For some reason I did not realize that XDD Makes sense though lol

Well that's gonna be crazy lol

Ooh yeah Bobby's definitely investigating that o.o not that I expected he wouldn't but aaaahh looks like it's gonna be intense >:D

Lol xD anyway that's a bunch of short clips but it looks like it'll be wild :))

And AHHHHH a 9-1-1 Lone Star promo!!! I saw one during one of the commercial breaks earlier that had some different stuff so I'll make a separate post for the few things I caught in there with one rewatch of the one I saw during commercials as I searched up this promo to see if there was anything I was missing lol since it went so quick.

So yeah! That's the last of my last thoughts. Looks like it'll be super intense! Now time for the. . .

REVIEW

I LOOOVED this episode. I thought it was great! A dip back into the old commentary, some angst but also a bunch of laughs lol, and my lovelies being family :DD. Plus we got Joshhhh, always love to see my boy :D. And overall just some really cool calls and such!

First off, congrats(-ish? lol) to Buuuck, it finally happened lol xD :D. Took a while but we got here xD. Anyway, I'm happy for his friends :)). And I'm glad that he finally got some (good) sleep lol, after he started being unable to as well XD. Hilarious, love my boy lol <3.

Eddie! Not much to say for him, though that scene with Bobby after the fire was really great. But we DIDN'T GET THE SHOT XDDD. The cross shot from the promos!! Rude lol. Anyway, him playing video games was great, and I'm glad he finally got some sleep xD.

(Chris: . . . you didn't sleep did you

Eddie: eat your breakfast)

(wait wait wait it's like the babygirl meme - I'll make it in a second lol because I won't finish this before tgd since I wanna finish last week's tgd review lol)

Hen, plus Karen and Denny! Very important storyline, but clearly it doesn't end here. I'm glad they were so supportive of him wanting to know and stuff, it was really nice to see :). But I'm glad Hen admitted to her emotions about it <3. Like, just because they know it's about Denny doesn't mean they can't have feelings lol! But if Denny did go to visit his bio dad in secret, I'm curious as to how that'll continue 👀👀. Welp, we'll see! Anyway, THEY'RE ADORABLE AND THEY'RE FAMILY AND I LOVE THEM <333 😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰.

Also yeah Eddie openly saying "moms" got me okay 😭😭 I don't know why (that's a lie, I do, it's because it's amazing to see on tv :'D)

Poor Josh this episode xDD. I was wondering why they were looking shifty but I couldn't think of a reason (like thinking he was up to something or had a new relationship or something didn't make sense, them scheming to stop him sleeping or something didn't make sense, although it turns out they were scheming XD). I've gotta admit though it was a hilarious plotline lol, I loved it xD. Plus I just liked seeing my boy :D. Anyway, it was great xD.

Madney!!!! AHHHHH!!! They bought a house :DDDD. I mean sure, it's known as the murder house, but it's not ACTUALLY lol. Plus I'm sure that and eit cheaper :D xD. Besides the fact that it needs to much work. I'm sure we'll see the renovation process, and I'm looking forward to it!! I'm so excited and happy for them, ahhhhh (small aaaah scream not awhhh) :))) 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰. THEM <33!

Now, onto Bobby. I feel so and for him D:. I wish his friend had survived, I was really hoping he'd be able to get through whatever he was going through, but alas :'(. And I liked that conversation Athena had with him :'). It was a nice callback, and of course I love my babeys <33. Plus I just like seeing anyone being supportive of their loved ones :)). Idk, it's just nice 🥰🥰❤️. I'm VERY interested in Bobby stopping at nothing to get answers though, it seems like it'll be super intense but I great storyline 👀👀. Not that the intensity is bad! Anyway, as long as it isn't too short or isn't drawn out too long, I think it has real potential :D. Plus, it's always wild (and a privilege lol) to just see Bobby go ham xD. Batcrap, I'll say, since I don't cuss lol. It's gonna be great >:).

Overall, I really loved this episode! I thought it was great, it had a suitably creepy atmosphere, and I thought the insomnia theme was really interesting! It left space open for moments we wouldn't normally see, which I loved :D. And the calls, plus all the family feels, and some angst? Perfect episode, in my opinion /hj <3. It was just great 🥰🥰. Between all the storylines, and the little moments, it was an awesome episode.

So yeah! I enjoyed this episode so much. It had a bunch of great parts, and I don't really have any complaints. I'm excited to see where the stories go next! This has been my review of. . .

9-1-1, Season 6, Episode 9: Red Flag

What a great fall finale! I know we'll have to wait a while for the next episode, but I'm still interested in what's gonna happen next. I'm definitely invested! I'll be back here then for my review of. . .

9-1-1, Season 6, Episode 10: In A Flash

See you then!

[havnblog]

An Introduction to Mad Max

I recently saw a film poster to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - so I thought I’d might watch Mad Max: Fury Road again. I think I remembered it being pretty good - but after rewatching it, I thought: “Ohm, I think this is the best film I’ve ever seen??"

So I’ve spent some time the last two weeks getting into the Mad Max Franchise. I’ve always known about it, but never really had a relationship to it. But now I’m a fan!

This post is a part of a sort-of series I'm calling "Noob teaching noobs". So I absolutely don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to Mad Max, or films in general!

Worth your time

There are many famous franchises out there - but most of them take a little lifetime to get into. There’s so much Star Wars/Trek, Game of Thrones or Marvel stuff out there. But Mad Max is much more manageable, and the high notes are so great, that it’s absolutely worth your time.

You can absolutely just watch Fury Road, without doing anything else before it. If you’re going that route, you can read this little footnote for a tiny bit of background. 👉🏻 1

I watched Fury Road blind, and then went back to the three old ones - but it could also be fun to simply watch them in chronological order!

Mini reviews of the first three

Mad Max

This one is made with about AU$0 in budget, and with a bunch of amateurs (who absolutely didn’t get permits to do all of these stunts on Australian public roads!). So it’s a bit slow and weird, and campy as føck, but still worth your time I’d say! Especially as that time is about 90 minutes - the film length God intended. Some cool chases, weird bad-guys, and interesting world building. (And it’s fun to see a 21 year-old Mel Gibson being 21 year old.)

Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior)

For over 20 years, the first film held the world record for the most profitable film ever made. So with the second one, George Miller could afford to do the things he wanted to do in the first. And the result is amazing. It’s hard to overstate the influence this movie has had on everything post-apocalyptic, and the stunts and action sequences are very impressive, and still entertaining. I mean, as it is a 43 year old film, there’s plenty of questionable hair-cuts and costumes. But this is a great watch both as a piece of film history and as simply a great movie.

Mad Max (3) Beyond Thunderdome

This is pretty good, even though I don’t like it quite as much as the last one. For some reason, this has Tina Turner - and she’s pretty good! I also think it “suffers” from that a couple of things it does (like the Thunderdome itself) has become clichés after-the-fact, and that the last one was so ground-breaking. Still, it has a bunch of great actions sequences and characters, and it carries more emotional weight. Not bad!

The ultimate YouTube partner

During my little adventure, I’ve also stumbled upon a top-tier YouTube channel called Mr. Sunday Movies. And their series Caravan of Garbage (two dudes bantering) is the perfect companion, and something I love to watch after I’ve seen the films they cover. With this specific series, it’s also a bonus that they (just like Mad Max) are very Australian.

Their video about Mad Max,

Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior),

Mad Max (3) Beyond Thunderdome),

and Mad Max: Fury Road.

So, I’d watch one film, watch one Caravan of Garbage video, one film, etc. And if you’re unsure, start with Fury Road (the best). If not, it’s fun to start at the beginning.

There’s also a pretty cool comic, that' meant as a prequel to Fury Road, which can be added in-between Beyond Thunderdome and Fury Road. What a lovely day!

Max starts out as a pretty regular cop, with a little family. But in the first film, he loses everything, and becomes more … Mad. Then the general vibe, is that he wanders around, trying to mind his own business, but gets caught up in stuff. And he ends up being a bit of a hero, without really wanting to. And Fury Road is another example of a situation he just gets caught up in. ↩︎

[neighbourskid]

Dave? Dave.

It's been quite a bit since I've written anything here, huh? Well, I guess as it has been for pretty much everyone, life has been kinda strange for a while now. Despite vaccine roll-outs and continually changing safety regulations, there's still a global pandemic on, and everyone is trying to navigate this reality the best they can. For once, we are all, generally speaking, in the same boat now (sure, there are huge differences between countries because capitalism fucking sucks and rich greedy humans are once again proof that things need to change asap, but overall, we all have to deal with this pandemic).

But I don't actually want to talk about the pandemic, it just exists as a frame of what I do wanna talk about.

As I have mentioned before, when the pandemic hit, I was in the last semester of my undergrad studies and writing my Bachelor thesis. Or that's what I was supposed to do, anyway. I did do a lot of reading for it, early in the first lockdown after university closed and we were all attending from home. I was lucky, I had no classes, I only had like three scheduled meetings to check in on progress of the thesis, but otherwise I was free of zoom calls and attempting to attend university digitally. So I read.

After a while, reading became taking a book with me into the sun, glancing at one or two pages, and then just napping for most of the day, and spending my evenings either playing video games or watching some tv show or movie. At some point, I felt like now was the perfect time to rewatch all fifteen seasons of CRIMINAL MINDS, so I did that, instead of writing my thesis. I still occasionally read, but most of the days I just felt exhausted and unmotivated so I stayed in bed and binged my crime show.

As the deadline for the thesis started approaching, and the time I had left fell under a month, a switch in my brain seemed to be activated and, oh, hello, suddenly there was a certain drive there for that thesis again. Which lasted exactly until an email from university dinged into my inbox a few days later, informing me that I would get another month for my thesis, due to the pandemic. And away that motivation and drive went, immediately.

Not much later I had a session with the therapist I was seeing at the time, because of the hormone treatment I had started early that same year. I had talked to him about my concern that I might have ADHD before because I didn't feel like there was anything we needed to talk about related to my transition, so I brought it up again here. I told him how my thesis was going -- or rather, how it wasn't going at all -- and finally, as I told him about some of the issues I experienced while trying to do work for it, he acknowledged that I may indeed have some attention regulation issues. He prescribed me medication to try out, and -- wonder oh wonder -- suddenly I was writing my thesis. I ended up finishing it on time (even though a week before I had a moment of "all of this is garbage, I will never pass, I should start the whole thing from scratch") and got a decent grade for it, too. I've been on those meds since.

Over the last, I don't know how many years, I've always known that there was something a bit wonky about my brain. There were always these things that seemed to come so easy to other people, and try as I might, I just couldn't make them happen. I, presumably, had a lot of neurotypical friends. I also have friends with depression, BPD, anxiety disorders and other neurodivergencies. I have family members with autism. I know my mom suspected I might be on that spectrum as well.

Reading up on many of those things I never felt like any of them described what I was experiencing. There were certain traits, sure, but mostly there was a lack of what I actually did experience in most of them. Even ADHD, when reading about the "required" issues and traits, doing those self-diagnosing questionnaires, I just never saw what I felt represented. And then I started reading about what people with diagnosed ADHD had to say about how they experience things. I ignored the more medical or clinical information, and just looked for people talking about how they navigate their lives with ADHD. And then all of a sudden it was, oh, yeah this, this is relatable. This is where my brain's at.

Suddenly it made sense that caffeine didn't do nothing for me, that a nice, warm cup of coffee put me right to sleep. It made sense how, after only a month, suddenly a well beloved hobby or tv show was suddenly of no interest whatsoever. Staring at the wall for three hours instead of doing a simple task. Drawing in class so that I could pay attention to what is being said. The inability to remember much of my life before 6th grade. Having to bounce my leg so I could read a simple text. Needing to visually break a book down into chapters with colourful post-its to keep me from being overwhelmed by the length of the book. And so many other things. Suddenly, there was a reason for that.

I've always liked doing personality quizzes. Or doing stuff related to my zodiac sign even if I don't believe in astrology per se. Finding out what my Enneagram number is. Or my Myers-Briggs type. Not because I think those things define me or describe me to a T, but because they give me a vocabulary. They give me options. I love answering a bunch of questions and then getting a wall of text telling me This Is Who You Are and then I get to pick out what is accurate and what isn't. It gives me words to describe who I am that I didn't have before.

And it is the same thing with posts or videos of people with ADHD. It gives me a vocabulary for the things I experience and it lets me express those things in a way I wasn't able to before. Before, I was like, doing things that my brain doesn't want to do, feels like running headfirst into a wall because there is no way above, around, or underneath it. There is no door, no ladder, no tunnel, no nothing. There is only running headfirst into it until maybe, hopefully, it cracks. Preferably before my head does. But that is exhausting and most of the time, I prefer to not get through the wall at all, if what it takes is going headfirst through it. Now, I know that what that is, is a dopamine deficiency. The task that needs doing, the task that this wall is, doesn't give my brain enough dopamine. There is no satisfaction, there is nothing to gain from that task, so the brain isn't interested.

One of the things that I recently discovered and helps me a lot in this quest of figuring out how my brain works, is this guy Connor on tiktok, who also has ADHD. His videos are both hilarious and informative. And also incredibly relatable. They might be silly haha funny videos on the dear old internet, but I walk away from most of them going, oh! oh that makes sense, good to know.

He occasionally talks about how ADHD is completely misnamed and how Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder does not actually accurately describe what exactly people with ADHD lack. In one of his videos, he calls it DAVE instead. It's silly, and sounds a bit dumb, but I kinda like it. Dave. Dopamine Attention Variability Executive-Disfunction. Dave. I like Dave.

Y'know, I don't mind having ADHD. Presumably, I've lived with it my whole life so far. And it's annoying as shit some of the time. Especially when things need to get done and they just won't. But I don't mind that, especially now that I know that this is what it is. I've always feared that if I finally do go to a therapist and try to figure out what my brain is up to, they'll just tell me that I'm fine and there's nothing to worry about. And at first, my therapist did say I was psychologically unremarkable. But I guess if you've lived like this your whole life and nobody has really picked up on it, even a therapist doesn't notice (it's called masking, I've learned, thanks Connor).

But knowing is good. Knowing means I can learn things that help. I can take medication when needed. And, looking at the grades I'm currently getting in my graduate studies? Hells yeah, taking that medication and knowing how to deal with certain aspects of my brain helps a lot. It is incredibly funny to me that the best grades I have gotten in my entire academic career have been achieved in my Master's studies during a global pandemic. There is currently an actual real possibility that I may graduate summa cum laude. In my MA. That is insane!

Anyway, I am avoiding tasks by writing this right now. Oh, the irony. I'm gonna try and do those tasks now. Y'all take care. Cheers!

[purplerose244]

Thoughts journal about Season 13!! 💪💪 (1/4)

Phew, I actually made it to the English release without spoilers! 🤩 I do know general things about little plots for the ninja, hopefully nothing major! Finally, the Cole season we've all been waiting for, with Rock Mom and possibly plenty of our Earth baby development! COLE IN THE SPOTLIGHT AT LAST!! 🖤🖤

Well, I know I'll be shooting rainbows from my eyeballs if I see even one Nexo Knights reference! For the rest I don't really know what will happen, I'm curious! 🤔

It's the 6th of July, and here we go!!

GENERAL THOUGHTS

Is it just me or the dialogues sounds better? More built up, funnier, cohesive just like in the earliest seasons of Ninjago? Maybe it's just me but I'm really appreciating 🤷‍♀️

It also doesn't feel that rushed anymore! Which was my biggest problem in Prime Empire really. The episodes seem to me like fragments of a nice movie, not a too long story forced into 11 minutes. I'm very happy with the quality so far, I feel good about this for now! 👍

No matter what season it is, you can count on The Fold to make an AMAZING intro!! Freaking awesome, it was epic and very final battle like 👌👌 I WANT THE FULL VERSION ASAP!!!

SHINTARO

I do appreciate we are not forgetting about the adventures we had until now, it feels like from season 11 forward we are building a new backstory of. But they still show stuff from the very first seasons so I'm happy anyway 😍

Pff, Cole plays Prime Empire right after being trapped in it. And Lloyd joins in! YES!! Maybe there is hope for a season without greenie being traumatized! 👍👍

Also he's doing laundry because I DON'T WANNA DO THE DISHES NO MORE~ 😎

The chicken is back 😂 The constant reference to the movie we are all kinda attached to a this point (well I am, LOOK AT THE LITTLE HAT 💕💕)

Is it me being a "I've rewatched this show way too much" type of fan to feel that Nya saying that Jay using Spinjitzu for chores will get Wu mad might be a reference to how the guys had cleaned the very first Destiny Bounty with that? You think that Wu found out and got crazy mad? That would be kinda cool 😂😂

Okay, poor sensei and all, but he's kinda right 😅 I like Wu, I really do, but Aspheera was a problem kinda because of him, they all going to another dangerous realm could have been dealt a lot better if he hadn't been so on edge and in Prime Empire he freaking got kidnapped by NORMAL PEOPLE. Maybe he is getting old 🤷‍♀️

At last, he has returned...

THE ONE AND ONLY RULER OF NINJAGO, THE POSTMAN!!! 💜💜💜 Was he missing since March of the Oni? I can't remember if he was around for the Aspheera part 🤔

Soooo, not to be that person, but a secret group of royals asking the ninja to meet them in a place that was never open for outsiders before then? Kinda... feels familiar... *SoG flashbacks* 😰

Okay, not the biggest fan of Misako, but her scolding Wu was kinda fun 🤣 Needed to change the animation for her to get a bit of personality apparently 😉

Ah, you left Pixal behind to let her do... chores. Well, if you guys are happy 😒

Ninja babies all excited ❤💚💙🖤🤍💦 Also I'm excited because there is FINALLY a white heart between the emoji! I didn't notice it until now, I just need a gray/maroon heart now 😍

Jay screaming NOT MADE UP cracked me up so much 😂😂 Gosh I love my bluebell

A bit of action scene, nice, nice, also Cole going full buddy mode to save Jay gives me my beautiful Bruise vibes 💙🖤💙🖤

Well hello Brian

Looking good 💕💕 The designs are rocking in season 12 and 13, I cannot tell it enough! Super super cool

Overall nice episode, seemed more nicely focused than usual, I don't know if it's just me. I'm happy anyway 😁

Ooohhhh, so the sails were ripped off by the bats, and they were flying thanks to the soldier guys with wings. It makes sense, I was confused by the trailer, now there's the answer!

IN THE DARK

Okay, Vania introduction, I wonder what kind of princess we will get after last ti-

Vania: I'm such a big fan of you, I was the one that insisted at having you here! 🤩

... besides the fact that she sounds and looks absolutely ADORABLE, I'm kinda with Lloyd about feeling suspicious... because that's exactly how Harumi introduced herself back then 😅 And away it goes, the possibility of Lloyd spending a season without feeling disturbed or traumatized...

Ah, there we go, Cole and Vania. Soft looks, instant attention and... that's it? Idk, Jay and Nya's meeting had that one very awkward color question (💙❤💙❤), Kai literally heard romantic music while looking at Sky (❤🧡❤🧡), Lloyd was being mocked all the way by the guys as he looked at Harumi (💚😰💚😰). This one seems a bit weak? I don't mind it actually, I'm actually a bit curious about how it will develop since it started like this 🤷‍♀️

References to Hiroshi's Labyrinth and the Tournament of Elements, my fangirl heart is happy 😍 Is it too much thinking that the maze was a reference to Shadow of Ronin, since they all went there in the game while in the show only Lloyd was at the Labyrinth? Idk 🤷‍♀️

JAY SAYING COLE IS HIS BEST FRIEND, YES!! YES!! FINALLY, HAVEN'T HEARD IT SINCE SKYBOUND!!! BROTP IS BACK 🖤💙🖤💙 Also Jay confused that Vania is interested in Cole, pff, you clearly don't know the fandom 😂

But it is a bit fishy, does she knows stuff? Now I'm into it...

Lloyd sneaking in, that was creepy 🤣 And ninja like, of course

I kinda like how this is going, Cole straight up saying dude, I just met her, calm down. Like, I do understand green bean and I'm kinda on his side, but still 🤷‍♀️

Cole: I'm not just gonna jump on the lovesick wagon like you weirdos, geez

"It felt like a cloud of warm contentment." I'm gonna use this whenever someone asks me why have I been in my bed all day 😎

I know they all believed Cole was just dreaming the purple guy, but honestly they could have just said "Cole, we had flaming snakes raining on Ninjago a few weeks ago, what are you so worked up about?". But yeah, ROCK MOM FINALLY!!! I wanna know more!! 😍😍😍

Mr Sparkles 😂😂 So cute

Vania is cool for now, she is basically the innocent Harumi without a scarring tragedy from her past changing her into a vengeful villain... yeah 😅

Did Cole notice that she talks a lot and loud, kinda like Jay? Is that why he seemed a bit annoyed? 😂😂

For now they don't seem that annoyingly into each other, they look chill, no major lovesick moment or anything. I like it, I don't know if this ship will be super important or something, but at least I'm happy they are dealing with it in a different way 👍

With all these creatures chained up and a crazy dude making them work, Cole must have one HECK of a flashback from back in Chen's island 😵

Okay, I get the drama, I get the lair which is

Legit cool, with that nice Underworld vibe, but really? A wood door with ropes behind a lava fall? Security measures who? 😂😂

So Skull dude is the bad guy, and has a mask. People with masks means big reveal at some point. I like dudes with masks 😗

Aaaahhh, figures it was too easy being in a literal mine with the power of Earth. They really can't keep their powers for more than five seconds now can they 😂😂

But this seems interesting, is it connected with the burst thing they said in the trailer? Or even Cole's mom? Is this Skull Sorcerer connected to her? I HAVE QUESTIONS PEOPLE!!!

I am legit enjoying this 👌 They are building up questions and I do hope we'll get a good flashback moment with Rock mom... or even finding out if something else happened to her... EXCITED 🤩🤩

So to be the main ninja of a season lately you have to be either without powers (Kai Fire Chapter) or trapped in an unknown place (Zane Ice Chapter and Jay Prime Empire). Cole got them both 😅

IT REALLY IS ROCKY'S SEASON FINALLY 😎😎

WORST RESCUE EVER

Mm, the king is being weird, what's up with this mountain thing? Does he know who the Skull Sorcerer is? QUESTIONS

So Vania keeps being extremely adorable, I think I really like her character 💕 We'll see what will happen with her, how she will interact with the others, especially Lloyd since he seems very suspicious... can't really blame him 😅

Kai ready to argue with a king because one of his friend is in danger, THAT'S MY FLAME BABE ❤❤❤

Okay, the conflict between the two tribes, I read about this in some plots of the season. Not sure how that will play, but

I did laughed at this 😂 Sorry Mole

Okay, seriously, have we not learned anything from letting Kai come up with a plan? The notoriously bad planner Kai? The think before talking Kai? The let's follow the sun because yes Kai? I love him to dead but really, it was meant to go bad right away even if the title wasn't that 😅😅😅

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GOT EMOTIONAL AT COLE'S NINJA-GO WHILE DOING SPINJITZU?? 😭😭 They don't say it that much anymore before spinning, it kinda hit my tornado shaped heart 🖤🖤

I expected at least a comment about them being similar to the Skulkin, too bad. Not fundamental though, I'm really enjoying this so far 👍

Well, all of the ninja are trapped now 😅 Is Wu going to come for the rescue? Is Vania? I know they will be separated and will all go on separated quests, and I'm kinda more looking forward to it now. Let's see what happens!! 🤩

THE TWO BLADES

Considering how big of a fan Vania seems to be of the ninja, I bet she had those figures way before this moment 😂

Wooooo, hearing someone addressing Cole as the leader, does this count as a major throwback to pilots and season 1? I would make it count 😍

Okay here Vania does seem into Cole, we'll see how that plays out 🤷‍♀️

Ooooooooohhhhhh, vengestone! This actually make more sense than the last two times they were left without powers 😅 We never actually saw where that material came from, and here there's an actual mine full of it! Very cool, I like this! Big question is, what does Skull dude need all this vengestone for? 🤔🤔

Okay, the legends fits, sounds good enough but... she? SHE?!? WAS THAT ROCK MOM??? She was clearly a ninja and she did spinjitzu!! I didn't even considered the possibility, I only saw Misako, Doubloon and Aspheera knowing Spinjitzu before!! An actual mom?? THAT WOULD BE EPIC!! 🖤

Pff, these tribes are a bunch of idiots, I actually like them 😂 I like them better than the rats of Prime Empire that's for sure, but maybe that's just me 🤔

Aww, this Mino creature is cure! Cole did pretty good with him, does he remind him of Rocky? ☹

Nice, this I was waiting for! Cole and Lloyd together, leaders collaboration 💚🖤💚🖤 It didn't last much, but I think there will be more of it? I HOPE SO!!!

So the blades must be somewhere hidden, if they really have been taken by the Skull Sorcerer. I mean, even in Prime Empire they thought for sure Unagami was Dyer, so I wouldn't jump on it right away 🤔

There we go, the divided team! I knew about Kai and Zane stuck together, I remember stuff not too promising about Nya having to fight for Jay, but I'm honestly really enjoying the season so far! I like the pace and it doesn't seem as rushed as before! I hope we get to some good plot twists and backstories soon!! 🤩🤩

[ironstrange-is-the-endgame]

since I'm guessing that you've watched both WandaVision and TFATWS I was wondering what you think of them and which do you think is better in your opinion, also what you think of the upcoming shows/movies releasing this year. also I think you are amazing, and I hope you have a great week! ☺❤

Awww, thank you so much! I really hope my week won’t be as messy as the past ones, to be honest, but still. 

Back to your ask, yeah, I’ve watched both, multiple times each episode. And well, while I liked them, TFATWS more than WandaVision, I find them having the same downsides as most MCU products: they usually have too much and the blow-up all the potential in a very unsatisfying ending. I mean I really had this feeling more with WV because the finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was sort of open to season 2 or something else, but I found WandaVision finale way anti-climatic and rushed which is something we’ve also seen in most of the movie (first one to come up in my mind: Captain Marvel because it’s the last I’ve rewatched some weeks ago)

Also, I’m not a huge fan of comedies so WandaVision wasn’t really my cup of tea in the first place and the only thing which really kept me going on watching it was Vision because I really started to like him watching the show. On the other hand, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was more my kind of show and even binge-watch it seems like watching a movie which I consider a plus when we are speaking about cinecomics - or telecomics or whatever. 

As for hype, I have tons of it. Like, the thing I’m most hyped about it’s Black Widow because I’ve been waiting for this movie to come out since I saw her first in Iron Man 2 in 2010 so I’m really bummed about them keeping to push it back. Another one I can’t wait for is Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness even if I’m sort of worried about how many characters are confirmed/rumoured to be In the movie. I get Stephen (sadly) isn’t the most popular character even if they are pretty much trying to make him the new Tony (and I’m all for it), but this is supposed to be HIS movie and I’m really worried he’ll become an extra in his own movie, which would be super sad and please Ben save us from this! Then, I’m REALLY curious about the Eternals and not only because of Richard Madden and these Loki trailers are just chef’s kiss and I just really can’t wait to watch it. As for the other stuff, I really don’t know. I love crammed schedules as every other people, but I sort of feel like they are going full in and with the current situation and the forced stop, I just don’t know, it feels too much in such a short time you wouldn’t even get the time to actually think about the character and the storylines and that’s something which deeply bothers me? 

Liiiiike, maybe - probably - it’s me, but I feel you should be given time to know the characters well before moving on to something new and with all the completely new stuff coming is sort of disorienting?! I don’t know, I get the TV series because are all about characters we already know and dealing with the aftermath of Thanos but out of all the upcoming movies, there are like 3 characters we already know and a bunch of new stuff coming up. I’m not saying it���s not going to be good stuff, I know it almost certainly will be, but like, we were used to a “new” character movie every two/three years. You had time to know the previous ones?! I don’t know, I’m rambling, better if I shut up now xD

Anyways, thank you again for your ask!

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 5x02 Red Queen

Note: I’m afraid that I’ll have to delay my review of 7x12 The Stranger a bit longer - maybe till Friday (because I’m busy with work, and I think that one may take a bit more time to finish), but in the meantime, here’s - finally - a continuation of my season 5 rewatch reviews. It happens to be the only seasons I haven’t covered yet - except for 5x01 Eden, which I rewatched a few months ago after 7x02 The Garden, because I wanted to compare the two. I was planned to do Red Queen right afterwards - it’s interesting to compare and contrast Octavia’s character transformations in season 5 and season 7 - but it didn’t pan out that way. But now, @jeanie205 and me have started another joint rewatch during the hiatus, this one of season 5. (She only saw it live, week to week, and hasn’t rewatched it yet, I binged it and this is my second rewatch.)

...............................

I’ve always thought of season 5 as a season with a really strong beginning - the first 3 or 4 episodes are fantastic - which drags a bit in the middle before ending a very strong two-part finale.. The 6-year jump, in terms of storytelling, had both good and bad results. These two opening episodes, Eden and Red Queen, really make the best out of the time jump, with flashbacks about Clarke surviving on her own on a desolated Earth and meeting Madi, and flashbacks of what happened to Wonkru in the bunker. It says a lot that we got half an episode of Clarke surviving on Earth, a full episode plus a bunch of flashbacks in 5x11 about the bunker... and nothing about the Ring (till that one flashback in season 7). It’s because the life on the Ring was so boring and uneventful that the show didn't care to show anything of those 6 years. Clarke’s peaceful life with Madi in Eden also happened off-screen - we only saw their first meeting and their later relationship in the present - but Clarke’s two months of terrible hardship got covered in amazing 20 minutes. But the bunker is where things were the most intense. 

If the Ring seems to be just boring everyday life of 7 people who can’t go anywhere for 6 years, and if Clarke got to live in Eden (paradise) with Madi after the purgatory of 40 50+ days in the desert, the bunker is clearly Hell. It is a claustrophobic underground world full of anger, conflict and violence that certainly looks like Hell by the end of the episode.

The last scene, with its horror imagery, reminded me of the current Sanctum storyline in season 7 (both Blodreina and Sheidheda like using skulls as decoration), and the comparison shows exactly why the bunker/Blodreina story worked so well, and why the S7 Sanctum story does not. It’s all about moral ambiguity and keeping the audience on its toes, pulling the rug from under us by making us unsure how to feel about characters and their actions, which Red Queen does so well (and which S7 Sanctum storyline completely fails to do, being very predictable and black and white). Red Queen is so well done and intense that I don’t even mind that Clarke and Bellamy and some of my other favorites aren’t in it.

Timeline: The episode starts 42 days after Praimfaya and ends 46 days after Praimfaya.

The opening scenes take place at the same time when Clarke arrived in Polis and tried to open the door. Clarke's only listed as appearing in this episode because of this repeated scene from Eden. (It’s weird that apparently not just the Temple, but the Tower also apparently fell on the entrance. The Tower is next to the Temple, but I’m not sure if that would really happen?) I’m not sure what exactly caused the rubble to fall down, but this is the moment where everyone loses hope, since they know they probably can’t get out, even though they have 5 years to try to think of the solution.

Niylah has found a bunch of books and some other stuff in the bunker, and one of the books was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which we now know was Callie Cadogan’s book. (That was a nice Easter Egg in 7x08.) Niylah knows Bellamy used to read to Octavia about Ancient Rome - she must have heard it from her or from Clarke or someone else in Arkadia over the last month or so that she spent with them. It is still surprising she knows about Ovid, specifically. What she doesn’t know when she gives Octavia the book is how symbolic it is of what happens to Octavia throughout this episode - her metamorphosis into Blodreina. (We even see the opening line on screen: “ I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities..”).

Octavia Blake is a character who has undergone more dramatic transformations than any other character on The 100. I wasn’t a big fan of her in some of the early seasons, but now I think that, after what the show has done with her since season 4, she has probably had the best character arc of any character on the show. (Some would say it’s Murphy, but that’s because people like to think of character development as going from bad to good, a positive progression - which is a lot more predictable and done quite often. What the show did with Octavia is much more complex and unexpected.) Her turn to the dark side and subsequent redemption were really well done, and Marie Avgeropoulos is one of the best actors on the show (I’ve always thought so regardless of how I felt about her character at any given time) and pulled off her changes in season 5 so well.

What the episode does really well is maintain ambiguity about Octavia’s development as a leader. The first time you watch it, it’s not clear what is she developing into. Is this a story about a well-meaning but still inexperienced teenage girl becoming a great leader? Well, the cliffhanger of 5x01 showed the fighting pits and the new scary Blodreina look, so it’s already hinted it’s not quite like that. But the episode still makes you root for Octavia, who’s up against not just the difficult circumstances - trapped in the bunker, limited resources - but also tribalism of Skaikru and 11 Grounder clans and a lot short-sighted people who hate and keep fighting each other. You just can’t not root for her when she starts forcing them to obey, near the end of the episode (and it’ certainly comes off as a very badass scene - if a bit unrealistic, since Octavia has only been training in Grounder-style combat for about 7-8 months at that point) - but then things may start getting a little ominous as she repeats the mantra “You are Wonkru, or you are the enemy of Wonkru. Choose!” (“You’re either with us, or against us” statements by political leaders are always worrying), even before the ending, where both Octavia and the bunker look like something out of a horror movie. This entire storyline made the point that unity can’t be forced on people, especially not by a single all-powerful leader, without turning into tyranny and oppression.

What’s also morally ambiguous is advice from the mortally wounded Jaha, which ends up influencing Octavia’s decisions and development as a leader. Jaha was always one of the most morally grey characters - he’s not evil, always had good intentions, but his ruthlessness and willingness to disregard individual lives in the name of the Big Picture of saving “his (collective) people” and his complete confidence that this is the right leadership style, were always very disturbing, and made him the villain in the eyes of - and the lives of - all the young protagonists of the show. In season 4, some of them started seeing his perspective. faced with the similar difficult choices. After Clarke in season 4, Octavia also starts seeing his perspective - which is particularly disturbing because it is the same man who executed her mother for just having a child, and locked her up for a year as a criminal just for being born. But Jaha’s actions in Red Queen are some of his most heroic ever in the show, and he gets a heroic death and a moving death scene... while still being kind of a real d1ck, someone who justifies Aurora’s execution to Octavia by saying her mother made herself “the enemy” and bringing them “closer to death”. In the context, Jaha as an unexpected mentor to Octavia can be seen as something good or at least a necessary for her to develop into a capable leader... Or is it? The line between hero and villain can be very thin. Sure, it helps Octavia resolve the situation, save hundreds of people in the bunker, and apparently unite everyone into Wonkru - but as we see by the end of the episode and the rest of the season, it also ends up making her a tyrant who ends up getting hundreds of her people killed in the name of saving “her people” and delivering them to paradise as a messiah. She becomes the same thing she hated, an oppressor like those who forced her to hide under the floor and killed her mother.  

(This dialogue from season 4 is pretty relevant here:  

Clarke: You know, he used to be everything that I hated. Maybe he was keeping us together.

Jasper: When Jaha's looking reasonable, it's time to reassess.)

I have to say, however, in spite of all the moral greyness... I can’t stand Kara Cooper. She’s one of the few characters on the show that just piss me off to no end and I can’t find any sympathy for her. I know that it’s different for others, I’ve seen people say they see her perspective, and yes, the show  gives her a tragic backstory (losing her father in the Culling on the Ark and her husband in the Second Culling in 4x12)... but this time I can’t bring myself to care, because: 

She wants to leave some 1100+ people to die, even though she should be well aware that, even if there is a problem of overpopulation in the bunker*, she really doesn’t have to kill that many people, 

She’s a scientist and gives a speech about how the lack of diversity would lead to a massive die-off for plants... Surely she should know that the same would happen to the humans, and that a human race can’t survive with just around 80 people?! which leads me to

She doesn’t care about the survival of the human race and is ready to condemn it to extinction, just so she and a few others would live more comfortably and wouldn’t be in danger of immediate death, 

She says she wants to save “her people” - but it’s all about tribalism (Skaikru or not Skaikru?) and not love, and she is a hypocrite, because she is ready to leave a bunch of Skaikru outside the door to die, too, 

She is a hypocrite when she acts like Abby did something terrible by opening the bunker door to save Kane (which also saved hundreds of people more than would have otherwise been saved) - basically, she’s like “ Abby, how dare you not prioritize my husband, a guy you didn't even know, over your boyfriend? You're so terrible!" Sure. That makes sense. 

Her arguments about why the bunker “belongs” to Skaikru are rubbish: “ "Jaha found it. It belonged to us" - even if we accept the finders-keepers idea, actually, multiple people helped find the bunker. Yes, Jaha was the driving force, but Bellamy found the coin, and Kane, Monty and Gaia all massively contributed to finding it - without Gaia's info they wouldn't have ever found it - as did Indra, and the fighters from Trikru and their allies who guarded the temple so they could do it. She just ignored all these facts. If they had kept the bunker in 4x11, they would have left most of these people out (including Kane and Monty). Oh, and she is now trying to take the bunker back... and she’s ready to leave Jaha himself outside! 

And after all of that, she saves her own skin by being the most ruthless one of everyone Octavia sent to the fighting pit and killing them all - and then becomes Octavia’s right hand and sycophant. What integrity! 

While many people seem to think that Octavia’s downfall started with the cannibalism during the Dark Year, I think it’s the decision at the end of Red Queen to open the fighting pits and start punishing every crime by throwing people in them. This is her first really bad decision. In practice, this form of “justice” means that you can commit any crime you want if you're good at killing people once you’re in the pit. it fosters a culture of violence - even more so when death matches are entertainment. So, in the end, the guy from Delphi clan who just stole blankets (the Sangedakru delegate Brell demanded death for that - their laws are pretty draconian, makes me wonder in retrospect if Sheidheda was the one who first imposed them) died, while Kara effing Cooper got to live because she was the most ruthless person there. What I think Octavia should have done is - she should have executed the murderers and the leaders of the rebellion and given minor punishments to people who did things like steal blankets. (it's been argued they needed Cooper for the farm - but that was not the reasoning, Octavia left her with everyone else to fight.) 

This was Octavia, sadly, combining not the best, but the worst of the Ark system (death as the punishment for every crime or minor misdemeanor), Grounder tradition (death matches as the solution to everything) and her childhood stories of the Ancient Rome. If you're using Ancient Rome gladiator fights as your role model...you've probably stopped being a good guy.

The last scene, fighting pits 6 years later, is similar to the cliffhanger end of the previous episode, only now we get the cliffhanger of Kane being one of the fighters. Octavia is in her full Blodreina mode now. Not just her outward look has changed, but her facial expressions, too - this is the first time we see that cold, sinister Blodreina smile. Indra doesn’t look too happy, Gaia and Ethan are there. Miller- even after that much time - doesn’t look too happy with Cooper being there, by Octavia's side.

This is straight up horror imagery. There is even some sort of structure made of skulls next to where she's sitting!  Not exactly a throne of skulls like Sheidheda has in season 7 but something similar.

But here’s why this works so differently than Sheidheda and his throne of skulls in season 7 and why people are bored by the latter. There is no ambiguity in the S7 Sanctum story. Sheiheda is completely, cartoonishly evil, there is nothing complex about it, Murphy is now definitely a good guy, as are Emori and Indra, and none of them are in conflict about how to deal with him (except for a short moment in 7x09, which was OOC for Indra). The only characters that we may still wonder 'what are they gonna do? which side will they take?" are minor, underdeveloped characters like Nikki, or Knight (you're in trouble when your main question is "will Knight change sides?"). It's a very simple black and white story, the kind t100 normally doesn't do and Shady’s throne of . But when Octavia has her face painted in blood, has skulls next to her, and a creepy smile while she’s deciding the fate of the winner, that is genuinely disturbing because it's Octavia. You’ve followed her for seasons, and you’ve spent the whole episode rooting for her to solve the problems and deal with those really awful and annoying people... and then she does, and oh my god, suddenly she turns into a villain, and that’s chilling. 

Other observations:

I love the Kabby scene where they're talking while chained up in the farm, while a guy is playing guitar in the background. I think Abby was pretty unfair to Kane when she said he took away her choice to kill herself - because she didn’t try to kill herself, she tried to make Kane kill her, and then she expected him to be able to do it, even though she never could: not only did she open the bunker door to save Kane, she destroyed the radiation chamber (possibly dooming thousands of people) because she couldn’t allow Clarke to risk her life (in 4x08). Kane may be more of a “Head” than “Heart” of the two of them, but Abby should have realized he wouldn’t be able to carry her unconscious body (or even let someone else do it) and let her die of radiation. He loves her and he doesn’t really have anyone else. Abby really seemed to be taking out her own self-loathing out on him. It was still a sweet moment when he finally dropped the pretense that he saved her for being a doctor and admitted it was a Heart decision, and she finally admitted she would do the same and never regretted opening the bunker door to save him. 

But we get a hint about that Abby has already developed a pill addiction, which will strain and almost destroy their relationship. Kabby was a really well written relationship - we saw them falling in love over 4 seasons (which rarely happens with romantic relationships on this show) - but then we also saw that being together and loving each other is not enough to be “happy ever after”, not when you live in f*cked up circumstances and when you both have to deal with all sorts of problems. Love can’t conquer everything, which is more realistic way to depict romance.

Mackson actually have some screentime in this episode. This is actually the first time we see that they are together (after a brief flirting scene in season 4). I had forgotten that Miller says the L word in this episode: "You're a healer, nor a fighter. That's why I love you.” I thought “This was pretty fast” - but when you take into account they’ve been together for a couple of months, it’s actually not that fast compared to most of the romances on the show... It’ just that most of their relationships happens off-screen.

So Level C (which Cooper and her people took over) was where Cadogan planned to be with his family if the rest of the bunker goes to hell. Makes sense he’d do something like that.

Indra was already not a fan of the Commanders at this point, telling Gaia: "Your real Commanders would have left you to burn", "the spirits of the Commanders have abandoned us"

We got two Wells mentions in this episode! One when Jaha was reading a children’s book (apparently The Giving Tree - thanks @jeanie205​) to Ethan, and says it was his son's favorite bedtime story, and another one when Jaha is dying and says “Take me to my wife. Take me to Wells”.

ALIE would be proud of these people: they all keep repeating “There are too many people in this bunker” throughout the episode. Thanos would be proud of them, too. Why not instead say: “There aren’t enough resources in this bunker”? No worries then, they will manage to get 1/3 of those people killed - 814 will remain instead of 1200 by the time they get out of the bunker... What few characters in the show ever seem to realize are too few people for the human race to survive. That is, if they weren't lucky to always be running into more humans, and then everyone blows it away by killing each other, again.

A few lines in this episode feel like dark foreshadowing:

Abby makes the first mention of cannibalism, a dark period in Ark’s history called the “Blight"

"It won't be that easy", says Octavia to Cooper when Cooper wanted to kill herself. One could say the same when Octavia tried to sacrifice herself and die in 5x12

"I'll take care of the boy” - Octavia promises to Jaha to take care of little Ethan, just as Jaha promised to Ethan’s father. That didn't turn out so well in the end...

Rating: 9/10

[llycaons]

tagged by @zhuhongs! thanks sage, sorry this took so long!!

I had already answered this one and was planning to just copy it over but I deleted it on accident! so here we are

1. Why did you choose your url?

I wanted something that referenced the natural world or anatomy or evolution in some way and I landed on the one that I thought had the prettiest latin name. I was almost bisynapsids which would have been cool too. I played around with edgy names of bones and stuff before settling on the name for one of my favorite wild animals

2. Any sideblogs? If you have them name them and why you have them

ok I never understood how “sideblogs” worked so I just made an entirely new tumblr when I wanted to focus myself on ba/ccano. I had a really fun time for a few years and the community was wonderful but I ran out of juice last year and haven’t been back. if anyone’s interested it’s @eyes-like-a-gentle-knight (wordy, I know). there was so much good novel content I loved it. still waiting on those last two books narita!

3. How long have you’ve been on tumblr?

hmm almost nine years? but this blog is a freshy and clean 6 months old

4. Do you have a queue tag?

never saw the point? I don’t use a queue and when I do I like to be mysterious

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

obsession with near from death note and also I was into other anime like ouran and  [redacted] and [redacted] but death note had me in it’s grip age 15 so when I found this site which had lots of pictures of near from death note I was like :o

I had no idea what I was doing! I just reposted a bunch of screenshots with captions like ouran posts 2/3 or something. no I had to learn the Culture of this site purely by osmosis

6. Why did you choose your icon?

princess mononoke is one of my favorite movies and the image of san in that scene was always so powerful to me. I didn’t mean for a dog theme I swear I’m not even a dog person

7. Why did you choose your header?

I wrote a big post about this when I chose it because I like to talk about every one of my decisions but basically:

it’s got nature in it

looks green for summer

cql but appealing to someone who hasn’t seen it

not an critical moment so I won’t get sick of seeing it

lwj is there which I like but he is barely visible so he’s like secret lwj. but I like that he’s there

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

in my foolish youth I reposted a pic from facebook about tesla that got 100,000+ notes (I think) and got my my first ever rude anon!!!! they just told me not to repost without a source and called me an asshole which as a sensitive 15 year old was very difficult to handle/s. but on here it’s my cql rewatch lb about the atmosphere of ep1. I had a good number of notes on my previous blog for some cql txps but I don’t like to see the notes so I’m glad I’m cut away from them.

however the mdzs/cql fandom has been the only other place I’ve gotten rude anons so. with fame comes tragedy ig/s. they called me a dummy :(

9. How many mutuals do you have?

like? 20? I don’t keep track.

(and sage you ARE everyone’s bestie I feel like everyone I know loves sage zhuhongs)

10. How many followers do you have?

uhhh 78. nice and neat. last blog was like 1780 or something but a lot of them were inactive

11. How many people do you follow?

umm 44? it’s really hard for me to follow people I legitimately feel sick when I do it more than one a week or something. the dash NEEDS to look a certain way and I NEED to get to where I was last time and so I am very very picky about who I follow. also when I break mutuals I feel horrible and guilty so I try not to have too many

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

idk what this means! unlikely!

13. How often do you use tumblr each day

yeah I also work and I can’t have my phone in the lab so for 17 hrs a day I’m asleep or away which is very good but most of the rest of the time I’m on here...which is fine tbh I like it and I know I have nothing better to do rn. school will start again and I won’t be able to be on here as much :(

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

I feel like usually nobody “wins” these fights. I am bad at articulating my point and I hate confrontation so I usually just block but when I get an anon trying to argue with me I’ll sometimes respond and I feel like I win those? but like, it’s anon. I’m just responding. like someone sending me flack for tagging my hate for bad ship and I gave this long-winded and lbr kind of annoyingly self-righteous response that at the time I felt very pleased with. but it didn’t work bc I kept getting anons trying to convince me or discuss with me why they shipped it and im like idk!!! go away!!!

okay early in the year I got an ask like “how do you feel about wwx being lame in cql” and I got kind of defensive bc I thought they were one of those diehard novel fan but they came back and were like “oh sorry I’m into the donghua and you have a point and this isn’t productive to discuss” so I kind of feel like I won? I mean, it wasn’t really an argument

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

If it’s something important then yeah obviously but if it's like “or something bad will happen!!!” no ofc not those are annoying as hell and probably awful if you’re paranoid

16. Do you like tag games?

YESSS

17. Do you like ask games?

YES PLEASE SEND ME ASKS

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

probably mx. gun? some of the Polycule, uhh, you, sage. and maybe my very most recent follower hello to you! I feel weird using anyone’s personal name if we haven’t spoken so if you’re seeing this just know I was also super into good o/mens a few years and I really liked seeing your posts and art so it’s cool to see you around again in cdrama circles

19. Do I have a crush on a mutual?

I don’t see having a crush on anyone I’ve never really spoken to irl but I do know I have a very many pretty and/or  handsome mutuals :)

20. Tags?

god I am so stressed out to choose. it’s open to everyone!

[silvanoir]

Summer 2021 Nerdy Reading and Watching:

I don't have as much time for reading and watching fiction as I used to, or to post my thoughts about it, but here's some things I read/saw this summer so far:

Cat Woman: Soulstealer (graphic novel):  The art starts out sketchy and improves as it goes.  You have to get used to this being a younger Selina, just starting out, who has a fling with Luke Fox (Batwing) instead of Brice Wayne (Batman), but other than that, fairly solid.  I think they overdid Selina's backstory and skills, stuff I know that's usually on par with how they overdo male superhero's skills/backstory, but eh.  Catwoman really should be simple: woman who grew up poor, is good at stealing shiny things from the rich, dresses like a cat because she likes cats.  I prefer the backstory in this for her sister over the one in the main comics, though (anything is preferable to Blackmask torture scenes, really).

Batman: The Adventures Continue "season 1" (comic):  A decent Batman vs. robots and Lex Luthor story to start, Slade trying to recruit Robin like in the TT cartoon but BTAS style, followed by What If Jason Todd was part of the BTAS which.... doesn't really work, since BTAS Tim is a combo of Tim and Jason (even slightly refrenced).  And they went with Jason wanted to kill criminals and was BAD ALL ALONG angle, and removed a lot of the emotional angle of why he wanted Bats to kill joker so it... fell flat for me (read the main canon comics or watch the redhood movie instead).  Ends with a Christmas story that feels like it almost could’ve been a real episode (except that Harley/Ivy are more clearly a couple than would;ve been allowed on 90s kids TV).  There was also a story involving Azreal which reminded me its been almost a decade since I read the entire Knightfall arc.  So maybe... I'm just getting tried of superhero comics?

Vampire the Masquerade: Winter's Teeth:  ah, this is how I like my vamps.  A variety of vamps in personality, ability, and social standing, with varying degrees of sympathetic stories to an acknowledgement that all vampires are kind of a-holes (also to varying degrees).  Don't read if you're squeamish about blood (don't read any vampire story if you're squeamish about blood?)

Gundam Thunderbolt.  There's fantastic detailed animation and Jazz like in Cowboy Bebop (so much so I thought it was made by the same people).   But there's also war is terrible for both sides,  causes grief and loss, maiming of bodies,  and destruction on a mass scale of Gundam.  There is literally now way you can miss the driving point of this one for "wow cool robot".  Very well made.  But kind of intense and depressing.  Japanese with English subtitles only, there was no dub made.

I've also rewatched Farscape.  It is hornier, sillier, and more morally grey than I remember it being.  I mean, I remember it being all of those things, but it is MORE of it.   Just like watching back in the late 90s/early 2000s when it originally aired on SyFy, I find myself more distracted by the makeup, costumes and puppetry which most often I'm impressed by (unless they are the aliens of the week instead of reoccurring characters, then they tend to skimp on silly wigs).  The things I remember, more than the plot (I don't know how some of you people have near photographic memories for plot, given enough time I forget everything but a few still images from anything I watch), is how Zaan's skin changed in blue hue from season 1 to 2, The movie alien colors not matching the show colors, Chiana's necklace which looked like a bunch of swords stabbing her neck, how impressed I am with the pilot puppet in general (still am).  Or, how I didn't really care for either the show or the movie's ending (I think I would have preferred the show's ending minus the very last scene... just stop with the proposal).  I notice its inconsistent when it comes to things aliens know and don’t know (makeup exists on many worlds they visit yet Chiana didn’t know what it was until she visited Earth?).  Weirdly, the one thing I think it does a good job with is depicting how when people go through repeated trauma and ordeals, it has a long term effect on them.   Something I don't think I appreciated as much when I watched it the first time.  Poor John never fully recovered after being tortured in the chair (didn’t help that awful things kept happening after that, but it was the point where his character permanently changed).

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Welcome back! It’s once again that time for me to watch some more Ranma 1/2, in doing so looking at it with fresh eyes and a different perspective from when I was younger. We’re already up to episode 13, and with it the end of Kodachi Kuno’s introductory arc. I’m guessing this is going to be almost a full episode of fighting, but how good that fighting will be, I don’t recall. But by next paragraph, I’ll have rewatched the episode, and I can talk about it just a bit better. See you then!

That certainly was almost a single fight for the entire episode. Now, unlike the full episode fight against Ryoga, my summary is going to be a lot shorter. There’s a lot fewer moving parts here, and I feel like going blow by bow would be boring.

In general, the idea of the fight is that the combatants lose if they go outside the ring, and they get a foul (though the exact penalty isn’t made clear) if they hit each other directly without using tools or weapons. Besides that, there are no rules. Kodachi and Ranma both have new items thrown to them when they need it, but Kodachi is obviously the one who stretches the rules the most. Most of the fight is her pulling new insane things out of nowhere that Ranma has to work around.

When it comes to actual plot stuff, the first big thing is when Kodachi mouths off again about how much she loves Ranma and can’t wait to date him and stuff. Ranma gets annoyed, and Kodachi interprets this as Ranma loving, well, Ranma too. Kuno jumps into the ring at that (By which I mean Tatewaki Kuno. I know they both have that last name, but when I say ‘Kuno’, assume I just mean him), and demands to know if this is true. Instead of denying it or playing into the idea, Ranma takes a third option and says something that’s technically true, that he and Ranma are one in body and mind, because of destiny.

Of course, the two rich folks immediately interpret that in some serious ways, though exactly what they think that means isn’t spelled out. Do they think Ranma and Ranma bang or something? Anyway, a little after that, Genma shows up looking like a panda in the stands, carrying a kettle of hot water. Whether that’s for him when he decides he’s done being a panda or for Ranma to use after the fight, I don’t know.

The problem is, by this point, Ranma and Kodachi have entered the stage in the fight where they’re using their ribbons to grab stuff from outside the ring and hurl it as each other. Kodachi takes the kettle, and notices immediately how scared Ranma and P-chan are. Oh, yeah, Ryoga is still chained to Ranma, and he does what he can to try and make Ranma lose every so often.

Kodachi uses a pretty clever trick of slicing the kettle in mid-air to soak Ranma and Ryoga, and they change back in mid-air. Luckily for them, Akane saw that coming, and enters back into the gym carrying a fire hose, with water cold enough to turn them back into their cursed forms. It also means Ranma has to swim for dear life to stop from getting knocked out of the ring, but it works.

A bit later on, the show cuts to a group of teenage girls somewhere dark, and we get a nice little break from the fight as they chat amongst themselves. But when it gets back to the fight, Ranma is able to finally knock Kodachi flying, far outside the ring’s boundaries. But all she has to do is whistle, and the ring gets up and moves across the gym so she still lands inside it. Ranma quickly puts together what’s going on, and destroys the floor of the ring, exposing the girls we saw before, who run away.

Now there’s no place to stand except the four corners and the ropes, but Ranma is fine with that, pointing out that he has an advantage in aerial fights. Too bad that he forgot Ryoga is still attached to him, and his rival goes extra far in trying to shake him off. The chain is broken, but Ranma doesn’t have any tools left to fight with. So instead of getting a foul by just getting Kodachi, he kicks the post she’s standing on, sending her sprawling to the ground for a win.

After the match, she tearfully agrees to abandon her ‘present’ love for Ranma Saotome, and everything seems to have worked out great. At least, that is until later, when Ranma and Ryoga are taking a hot bath together. Ranma complains about Ryoga’s attempts to sabotage the fight, which he defends with a reminder that he wants Akane himself. Then he uses cold water to be P-chan just as Akane calls for him, leading to another case of Ranma running into Akane’s room and getting assumed a pervert as he chases Ryoga.

After that, Ranma gets back to back flowers from each Kuno sibling. He sees Tatewaki uncursed, and Kodachi cursed, so each gives the bouquet to deliver to the Ranma that they love. Leaving Ranma holding a bunch of flowers and having to contend with the fact that he now has two Kuno’s to worry about, long-term. Kodachi defends her continued pursuit of Ranma by saying she abandoned her ‘present’ love and developed a new one.

So, what is there to say about that episode? Well, a lot, actually. It didn’t necessarily blow me away, but I do think it was a stronger fight than the last time a whole episode was centered on a battle, since this one doesn't have nearly as many cutaways to unnecessary plot points. There was a short scene of just listening to the announcer describe the fight while we just saw outside the school, which felt a bit chief, but on the other hand I really liked the little bit we got with the gymnasts under the mat. Those minor characters got more definition than they necessarily needed, and it made the coming cheat more fun than the others.

This is also kind of a big first for the series. Namely, it’s the first time Ranma has fought someone who practices a strange, ultra-specific kind of martial art and did so while following all of that school’s rules. Sure, Tatewaki Kuno fights with a wooden sword, but those were all basically street matches, as was Ranma’s fight with Ryoga. But this is an official match, and Ranma obeys all the rules wherein and still wins.

That is something that will be incredibly common from here on out, in manga-adapted stories and anime-original stories. I’ve yet to see it mentioned in-series, and I can’t recall it doing so later on, but it’s generally accepted as canon by fans that this is for a reason. Ranma and Akane’s school, Anything Goes Martial Arts, isn’t called that for no reason. They are supposed to fight other styles, learn from them, and take what’s useful to use themselves. It’s a great way to add more moves to the protagonists’ repertoire, and get them into fights with silly fighters.

This specific fight was...okay. Actually, I feel like I’m a bit of a grump for saying that, it was good. There were some neat moves, lots of back and forth with stuff, it was enjoyable to see. It wasn’t anywhere near what I think this series can do at its best, but it was a good way to end this mini-arc. I do feel like Kodachi, as a character, doesn’t get the same level of badassery even her brother does from the story, and that feels kind of lame. It seems like, in general, Ranma 1/2 saves all the cool stuff for the guys.

To continue what I was talking about with Kodachi last week, I do think it’s really interesting how different she is in each language. It’s a strange case of part-translation and part-acting, but the english version of the character definitely hits different, and not in a good way. It’s actually making me reevaluate her a little, just because the version in the original Japanese is so much better. It feels a lot less like “she’s crazy!” and more “she’s a highly driven and amoral rich girl!”

This was a good episode. I am once again pleasantly surprised by this arc, and it’s raising my hopes that further stories will be better than I recall. As for where to put it in my rankings exactly, I actually think I’ll put it one step above the last single episode of just fighting, and right below that emotional episode about Akane’s feelings for Dr. Tofu. What can I say? I like the feels. That puts the current ranking at:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 12: A Woman's Love is War! The Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 9: True Confessions! A Girl's Hair is Her Life!

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 13: A Tear in a Girl-Delinquent's Eye? The End of the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics Challenge!

Episode 8: School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga

Episode 11: Ranma Meets Love Head-On! Enter the Delinquent Juvenile Gymnast!

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Episode 10: P-P-P-Chan! He's Good For Nothin'

Now, if you’re watching this series on Hulu like I am, you might think the next episode is the first part of the Martial Arts Figure Skating arc. And while, wow, I sure wish it was, that is actually wrong. I don’t know why, but some of the arcs are in the wrong order on Hulu, but I’m watching the series in the actual order. Which means, instead of watching one of my favorite arcs in the series, the next episode is actually “Pelvic Fortune-Telling? Ranma is the No. One Bride in Japan”. My hopes...are not high. See you all...then...I suppose...

[do-what-the-knight-tells-you]

Tag game - Quarantine version

Tagged by @leviosally

Are you staying home from work/school? Sort of. I do several things part time throughout the year, and a bunch of that stuff (like summer camps/programs etc) got completely cancelled. Some things filled the gaps, but overall it was a lot more like being fired for the year. 🙈 And we're still not quite back, with that, particularly with an international summer gig I was expecting which is Also not gonna happen this year too. 🙈 (In this case the frustration is because I absolutely understand and agree with why it's not going down, but we're literally also seeing a resurgence of the troubles in Belfast, which is exactly what the fuck we said was going to happen after Brexit, and one of the programs I work with is involved in attempting to deescalate sectarian tensions between youth, etc, so like, this would be a great time to be planning that for this summer... Siiiiiiigh)

If you’re staying home, who is with you? Mostly my brother and I, three big dogs, and an inappropriate number of plants. Several new gardens have developed in the backyard and I'm pretending I don't know how that happened. XD

Are you a homebody? Yup. I mean, I definitely used to get out for non-work-related reasons far more than I do, but yeah. Could be a lot worse. Definitely I haven't minded the bulk of the not-going-places.

An event you were looking forward to that got cancelled? Summer employment. But also, my very close friends and I were planning a road trip and a week of hanging out in an Airbnb with a trip to a Renaissance festival we've never been to before in the middle, towards the end of last summer, which obviously did not end up happening, both because the festival itself wisely decided to shut down, and because, without vaccination yet at that time, we knew it was unsafe to be in a car together for 12 hours, even if we could have done a reasonable job of keeping ourselves safe from Other people once we were where we were going.

What movies have you watched recently? Hm. I don't watch a lot of movies, but I did watch the live stream of the taping of the 2012 UK arena tour for Jesus Christ Superstar, which is quite possibly my favorite run on that musical. Delightful. Also I think I watched Muppet treasure Island the other day. Also delightful. XD very nostalgic. XD

What shows are you watching? SGA with some excellent folks on discord. MASH and sometimes Naruto in my downtime when I just need something to fill the silence or kill a little time. Oh, sort of The Hexer with @badwolfbadwolf which I expect we will get back to when there is a little more time this summer. Also the occasional episode rewatch for Teen Wolf so I can chat with @ligeiasand about them. XD 💚💚💯💯💯💯

What music are you listening to? Last week was a lot of Jesus Christ Superstar. XD this week has been The decemberists and the Longest Johns. And of course the Amazing Devil is never far away, nor is Laura Jane Grace and Against Me. 💚💯💯💯

What are you reading? just finished Andrew Seidel's the Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, which was good, if obviously written by a lawyer. XD he gets into discussions about the degree to which Christianity did or did not influence the foundations of American government (spoiler: it didn't, except as an example of the way they did Not want to run their government), and also the ways that the myth or lie that this is or should be an explicitly Christian Nation have been constructed over the years and decades in moments where leaders and politicians saw an opportunity to encode their private believes into public structure, and finally how all that fed into the last guy's presidency over here, and eventually the insurrection on January 6th. I'm about to start either These Divided Shores by Sarah Raasch (I had mixed feelings on the first one but I'm hoping the second one will improve on it) or The Black Prism by Brent Weeks.

What are you doing for self-care? brushing dogs, being up to my elbows in dirt, playing Pokemon go. XD

Thanks friend! I tag Wolfie and ligeia of course, and also @hedwig-dordt @kylo-thecrybaby @lyriumwolf and to anyone else who sees this and wants to do it, consider yourself tagged!

[xxmisty]

My Big Humiliating Torchwood Confession - Part 1 :P

Warning: this will be a LONG post, and i’m sorry about that! 

Lucy is sat opposite me asking me repeatedly if I’ve started typing yet because she knows how desperately i’m putting off making this post!!1

This is awful, this is.... probably the most embarrassingly intimate confession i’ll have made since the day I opened up about my fetish way back at the start of 2013. And on the surface of it it probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but IT IS TO ME! And a big chunk of the trauma i’m about to express is tongue in cheek but it’s genuinely been - and continues to be - a huge bundle of DISTRESS AND HUMILIATION AND UTTER RESENTMENT!!! Because this year has been.... one hell of a personal journey and i don’t even mean anything to do with the pandemic.

It all started on New Year’s Day. I was feeling horrendously ill; the miraculous medication that had started to give me my life back had run out and thanks to the festive postal delays my new lot hadn’t arrived yet. I was in agony, I had a horrible headache, I felt sick and I could hardly move. We spent the day watching a bunch of muppet stuff, and that night we watched the first ep of season 12 of Doctor Who and, y’know, it was a pretty damn good episode (plus thirteen in the suit.... fuuckkk) 

So afterwards we started having a discussion about Chris Chibnall - we’ve long held criticisms about some of his writing (not all of it, but it’s a mixed bag) and Lucy told me I still hadn’t seen his worst writing because that was for Torchwood...

Which I had never seen. Which I had been desperately trying not to see, although I didn’t know why. I just always had this vibe like a big “NO ENTRY!” sign at the idea of ever watching it. It’s not as though I had a logical reason for it, it’s not like I’d read up about it and thought, ‘naahhhhhh, I don’t fancy watching that’. I just had a big WARNING sign in my head, telling me not to go there. 

Several years ago Lucy made me watch the first episode (after i’d been avoiding her threats of showing it to me for like 2 years) and like... it wasn’t horrible? It wasn’t... great either... but it didn’t kill me. Then a couple of years ago she showed me Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang because we were having a big Runaways phase so she wanted to show me an episode with James Marsters in. Again, it didn’t kill me. It wasn’t horrible. But I still had those big NO ENTRY!!! signs up in my head. I was still trying desperately to avoid actually being shown Torchwood as a show.

And the the new year happened and I was too WEAK AND DEFENCELESS to know what was happening when Lucy and I cuddled up in bed that night. I was too sick to really comprehend what she was doing or to fight back when she announced she was going to show me the very worst of Chris Chibnall’s writing... and put on Day One followed by Cyberwoman.

Oh. My. God.

All day I had been in a state of physical agony. Suddenly my mental and emotional state was far, FAR worse!!! The sex gas alien was bad enough, then by the time she put on Cyberwoman my brain was trying to shut down. I used to suffer blackouts and, god, I kept blacking out all the way through it, and instead of being her usual loving, wonderful self she KEPT FORCING ME TO COME ROUND TO WATCH IT!!!

By this point it was gone midnight and I was in a state of utter distress!! This was the worst double helping of tv I had ever sat through in my life and I sat up and let forth a tirade of absolute distress! This, I decided, had to be the reason I’d been avoiding Torchwood. Because it was more like.... Torurewood :P 

Yep, that had to be it. Couldn’t possibly be anything worse, could it? 

At least now lucy had shown me those two terrible Chibnall eps I would NEVER EVER HAVE TO WATCH THEM AGAIN. Or ANY Torchwood episodes. Yes, my ordeal was over. Had to be.

Nope. We went back to bed and she put on Out if Time. And i’ll admit, the story was much stronger but goddddd I had issues with the endings! And my level of despair started to rise even higher. I HATED Torchwood! This was the most distressing night’s viewing ever and I just wanted to go to sleep and be done with it all! Lucy put one more episode on afterwards: They Keep Killing Suzie. And that was much better but halfway through we finally fell asleep - so surely my trauma was over with.

Nope.

I had horrible nightmares of a very thirsty Gwen coming onto me all night, over and over again and it was HORRIBLE!!! Like, you have no idea how distressed I was! And when I woke up I blamed lucy whole-heartedly and she very sympathetically laughed at my plight!

But yeah. My trauma was over. No more Torchwood. I’d suffered the night from hell. Now it was time to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and move on! My medication arrived that day, I started work on some new pet portraits and life went back to normal.

Until that night, when I saw the telltale sign of Lucy putting a video on and turning her iPad around and then there they were - the opening titles of Torchwood - and I wanted to jump out the boat and into the canal and swim as far away as possible!!!

But the episode she put on was Fragments. She said she wanted to show me Chris Chibnall’s finest episode. And y’know what? It was really pretty fucking good. And god, I was fURIOUS about that!!! When we went to bed she pulled a real double whammy though by putting on Adam - which became instantly one of my favourite episodes of ANYTHING, EVER. And I looked at my wife, shook my head, sighed and told her, ‘nice save, Lucy... nice save...’

Over the next couple of weeks we also had a major Doctor Who rewatch and revisited most of the New Who era, and - to my mixed feelings - she dotted various other episodes of Torchwood in around them. I was conflicted - after the Adam and Fragments double bill I was no longer in brain-screamy hatred territory. I did however keep having flashbacks to that godawful night. Plus i’d had several further nightmares about a thirsty Gwen and I did NOT like it! But by a couple of weeks into January I’d seen a fair bit of Torchwood. Some of them twice. 

Around this same time I’d started back in testosterone after not being able to afford it for the last 3 years. And then I started to notice I was getting some..... urghhhhhh..... unusual... and very uncomfortable feelings... about certain.... things... and characters.

And I started falling headlong into a great big gay panic :P

And here’s where the whole story becomes a HELL of a lot more embarrassing so i’m going to put it under a read more :P

Did ya click on that read more? Wh-why? there’s nothing to see here... especially not a long tale of shame and distress :P ugggghhhhhhh ok, FINE;

Basically there were two things happening at the same time. One was that I started to feel something I hadn’t felt in two decades. When I was a kid/teen we didn’t have the phrase ‘hyperfixation’ so I just called them obsessions. I always had obsessions, at any given point there was always this ONE THING that was my entire life. i lived it, breathed it, became it. It was my whole world, my whole personality, my focus, my lifeline. 9 times out of 10 it would be a tv show. Between the ages of 12 and 15 I would generally change my obsession about once a month. There were several ‘usual suspects’ that would cycle around over and over - Red Dwarf, The Brittas Empire, Sonic the Hedgehog, Halfway Across the Galaxy, Parallel 9, Out of this World... 

late in 1995 I became obsessed with The X Files and - bizarrely - that obsession just ran and ran. I was so used to my obsession changing around once every month that it was bizarre to still be absolutely hyperfixated on it almost 9 months later. And then, in June 1996, my longest ever obsession took its place, a little known uk fantasy show called Bugs. 

That... was my longest running obsession. And oh my god, was I ever obsessed with it. I have no idea how that one obsession kept going for 3 years. i’m sorry this is particularly wordy but this is kind of personal and I want to explain this right.

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll probably known that one of the most defining moments of my life happened in the summer of ‘98. My cousin’s husband sexually assaulted me and my life spiralled into total despair. While that night was bad enough, the slow breakdown I went through over the course of the year that followed was harder to recover from. And eventually I came out the other side to some degree but i’d lost my love of three things that made me the person I was: writing, drawing and being obsessed. All three were so closely entangled with that night and surviving afterwards that it changed something that had always been a fundamental part of me.

I was no longer able to feel obsession. To hyperfixate the way I previously had. It was like something was broken inside me. And that was like a loss unto itself. It was SUCH a big part of me. It had been the only way i’d survived years of depression when I was young. My obsessions were what kept me afloat. 

In the last decade there are a few things that I called ‘obsessions’ and I thought were as close as I would ever get to the way I used to feel. I thought maybe it was because i’d ‘grown up’ (pah). That’s not to say that i wasn't thoroughly into Ashes to Ashes, FNAF and Homestuck, for example, because of course I was! I even called them obsessions, but there was something that just... wasn’t the same, no matter what I did.

And over time, I got back the other things I’d lost. I started writing my A2A fics in 2010 and Lucy helped me to start drawing again in 2018 and god, both times it was like finally having a piece of myself returned after so long! As for my ‘obsessions’, I just thought I wasn't able to feel the way I used to because I wasn’t a kid any more.

But then, I thought that about Christmas Eve too, and then lucy came into my life <3

Still, the last thing I was expecting was... for *those* feelings to start sneaking back in my life. Feelings I hadn’t been able to experience since the summer of 1998-9. And to my further distress I discovered that they were relating to a certain show that I’d had a traumatising introduction to on new year’s day...

Suddenly it was all I could think about; TORCHWOOD! TORCHWOOD! Aargghhhhh and yet I still hated it! It was still awful! And yet... at the same time... it was so goooooooood.... arghhhhh, every time we watched an episode there was a  knife twisting in my guts, reminding me that I hadn’t even felt these feelings over things we’d been HUGELY into... the fandoms we’d met through, the fandoms we discovered together. Nope. It was Torchwood that brought back my ability to hyperfixate! And I have SO MANY ANGRY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS!!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!

And believe me, I kept thinking it was going to stop and go away BUT IT HASN’T! It’s only gotten worse! And as of yesterday Torchwood officially became my second  longest obsession ever!!!

I. AM. FURIOUS!!!

It’s... urrghhhh I hate this fact but it’s almost like I have a crush on the *show*??!!! I... can’t explain it better than that??? It’s like, if I could throw Torchwood on the bed and make sweet, sweet love to it I would :P and yeah, i’m saying all of this tongue in cheek but i’ve had a fucking sky high libido ever since I went back on T (ohhhhh and believe me I am LOVING it!!! 💙💙💙) But it’s like... there are elements of Torchwood itself that are so fucking hot that I get.... reactions that I am SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED ABOUT for so many reasons deidjdhdggjhaaahhhhhhhhh

Lucy literally only has to say ‘Torchwood’ at me and I end up in a gibbering heap half the time - I am not even kidding!!!

This, however, is NOT the worst thing that happened as a result of Lucy making me watch this god damned show.

But honestly this post has gone on WAY too long already so i’m going to save that for part 2.

Oh god... my shame.... my total and utter shame....

To be continued :P

[t100ficrecsblog]

an interview with @queenemori (she/hers)

what are you working on right now? I recently started posting We Don’t Need To Say It, which is a multi-chap Memori actor AU. It’s a slow burn, don’t ask me how I looked at Murphy and Emori and decided to write a slow burn, but it’s what’s happening. I really do mean slow, the chapter I just finished writing is only the beginning of the angst, you’ve been warned. My beta tells me she hates me at least once a chapter if you want an idea of how angsty this is gonna get. I started out writing for Bellarke in this fandom, and I’ll be going back to that later this summer. Anyone who follows me knows I’m obsessed with Emma, and I have an Emma Bellarke AU that’s in the outlining stages currently. I’m hoping to work on it more once I get further into this Memori fic.

what’s something you’d like to write one day? The fic I’m working on now is actually the thing that I was like, “I want to write that one day”. I love actor AUs and I wanted to write one for some fandom at some point, and in January I got this idea, but I was working on other stuff, so I was like, well maybe I’ll write it this summer. And now I am! Though I would like to write something featuring dad!Murphy in the near future.

what is the fanwork you’re most proud of? It’s actually one I haven’t published yet! I participated in Bellarke Big Bang this year, and I wrote a soulmates rom-com fic. I’m excited to share it soon once we get the go-ahead, and the artist I got to work with @clarkeindra has made some amazing art to go with it! For ones that you can actually go physically read, I will say You’re Already Breaking My Heart. It was my first fic I wrote for t100 fandom, and also the first thing I wrote after a really long time of just not writing anything, so I’m proud of it for getting me back into something I love and I’m glad that other people seemed to enjoy it. It’s what got me more into this fandom in the first place and how I made some of my first friends.

why did you first start writing fic? I got more into writing around the time I started college, though I always used to write little stories. There were a few times I almost wrote fanfic before then, like the time I almost wrote a Glee fic in ninth grade, or the time my junior year of high school where I almost wrote a Downton Abbey fic where Sybil and Branson were pen pals while Sybil was on her nurses course in season 2. But the summer before college, I wanted to write, and didn’t have any ideas for characters, but I had just read a really amazing next-gen Harry Potter fic called “Potters, Weasleys, and Misguided Snogging” which made me ship Scorpius Malfoy and Lily Luna Potter, or Scorily. So I started writing a couple stories specifically for that ship, back when I still used FF.net. It was just a one-shot and a multi-chap I never finished, but it was fun to interact with people and get to hear what they liked about the story and that they hoped I continued it, so I guess I caught the fic writing bug then.

what frustrates you most about fic writing? I wish people would leave more kudos. I’ve had this discussion with some friends before where they’re like, “What makes you leave kudos on a fic?” and I leave kudos on most fics I read, so it’s very interesting to hear people say they don’t do that as liberally as I do. If I made it to the end of the story, I’m probably going to leave kudos. The writer kept me engaged long enough to get to the end, which I think is worthy of showing some sort of support, even if I don’t leave a comment. Though I am trying to get better about leaving comments more often. Kudos are a very low stakes way to show you like a story that someone put out. Afraid to comment, but want to show the author you enjoyed reading? Leave kudos. A couple of stories I have out have gotten a fair amount of hits, but the amount of kudos in comparison to the amount of people who have probably opened it is a little disheartening. I’ve also heard people say they don’t want to leave kudos on stories that have been out for a while, but I love to get kudos on my old work! It’s fun to see that people are still reading things I put out in like 2017 or even just last year. Kudos brighten my day just as much as comments do sometimes, especially when I know not everyone feels comfortable leaving a comment!

what are your top five songs right now? The answer to this is 98% always related to what I’m listening to when I’m working on a certain writing project lol.

Sweet by Cigarettes After Sex Heartbreak Weather by Niall Horan I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie Bye-Bye Darling by Borns Fire for You by Cannons

what are your inspirations? Red, White & Royal Blue, since I read that recently. It honestly just made me want to write a movie, and I kind of hope that whatever TV or movie adaptation it ends up getting in the future I’m able to work on. I want to be a screenwriter, so I tend to get inspired by TV a lot. The Mindy Project, Insecure, and even Never Have I Ever are big inspirations for me. Or more like, anything that Issa Rae or Mindy Kaling are involved in, to be honest. I write a lot of modern AUs, so just anything that shows good relationship progression or has fun with mundane, everyday situations.

what first attracted you to Memori? what attracts you now? So fun fact, I stopped watching the show for a bit. I binged basically two seasons in a weekend while visiting a friend in like 2017, and I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t obsessed? Then I started s3 and a bunch of characters were getting on my nerves so I put it down for a while. Then I was on Tumblr at the beginning of 2019 and saw a gifset from 3x05 of Murphy and Emori kissing and I was kind of like, “That guy’s still alive? And he has a girlfriend?” So I started watching again, legit only because I was shook Murphy had survived lol. So the thing that first attracted me to them was just the fact that they were a couple at all, I guess. I’d say now that I’ve rewatched the show and seen their relationship develop, I love that these are two people who have always had to fend for themselves and kind of had that “me against the world” mentality. And then they find this other person that cares about them and wants to take care of them, and life becomes a lot less lonely. Also now we get to see their relationship after years together, so they’re very domestic, which adds this lovely sense of normalcy on this post-apocalyptic sci-fi show that I absolutely adore. Their interactions especially in s7 just read as a married couple who are very comfortable with each other, but still incredibly devoted to one another and in love.

Besides Memori, what character or pairing do you like best on t100? For ships, I also really like Bellarke. When I was more casually watching the first time around, I didn’t have much of an opinion on them/didn’t really ship it until season 4, but ever since then I’ve been on board. It’s very clear I’m a huge Memori person, but I do ship Murven, though mainly in AU settings. And Memoraven are my OT3!! My other fave character is Bellamy. And I feel like Gabriel has also quickly become a favorite for me. It’s definitely a mixture of his confused, but obsessed with science vibe on the show and the fact that he has been very fun to write in my actor AU when he makes appearances every so often.

why did you decide to start writing for bellarkefic-for-blm? Ever since I’ve been home due to the pandemic, writing has kind of been my escape. Weirdly enough, I’ve written so much (both fic and some real life stuff), even though I’m still working and everything like that. And when the BLM movement was getting a lot of traction specifically in our fandom spaces, I was immediately skeptical of people’s intentions because as a Black person in America specifically I’ve seen this happen before where all the attention is on this issue for a couple weeks and then everyone goes back to posting what they normally post about. And I guess this time things are a bit different, but the thing that began to frustrate me was seeing people shame others for saying they were going to watch the next episode of the show or for working on their fanfic. Fandom spaces have been my biggest escape from the news since March and while I was glad people were focusing on this sort of thing, I kind of hated the way people were making it out to be like this was a new issue when in reality it’s just my life. When I close my laptop and go out into the world, I’m still Black. I had considered opening my ask box up for prompts in exchange for someone donating to a bail fund or something like that, especially since I had just reached a follower milestone, but when I saw that Sam was organizing this and it was going to be an ongoing thing rather than just for a certain period of time, it was heartening to see someone realizing that this isn’t something we can just stop talking about even when the media moves on. The structure of these prompts makes it so that a person has to do a bit of research on BLM and educate themselves or confront the issue in a way they might not have had to before. And it gives me a chance to write things like my fluffy Memori wedding fic ! It’s a way to have my little fandom escape and also stay aware of what’s going on in the real world.

what’s your writing process like (esp for prompts, chopped!, etc)? I LOVE outlines! The Virgo in me loves to talk about my fic outlining process lol. With some short one-shots, I tend to just go in with a sentence or concept that I write at the top of the document and just write and see where that takes me. I also put at the top of the document all the things I want to tag it as when I go to post to AO3, so I don’t have to spend too much time thinking of those when it’s time to post. With multi-chap fics, I first make an ideas dump document which is just me typing out a bunch of thoughts, things like who’s in it, the premise, stuff like that. My actor AU has three preliminary documents: My ideas dump, the actual outline, and then the outline for what happens on each season of the TV show the characters are all on, since I reference those plot points a lot. For things like Chopped or prompts I receive, I do a mixture of the outline/ideas dump in one document. I put at the top all the information I received (so with prompts I tend to just copy/paste the ask from my inbox, and for Chopped the different tropes and theme), then think about what characters I want to use if it wasn’t specified, then kind of do bullet points on what happens in the story. These have all been really helpful in terms of keeping me on track, but I make sure to remind myself that things can change as I write and take a different direction than I expected. So my outlines are constantly changing, but the general idea is already written somewhere so I don’t get too stuck.

what are your thoughts on dad!murphy? The concept of dad!Murphy has really been living rent-free in my brain since before the beginning of season 7. I just kind of love the idea of Murphy (who is a character at first glance I feel like people don’t picture as much of a father figure) kind of falling into being a dad in an unexpected way, and then realizing how much he loves it. It’s just such a sweet thought, and I talked about it so much with some of my friends, that we started a Dad!Murphy Enthusiast Club server on discord (we’re always accepting members so DM me if you’d like to join us!). We just kind of talk about our dad!Murphy headcanons, share fics featuring dad!Murphy, and then get excited when people make new dad!Murphy content. It’s a fun time and though I am a very large Memori, I’m a multi-shipper at heart, and Murphy is one of those characters that I find easy to ship with a lot of people, so we love dad!Murphy in all forms!

what are some things you’d like to recommend?  This is a mix of Bellarke and Memori stuff, since that’s what I mainly read.

Literally everything @mobi-on-a-mission writes, but if I must get specific, then Revive and The Cockroach. 

Almost Paradise (We’re Knocking On Heaven’s Door)  by @nakey-cats-take-bathsss , 13 hours by Kats_watermelon, feat. by Debate, and of course, my comfort fic so i sing a song of love  by twilightstargazer.

The best place to find @queenemori is here on Tumblr. You can find her ao3 here. Request a fic written by her via @bellarkefic-for-blm.

[knjnvrland]

Prank Wars - ch. 7

> pairing | jungkook x reader

> word count | 3.5k

> genre | college!au, fluff, smut, angst

> warnings | swearing, sexual innuendos.

> synopsis | College can be a stressful time in anyone’s life as it is, why don’t we throw a little prank war in the mix to make it harder?

> fic masterlist

> A/N | English is not my first language, I’m sorry for the eventual spelling mistake, please let me know if you find any!

CHAPTER 7 - Popcorn Stealer

It was only a week after that Jungkook’s plan came to fruition. With everyone having exams and finals, there wasn’t much hanging out in the days following the whole having-sex-in-the-heat-of-the-moment-with-you thing. But it all finally ended on a nice Thursday afternoon. The last of you who still had some sort of assignment were Jimin, Namjoon and you -you and your brother were on the same boat, having the same teacher for different lectures who was really into leaving things last minute. Jimin only had a paper left because he got so caught up helping Hoseok that he kinda forgot he had his own things to do. But at last, after class was over on that sunny but chilly afternoon, you were finally on winter brake. No one had the stamina to go out and party that night, and, as Jungkook himself suggested, you’d all meet up for brunch at Jin’s the next morning and have a chill day doing whatever.

What no one knew, however, was that Jungkook would wake up that Friday at the ass crack of dawn just to pull his prank on you. It wasn’t as if there was absolutely no contact between the two of you in the days that followed. You texted him a meme that same day, ashamed of how you handled the situation and trying to not make things awkward. It worked, you guessed, as the two of you communicated solely through facebook-mom kind of memes every day from then on. You also bumped into each other one night at your brother’s place, but if anyone noticed anything about how the two of you would avoid eye contact like two middle schoolers avoiding themselves on the school corridors after texting something risky, you didn’t know. That is, aside from the weird looks Jimin, Taehyung and Hoseok still gave you whenever you acted normal around Jungkook, they were still getting used to the friendship thing, god forbids they find out what happened. It would break them.

You woke up later then you planned Friday morning, and could hear Alice already taking her shower. You checked the time and saw that twitter was blowing up with something, but had no time to snoop around a bit because your friends would be waiting for you in twenty minutes, so you got up and decided to skip showering and just get ready. Alice was out around the same time you were finishing brushing your hair, and traded places with you in the bathroom so you could wash your face and finish getting ready. You were both at the door surprisingly on time, and texted the group chat to let them know you were on the way. It was a short walk from the dorms to Jin’s cafe, and even if it looked like it would start pouring at any moment now, you decided to ditch the car and just take the stroll there, hoping one of the boys could give the both of you a lift if you needed it later.

It was nice to leave your heavy books and computer behind for the first time in weeks. You weren’t even carrying a purse! Everything you needed fitted in your coat’s pockets. You were happily thinking to yourself throughout the first five minutes of your walk when you first noticed the commotion.

“What's going on there?” You wondered, looking at a group of people surrounding some bushes on the sidewalk.

“Oh, didn’t you see? A bunch of clothes showed up all over campus this morning” Alice took out her phone to search the tweets and show you.

“That’s so random” you passed by the group and noticed on of the round bushes was wearing a grey sweater, while another one had a simple white shirt on “funny, I have a sweater like that"

“They think it’s some sort of art project, no one claimed it yet, though” Alice found what she was searching and turned her phone to you “This one’s the most popular”.

In the picture it was the big tree in front of the main humanities building, where you had most of your classes. The tree had no leafs anymore, as expected during winter, but from it there were a bunch, and I mean a bunch, of underwear hanging. All female clothing, you noticed. The piece of resistance, the focus of the photo, was a light yellow bra with two cartoonish bears on it, one on each side where the boobs were supposed to be. You took the phone from Alice and zoomed in. It couldn’t be.

“Hey, everything alright?” You stopped on your tracks and Alice took a second to realize, coming back to you when she noticed. You gave her the cellphone back and took a better look around. On every tree leading up the main path there were at least one piece of clothing. And in the small sections without trees, there would be bushes, benches and even some lamp posts all dressed in cute blouses, bras and pants. Your cute blouses, bras and pants.

“I’m going to kill him this time, I swear I will” You started to walk again, faster this time, and Alice had a hard time keeping up with you. 

“Hey! What’s wrong?” Alice held your arm to slow you down, but it didn’t really work.

“This is my stuff, Al!” You didn’t even look at her “I knew I wasn’t going crazy, I’ve been noticing that my clothes have been disappearing” Her mouth hung wide open and it would be impressive how quickly she connected the dots were not for the ongoing theme of the semester being ‘Jeon Jungkook must be ended’.

“Oh he didn’t” she picked her pace by your side “I thought you guys were cool now!”

“So did I!” You lamented to yourself. All you wanted at this point was peace and a nice break, some good food, maybe a gift or two for Christmas… Instead you’d be spending your next weeks in jail, after trying and failing to commit the perfect crime. Knowing Jungkook as well as you did, you were sure he wouldn’t even let himself be killed alright. “I was so dumb! It began when he started to come over to do his laundry” you mourned to yourself “I should have guessed he had something to do with it.”

By then you were just a few steps away from the cafe entrance, and through the window you could see the boys all inside having a laugh. You bursted in first, and the whole table they were in went silent. Your older brothers smiled sheepishly at you, but Taehyung could barely hold in his laughter, biting on his knuckles to stop himself. You could notice Alice mouthing something to Yoongi and he responding only by a motion of his shoulders. Jimin hid his face behind Hoseok, and Hobi gave Jungkook a pat on the back. And sitting there, as if he owned the place, was him. He smiled triumphantly at you and again, it all happened so fast you would only remember what went down next when your friends retold you the story later. 

Passing by your side at that exact moment was Rhina, this cute freshman Jin had hired to help out with the busiest hours of the cafe. She was carrying on her tray what looked like a frappuccino or some other sort of cold drink only someone mental would order at this time of year, but it worked perfectly. You took it and made your final few steps towards the table. Hoseok still had time to try and get out of the way, but the same could not be said about Jungkook who, in a matter of seconds, was head to toe covered in cold coffee, foam and tiny marshmallows. You turned around and left before anyone could do anything. You would regret it later, when your friends would tell you about the look on his face or about the fact that he slipped when he tried to get up and ended up dragging Jin along with him, making an even bigger mess. But then, all you wanted was to get away.

You were starting to trust him, and yes, Alice would remind you later that no one knew it was actually your clothes, and that the boys ended up spending the rest of their first day of break cleaning up the campus and searching for the pieces that had been stolen to return them to you, but you were a little bit hurt by the prank.

It was just a prank, you would try to remind yourself, but you didn’t feel like getting back at him this time. You just got back to your room, turned off your phone and curled up in bed to rewatch your favorite tv show and forget that the outside world even existed. 

The next day, Alice and you had made plans to watch movies at Yoongi’s. She felt bad about what happened, even if deep down she felt you over reacted a bit, and Yoongi had this massive TV he used to produce his music and made for the best home cinema ever. Besides, there were a couple of films you really wanted to see, missing them while they were on the movies because you had to study. You were supposed to meet the couple there, but Alice had a few errands to run earlier, and you just made your way to Yoongi’s place because you were bored of staying in already.

You had the password to the front door of the building, memorizing it by how often you went there with Alice, and you were just waiting for the elevator when someone stopped beside you.

“Hey” of fucking course.

“I’m not talking to you” you responded, not bothering to look at him.

“You just did” you could hear the smile on his voice.

“Seriously, Jungkook, how old are you?” The elevator doors opened and you got in, hoping he would just let you ride alone. Tough luck.

“You can’t stay mad at me forever” he tickled your side and you took a step away, trying to mask how your body reacted to the touch.

“Just watch” you pressed the number to Yoongi’s floor and crossed your arms, getting as far away as possible.

“You have to admit it was funny” he leaned into the back of the elevator with his body turned to you “and you already had your revenge, we’re even”

“I wasn’t trying to get revenge and it wasn’t funny. I can’t login into any social media without seeing my underwear all over my timeline” you huffed. “and people can be really mean, you know?”

Jungkook looked taken back by your statement, but it didn’t last long, the smile returning to his face. “Well, what did you expect when you bought yourself mickey mouse panties?”

The doors opened at Yoongi’s floor and you stepped out, glad to know Jungkook's floor was a few above the older boy. “You know what? Fuck you.”

Before the doors closed you could still hear his “you already did!” and had to take a quick look around to make sure no one heard it. You sighted relieved when you noticed you were alone, and made your way to Yoongi’s apartment. 

A few hours went by with you and Yoongi alone. Alice was running late and the both of you didn’t want to start the movies without her, so you just spent de afternoon watching music videos and some random clips on youtube. Yoongi also showed you what he has been working on. His graduation project revolved around composing an EP and putting together a small concert, it sounded fun but it was actually a lot of work, since he had to do not only the production of the songs, but also the organizing of the event and all the reports and data analysis of the feedback. He was in the final stages of his album, just finishing a couple of songs, and you were the only person, besides Alice, that was shown the entirety of the work.

He had a couple of songs with ‘special guests’, them being Namjoon and Hoseok in one of the tracks, and Jungkook in another one. You knew your brother could rap, and had been to a few competitions he was a part of growing up, but Hoseok was a nice surprise, specially when you noticed how different all of their styles were. And Jungkook was also something you didn’t expect. You noticed a few musical instruments when you visited his place, and you knew he helped Yoongi on the studio, but you always assumed it was related to technical production, not singing. You hated to admit how much you appreciated his voice, and felt awkward asking Yoongi to play that track again.

“That one is not really finished yet” He commented, pausing the next one that was about to begin “I know it sounds weird, there are a few bass lines I have to tweak and-“ he started to bite on the corners of his thumb nail, and you noticed he was actually really nervous about the whole thing.

“No dude, I’m asking because I liked it” his eyes light up at that and went bigger then you ever saw them.

“Oh, really?” 

“Yeah, it’s my favorite so far” you smiled and scooted closer to the computer, to press the play on it again.

He went quiet immediately and you could feel he was studying your reaction, so you tried to come up with something smart to say. “I like the… guitars on it?” You knew it sounded more like a question then an affirmation, but Yoongi laughed nevertheless.

“There are no guitars on this song” ok, never mind. You hid your face in your hands and laughed alongside him, there was no point in denying that you knew nothing about music, that talent being spent entirely on your brothers.

“My bad. I really liked it though" you commented when the laughter died down.

“I was uncertain about asking Jungkook to be in it, but after last year’s bonfire festival I was convinced he could sing” he shook his head, reminiscent of a time you still weren’t around “he was always blabbering about his music skills to get girls but never actually owned up to it, and then he lost a bet with Jimin and had to perform and honestly, I had to make use of him somehow, he owned me for how many times I saved his ass…” he pondered for a while but continued “and I’m sure the fact that he’s in the track will bring some attention to the EP” you shoved him sideways and before you could ask more about that bonfire festival, someone knocked at the door.

Yoongi stood up to answer and in came Alice with, of course, Jungkook trailing behind.

“Look what the cat dragged in” Alice was carrying a bag full of groceries and pointed back at the younger boy, who was also carrying a few bags himself.

Yoongi gave them passage and took everything Jungkook was carrying, walking with Alice to the kitchen so they could put everything away. The boy stood awkwardly in the middle of the room and gave you a side smile, almost like an apology. You glared at him and turned to follow the other two, hoping they could keep you busy from looking at the intruder’s face.

“-and then I was just about to give up getting it when Jungkook showed up, so I invited him to come” Alice was finishing explaining to her boyfriend what went down on her day to keep her from coming early “I downloaded a few films, not sure what you wanted to see” she found a small pendrive in her purse and handed it to you. Finally, a task you could menage.

Yoongi and you had already set up the living room earlier, dragging his mattress to be on the floor in front of the couch and moving his giant TV out of his working desk and back to the part of the loft assigned as the living room where it was supposed to be. You were sitting on the mattress browsing Yoongi’s computer to see what were the film options, when you felt the place beside you being taken.

“What do you want?” You didn’t bother looking at him to ask.

“Can we be okay tonight?” You glared his way and saw him using the puppy eyes you were sure he learned from Taehyung.

“Are you for real?” You went back to your browsing.

“Yes, please, they have nothing to do with it, we don’t even have to talk, let’s just not, I don’t know, be us?” You looked at him again “you know what I mean! Let’s not argue, I won’t bother you, you don’t pretend you hate me-“ You opened your mouth to interrupt him but he went on “I said what I said! Let’s just be cool? Please?”

You rolled your eyes but honestly, you could take a break from the bickering and, as annoyed as you were with the existence of Jeon Jungkook, you could play nice for a night “fine, but don’t force it” he smiled big and stood up, running back to the kitchen to help your other friends, but not before turning around midway to, not only catch you staring, but also give you a wink. What an asshole.

Alice had downloaded quite a variety of movies, most of them you didn’t even recognize, but after checking with everyone a few times to find one that had not been seen by anyone, you set on a war film. Not your favorite but you could menage. Yoongi made popcorn and Alice filled a few big cups with your beverages and you were all set to go. Not even ten minutes in, Jungkook had managed to spill all his popcorn and scooted closer to you to steal from your bucket.

“For real?” You whispered to him, trying not to bother Alice and Yoongi sitting behind you on the sofa, cuddling under the blankets. He just grabbed a handful and shoved it all on his mouth, you heard Alice chuckle behind you and noticed she witnessed the whole thing but, instead of sticking with you as a best friend should, she just did the same with Yoongi’s bucket, but was not reprimanded at all.

“You should be more like Yoongi” Jungkook whispered back to you, still with food in his mouth. You grabbed more of you popcorn and shoved it to him, shutting him up again.

“And you should be quiet” there was no point fighting him, so you just got comfortable and tried to enjoy the film with him constantly stealing your food.

You were in your third movie of the night. After the war film you watched an animation, Alice’s pick, and now a drama was playing. You had seen that one already, but Jungkook was adamant in watching it so you just let him be. It was about halfway through and you were starting to feel sleepy. You were sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jungkook, not because of the popcorn anymore, but because he was supposedly cold and Yoongi only had two clean blankets, so you had to share. You started to scoot down, to lay more on the mattress and make yourself more comfortable. Jungkook noticed it and did the same. You looked at him, but he only motioned at the fabric covering the two of you, as if saying that you were dragging it with you and he wanted the warmth. The two of you adjusted to the new position and soon enough you were not capable of keeping your eyes open any longer.

Jungkook noticed you had fallen asleep and tried to drag from under you one of the cushions you had supporting your head, to make you more comfortable. You were already insufferable as it was, he was not excited to deal with you with neck pains. But in trying to do so, he ended up pulling both the pillows, and had to support your head with his hand, trying his hard not to wake you up. Before he could figure out how to put the pillow back in it’s place, however, you rearranged yourself to lay on his arm, and then scooted closer to lay on his shoulder. He had no way out of it if he didn’t want to wake you up, so he just let you be. Before he could turn his attention back to the movie, however, he sneaked a sniff of your hair. Chocolate and coconut, like a Barbie one of his cousins had when he was little. He turned back his attention to the movie but, as much as he was liking it, it wasn’t long before he too was knocked out.

Behind the two of you, Alice and Yoongi were still wide awake. Yoongi nudged Alice when he noticed Jungkook was starting to waver, and they witnessed when he laid his head on yours and fell asleep. They didn’t thought much of it, continuing with the movie unbothered, but soon after, when you turned to Jungkook and hugged his arm, and he, by reflex, scooted closer, the couple shared a knowing look between them.

> A/N | This is a shorter chapter, more like a filler tbh, because the next one is getting quite big, just wait for it ;) I was going to take a little longer to post, but I want to try and get chapter 8 up by the 21st (comeback day aaaaaaaa who else can barely hold on their excitement?) so there's that. It's a whole lot of fluff for now but if there's anyone eagerly awaiting for the angst: I promise it's coming reaaaal soon. Longer note, I guess I felt like talking today. Have a nice day, wherever and whoever you are :)

TAGLIST | @w1tchcraftt @girlwiththeglittereyeliner @teresaisla @nctssidehoe @kawaiimusiccollection​ @nininek12​ @livewittykid​ @namjoonsslutakakoreanmanswhore​ @planhtarxhs​

TAGLIST IS OPEN

[mego42]

Writer Asks

Tagged by @sothischickshe, @bourbon-ontherocks and @medievalraven who are all v lovely and for reasons unknown to me, want me to ramble about my fic so like, blame them for this I guess

Tagging @fairhairedkings, @riosnecktattoo, @inyoursheets, @foxmagpie, @pynkhues if you feel like it

ao3 name: ms_scarlet (origin story no one asked for: I came up with it for a creative writing class where we had to submit everything under pseudonyms for anonymous full class critique, which was gr9 and not at all traumatic, and I was deeply obsessed with both the Grateful Dead and Sublime versions of Scarlet Begonias at the time)

fandoms: the only fandoms I’ve written fic for are bellarke/t100 and Good Girls (and Buffy but it was way back in the day, pre-organized archives and has been completely lost to time which is For The Best)

number of fics: 14 (lol, 5 over the course 3 years in t100 fandom and 9 since joining the GG fandom at the beginning of s3, you could say I have been inspired)

fic i spent the most time on: a song inside the halls of the dark for sure, it’s the first multi chapter I’ve ever done and I’m far enough into it that I will be super honest, I was extremely dubious over whether or not I’d actually see it through when I started but huzzah! It’s happening. But yeah, I spend like, a lot of time thinking about it, writing it (lmao obvs), rewatching clips of the show to pick apart characterization and mannerisms, etc, etc. I try to work on it in some capacity every day (sometimes that just means outlining or deleting chunks of my outline and crying about how much I hate myself) to keep up momentum so yeah, def that one.

As far as one shots go, there’s blood in my body (I’m holding on) for bellarke, I think I spent a month, maybe 6 weeks working on that

fic i spent the least amount of time on: as the world turns, the blunt burns, I was doing my usual lazy Saturday morning scroll through Tumblr before I got out of bed and saw a post like I want beth and mick to get high together (I would love to give credit but I haven’t the foggiest notion who said it, I wasn’t intending to write it so I didn’t pay too much attention, I’m the worst, I’m sorry) and then some dialogue popped into my head maybe 10 min later and I think I wrote the whole thing in like, 45 min on my phone. Cannot emphasize enough how little I thought about it (or proofed it tbh, yikes, so many typos) before posting

most hits: overall, I’ve Got You Here my t100 post s3, alt s4 thing. For Good Girls, a song inside the halls of the dark

most kudos: overall, there’s blood in my body (I’m holding on) - bellarke modern au. For GG, still song.

most comment threads:  a song inside the halls of the dark by a M I L E (it twice as many as blood, the next highest), the GG fandom is so lovely and supportive and friendly and I love you guys, I really do

most bookmarks: same as kudos, blood overall and then song for GG

highest total word count: lol song is killing it

favorite fic i wrote: oh man, that’s hard. I love them all for different reasons. Blood was my first ever AU (I am a canon/canon-divergent ho) and it also deals with some stuff that’s important to me so that’s always going to have a special place in my heart. I’ve Got You Here was the first time I tried to tackle something bigger than a missing scene or short one-shot so that’s also significant.

I’m really proud of smoke, fire, it’s all going up because I think I did a p good job with the Rio POV there. I’d give her a HA! And a HI-YA! is special bc it’s my first outside POV and it was based on so little info it was basically OC, so that was a fun challenge.

All of that said, obviously, a song inside the halls in the dark is my fav. It’s been the biggest stretch of my skills (I had NO! IDEA! If I could plot and pace on the level required to sustain the fic I’d originally outlined and it’s only grown from there tbh), it’s also been like, the loveliest experience? I keep saying people’s reaction to it has broken my brain and I’m not actually just saying that. I’m deeply overwhelmed. And last but emphatically not least, it’s how I’ve gotten to know @nickmillerscaulk who, on top of being an incredible editor (seriously y’all, she is Skilled, I’ve learned so much from her), is such an awesome, amazing person and I’m so very glad we��ve become friends.

fic i want to rewrite/expand on: Oh man, idk. Pills N Potions is the easiest because it’s a prompt collection! Send me prompts! I can’t promise I’ll write them right away (my ADHD is so very real and only dubiously under my control during quarantine, so I live in constant terror of losing the thread of song especially this close to the end) but I def want to flex my quick and dirty short fic for funsies skills. I’m super looking forward to @goodgirlsficrecs prompt-a-thon.

share a bit of a wip or story idea you’re working on: ahahaha oh man, my google drive is littered with partially drafted or outlined ideas. I have a bunch of missing scene things I started at various points in s3 that are realistically dead in the water.

In terms of WIP/ideas I’m still intending to work on/finish:

A post 311 Rio POV pwp

A fishing/fencing/flute playing fluff for @medievalraven because I keep taunting her with my tags for song

The Good Guys (Rio, JT and Stan) thing that snowballed in a post way back when from @jazillia007, @nickmillerscaulk, and @inyoursheets

I still low-key want to do the transcripts for the Mick, Annie and Ruby group chat. I might save that for whenever I rewatch and have it running concurrently to s3, idk we’ll see

A Jewel Thief AU that I am wildly hyped about. I outlined the first chapter of it around when I started posting song and haven’t let myself do anything with it because I know once I get started I’m going to abandon whatever else I’m working on

More Annie POV, I don’t have any specific ideas, I just really love writing Annie POV

[trishyeves]

Episode 4-Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Oh boy, we are back into the Ranma Rewatch and this time it’s the fourth episode, titled “Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another”. That is definitely the kind of title I remember more from this show: incredibly long and silly. I love it in any series where the titles are like half-formed sentences. As for what I’m expecting in this episode...I honestly don’t really remember. We’re already reaching the edges of my memory, so I look forward to seeing it with fresh eyes.

Yeah, I had pretty much forgotten about most of the stuff that happened in this episode, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The episode starts with Ranma having a bad dream about Kuno professing his love and asking him out. After waking up in a cold sweat, Ranma takes a bath and shenanigans happen.

There’s some cute banter between Ranma and Akane on the way to school, then a threepeat of the fight against all the guys trying to ask her out. Kuno makes an appearance at the end again, but this time he’d taken out in one combined hit from both Ranma and Akane. He’s tended to in the nurse’s office afterwards by Nabiki, who finds out from his sleep talking that he’s fallen in love with ‘the pigtailed girl’ in addition to Akane, and feels conflicted over who he should choose.

Seeing an opportunity, Nabiki abuses the fact that apparently Ranma is a heavy sleeper to activate his curse as he sleeps, takes a bunch of sexy pics, then turns him back, all without him ever waking up. Not too long later, she gets a surprise message from Kuno, asking to meet up.

He treats her to a meal, asking her the favor of delivering a cute doll he got as a present to its recipient: the pigtailed girl. Before addressing that idea, Nabiki tempts him with the sexy pictures of his new waifu, only letting him even see them if Kuno treats her to spaghetti. I thought that might be a dub change, but it’s not, either language they still go out for Italian pasta. She sells them to him for 1000 yen a pop, then asks if he’s giving up on Akane then. He clarifies that he intends to pursue them both, so Nabiki reveals there are Akane pictures available too. In exchange for free ice cream, and the same price per picture, she sells him those too.

Only with that done does she tell him how to get his present to the pigtailed girl: Ranma is the only way. She doesn’t explain why, but Kuno doesn’t dig too deeply into it. She couriers a letter to the titular protagonist, asking for a meet up, which Ranma goes to. Once it becomes clear exactly what Kuno is asking for, Ranma rebuffs him, saying he’ll never see his precious pigtailed girl ever again.

This threat becomes somewhat toothless when someone randomly dumping water out of their window activates Ranma’s curse, and Kuno quickly embraces the object of his affections. This hug becomes a little awkward when Nabiki appears and douses Ranma with hot water, and Kuno realizes who he is ‘now’ hugging. You might think this would mean he has some understanding of what’s going on, but Kuno’s immediate thought is that Ranma knows some vile sorcery.

When Nabiki realizes how dense Kuno really is, she decides to phrase it to him as Ranma ‘owning the pigtailed girl’s body and soul’, which is not technically a lie. That said, of course Kuno interprets that as meaning that somehow Ranma has the warrior woman he loves enslaved to him in some way, so a fight breaks out.

When Ranma sees the photos Kuno has on him, it distracts him enough to take a hit to the torso, just as Akane arrives. Just as Kuno starts getting serious, the air pressure from his piercing attacks alone strong enough to crack a statue apart, Ranma counteracts and wins, though it becomes clear his injury hurts like hell, even if he’s trying to ignore it.

And that’s it, no cliffhangers this time around. Now that Kuno’s love for Ranma’s alter ego has been established, the actual meat of what that means, namely how he sees them as two separate people and chases one while attacking the other, is what this episode works to make clear. It also sets up his and Nabiki’s dynamic more, but that’ll be something I talk about more in just a little bit.

There are two kind-of bigger things I want to pull out of this episode. First one being the dream sequence at the start. Now, I am fairly sure that whole bit is meant to be there for comedy, in a very ‘gay panic’ kind of way. Which honestly...does not play super well these days. Ranma’s terror at the dream, on a surface reading, has to do with him being super grossed out that some dude is in love with him.

Of course, there are other ways to read the scene as well. I’m sure some people might instead look at it as being less a nightmare and more like Ranma running away from his own possible attraction to another guy, and while that’s definitely possible, I didn’t really get that vibe at all. That said, if you did, rock on.

What I saw as more likely was a gender-based reading. Ranma is, more than anything else, freaked out by Kuno’s love declaration because it’s someone seeing him as something he’s not, a woman. Kuno isn’t interested in Ranma, he’s interested in a woman who doesn’t exist. Ranma has a lot of complicated feelings tied up in his masculinity, which his curse doesn’t exactly help with, and Kuno’s attraction to his cursed form just makes it all worse.

Speaking of attraction, let’s talk about Kuno. The fact that everyone calls his affections for two people at the same time ‘two timing’ is a bit vexing to me. As someone who has been in polyamorous relationships before, I can attest to the fact that liking more than one person at a time is totally okay, and if everyone involved is okay with it, dating multiple people is also okay.

That is kind of the problem though. Neither Akane or Ranma like Kuno, and neither is likely to want to date him, regardless of if he’s dating someone else at the time. Their problem with Kuno isn’t his dual attraction, it’s that they just plain don’t care for the guy. (And Ranma probably doesn’t swing that way, but he could be repressing it so what the hell do I know.) Even with that in mind, I still kind of roll my eyes at how Kuno ‘liking two girls’ is treated as a perversion. That just kinda sucks.

Last thing before the character spotlight I can think of is that I really liked the fight in this episode, the action was pretty good. ... Listen, I know that’s not exactly expert analysis, but it’s what I got.

I feel like covering Nabiki now is pretty much a no brainer. Of all the side characters introduced so far, she’s easily gotten the most shading, and this episode in particular develops her further for the audience. In terms of voice acting, she’s played in English by Angel Costain and in Japanese by Minami Takayama. Angela isn’t known for much else, which is quite a shame, because she’s pretty fantastic, in my personal opinion. Minami, on the other hand, has a pretty huge resume, and along with the voice actors for Akane, Ranma’s cursed form, Kasumi, and a character we haven’t met yet, was in a pop group called DoCo.

In terms of acting, they both play her fairly similarly. A normal girl at first glance, but with quite the amount of dry wit and sarcasm lying beneath that surface. The main difference I’ve seen so far is that Angela seems to have more mirth to her performance, while Minami’s is a bit more deadpan. Both are good, though I definitely prefer the english performance so far.

But what is Nabiki actually like? Well, of the three Tendo siblings, Nabiki hides who she is more than the others. For the first few episodes, she comes across as a fairly unassuming character, most known for her occasional snark. But this episode is where we get to see her primary character trait: greed. Nabiki is quite happy to take advantage of Ranma’s curse to make money, though how far she’s willing to go for the yen hasn’t really been made clear.

It is worth noting that, while her pictures of Ranma were very sexy and revealing, her pictures of Akane were just of her working out and stuff, far less of an invasion of her sister’s privacy. Does she have better respect for family than the freeloaders who live with them? That’s to be seen.

Another big character trait we’ve gotten so far is her...friendship? Sure, let’s go with that, her friendship with Kuno. Always happy to try and pop his inflated ego with her sharp wit, they have a good comedy routine going. At the same time, she does seem to legitimately be there for him, since she was taking care of him after he got knocked out. They get shipped a lot, which I definitely see the appeal of, but part of me just kind of likes the idea that they’ve just known each other for a long time, and they just kind of have a thing going. Not that any kind of friendship they may have is coming close to stopping her from bilking him from as much money and free food as she can. Of course, Kuno is quite rich, so he can afford it.

Some people have described Nabiki as a villain, but I wouldn’t really agree with that. What she is, is someone happy to create conflict. She’s a fun addition to the cast, and I can’t think of any time in my previous watch-throughs where I got tired of her being there. (Which is not something I can say about every character in this series.)

Now it’s time to rank the episodes once again. Of the four episodes so far, I can immediately say this one is in the top half. I enjoyed Nabiki’s antics and the marital arts quite a bit, but I don’t think it’s quite as strong as the second episode. So far, that means the rankings are:

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

Will next week’s episode be just as entertaining? Well, I don’t know, but from what I remember about episode 5, “Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart”, I don’t think that will be the case. See you then!