#but. like. dude. that's a whole level of Extra that I... should have expected tbh

[nagiru]

Oh, you're the thief without a name? That's fine, that's fine... just be warned that if you don't give me a name, I'll just keep calling you "The Cologne Thief" and that's going to be pretty embarrassing for you, just saying.

[rottingflovver]

Random relationship (and just general stuff) headcanons for the ADA squad!!

Atsushi Nakajima 🐯

Soft boi

Smells like strawberries and vanilla

Don't question me on this, he just does

Also probably adores eating strawberries and vanilla, alongside ice cream and anything sweet really, but like, in moderation (it's gotta be a soft food tho)

He also likes fruits and veggies

A healthy boi

His ideal date would be sightseeing, just walking around town with his s/o and admiring the scenery

Would try to be really cheesy and say something like "you're prettier than any location we've been to" but he'd get too embarrassed halfway through so it would just come out as a stammering mess

He's adorable tho, you love him

When sleeping, if you sleep in one bed, he'd legit be like a big cat (no pun intended)

He'd be so warm, and his arms would be wrapped around you in a soft embrace

Prone to having nightmares so please comfort him

Ozamu Dazai 💀

The literal opposite of a soft boi

What I mean by this is that he's a straight up f-boy

Don't @ me, it's official; he's left every woman he's ever been with crying

But don't worry, once he gets attached to you, he'd be all giddy and happy whenever you even exist around him

My dude adores coffee (+ alcohol!)

Doesn't really eat much (please force him to eat more) but he's a sucker for sweets (I feel like he'd be really picky tho, like "no this brand of chocolate is absolute garbage I only eat the finest *insert niche brand literally no one has EVER heard of*"

We love him for it

He'd also really be into salty snacks, anything that has a crunch to it really

Did I mention that he smells like washed out Cologne mixed with his natural scent (+ the most recent way he tried to commit not-living)

His ideal date would be a coffee-date

He knows it's not much but that's where he feels the most relaxed and happy, so he wants you to experience that with him as well

Unlike Atsushi, this boy can FLIRT

Expect a cheesy remark every few seconds

It comes to the point where it's actually kinda annoying

Once you start firing it back at him (it's gotta be something sincere tho) he'd be flustered and kinda flabbergasted

Is also prone to nightmares, but don't expect to see this side of him unless he REALLY really trusts you

Kunikida Doppo 📚

Stoic boi

Idk how to explain this but I feel like the 🗿 emoji really represents him

Also he smells the most normal out of everyone ㅡ literally just some kinda nice perfume and neutral, washed out shampoo (by neutral I mean that you can't really identify what it is, but it's nice)

I feel like he'd be warm

Like not to Atsushi's level, but he'd be a good heat provider if it ever gets windy or rainy

Not to mention how comforting his hugs are, although, extremely awkward (he's so inexperienced with them Lord help him)

Also a sucker for coffee but that's because it's the only thing keeping him sane (and awake, Kunikida go to bed challenge)

He's a really good cook

Like it surprises you how many dishes he actually knows how to make, given how much time his work occupies

He's also more like your dad (or even mom tbh) than your boyfriend, because he's always nagging cuz of some idealistic criteria you failed to meet (ie. "cLeAn YoUr RoOm")

That's why his preference for dates are dates that don't even feel like them

It's literally just everyday activities

Going shopping together? Sure, he's down, gotta get it done anyway and it's nice to have company. You want him to teach you how to make a certain dish? Geez, finally, it's about time you start doing that yourself. You wanna join on a mission? That's a bit too dangerous, but you can meet him afterwards

Like do you get what I'm saying

It's so obvious you two have a thing for each other but he's just so damn dense and yet somehow gets super flustered at the same time

Compliment him on something he's insecure about and he'll be a mess for like 10 whole minutes (by this I mean he genuinely won't be able to utter a word)

Akiko Yosano 🦋

She listens to girl in red

Okay maybe not, but she definitely stans Dreamcatcher

I'll stop you get the point

Her favorite LOONA solo is Heart Attack

(That was the last one I swear)

But fr tho, she looks and acts scary but she's a whole sweetheart

Kind of cold but it's okay you can warm her up (melts if you do that)

Really scared of letting people get too close to her, but if you keep insisting and being nice to her she'll have to accept your love

ALSO fond of coffee (seriously what's with these people) and a mediocre cook (she's trying ok)

Will always be down to try and make something with you, whatever the dish may be

Smells like oranges and roses (not mixed, obvi on different days it's a different vibe)

Also sometimes has a lingering aftertaste of blood due to her job at the ADA and you're kinda just like 😶 about it because?? Do you tell her?? Does she know?? What do you do???

Pain.png

Hint: you should definitely tell her tho

SHE FINALLY HAS A CONSISTENT SHOPPING BUDDY

Although she doesn't force you to carry everything around like she forces everyone else to, because you're special ✨

That would also be your assumption on what her favorite date is, but she can actually be pretty romantic!

Don't expect anything grandeur tho, it's just a fancy dinner date at a restaurant

Poor bb has been planning and saving up for this for months now so please appreciate it

She sleeps like a rock

She's just straight, like a soldier

Oh the irony

But I feel like if you were to hug her she'd instantly melt into your embrace

Is ALSO prone to nightmares (seriously what's with these people) but she doesn't wanna bother you with them

Edogawa Ranpo 👓

Praise him

Please

He has a praise kink

So please praise him

He's surprisingly soft

Maybe it's all the sweets he eats, but he's both soft to hug and soft personality wise

Oh yeah did I mention he emits an aura of candy

Like he walks into the room and you don't even have to look to know that it's him, cuz it'll just smell like sweets all of a sudden

Speaking of, he really adores them

To the point where you'll have to force him to eat something healthy from time to time as well, I mean, seriously, that much sugar CANNOT be good for you

If you give him some homemade baked goods (ei. cupcakes, brownies, cake, ect.) listen he will LITERALLY lose it

You're his angel now

No not even that, you're a GODDESS/GOD to him

(Yes he's that dramatic)

He likes taking you to see detective movies with him where he figures out the killer in the first 3 minutes

Also he gets lost so gosh darn easily; never ever let him out of your sight or he'll just be gone forever

Other than that, he lets you organize and plan the dates, cuz he thinks you could do a way better job at being romantic than he ever could

He's really okay with anything you wanna do ㅡ he's just happy to be with you

(Just don't take him to someplace where he can't eat candy)

Force him to eat spicy food and he's breaking up with you nckdndjc

When sleeping together, he's sprawled out across the mattress

In many ways he's just a big teddy bear, you can climb on top of him and sleep there and he'll just be chill with it

These next few ⬇ are only friendship hcs bc a sis doesn't wanna go to jail

Kenji Miyazawa 🐄

Baby boy, baby

Listen I can't explain it but he smells like grass and that fresh air country smell

Like you just know he does

LOVES getting head-pats

Loves giving them too!!

He's so confused when it comes to city stuff, so he'd much rather chill with you somewhere on a grass field

Expect to play a lot of tag and hide n seek with him!! It'll be extra fun if he drags Kyouka and Atsushi with him as well

Sometimes he'll randomly drop a country fact that seems so obscure to you (think; that one time he mentioned they just throw criminals off a cliff) and you'll just stare at him like; 👁 👄 👁

He loves to eat

Literally anything

"I love cows but I love eating them too"

He mentioned before that he shouldn't eat a lot cuz he has no power when full but you can't just??let him starve??

Give him an apple and water and he'll be fine

Introduce him to arcades and he'll get hooked in a matter of seconds

Kyouka Izumi 🌺

baby girl, baby

Loves to go sightseeing like Atsushi

Kind of stoic in the beginning but as she slowly warms up to you she'll be smiling all the time

Brings out Demon Snow to protect you if a leaf falls a little too threateningly

Cdndjdj no but fr ㅡ she never really had friends that accepted her and wanted to spend time with her so she really doesn't want anything to happen to you

You have to remind her that she's just a kid; she should be allowed to relax and enjoy the moment for a bit

Smells like flowers and death

The death part of it fades away with time

Spends a lot of time with Atsushi!! Meaning you will spend a lot of time with Atsushi as well

If you don't like him I'm sorry but you two just can't be friends

She has no idea what counts as friend activities and what doesn't so expect her to either: a) not propose anything, or b) propose totally obscure stuff

But if something cute catches her attention she'll make an attempt to guide you to it

Like if she thinks you two should eat ice cream she'll stare at a nearby ice cream shop intensely

Sadly missing Junichiro and Fukuzawa cuz I just don't know enough about them 😔 we sad

[loslotharios]

new season of tbl premiered, u know what that means 👀 here's my surface level review of s9e1 written at 4am.

Disclaimer: u will not find any deep thoughts in this review uwu

•SPECIAL AGENT DEMBE ZUMA IM- HE DID IT

•3 minutes in and I'm already down on one knee begging for Dembe's hand in marriage 💍

•Harold on tv lmaooooo I love it

•how dare this rando speak to Aram this way. If Aram says he's prepared for the presentation, hes prepared damn it.

•Restler saying "Reddington" is giving big Timmy's dad energy:

•Yes I know hes burnt to a crisp and in pain, buuuuuut shirtless Dembe writhing around is... very interesting. I think there should be more of that this season.

•YO THAT X THAT HAROLD DREW ON THE MAILBOX WAS SO SMOOTH

• Harold deserves some kind of award for all his hardwork tbh. Like why does he have to wait 7-9 business days to talk to Raymond?? What if it was an emergency?? Nobody has time to do all of that. The emergency would be over by the time Harold finally got to Raymond-

• Raymond I'm begging u just give the man a burner phone. Please. His heart cant take this type of stress.

• No emergency is worth that amount of work.

• Raymond is so extra. I cant.

• Its so crazy how much a little bit of hair can change someone's entire appearance. Like the difference between buzzcut Red and bald Red is wild lol

• Park is thriving. Good 4 her.

• Aram dropping/risking everything for the task force twice in one episode is so pure. I love him. He said "fuck ur parents mortgage dude idc the squad needs me"

• RAYMOND HOLD DEMBE'S HAND U BITCH-

• Donald Restler cut your hair and shave your beard challenge.

• everyone being concerned for him bc of his hair is hilarious.

• Dembe stays having words of wisdom. What an icon.

• Sooooo is the taskforce just working for free at this point? Like??? What do u mean they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? I dont understand.

• Raymond this whole episode:

•Im not sure why yet, but I want to fist fight raymond.

I wasnt expecting much from this episode tbh considering that it's the first episode of the season. Theyre always kinda boring since they're just setting everything up. I think that's the case with most of these kinds of shows. Nevertheless I had a blast. I think the characters I'm most invested in rn are Dembe and Aram so hopefully they get a lot of screen time this season! I'm looking forward to it.

Anyways like always, if for some reason u read this entire thing i <3 u

[professorspork]

i know I always say this, but, last night REALLY WAS the BUSIEST OF DAYS in the Reaper War

before I get into yesterday’s gameplay, I realized I forgot to react to the fact that Jacob got Brynn pregnant, which -- again, I suppose that wraps up everything about his backstory in a nice little bow, lad of the bad dad gets to be good dad, but like... it still gives like they gave his character incredibly short shrift. so. humbug to that.

but I have bigger fish to fry (ha ha, literally, see what I did there?) because ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, AND ALL OF THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. I rescued Ann Bryson, and learned that -- shocker -- she had a bad relationship with her dad. I uh may have condoned her getting a bit of a nasty nose bleed in order to track the Leviathan to Despoina, where as ever I got to read a bunch of people’s weirdly specific sad diaries. my jump into the depths was very cool and scary (does no one get the bends in the future???) and I enjoyed my The First-style body swapping conversation with the Leviathan in which I tried to prove I’m ~special and this time is ~different. on the one hand, I don’t know why I expected the origin of the Reapers to be anything other than yet another story of AI gone wrong, but this whole cinematic parallels thing is starting to edge out of “everything matches up and is of a piece” territory and into the murkier waters of “we kind of only had one idea, actually.” to reveal that the Reapers’ plan is just stray AI code to ‘preserve life’ is at once very chilling and a bit of a let down; when I think back to when I talked to Sovereign for the first time and I had my initial “GOD IS A MACHINE THAT WANTS TO KILL US” freak out, I was in fact very on board for an evil plan too broad and complex for a human mind to fathom. for it to be this feels kind of predictable and pedestrian.

that said, watching the Leviathan take down a huge-ass Reaper capital ship with its pulse signal was very satisfying.

oh no this is going to get very long, now that you’ve had this fun teaser i’m gonna put the rest under a cut

then we kicked it on over to Thessia and I highkey traumatized my girlfriend. I feel like I should have seen the reveal that the asari were more advanced because they were hoarding prothean tech coming, but I didn’t. hearing and seeing all the asari commandos helping me get wiped out was a real gut punch, but didn’t hold a candle to my frustration at the confrontation with Kai Leng. I’m not mad that the game wouldn’t let me beat him, per se (though I still think it’s ridiculous that I’ve taken down a Reaper by myself and I’m supposed to be afraid of a dude with a knife), but I am pissed that it all happened with combat cut scene magic. this game has given me difficult combat before! if, in fighting Kai Leng, I’d genuinely felt outmatched, I think I would have tolerated it better -- or if the combat had been me fighting the Harvesters and then Kai Leng sneaked around me because that’s what he does, he sneaks. but to have such a relatively easy combat sequence with him that felt very much like winning just to have it snatched away from me... maddening. WHY CAN’T I BEAT THIS ONE GUY AND HIS KNIFE? I don’t want to be all “Kai Leng is a Mary Sue” but like... he got to murder Thane and then beat me in overtime, and his entire vibe is I exist to sell action figures even though that’s not, as far as I know, any part of Mass Effect’s profit model. so it’s just frustrating. and for them to then rub salt in the wound and have him EMAIL ME to be like “lol snowflake r u triggered” was just. MY PATIENCE IS THIN, ME3. DON’T PUSH ME.

seeing Shepard have to admit to failure was a gutting scene, though, and a necessary one. and watching Liara fight with Javik was highkey satisfying, too. 

so anyway, because i was BIG MAD at Cerberus I tracked them first to that one N7 communications mission-- 

(Sample dialogue: Helen: Why aren’t you using cover? You’re going to die! Use cover! Me, jumping out of cover and rushing Cerberus goons trying to melee them to death: BECAUSE I’M MAD)

-- and then to Sanctuary, and HOO BOY WAS THAT A LOT OR WHAT. from the second I heard Oriana’s voice I had a pretty good idea of what was going on here, but seeing in in practice was still creepy af. and like. i’m just gonna go out on a limb and say INDOCTRINATION BAD. I AM NOT A FAN. shout out to that one capitalist volus on the Citadel who was like “lol sanctuary is a scam don’t waste your money” i guess

additionally, last night was significant because I picked not one but TWO ENTIRE renegade convince options, because I saw no reason to be nice to terrorist daddy the illusive man or actual terrorist daddy Mr. Lawson. after I got through all that, Helen explained to me how difficult it apparently is to keep Miranda alive by the end of that confrontation, so I got to do some WHAT LIKE IT’S HARD? preening at how Nice Sheps Finish First sometimes. 

but as usual, the real highlight is getting to know my crew better and talking with them. I finally got some prime flirting in with Liara during Leviathan. it was VERY cute when she was like “man what’s with you rescuing damsels from dig sites? if you end up teaming up with her to save the world and bring down the shadow broker i’ll be very jealous. ... and concerned” and WEIRDLY CUTER when she was like “hey the only tentacled alien who gets to mess with your brain is ME” because Liara is like 115 by now considering how slowly i’m getting through these missions and she still does not know what romance is. 

[no but seriously, Liara does not know what romance is. half the time I’m still going WE’RE STILL DATING, RIGHT? every time she refuses to talk to me. and even after Thessia, when everyone was like “go talk to Liara, she needs you” and even JAVIK of all people was like “you’re dating Liara, right? it’s so obvious” our interactions did not feel particularly... romantic? it’s a tricky needle to thread, obviously, I’m not looking for sloppy makeouts right after millions of her people died, but it still reads as very odd to me. anyway.]

Javik’s story about how he once had a ship like the Normandy and a crew of friends like mine and they all ended up indoctrinated and he had to personally slit their throats went way harder than I ever expected it to. even just the IDEA of having to do that as my Shep upsets me. i’m legit enjoying getting to know Javik, even though i’m still GuessWhoJustGotYelledAt.jpg every time I leave his room. I HAD ENOUGH OF THAT FROM KREIA, JAVIK, YOU’LL NEVER PUSH ME AWAY.

I was surprised by how hard Tali took Miranda’s successful challenge of Mr. Lawson, though in hindsight it makes sense -- with the geth war still happening on top of everything else, I don’t think Tali ever did get the chance to process her anger at her dad being a war criminal and all. and her whole “emergency induction port” bit about the straw was cute as hell tbh. her friendship with Garrus over the comms continues to give me life. 

(in other quarian news, I AM SAD ABOUT KAL’REEGER.)

and jeff. JEFF. after Thessia i literally ran to the bridge and said aloud “Jeff, make me feel better” as I clicked interact with him, and then he made that dig about asari dancers, and i was like NO NOT LIKE THAT. (I mean, what Shep literally said was “now’s not the time for jokes” which is ironic considering she, unlike me, still calls him JOKER) but then he was all DAD ANDERSON SAID I’M SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, I’M SORRY, I’M DOING MY BEST and like. what a fucked up little family we are. he feels guilty that I died saving him, still! apparently he asks EDI about my stress levels and they are BAD and he feels BAD! im crey. OH AND ALSO THE FACT THAT PTSD ASARI LAURA BAILEY WAS TALKING ABOUT HIS FAMILY ON TIPTREE AND I CAN NEVER TELL HIM BECAUSE THE GAME DOESN’T LET ME DO THAT???? V UPSETTING.

and then of course EDI had to TRIPLE DOWN on all these feelings i was already having by telling me about human resistance and selflessness on Earth and how she wants to turn off her self-preservation code because she’s not about that. I’M SUCH A TOASTER FUCKER HALP.

Garrus being all “well sometimes your best friend gives you a pep talk” speech was cute as hell, and I was strangely charmed when Kaidan was like YOU CAN TELL I’M EXTRA MAD BECAUSE MY VOICE HAS GOTTEN SO DEEP grumbling.

next up: shore leave, and then going after Cerberus will trigger act 3! i may one day finish mass effect after all!

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 11: Rafael’s Lian Yu Experience

Ah, lets tune into Yugioh where Duke has decided to do some off-roading in the worst car and in the worst place.

Ah yes, the normal interaction you would have with a desert and your expensive vintage car. Duke has been struggling since he became a protagonist to stick to a defining trope. Now that Serenity is gone, and now that they aren’t watching a duel for Duke to be a downer about, I guess his only other tick is that he sucks at driving?

Again there was a perfectly serviceable truck back at the RV but they just really like to put miles on this car (which doesn’t have it’s lights on I believe, which...good job, Duke).

And he just launches these two inexplicably out of the car. Because Yugi might be losing his whole damn soul on the other end of this desert, but we will have cartoon shenanigans, damn it.

It really does look like Dukes looking through the wrong side of his binoculars here...that extra level of Duke.

Speaking of extra level, hows that horse thing going? Where Yugi is riding a horse for the first time in his entire life?

Because, apparently the show has decided that Yami should be really good at horses (????????). He can’t read any Egyptian, he doesn’t have any memories of his Pharaoh life, he can barely use magic, but apparently, he can game a horse. Only problem, is that this art team of high octane vehicle enthusiasts seems totally unaware of how horses work---I’ll just show you. This scene GOES places, and I will absolutely record it so you can watch it in it’s entirety in a separate post.

(see more horse under the cut)

The horses leg didn’t move the entire slide down the mountain y’all, he just stuck one hoof in front of him and power-slid down a freakin cliff like he was wearing horse Wheelies.

What the Hell?

Anyway, welcome to our new dueling platform.

You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s on a very tall thing. I know, in this show? They’re dueling on a tall thing? Whaaaaat?

This is a hilariously weirdly perfectly cylindrical land mass 10/10.

So Rafael’s whole deal is so freakin weird.

Rafael’s a weirdo. I was ready for Alister, since Alister introduced himself in a Maximilian Pegasus suit, but I just wasn’t expecting Rafael to be the weirdEST youknow? Of the three? Like he’s up there with Arcana and the band-saw ankle-slicing machine. Just a really choice human being who makes really good decisions.

God bless this artist’s obsession with edgy cargoes.

Anyways, another fun fact about Rafael is he gets more and more jacked with every single frame it feels--his muscles are like the quality to go fight Cell, but all he does is play cards.

Also he’s obsessed with justifying mass murder on a global scale so...he seems a little bit like an X-men villain in that way, except he’s...just a normal ass dude who got really buffed.

Rafael needs a reason to want to destroy all humanity--that’s really the big dilemma that the writing crew was given, but the way they got there...was a lot.

Lets dive right into it, starts off kind of normal, run of the mill “gotta cleanse the world yada yada” and then just starts somersaulting down a steep hill like in Princess Bride.

First of all, the show decides to reveal to us the entire story via a Rebecca google search, and then, once we’re like WTF? we get to hear it in it’s entirety and it is way weirder the second time.

So um...this Titanic cruise ship.

Yeah. I know. That’s a lot of Princess Peach dresses.

(welcome back, glass of OJ that every child on this show drinks with every meal)

Honestly there is no greater curse in this show than being rich. If you’re a rich dude you are SCREWED. Some force of nature is going to come for you just at any possible moment. You will get abducted....MANY TIMES. You will lose your parents, repeatedly. Your wife will die shortly after marriage. Some asshole will walk up and just remove your eyeball and replace it with a magic golf ball. You will never be the best at cards. Just never be rich in the Yugioh universe. It is better to be dead.

Speaking, of dead--just did a Rebecca-brand google search--do you know how many people fit on an average cruise liner?

It’s more than you think.

Woooooooooooooooooooooo that’s about 3000 people! Just nonchalantly! (and yo, I went mid-range, some cruise liners carry like 6000)

We passed so many 69′s just now!

Now there is some weird issues with this episode where Rebecca was like “The only survivor was Rafael” and then later, Rafael mentions his family is still alive--kinda sounds like the translation shenanigans are back at it, where the English version is desperately trying to keep people from dying, but like, the Japanese version drew a 600 ft tidal wave that ate up this cruise-liner like it was a bathtub toy made of paper.

But sure, maybe some escape boats made it out safely from a catastrophe that is 800 times worse than the Titanic. Sure they did.

PS History Channel got into a weird trend in the 00′s where they used to do these series of rogue wave horror stories--do you remember those? Anyways, one of my friends got super spooked by rogue waves and had it as one of her top ten fears. At the time I was like “lol you’re not gonna get rogue waved on a cruise are you kidding?” But then again, maybe she watched Yugioh and this episode scarred her for life?

Especially since this crazy traumatic experience was followed by three years of being stranded on an island and going COMPLETELY insane. Like not just...partial--Rafeal has absolutely no grip on reality anymore. Like, at all. He’s on another plane from most other Yugioh villains.

It’s like Lord of the Flies but there’s only one person in it. The Lord of the Fly.

This is a kid’s show.

Anyways, on the island, Rafael got hella jacked. So there was that one plus. He did eventually become a very huge person in his adulthood, although he did get a Mokuba haircut for a little while. This honestly says more about Mokuba’s hair routine than anything else.

He also spent some time seeing his lost family members as these three cards that he likes to pray to. Occasionally they fall into the ocean and he has to dry them off. Rafael lived a kind of boring weird life cycling between hallucinations and staring into the ocean.

The show didn’t bother to tell us what Rafael was eating or explain how that outfit lasted 3 years. But, they did describe that after 3 ENTIRE YEARS, Darts decided to just start harassing him.

Which...OK...and then there was this next sequence

I mean this was the only interaction that Rafael had in three years so maybe he forgot that getting drowned by people who harness the power of the ocean isn’t like...good behavior?

Anyways, back in the real world, in the city and wearing his hot topic grunge vest well into his early 30′s, Rafael decided that everyone just...deserves to die. Traffic sucks. Cities sucks. There’s too much crime. Everyone should be dead. It was very strange and sudden twist. You go from having all the money in the world, to no money, and then back to all the money and it’s like “Central heating SUCKS! KILL EVERYONE!”

Then Rafael made this mention of his family that has to be a translation thing.

Those guys have got to be dead. I mean this is Yugioh. There were no survivors. I’ll be very surprised if they pop up next episode, I’ll even dock them off the Death Count if they never died, I am that certain they won’t still be dead in this upcoming arc. They have clearly been replaced with paper cards. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if their souls were somehow inside these particular cards he carries.

I didn’t cap it, but to walk on the island you walk across a glowing oricalchos bridge and it was very goofy.

And then these guys showed up, reminding me again that they are still on this show, because tbh, I completely forgot.

I kinda miss when they were the weirdest people here and I just thought Rafael was another boring guy in handlebar muttonchops.

Anyway, it’s a short update today. I’m a little behind on things in other places, so that’s fine by me. I keep hoping that soon I’ll be back to doing like 2 of these a week. Especially since I recently decided to start blocking twitter and other places I’ve been wasting a little too much time on, maybe then it’ll funnel my efforts to here? We’ll see. Next episode we’ll find out how long all of these guys wearing jackets in the desert are faring.

And here’s a link to read these from the beginning.

[mianmimi]

LONG-ASS POST AHEAD! (Also, spoilers for a novelization no one read lol)

About the DS novelizations... How many are there? lmao I just read one published by Little, Brown and Company, adapted by Alex Irvine and based on the script by Spaihts, Derrickson, and Cargill. And it is nothing like the one you read. I feel ripped off, yours sounds way better!

The novelization I read does cover the entire film, as opposed to the one you read, though it doesn’t do much with it. Yeah, a book for kids, I know, I wasn’t expecting ten pages of Stephen, Mordo, and Wong in the greatest threesome that actually ended racism and homophobia. But it’s still really uninspired, is what I mean.

It’s almost exactly like the film, except in some places that seem devoted to fix certain plotholes (for example: Why did Kaecilius take just the pages he needed and not the whole book? Because he enjoyed the idea of people seeing the book incomplete, as evidence of what he’d done) or add inconsequential details (the weapons the zealots use are called Space Shards). There are parts that I can see why they weren’t on the film itself, likely because they went over the budget (Kaecilius and the zealots fight against several sorcerers + the librarian, they don’t just walk inside and decapitate the poor guy).

Curiously enough, most differences between the final film and the novelization are due to lines that were add-libbed by the actors on set, lines that must have the cusses removed, or lines that must have names of songs and artists removed because I guess they don’t have the rights to Beyoncé’s name lol

  Random vaguely interesting stuff that I remember:

  Kaecilius spent years away from KY. It doesn’t say how many years, just “years.”

  Stephen really fucking hates Nic West. It’s not even that kind of hate filled with sexual tension. It’s sitcom-nemesis levels of “fuck this pathetic waste of sperm, seriously.” It’s hilarious.

  Stephen is genuinely hurt when Christine comments she no longer dates colleagues because of him.

  Christine comes across as someone who has moved on 110% from her relationship with Stephen. She reads as exasperated and extremely disappointed around him.

  Stephen loves to drive, and he drives like he’s on a racetrack... and we all know how that ends.

  Before he passes out, he sees his hands covered in blood.

  He proves the old saying of doctors being the worst patients true. He really dislikes being a patient.

  What Christine’s bringing to Stephen the night of their big fight is a care package. Awww.

  Stephen’s physical therapist sounds like a sweetheart, tbh? Stephen describes him as being a huge optimist that always wants to make his patients see the brighter side of their unfortunate situations.

  Stephen considers apologizing to the physical therapist after the man actually gets him Pangborn’s file. But he doesn’t because, as he says, he’s not the apologizing kind.

  Stephen finds Pangborn by himself. How? Who the fuck knows. And Pangborn doesn’t tell him where Kamar-Taj is, he just gives Stephen the name. Stephen finds mentions of KT on books on mysticism, and these books mention it is located somewhere in Kathmandu.

Stephen spends days wandering in Kathmandu, probably sleeping on the streets, since there’s no mention of a hotel.

  This novelization doesn’t have the scene you mentioned in that other novelization, the one with the boy asking for Stephen’s last dollar, the one that gives him directions to KT and then replies to Stephen that Stephen is the one doing badly and not him. I wanted to read that part :(

  In this novelization, four men attack Stephen, not three like in the film.

  Stephen thought he could talk his way out of the mugging, and when he realized he couldn’t he was willing to give them the watch, then he snapped and thought fuck no I’m no stupid tourist and punched that motherfucker in the face. The watch is not really as important as in the film, or at least it doesn’t feel that way, it’s almost an afterthought.

  Stephen thinks Mordo’s epic smackdown to the muggers is “like something out of a movie.”

  Stephen describes Mordo as a “young man” which is cute, and probably means that Mordo is younger than Chiwetel (Mordo the grown up twink and Stephen the chickenhawk theory confirmed? lmao). He notices Mordo’s forehead scars. Also, he doesn’t recognize Mordo’s accent, which means that it isn’t British, because Stephen would definitely recognize a British accent. Come to think of it, Chiwetel’s accent in the film is not entirely his own, and at times feels like he’s trying to give Mordo’s accent an Eastern European feel. Mordo is a Romanian/Bavarian aristocrat confirmed?

  Mordo is very serious business here, unlike the film. This confirms Chiwetel saw the script and said nah fam how about if he’s sweet and gay

  Stephen thinks of Mordo as “his rescuer” until he finds out his name when TAO says “Thank you, Master Mordo.”

  Stephen actually hears Mordo’s voice in his head when he says that Stephen’s heart-rate is dangerously high.

  In this novelization, Mordo is the one that grabs Stephen and throws him out after TAO says she won’t teach him. But in the film it’s Master Hamir. Seriously, I screencapped the scene, you can briefly see Master Hamir as the only person at the door when Stephen’s thrown out. TAO told Master Hamir to handle the white trash and he fucking handled the white trash. I love that dude lol

  TAO was debating with the sanctum masters about whether she should let Stephen stay, but she remained unconvinced. Mordo convinces her.

  TAO is the one that tells him to go to the library. The library is Stephen’s very first stop after his first real talk with TAO. It’s on his second trip when he meets Wong, which would mean he read all those books in one fucking sitting???

  “Mordo stopped next to him. Strange concentrated harder.”

  He really wants to make a good impression :’)

  Stephen doesn’t know Wong knows he’s been conjuring portals on the library to take the books Wong forbade him to read. He’s genuinely surprised when TAO tells him she knows.

  Mordo is angry during The Sparring Scene™ like, this dude is always angry, no wonder Chiwetel thought nah fam he ain’t angry he just very gay and can’t find a good white top

  ““What’s that?” Strange asked.

  “That’s a question,” Mordo said with the smallest of smiles. A joke, Strange thought. He was starting to like Mordo.”

  Film: Mordo gives Stephen a soft punch to the shoulder. This novelization: Mordo straight up kicks Stephen in the chest like he’s auditioning for a Hong Kong martial arts film.

  Stephen e-mailed Christine twice. He missed her and wanted to apologize to her face-to-face.

  Stephen stops writing that third e-mail to Christine and jogs to the library to learn spells specifically from the Book of Cagliostro because he wanted to see if it was possible to go back in time and fix his mistakes. Stephen, you motherfucker, didn’t you pay attention in Natural Law 101?

  Stephen’s stomach gets the rumblies when he studies :’)

  Magic is shown to be kind of addictive and seductive. Stephen is pretty much seduced by the Eye and the book to continue fucking up after he does the thing with the apple.

  He doesn’t believe (more accurately, doesn’t want to believe) TAO could lie and use the Dark Dimension to live indefinitely. At least not at first.

  Wong is fucking pissed off when he sees Stephen with the Eye. In fact, some of Mordo’s lines in the film are Wong’s in this novelization.

  “Mordo was looking at Strange in a new way. There was anger still, but also some respect… and maybe even a little fear.”

  Wong and Mordo stare at Stephen with pity and disgust when he says he doesn’t want to fight in their mystical war and is gonna bounce thank you ‘cause he just wants to go back to his previous life.

  Stephen learned the Shield of Seraphim spell from Mordo. Mordo was his spellcasting tutor, apparently.

  Stephen actually notices that his fight with Lucien in the astral dimension gave Nic West extra chips and he comments oh what a lucky day for Nic with the bitterness of a man who still thinks Nic West is banging Christine. He isn’t, Stephen, leave the poor man alone lmao

  In the film, Christine is more mildly exasperated/relieved when she’s stitching Stephen up. In this novelization she’s got no time for his shit.

  Stephen thinks she’s a “phenomenal doctor” :’)

  Stephen thinks it feels good to apologize now and feels like a changed man :’)

  Mordo has a sword-like relic that is strapped to his back. A concept that never made it to the film itself, it seems.

  Stephen thinks he isn’t ready to become a master, feels like he’s just begun studying magic. Masters he respects and thinks are better than him? Wong and Mordo and literally no others.

  In the film, Tilda does a wonderful job at portraying TAO just simmering with rage on the inside at Stephen’s fuckery but keeping a cool outside, because that’s exactly what happened. She’s so pissed Stephen actually thinks she will hit him before she changes the subject and leaves to get reinforcements.

  During their you lack imagination/a spine thing, Stephen is ready to take a swing at Mordo (lmao good luck with that) but the zealots interrupt what would have been the world’s shortest fight.

  Mordo cries in shock when Kaecilius stabs TAO ;__;

  Stephen briefly acknowledges that Nic is a good doctor (but only because Christine said so) because fuck Nic West lmao

  ““Mordo won’t see it that way.”

  “Mordo’s soul is rigid and unmovable, forged by the fires of his youth. He needs your flexibility, just as you need his strength. Only together do you stand a chance of stopping Dormammu.”

  She was right. Strange knew it.”

  Stephen knows he needs Mordo. He knows y’all.

  This novelization only mentions that Christine kisses Stephen, but it doesn’t mention where? She still leaves to “her responsibilities” but without saying where is she kissing him it makes more ambiguous. Did they mean for her and Stephen to go back together at first and then said nah fam Christine deserves better in the actual film?

  Stephen calls the Cloak a “good cloak” and that is very important ok

  Wong’s relic is explicitly referred to as the Wand of the Watoomb.

  Mordo is waiting for Stephen in the ruined library of KT, it’s not the NY sanctum. This was sort of clear in the film but still kind of ambiguous. But nope, it’s KT, where the doors to the sanctums are.

  “His last conversation with her rang in his head again. The Ancient One was right. Strange needed Mordo’s strength and single-minded belief in right and wrong; Mordo needed Strange’s flexibility and ability to see different solutions to a problem.” :’)

  ““The bill comes due,” Mordo said. He sounded almost like a preacher, warning of the wages of sin. Strange wondered what had happened in Mordo’s past to harden him this way.

  […]

  “You told me once to fight as if my life depended on it, because one day it might,” Strange reminded him. He could still see Mordo dancing through the air with the Vaulting Boots of Valtorr. “Well, today is that day. I cannot defeat them alone.”

  Mordo looked at him quietly… and nodded. As Strange had known he would. He was a soldier who believed in his cause even when he no longer believed in his leaders.”

  This is all sweet and all but the fact that Stephen refers to Mordo’s fighting as “dancing” just takes my brain to Mordo poledancing for Stephen and I am not ashamed.

  In HK, the spell of the time stone/eye doesn’t work on Kaecilius and zealots for long because the dark dimension is too close and is interrupting the spell’s effectiveness. Nice plothole fix, there.

  It’s unclear whether Wong is dead or not. Is he dead or just under the rubble, not dead but dying and agonizing? Up to you to cry about :(

  Mordo calls after Stephen, and Stephen wishes he could explain what he’s about to do but there’s no time :(

  Kaecilius’s eyes are actually sinking into his skull and more and more of his face is gray and peeling, btw. Would’ve been cool to see that in the film.

  Stephen gets the idea of the Dormammu loop by remembering what Mordo told him about dimensional openings, spatial paradoxes, and time loops. Technically, Mordo can't get mad, Stephen got the idea from him lol

  In this novelization, Kaecilius doesn’t say “He’s gone. Even Strange has left YOU and surrendered to his power.” He says, “He’s gone. Strange has left to surrender to his power.” So... what’s up with that? Is this a confirmation that Mordo is meant to be gay in the film? ‘cause I’ma take it as such.

  Stephen thinks he saw something moving on the edge of the dark dimension, he thinks its living forms, citizens of the dark dimension. Shame we didn't get that in the film, it would've been a perfect way to tease Clea. It'd be sort of like in the comics, with Clea being impressed by the fact that Stephen dared to oppose Dormammu.

  Stephen knows Mordo is hurting badly, because TAO was all he believed in and now he has nothing, but he doesn’t know how to make it hurt less :( (Stephen, you could have used your dick)

  Stephen looks at Wong after Mordo leaves, but neither of them know what to do/say, so they just return to KT. And then they never regretted not talking Mordo out of his misery. Oh wait. Whoops!

  Stephen is seduced by the Eye (or the time stone) again, it’s Cloaky who convinces him to put that shit down on its pedestal before you doom us all you fool.

  “Mordo always had been a bomb waiting to go off, Pangborn thought. He was a black-and-white kind of guy. Either your best friend or your worst enemy.”

  Mordo removes Pangborn’s “essence of power” whatever the fuck that means.

  ““Too many sorcerers.”

  It was an argument he planned to have with Stephen Strange.…

  Soon.”

  Except it’s been like 5 years by now, so Mordo’s definition of “soon” is not really like ours.

  And that’s it. That’s that novelization. Like I said, uninspired as fuck. I wish I could find the one you read :(

__________________________________

Whoa Nonny! Thank you for this! I haven’t gotten my hands on the novelization you read yet, but I’m hoping to get it on kindle. That’s where I got my version. It has the same publisher as yours, but with a different author. It looks like this.

Thanks for writing the post describing the novelization you read Nonny! I appreciate you taking the time and effort for sharing that with us :) Especially when not everyone can get their hands on that info. It’s pretty fascinating to me how much changes during the production of a movie, and honestly I’m pretty happy we got what we did. Especially in terms of Mordo. They significantly softened and warmed him up from the initial plan it seems. And I love that so much *swoons*

[diamond-song42]

Card Shark 69: Sunset Shimmer, Clever Girl

It’s Sunset Shimmer Day, my dudes! And with it I bring a special edition of Card Shark. Today I’m commemorating one of my favorite MLP characters of all time with this Ultra Rare Friend from Absolute Discord! I’m not sorry it had to be this way... let’s take a look at “Sunset Shimmer, Clever Girl!”

This card’s lack of usage in decks always surprised me. On the surface, she’s an entry-level Purple Friend if you have a partially Purple Mane, needing 2 AT and 1 Purple req for 2 Purple power. Once you do that, her ability stays active as long as she’s in play: Whenever your opponent plays a card, you can discard a card of the same type to gain 1 AT. That means if your opponent plays an Event, you discard an Event to gain 1 AT, and so on with Friends, Troublemakers, and Resources. It’s that easy! You don’t need to exhaust, retire, or banish Sunset to get that extra spending money. She’s also not Unique, so a full set of these in play could net you 3 AT per card your opponent plays (though I wouldn’t advise doing this). That’s not to mention the big bunch of cards that benefit from having cards in discard piles, especially now that the Core and Beyond blocks exist, and the significantly fewer cards that can actively shut down a player’s discard pile. Seriously, there’s a lot going for this card! I gotta be honest, when I was researching this Shark I did not expect to see so many factors that benefit this card in the long run. I love the Absolute Discord Ultra Rares as a whole... there has to be one lackluster UR in the set, right? Well, if there is, it isn’t this one. :)

So... where are the downsides? This is a card that’s very easy to control. You discard cards when you want and aren’t forced into it. Your opponent also can’t stop you from doing it unless they frighten, dismiss, or banish Sunset, which is a threat most hard-hitting Friends like this face. Besides these clear threats, I believe part of the lack of usage of this card is due to the ease other AT builders have compared to this one. Common cards that do this like Applejack, Factory Organizer, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Cover to Cover, and Starlight Glimmer, Guidance Counselor all simply have to be exhausted to earn that 1 AT, and they all have abilities to make up for that power loss. AJ is Stubborn and Immediate (meaning exhausting her doesn’t lose that power), Starlight is Immediate, and Cover to Cover has Meticulous 1, which can build onto Princess Twilight Sparkle, Ambassador of Friendship. It’s a bit of a complicated deck and play style, and I admit there are some deck and play styles that just don’t suit players as well as others. But if you can make the cards work in your favor, I highly recommend squeezing this one in alongside your AJs and GlimGlams.

Here are some more cards that can help Sunset get the most out of her purging:

*Maud Pie, Rockin’. If you want to get the most out of a discarding play style, this is the Mane you should use. Maud has +1 power for each card type in your discard pile, which, if you’ve been able to get all those card types into your discard pile, can build up to 7 power. This combo can basically limit your opponent from playing a variety of card types to prevent Maud from building power (but there are ways you can get around this). It sounds easy, but in reality I imagine it is very complex, so try this with caution!

*Sweetie Belle, Cutie Mark Crusader. Here’s another Mane that can combine with other cards to create devastating results. Sweetie can snatch Resources from your discard pile and return them to your hand (presumably after you discard them with Sunset Shimmer). Your opponent plays a Resource, you discard a Resource, you get 1 AT, you get that Resource back at the end of your next turn. I’ve surprisingly seen this Mane pop up in a few competitive decks here and there, and I think it’d be fun to experiment with considering the bulk of Resources you can retrieve with this card. Fetch a Staff of Sacanas, a Varmint Barricade, a Seabreeze’s Flower, a Heart’s Desire...

*Hoity Toity, Discerning Eye. Hoity Toity only says cards entering the discard pile from play will be banished. Cards in the hand are not considered to be in play, so directly discarding a card from your hand won’t get it banished. It’s a weird little loophole that can really hurt your opponent in the long run (if you can escape all those frightening/dismissal/banishment threats). TBH, I feel like simply saying this will either get something banned or introduce a new Leaders and Legends card that shuts this strategy down, so if that happens you can blame me.

*Orchard Blossom, A Whole New You. This Friend is a little pricey on the AT side, but can do a world of good otherwise. When Orchard is played, you discard the top 3 cards of your deck (which is a tricky thing you can work around itself), and then put a Friend from your discard pile into play. Orchard doesn’t say you have to choose a Friend discarded with her effect, so you can pick out a Friend you discard with Sunset Shimmer to get that extra cash to play Orchard. It all adds up in the end! (Does that make any sense whatsoever?)

Thank you for reading a special Sunset Shimmer edition of Card Shark! This Tuesday’s Shark is the 70th Shark, but I’m pushing that Ultra Rare to Shark #71. Why, you ask? Only because I can reveal that I have another exclusive Leaders and Legends card reveal! This Shark will be special, so make sure you come back to see what I have in store! Diamond out!

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

Fantastic Beasts: CoG Thoughts and Observations

*SPOILERS* Press ‘J’ if you want to skip to the next post.

Grindelwald is a badass. I don’t even like him and yet he’s a fucking badass. He was in fucking prison for 6 months and they had to change his guards multiple times because he’s so damn charismatic that he kept luring the Aurors to his side!

He then got out long before he was supposed to be transported and literally took out everyone on the transport team. And he drove the damn carriage and without even looking behind him, directed bolts of lightning to take out some of the Aurors on their brooms.

He did not come to play.

Newt is still my adorable child. He’s so awkward and still feels like he did in the first film which is great. A lot of people whined about how he wasn’t ‘manly enough’. Because Newt shows compassion on the regular and is more soft-spoken and not interested in ‘manly professions’ or some shit, so he doesn’t fit the ridiculous type of masculinity Hollywood shoves down our throats and dudebros can’t relate to him.

“There are no strange creatures, only wicked people,” is a great line and should be used in reference to animals as well since some people still walk around acting like sharks and pitbulls are evil incarnate. I really love Newt.

Leta knows him well enough to know what he’d say in response to her comment. They have an awkward air of camaraderie about them.

Newt stood up to a teacher with that line of his and got a month’s worth of detention. Leta left a dungbomb in his office to get back at him so she could join Newt. Good friends fight the intolerant assholes in charge of your education together.

Theseus gives off this smarmy vibe. I seen people praise him as a good brother but at present just the way he stands annoys me. And it makes me sad that Newt feels like he can’t be himself in order to be rightfully treated like a human being should be treated.

The dude playing Theseus really does resemble Eddie though, so props for getting that right at least. I can believe they’re siblings.

As usual the Ministry is useless. Grindels is literally the reason NYC got fucked up. Him and his messing with Credence. Newt made some mistakes but actually worked to fix them and then saved all their asses in the process. Why is he getting blamed with misinformation? Even in the 20s Magical Britain’s Ministry is full of morons.

There’s a black dude in a high Ministry position. I think there are more POC in this film than all the HP films combined, jfc. ‘bout time!

Also, they never told Newt that Credence is alive and are now using that fact as a way to try and guilt-trip him into joining the Ministry. Cleverish I suppose, but I still don’t like them.

Some dude just referred to Credence as an IT. wtf? Credence is a wizard who, because magical people suck at getting abused children the help they need, ended up a massive mess. He’s not some thing to be treated like shit!

The brothers are arguing and Newt starts spouting off things he’s mostly likely heard from Theseus and his parents. I will admit Theseus seems less annoying now that he’s spoken a bit, but the fact that Newt starts saying, “Okay, right, here we go, selfish, irresponsible-” speaks of somebody who is used to being compared to another and having what others consider to be ‘faults’ shoved in his face and complained about. That sucks a lot.

Okay, Theseus isn’t as annoying as I expected him to be. He does seem to care for Newt and understand how his mind works to an extent. He isn’t offended that Newt doesn’t go to hug him back. Newt is just awkward with physical contact from humans. He’s always seemed to be on the spectrum for me and I’ve only recently found out that others feel the same, which makes his character more interesting imo.

Grindels is in lift shoes! Needs that extra height that badly? 5′10 isn’t short or anything but he really needed that lift to 6′0″? XD

At least Grindels and the Gang are only using AKs(silently btw). I don’t get why everyone always acts like AK is the absolute worst spell in HP when literally it’s just a quick and painless death. There are a bajillion others spells that are actually terrifying.

Newt easily noticing that he’s being followed and fucking with his stalker is the best. People who say Newt is weak are effin stupid.

I would not take the hand of some random glove hovering in my face. Now way, no how. idc who it might belong to, that’s some shady shit. I don’t trust people.

Though we have to admit that the glove forcibly Apparating him, even if it’s a small distance is pretty cool. Dumbles annoys me but as Phineas Nigellus will say in the future, “He’s got style.”

The fact that Newt knew it was Dumbles makes me wonder if Dumbles has done this before.

Dumbles literally just summoned a big ass fog to cover the city! I don’t like him but he keeps impressing me! It’s annoying! Stop it!

“A Phoenix will come to any Dumbledore in desperate need.” Interesting.

A wizard doing sleight of hand. Oi vey. Dumbles is a drama queen to the umpteenth degree.

God he was a cryptic asshat even back then. It’s very easy to believe this dude becomes the Dumbledore we all know. I think people are just bitching because they refuse to see Dumbledore for who he is. Lots of people whining about ‘how manipulative Jude’s Dumbledore is’ not realizing that HP-Dumbles is literally a Master Manipulator.

Baby Nifflers are effin adorable and I love how well Newt knows them!

Newt literally has someone working for him. And he’s been nothing but reassuring in his own way. He especially tells her to avoid the Kelpie because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. I have seen several people whining about him ‘being mean’ to her and I just have to ask, are y’all fucking stupid? He knows his creatures and when he tells her to not go near one alone because of how dangerous it is and she might lose a finger, he’s not being mean. He’s being a responsible employer. I know some of your bosses don’t give a shit about your well being, but Newt is actually a decent bloke. Chill the fuck out.

She’s flirting with him and is really bad at it. But it’s kinda funny at the same time.

Also can we just stop and talk about how talented Newt is that he can create such realistic habitats in such seemingly small and cramped places? He’s really good at magic.

Queenie and Jacob are cute. And to all the people whining about how ‘unnecessary’ he is to the plot, can y’all chill? He is there for a reason. To show how fucked up MACUSA is when it comes to dealing with Muggles. Queenie will literally be imprisoned if they find out she’s with a Muggle. It’s ridiculous and his character is supposed to show how even the American wizards are messed up.

Queenie calling Newt, ‘honey’ is sweet. I swear she’s the Molly of this new group of friends. Seems like she wants to take care of people and just adopts everyone who comes along.

God, even the magical gossip rags are shit even back then. They deliberately made it so it looked as if Newt and Leta were a thing. Though tbh nothing really happened between Newt and Tina in the first film so her being all offended over him possibly marrying another woman is ridiculous.

These weird shots that are supposed to be directly from someone’s point of view are a bit annoying, I must admit. It’s kind of like watching through a somewhat less annoying fish-eye lens, but still annoying anyway.

Newt is very smart. He notices very quickly that Jacob is out of sorts and that he hasn’t been acting normally. He deduces very quickly that something is up and then stops it.

I really like how level-headed Jacob is about everything considering all the crap he’s just thrown into. He cares enough about Queenie to not want her to be imprisoned/possibly killed for breaking a stupid law. I got really emotional at that part because MACUSA is full of idiots.

Jacob is right though, she’s not being sensible. There’s a lot at stake and it isn’t smart for them to marry yet no matter how much they want to. 

Jacob looks at the bird thing and then’s just like, “I got my own problems.” He’s been through enough shit to just not care atm.

And now everyone’s basically going to Paris anyway.

Walking through weird barriers into new places should no longer impress me but it still does!

The magical circus looks kind of awesome but the I’m also not a fan of how circuses are handled. So it’s this cross between amazement and annoyance at the inhumane way animals(in this case creatures) are being handled.

Literally, they are kept locked up in filthy places, I am unhappy! Also Claudia Kim, who portrays Nagini, is so very beautiful and I am so very gay.

Nagini’s hair has that little serpent-like curl at the end as it rests against her neck. It’s such an awesome little detail to throw in there.

Her transformation is really cool btw.

Wow! You treat the creatures like shit and mock them, and get all confused when they attack you? I hope pain was dealt.

What is it with all the bad guys in everything having to incorporate skulls into their dirty business? Is this supposed to be a play on the whole skulls and crossbones thing meaning death?

Though Grindels does make it more interesting than some wiggly tattoo at least.

Dumbles is considered the greatest threat to his cause when he’s practically been doing nothing but playing teacher. That’s some high praise I suppose.

He’s already known as ‘The Great Albus Dumbledore’! What did he do to gain such belief in his prowess? He’s like 46!

Newt’s asking Jacob for advice on what to say when he sees Tina again, and Jacob gives him great advise. “Best not to plan these things.” It’s good. And then Newt’s like, “She has eyes just like a salamander,” and Jacob’s tune changes immediately! XD “Don’t say that!”

Jacob is a good friend. I really like him!

Jacob’s reactions are the greatest because he’s literally like an in-universe representation of the fandom when we saw magic in the movies for the first time!

Do people know that Eddie Redmayne actually licked the ground?

Newt talking about how narrow Tina’s feet are and Jacob just being like, ‘okaaaaaaay’ is the best!

Queenie must be so lost. Hearing all these thoughts and not knowing the language they’re in. And it must be stressful to not only be in an unfamiliar place but also be completely unprepared for everything going on.

That is the perfect moment to trick her. Literally, I don’t get how people can’t see that she’s emotionally vulnerable and a prime target for manipulation right now.

Credence is just a mess. He needs friends. Glad Nagini seems to be filling in that role but honestly he needs a few more. Those who are ‘cursed’ in essence, like he is. So they’ll understand him.

I really love Jacob’s character. He’s just so amazed by magic and all the things it can do. ^-^

Newt! Knows how to tame and capture creatures he’s never even met before! Zuowus are cute imo.

Hedwig’s Theme, I am crying!

Also, Hogwarts brings back my feels.

Very confused about the McGonagall thing unless this involves time-travel which idk how advanced that was at the time.

The fucking Aurors just break into the class and Head dude’s like, “I can go wherever I please. OUT!” And all the kids just standing there and look to Dumbledore for direction. It’s fucking hilarious that they won’t even listen to the dude who could imprison them with whatever excuse he can make up. 

Now, there seems to be students of all ages in this classroom, which makes me wonder if it’s actually a class or Dumbledore has a Dueling Club set up, because he’s literally teaching a Gryffindor how to not make the same mistakes in a duel, right before owning his ass. idc what anyone says, no class of 17/11 year olds will have multiples students the size of first/seventh years in it. People are either really really tall or really really short. So I vote for a Dueling Club happening.

The Gryffindor who just lost the duel gets up in the dude’s face and is like, ‘he’s the best teacher we’ve got’. Props.

Dumbledore is way better than this Travis dude. And I mean by power and presence. I don’t like him any more than I do the Travis dude. Meaning not at all, But you get what I mean. Dumbles is far better for the good guys than this hoity toity asshat who thinks that because he’s Head Auror he can do anything he wants. Him ignoring Dumbledore’s warning is going to get a lot of people killed.

“We were closer than brothers.” How else can anyone take that? What is closer than a familial tie? A romantic one! Duh!

He’s banned from teaching DADA. But he isn’t banned from teaching any other class! Travis should have been more specific! This is probably how Dumbledore ended up teaching Transfiguration during Tom’s time at school since he doesn’t fight Grindels until 1945. I love loopholes!

Are the candles in the Great Hall just lit all the time?

I for one, think that ‘Talk Shit, Get Hit’ is a very wonderful saying to take to heart. So when people were talking shit about Leta, she damn well deserved to tear them a new asshole over it! I applaud her for cursing that gossiping little bitch’s mouth shut in the corridor. She deserved it. I am a blood-thirsty bitch!

Young-Newt literally looked like a young Eddie Redmayne. Superb casting on that part, God damn! He even got all of Eddie’s chosen mannerisms down!

You know, I’m not shocked that Leta’s being harassed by Gryffindors. The whole school treats Slytherins like shit the moment they’re Sorted. Even when they aren’t raised on the magical side and know nothing about Slytherin’s reputation.

I have mentioned how annoying I find the weird fish-eye-like lens view, right? ‘Cause it’s annoying me again.

BTW, I will always firmly believe that Hufflepuff/Slytherin friendships are the strongest. That is a deadly combination right there.

Albus admits that he didn’t love Ariana as much as he should have. Age does somewhat remove that veil from the eyes, doesn’t it?

I really, honestly think that people just decided that anythngn they saw in this movie was going to be horrible and that’s why y’all are being a bunch of whiny bitches over everything. Queenie didn’t just up and decide hey, I’m joining Grindels! She’s honestly at the end of her rope and is getting manipulated. Y’all are fucking ridiculous. Don’t pay for tickets if you intend to find fault in everything the movie has to offer.

The good sis stands up and points her wand at Grindels despite knowing full well she wouldn’t be able to do shit to him. Temerity ftw.

You gotta give Grindels some props. This dude knows how to play on everyone’s soft points. He just sees them and immediately goes in for the kill. Was Voldy like this in the 70s? It makes more sense that people would follow him if he acted like this before ‘dying’ the first time. ‘Cause after his resurrection he wasn’t follow-worthy imo. Too frantic and mad to take seriously.

He literally tells her that she’s an ‘innocent’ and that ‘he doesn’t wish her harm’. He then tells her to leave, which puts her under the impression that she’s safe from him and can make her own choices. This is a prime manipulation tactic because she’ll come back eventually once she remembers that he supposedly gave her a choice and no one else will. She told Jacob he wasn’t giving her a choice, and now Grindels, the supposed bad guy, is doing just that. And he makes it like he understands her suffering in her desire for love without restriction. Even good guys make mistakes. Y’all want to kiss Dumbledore’s ass for every shit thing he did by saying he was trying to save the world, so you can get over Queenie having a lapse of judgment during an emotionally and mentally trying period.

Ah, the Mirror of Erised, in which you see your heart’s greatest desire. And Dumbledore sees him and Grindelwald alone.

Also, I’m just saying that pressing their hands together would have been enough to make the blood mix. Linking their fingers is not necessary at all.

Finally it’s just Grindelwald as he currently is, staring him down with an innocent expression. And Dumbledore’s sad smile is the only thing we see as the scene fades to black.

Newt is so good with creatures, I love him!

Every time he comes out of that case I am reminded of how slight Eddie is.

Newt asks Jacob to get the tweezers from his bag, but after the mishaps in the last film where British and American English were proven to be different to a degree, he goes on to explain what they look like and both Tina and Jacob are like ‘we know what they are, dude’. XD

They disinfect the unconscious dude, Tina gets her info and heads off. And Jacob tries to get her to come back and then looks at Newt and is all, “You didn’t mention salamanders, did you?”. XD

Upon Jacob’s insistence he goes after Tina and tells her she’s different from other Aurors because she’s got Middle Head, in reference to the middle head of a Runespoor which is said to be a Visionary/Dreamer and doesn’t argue like the heads on either side of it. Tina doesn’t want to kill Credence like everyone else which makes her a different kind of Auror.

So that whacky black shroud that covers the city is Grindels’ way of calling his peeps together?

Grindels’ appears before Credence and tells him he ‘wants nothing from him and wants everything for him, that Grindels never had’. He and Dumbles are perfect for each other. Master Manipulators. A certain kind of Dynamic Duo. Grindels even uses the whole ‘my boy’ thing!

The shot is on Jacob. His stomach growls and it pans down and then up. And Flamel is right behind him when it comes back up! Shit like that always gets me in films! The only kind of jumpscare I’m not into. I don’t like my back being exposed so shots like this kill me.

The Flamels don’t keep food in their house. What exactly was the exchange for living so long? Like, I just thought the Stone kept them youthful and stopped their aging, you know? Apparently they have no need of food. Wouldn’t living that long be boring as hell when you can’t even enjoy the basics of life?

“You don’t look a day over 375.” I love Jacob! XD

Seriously though. Nicki looks like he’ll fall apart at any moment. Is living forever like this really worth it?

Nicki “Hasn’t seen action in 200 years,” OMG!

Newt Polyjuices himself into looking like Theseus and calls him ‘an Auror and a hugger’ in this long-suffering but fond tone.

Theseus and Leta are literally right there too!

It was all going so well and then Theseus looks down and isn’t it always like that? The plot must continue on somehow? I’m dying! XD It was a good plan until that happened.

Tina gets him down with a flick of the wand? The War Hero? Really? Good for her!

Newt is such an awkward turtle. I love that they didn’t insist upon Eddie changing up the way he portrays him!

Newt describes Tina’s eyes as “Having and effect in person. Like fire in water, dark water,” and if that isn’t the nicest way to describe dark brown eyes idk what is. HE’S TRYING SO HARD NOT TO SAY THE SALAMANDER LINE! XD

SHE SAID IT INSTEAD! XD How she got that I have no idea. I don’t know shit about salamanders.

And Leta finds them and runs with them. I wonder if Tina is feeling awkward.

He’s known the Zouwu for so little time and it’s already cuddling up to him! The Snow White of fucking wizards, everyone! He is a cinnamon roll and must be kept safe!

Honestly I am proud I kept up with the whole Lestrange family tree business because holy shit it was convoluted!

The Lestranges are so sexist. Only the men get recorded on the family tree, what bullshit. Leta’s father Raped her mother via Imperius and never loved her. Frankly, a child being jealous of a new sibling that he did love shouldn’t be surprising. Kids make mistakes all the time and hating her for making a rash decision she didn’t fully understand at that age, is ridiculous. She didn’t even mean to get him killed. It’s not like she’s some super horrible person for that.

Newt gets this! He literally gets it! And she tells him “You’ve never met a monster you couldn’t love”. I hurt. She’s not a monster, she’s a fucking human being who made a grave mistake when she was like 7 and it haunted her for the rest of her life.

Nagini doesn’t trust Purebloods because, “They kill the likes of us for sport”. Her life must have sucked.

And here’s where is all leads up to. The literal Crimes of Grindelwald. And not in the sense of law-breaking, although there has been a lot of that. The title means in reference to an act of of great offense which isn’t illegal but still considered morally reprehensible, against another person or persons. He’s spent this whole time manipulating the hell out of everyone and doing things both illegal and simply sinful. Lying isn’t against the law, but the way he’s doing it is wrong, and it helps him commit his ‘crimes’.

Also what the hell is with evil people and graveyards/tombs? Is this a requirement in joining the dark side?

Grindels finds muggles “Not disposable but of a different disposition.” He’s really workin’ it because he knows the kinds of people who showed up to this little speech thing of his and he’s getting all of them at once.

He’s literally showing them a vision of what will happen in WWII with the bombs in order to scare them into joining his side. It’s what will ‘rise up’ from the muggles, and Jacob understands it instantly. Scare tactics ftw! He has a point in a sense. Could we really say that the leading governments of our world wouldn’t try to enslave magicals in order to have the most power over all other countries?

The Aurors are called down to face the crowd and Grindels knows just what to say to stir up feelings of distrust. Though they’re cops so it’s not shocking. They’re all power-hungry and with the experience a lot of the people have with Aurors, plus Grindels sweet-talking them all, of course some chick just up and moves against them and get murdered on the spot. Not even detained. Cops kill first and ask questions later, not shocking magic ones do the same.

Auror used an AK without hesitation. But you know, everyone says that is the most evil spell in HP, right? And no one, not even Aurors, should use it?

And as expected, it all plays in Grindels’ plans. I’m not shocked. “Spread the word. It is not we who are violent.” Right after an Auror just murdered someone. Talk about playing on the emotions.

The fire Grindels’ conjures is blue, compared to normal fire. Which means it’s hotter. Voldy’s fire was also blue. Is this just because they’re magically powerful or are both Dark Lords?

Grindelwald uses magic like he’s a conductor. It’s interesting because everyone else but Voldy has only ever had a death grip on their wands. Voldy holds his wand more gracefully and loosely.

Nagini does not side with Grindelwald. And she has a point. He knows what Credence is, not who he is.

Okay, so a lot of people died in the blue fire, but Newt was able to hold the fire off from consuming him several times. My child is so powerful! He’s just never violent with it! *APPLAUSE*

Queenie’s desperation makes me so sad. She and Jacob love each other but go about it very differently.

I can’t tell if Leta was saying ILY to Newt or Theseus. Maybe to both but with different meanings? Romantic Love isn’t the only kind of love out there. One is her long-time friend whom she could have romantic feelings for if their bond is deep enough. The other is her fiance though her bond with him doesn’t seem that deep. Confusing and shot deliberately like that to confuse us too.

She tries to kill Grindels knowing it won’t work. I like Leta. I don’t get why people don’t like her.

He’s literally using his fancy Fiendfyre to destroy Paris. This dude aims big!

Flamel is a genius and a bunch of people, most who aren’t trained Aurors, just had to put out some powerful magic that would have destroyed a whole city.

Newts hugs Theseus!

The Niffler lives and got the Blood Pact thing from Grindels! How did he not notice it?

Queenie’s skills are very useful to Grindels in how to deal with Credence without scaring him off. He knew what he was doing in manipulating her to his side.

Grindels and Dumbles agreed not to fight one another. Wonder what would happen if they turned their wands on each other with intent to do harm. Pain? Or maybe... their spells being directed elsewhere by some unseen force and hitting nearby things(*cough* Ariana *cough*)? 

So here’s where I am confused but I have many thoughts. A.) Percival Dumbledore died some time after 1890 but no date is given. He was in Azkaban during the time and immoral things happen in prison. He could be the father. B.) Kendra Dumbledore died in 1899 and Credence was born ‘circa’ 1901(meaning around that time frame but no specific details are known) so she could have birthed him. Albus wouldn’t know since he wasn’t very present at home and was distant to his siblings. Kendra isn’t actually a Dumbledore but she had the name, Credence doesn’t know the details, and Grindels could have sent the Phoenix in some way. C.) Grindels is just lying altogether but he’s really believable. D.) He used the word ‘brother’ to mean family, like how he addressed the people as his ‘brothers and sisters’. His fellow magical people. So perhaps he meant as in like Credence’s kin. So he could be a child of Aberforth who would be old enough to sire a child(teens do it all the time), or of their Aunt Honoria who could have had a kid for all people know.

Dumbles is the one to tell us all about the Phoenix thing first. Grindels strengthens that fact later on, making it not just some children’s tale. It’s all left to us to wonder if he’s lying about Credence or not.

I observed a lot.

So for the cinematography, it was really well done save for the fish-eye lens crap. I really didn’t like that. But I am a sucker for panning from above. Also clever use of the camera while certain people speak. Angles can do wonders to tell a story.

I thought the plot was very easy to follow. I’ve seen people whine about it not making sense but literally, in stories about multiple people, the POV shifts. A lot. In order to understand why everyone is doing what they are doing, you need to know what is going on from their ends. So yeah, why is everybody just randomly in France of all places? Paying attention lets you find out!

I do have one really big annoyance and it’s more for it taking this long instead of it happening at all. In the original HP films there really aren’t a lot of non-white actors portraying characters, even if they’re just extras to fill in for other students and such. In this film there were extras of all kinds of nationalities. I saw a lot of Black and Asian folks just filling up the background. And I’m glad the universe now seems more realistic and diverse. It’s just annoying that the most diverse of all the films in this fictional world, is the newest one and kinda makes the others a bit disappointing since the 20s were less progressive than the 90s.

My initial opinions on certain characters did change. Naturally I hate Dumbledore as a character no matter what but he’s more interesting than before. And I don’t really like Grindels all that much but he is a badass and watching him is interesting. Theseus and Leta grew on me with such little time. I cried for both of them. I’m disappointed but not shocked or angry at Queenie’s actions. I cried for her too. Flamel creeps me out still. I like Nagini. She’s been through some tough shit and is mildly distrustful of everyone. And now she’s away from possibly her only friend(I got not romance vibes between she and Credence btw).

I liked all the story-telling. There were a lot of creatures. A lot of talking. A decent amount of action. And humor spread out here and there for some levity.

I thought it was a fine film. It was good. I’d re-watch it with the first without hesitation. I had moments where I laughed, moments where I cried, and moments where I wasn’t sure what I was feeling at all.

Grade: A

[robo-cryptid]

So, robo, would you be so kind as to give us your thoughts about all the top/bottom data you collected?

I MEAN. yeah ok. Thank you for enabling my inability to shut the hell up, blooming. This got long and, as always, rambly, but sure, here are some stray thoughts I had about the research itself and the data and the discourse and the way we write porn in general. Under the cut, though, so y’all don’t hate me.

About the Process

This is not the most I’ve entertained myself in this fandom, but it’s probably in the top five, I’m gonna be real. I’ve always wanted an opportunity to turn the shit I’ve learned in my homophobic hellhole of an academic institution into something absurd, and looking at how folks are writing mlm sex felt like exactly the right way to embrace that and also satisfy my own curiosity and also just laugh like a 12-year-old over coding sex acts. 

Also, I didn’t stick around the homophobic hellhole for years because I hate research so like. It was fun, because I’m a sick individual.

About the Data

Y’know, I’m really not a huge numbers person. I actually kind of hate them; I think they can be as misleading as they are helpful, and a lot of times quantitative methods can be really “flattening” and sometimes incredibly dehumanizing (and further marginalize marginalized people by rendering them invisible or insignificant as “outliers”). But like, sometimes numbers make things more “real” to people, and if that’s helpful in some way – provided we all recognize that numbers are not the whole story, like, ever – I’ll save the epistemological battles for another day.

The trend graph is kind of misleading, actually, because it’s done with percentages and I didn’t think this through until later. Some months there are like 20+ explicit fics, but other months there are only 5 or so. Which means that while something like 0 Vers fics in a 20+ month may say a lot, 0 Vers fics in an only-5 month may say very little. But they’re both still 0%, and that can be a bit of a distortion. 

Also it’s just a really small sample, so breaking it out further by month (although visually still telling an interesting story, which was my goal in sharing it) really should be taken with a grain of salt. The absolute numbers are so tiny; “three out of every four!” means something different when there are only four to begin with, lol. Distortion everywhere!

This kinda thing would be way more interesting for a huge mlm pairing in a huge fandom (like… Dr//arry or St//erek or De//stiel or Jo//hnlock levels of huge), because the trends would be a lot more meaningful. Unfortunately there, given big media products’ centering of white dudes and fandom’s tendency to latch onto those white bodies, the race analysis becomes mostly just “there aren’t enough/any POC and that’s a problem,” and the whole convo just kinda flatlines there, because there isn’t much more to say when there’s not better representation. 

Although this doesn’t mean there’s no racialization. You can kinda predict with not-unreasonable accuracy who’s gonna bottom in Dr//arry fic based on whether the author leans harder into Harry being short with pretty green eyes versus being “naturally athletic” and mysteriously tan/“swarthy” for a pasty British dude. (There are actually racebent Harrys out there too, but that’s a different phenomenon. I’m talking about the way your default white dude Harry gets emphasized as “darker” than Draco more often when he tops.)

About the Top/Bottom Analysis

I’m not gonna try to position myself as an authority on tops and bottoms here, tbh. I guess I’ve kind of made myself an authority on the data though, since I’m the one who had to look at all of this. Anyway, folks pointing out that we have baggage around penetration that often pigeonholes the characters into very hetero gender roles/expectations are not wrong, and neither are they wrong that this carries some extra baggage when we’re talking about an Asian man, when Western stereotypes treat Asian men as “less man” than other men. (We could also talk about “feminizing” but the more I see that word the more I think it might be the wrong one; I’m still letting this idea bake, though, because I’m not sure what language does work well.)

Anyway, that’s a big ol’ mess of sexual identity, gender expression, and race stuff that’s just. No one person is going to be able to untangle it all alone. I will say I’d be interested in seeing other people take this data and look at the following:

I’d bet there’s not-insignificant overlap between Hanzo bottoming and Hanzo being described with words like “porcelain skin” and “silk hair” and “lithe body” – all of which hit on that less-manning/Orientalism nexus. None of these words individually are in and of themselves some kind of evil? But they add up (and I’d also argue they are/may be pretty inaccurate, but I’m trying not to make anyone feel shitty, just take a “moving forward, can it be better” stance).

How much actual digital ink is spilled for bottom Hanzo versus bottom McCree. With one-shots, there’s usually the single scene (which is how you get authors who do write them vers also getting sorted into writing exclusively-bottom Hanzo or McCree fics), but with longer ones there’s more room to suggest or write outright switching, and it’d be interesting to see a comparison by length of fic, or word count for each scene, and so on.

How bottoming gets portrayed – @divine–poison is already taking a look at this, but I wouldn’t discourage anyone else from trying. It’s not always about “who bottoms more?” That’s part of the story, but like, if Hanzo’s topping in a different fic and there’s still this sort of “the person topping is the ‘real man’ here” vibe, that isn’t magically fixing anything. Also, obviously, there are plenty of fics that write either of them bottoming but being very active agents in the whole thing, if not explicitly “in control,” so it’s more complicated than that. This is why I called the data a resource/conversation starter, not the whole thing.

I feel like it’s really easy to look at this data and say, well, the clear solution is more bottom McCree and/or more vers fics, and I don’t think that impulse is misguided exactly (hell yeah more bottom McCree, more vers, and while we’re at it, more non-penetrative sex), but I do think it risks oversimplifying? Because we’re also in a fandom with a history of portraying Hanzo as kinda-to-outright abusive, and coupling that with having him do the penetrating probably doesn’t solve problems. (There’s a reason that unhealthy sex scene in TSatS had Hanzo bottoming; like yeah, I am aware of the “Hanzo bottoms more” phenomenon, but also, like hell was I gonna have him be aggressive and angry and then associate that with penetration. yikes. There was the choice to opt out entirely, but I also saw kind of. an opportunity to write that kinda messy, unhealthy, angry sex and deliberately subvert a bunch of things. I’m not claiming to have done it perfectly, but I did give it a lot of thought and personal angst, lol. Layers, man.)

Anyway, my point is that I don’t think “more bottom Hanzo” is the whole picture, so the “more bottom McCree and more vers stuff” are only partial solutions. A lot of it is the way we think about sex and penetration altogether, and that doesn’t go away just by flipping the roles. I think this data also obscures the way that authors can be aware of tropes and play with them deliberately; sometimes you have to write the thing in order to subvert the thing. NTIC Hanzo is 100% the product of throwing a bunch of tropes about him into a blender and then fucking with McCree/the audience/kinda reflecting on my own writing, and he at least starts the fic bottoming; krebkrebkreb’s Ache has some great world-building, gender-and-sexuality commentary, race/nationality commentary and “this is why we need sex ed” (lolol), but in order to get there, it starts with omega-Hanzo in a dress; Interrobang writes some of the most enthusiastic consent, sex-positive, everyone-communicates-and-has-a-ton-of-agency-here smut in this fandom, and yes, some of (not all of) their fics got counted as “exclusively bottom Hanzo” and they’ve also written lots of ABO stuff… that subverts the usual/expected tropes over and over and over. I don’t think individual examples necessarily negate overall trends, but I do think they say “it’s more complicated than just that.” 

So I guess this is the place where I reiterate my hope that this conversation moves forward with nuance and doesn’t just fall on “well, the numbers said X so the solution must be Y.” I worry that way lies the sort of “Only One Way”-ing that I’m always cautious of.

Discoursing about the Discourse

I’ve said multiple times I find this kind of discourse exhausting, and it’s because we do so often get lost in the weeds of issues like “feminization” versus “femme dudes are valid, tho,” or sometimes people assert that like, “no, X bottom character must be a top because he loves to be in control” which often pings my YIKES meter pretty hard. (RIP all the in-control bottoms and also our analysis of toxic masculinity, I guess.) I do think some of that comes from the whole “we use top/bottom language differently” issue, in that some folks are describing “who penetrates” and others are describing an approach to sex, not necessarily specific sex acts (or both at once!). But some of it’s just a weirdass recreation of “real men are in control of themselves and other people at all times, and that’s why the real man’s doing the penetrating” issue. 

The discourse also sometimes veers way too close to shaming women for liking things for my tastes, tbh. We know lots of the people writing mlm fic are not mlm themselves, and there are definitely issues that arise there with the whole “straight women fetishizing gay men” thing. Like, hell yes, I do remember the LiveJournal days of women asking “why are conservatives so oppressed in fandom???” and taking explicit political stances against same-sex marriage while getting off to their mlm smut. (And that hasn’t gone away entirely, but it has transformed into something a bit more nebulous and harder to succinctly describe these days.) 

But there’s also this? Fandoms are often spaces for people, including women people!!!, to safely explore sexual desires and fantasies; for some people, this is the only or primary space they’ve got for that. It’s like the 50 Shades of Grey problem – the content is problematic and a poor depiction of BDSM and so on, but those convos so often quickly devolve into “lol, sad women reading their sad erotica, lol, they must be taking it completely literally and have no idea how to separate fiction from reality, lol, how dare they experience sexual desire and learn new things about themselves, lol, and they’re probably too stupid to look up this stuff and discover for themselves that it was a poor depiction but still appreciate that they opened that door, lol.” Anyway, it’s just super easy for this discourse in mlm-pairing fandom to become very shamey very quickly or to slide rapidly from “protect actual mlm from fetishization and homophobia” to “protect our fictional sexy men at the expense of real women and other not-cisdudes,” or for the first to become a smokescreen for the second. It’s Not Great and I feel perpetually on edge about it. 

There’s real issues there but there’s also some tension for me and I think we can do better at balancing and moderating the way we talk about it re: not fetishizing IRL mlm but also not being assholes to women and other folks about their sexual desires. I have no evidence for this particular claim, but I’d bet money this is why a lot of people get really defensive about the discourse, too: it sounds too much like policing their sexual desires in ways they are already intimately familiar with being policed.

I could say more, I’m sure, because I’m a mouthy weirdo, but like. This is quite enough discoursing probably, lolol. 

[drnucleus]

I don’t know what to expect from IX. I’m really hoping it is endgame and they don’t just drop the romance angle, but it’s also kind of what I’m expecting? Like I don’t expect follow-through from it, even though I would love it if it happened

Hi Nonnie, 

I totally get it. I understand that completely. Do I think it’s endgame? Yes. 

However am I going into IX with any expectations? NOPE. I’m a fandom granny. No seriously I have lived through so many fandoms that I simply go in with no expectations. That way if what I think might happen if even in some small way happens then I will be super happy and overjoyed and if it doesn’t I am usually able to divorce myself from my disappointment and respect the creator’s vision.

As a writer and someone who was professionally trained to do so, I know that creators have a vision. They have an endgame in mind. And they drop breadcrumbs about it from the beginning and if you’re clever enough to see them you usually can figure out any story. 

This is why I ruin police procedurals for my mom. My dad and I made a game of it watching Law and Order as a kid growing up (and I mean OG Law and Order with Det. Lenny Briscoe). Whomever could figure out who committed the murder first won. We used to keep a running tally. My dad was really good at it, but when I got really into reading and started reading mystery novels and horror novels and other stories that rely heavily on mystery boxes I started getting better at it. We also watched Law and Order because my two actor 2nd cousins have been guest stars as defense lawyers idk how many times but that’s neither here nor there.

And tbh ESB’s twist of Vader as Luke’s father came as such a shock because IDK if even Lucas really knew he was going to do it until he did it. Luckily the story was vague enough in ANH that a throw away line about certain points of view was enough to close what could have been a crippling plot hole. 

My mom is an OG Star wars fan. Mostly bc she loves the pew pew and the lightsaber battles, and secondly because Harrison Ford is a very handsome and talented man (tbh my first crush was Han Solo and second was Indy).

My mom was there when everyone was UP IN ARMS about Leia and Luke kissing. And how that was SOOOOOO going to be endgame. Which originally Lucas had intended that Leia would be a love interest for Luke and that the twin sister would be revealed in 7, 8 and 9 someday. However during writing ROTJ and filming ESB he decided to really hone in on Leia and Han’s chemistry (granted Irving was directing then) but he made the narrative choice to make Leia the sister and Han her love interest. It simultaneously elevated Leia’s narrative importance and made her the leading lady of her own story on equal footing to her equally powerful twin brother instead of just being Luke’s sidekick love interest.

Even when I was a KID and I saw ESB it always kind of made me laugh that Leia’s response to Han goading her about liking him was to smack lips with the only other humanoid male in the room just to prove how NOT smitten she was with Han. (AND if that doesn’t make her simultaneously Padme and Anakin’s child I don’t know what will convince you otherwise).

TPM came out when was was 13 and a half which will be 20 yrs ago next May - HOLY FUCK. And I’ve been an avid reader since I could read so I had gobbled up countless numbers of books by then. I was in the theater with my parents and legit held my hand up over Ian’s eyes and gasped and tugged on my mom’s sleeve. 

“Mom that’s THE EMPEROR” and she was like “No honey he’s just a senator who’s now chancellor of the republic”

And this was still in the age of Dial-up internet and no IMDB. So I did my own digging and found our VHS copies of the OT and looked at the cast listing at the end of the movie. And saw the same name playing the Emperor as the man playing Senator-Chancellor Sheev Palpatine. Now the movies in the OT never actually say the Emperor’s real name. He’s just the shadowy, scary Emperor with lightning bolts shooting out of his hands. So like we knew in TPM that Palpy was going to become the emperor. Now say what you will about the Prequels but Lucas did do a fair bit of narrative arc planning with it than what he threw together with the OT. 

He knew we had to meet Anakin as a boy, see him as a caring and compassionate individual who is uniquely gifted in the Force. And that had circumstances been different he would have probably been the paragon force sensitive and balanced the force. However due to realistic flaws of all characters, good and bad alike, including flaws within Anakin’s character himself he falls prey to the darkside and it’s temptations and then becomes the very thing he feared.

Tbh next to TLJ, ROTS is right up there with ESB as my favorite in the saga. Sure the dialogue is wooden and clunky. Lucas is not a dialogue director. He’s a vision director. He has a scene in his mind, and he wants it played like that. Which is fine. He also came from a school of thought in the 1970s where sci-fi was pure camp and overdramatic. His style never really changed. The OT is so lauded because he didn’t direct all of them. He had other people come in and he had script doctoring and his first wife in the editing room taking his vision and turning it into a cohesive narrative. We seem to forget that Lucas was a young dude right out of film school when he made ANH. He barely knew how to string a narrative together and the early cuts of ANH were terrible and nowhere near what people saw in the theater. Don’t believe me? Google “how star wars was saved in the editing room” it’s a remarkable story about how Lucas’s first wife and principal editor basically made ANH into an actual story instead of a mish mash of ideas that it was before. The prequels had Lucas at the helm for all three. Yes by then he had gotten a hold of narratively what he wanted to convey, but he still didn’t always convey it in the most efficient ways.

But there are moments in the prequels that I’m stunned by their perfection. “This is how liberty dies? With thunderous applause.” as Padme watches in horror as the Republic becomes an empire before her eyes. It’s perfect to convey the horror she feels and her disgust at what the thing she’s fought for so long to just crumble and slip away. 

Or the entirety of the Anakin v. Obi Wan Mustafar battle. Visually STUNNING, and heartbreaking. You can feel how much neither of them want to fight the other but how they both are so entrenched in their now opposite ideologies that they know they have to fight. 

I’ve also been a fan of JJ’s for a long time. 

Sure he loves mystery boxes but he usually makes the answer SO obvious that most people ignore it. 

Like on Lost which I never actually watched save for maybe a few episodes, it’s pretty clear that something metaphysical is going on in that island with the crash. And there are clues dating back to the pilot as to what happened in the finale. 

In TFA we’re introduced to Rey. We’re given a mystery box of who is Rey and why is she important and who is her family. But we’re also given the answer. She’s no one. And that’s why she’s important. She is no one. She doesn’t need to have this huge galactic sized legacy on her shoulders to be important, to be special. SHE IS NO ONE. And that’s why the Force chose her as its vessel. 

Reason why is that she’s narratively the perfect foil for her counterpart Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. He has all that legacy and weight on his shoulders. They’re equals in power in strength, in light and darkness. They are complete equals. And TFA was all about establishing that fact. Now TLJ was all about deepening that initial connection. To get them both to scratch beneath the surface of one another, and get under one another’s skin. In doing so Ben learned that Rey just wants to belong, to be loved and have a place in the galaxy. And Rey, she learned that Ben is just as lonely, but has rejected his birthright because he felt rejected and abandoned by those who should have unconditionally loved and protected him from Snoke (which granted OT Trio tried but they def didn’t have great parenting examples either sooooo).

Now as an adult Ben is bitter, full of resentment and rage because the people he should have been able to count on fucked up royally. And I love that. I resonate with it because of my own experiences as an abuse survivor too. But even more so because it makes Han, Leia and Luke less perfect legends and more human. It makes them real and relatable that they tried to do everything right by their kiddo but ended up fucking him up.  Luke’s betrayal itself was the least shocking part of TLJ tbh. Like does no one remember him going ABSOLUTELY banana balls insane when Vader threatened Leia in ROTJ?

That kind of Skywalker level extra doesn’t just go away with age. 

And yeah Ben needed someone in the fam to be like “so kid, um, lets talk about this.” No one in the OT Trio is good at talking about their feelings. Luke tries to control his by just not dealing with it - the kind of thing you’d expect from a “pray the depression away” type. Leia ignores it and bottles that shit until it comes out as thinly veiled anger. And Han is the most ridiculous of the three with his constant hot and cold routine throughout ESB.

The ST is yes about the failures of the OT trio, the failures of the Jedi and the Sith. But it’s also a story about the force and it’s two chosen vessels. A girl from nowhere and the last scion of the Skywalker line. The fact that their connections in TLJ are coded as sexual awakenings is very indicative of where I think this is all going to go. The Force is basically the Skywalker Patriarch if we’re going on the whole immaculate conception with Shmi. And Ben fell from his path for years now thanks to the other Skywalkers falling from the path and inadvertently pushing him down the rabbit hole with Snoke, manipulating everything like a master of puppets. 

JJ himself even said he was upset that he didn’t get to direct TLJ because he loved Rian’s script so much. 

I have faith we’re going to get a hell of a finish to the 9 film Skywalker saga. With Reylo as endgame or not I think we’re going to get something truly satisfying that links all 9 movies together in a way that will have meta writers writing for years to come about all the parallels and thematic Leitmotifs within the narrative as a whole that encompasses technically 4 generations of Skywalkers (Shmi, Anakin, Luke/Leia, and Ben).

When Ben killed Han in TFA and you get that focused in shot of Adam’s face as the weight of what he just did HITS him and his eyes widen and his lips part, you see the exact moment he shatters his soul realizing that he just seriously fucked up. I leaned over to my best friend that night in the midnight showing and said “do you smell redemption arc?” and I’ve been on that train from day one. 

If he were truly irredeemable he wouldn’t have split his spirit to the bone by killing his father. He wouldn’t have cared to try to convince Rey to be her teacher in the middle of their battle. He wouldn’t care that Rey stares at him like she did that night and call him a monster. A real monster wouldn’t care at being called one. And is so very shook and pained by that moniker with his lower lip quiver and his eyes red rimmed. If he were truly irredeemable he wouldn’t have killed his master just to save the girl, he’d have just usurped power and shrugged her off instead of trying to convince her to stay with him. He wouldn’t have addressed her fear and insecurity of being nothing and no one while shaking his head and saying “but not to me”. If he were truly a monster he would have pulled the damn trigger when his had the bridge of the Raddus in his sights but couldn’t because he felt his mother’s love for him even after everything he’s done.

Has he done terrible things? YES. He definitely has. But he has the equal potential for amazing things as much as he has for the terrible things he’s done. And I for one will be happy to see him begin to even slightly embrace that potential by the end of ep 9. Reylo or no Reylo I’m sure I’m going to be happy with ep 9. There’s no way Adam and so many other brilliant actors would have signed on without at least knowing where this is all gonna go. Adam himself was hesitant to take on the burden of SW but was convinced to do so because of the complexity of Ben’s character. That to me says we’re getting something amazing in ep9. And I can’t wait.

[moonmothmama]

ok. so. The Princess Bride. i read it yesterday.

and right up front, before even a review, i’m gonna go ahead and list everything objectionable in the book that i can recall. please don’t take the length of the bullet pointed items to follow as an indication that the book was wildly problematic and offended me at every turn; it wasn’t and it didn’t. but there were some things that made me go: 😑 or 😒, and here it all is, presented with context, before anything else, because to be honest, i didn’t expect any of it. the film is relatively spotless, which is pretty rare for that era, and if any of you are thinking of reading it, you could do with being more prepared for this than i was.

first off, racism. two passing remarks. one isn’t even in the story proper; it’s in the first whole long intro bit from the author/narrator. that takes some explanation, i suppose: like in the film, the story is presented as a book having been written by “S. Morganstern,” except instead of a grandfather reading to his sick grandson, the narrator is interjecting with notes on the original text that he has abridged. the beginning is a whole long shpiel that, in my opinion, could have been significantly pared down with absolutely zero loss to the story (which! hey! the film did perfectly! go figure!). anyway, the first racist remark is an absolutely tasteless line in which the narrator pisses and moans about his fat son, making a crack about “painting him yellow” and making him a sumo wrestler. y i k e. the other passing remark is from Miracle Max (really, truly, the film version of this scene is miles better than the book version, but contains an important plot detail, so you should prob still read it, but i’ll give you the lowdown if you wanna skip). he refers to Iñigo as a sp*ck (rather bafflingly, i might add, bc Iñigo is a Spanish man... from Spain... not a Hispanic or Latino man from Latin America. so. i mean i’m certainly not an expert on slurs but... i have never in my life heard that term in reference to a person from Spain, and am virtually certain it was invented to refer to ppl from the americas) and in the same breath uses an objectionable term for a Polish person. sooo... again: y i k e. what gets me is that... these could’ve just been edited out? why weren’t they? i mean i know why but

fat shaming! see above. though to be honest, any true negativity about fatness is restricted to the author/narrator’s interjections; there are a few minor fat characters in the story and those depictions, without being too long-winded or spoilery, didn’t offend me (fyi: i’m fat). if you want the details, please feel free to message me about it.

if we can go back to the whole long beginning shpiel from the author/narrator, it’s just... eh. he comes off as kind of a jackass, tbh. not even halfway through it i found myself more than a little impatient for the story to begin, and that could be at least partly because the film spoiled me with a lovely, not annoying, not problematic scene of Granddad Columbo reading to Baby Fred Savage where no one made any racist remarks or ragged on fat kids. the basic gist, if you want to skip it, is that the author, as a kid, had this book read to HIM by his father, who was a Florinese immigrant, and nearly illiterate in English, but still labored over reading the English translation to his American-born son, who adored the book and requested it read to him dozens and dozens of times over the years, refusing to read it himself (though he read plenty of other books). as an adult, he buys his son the book, and is crushed when the son doesn’t like it. he then reads it for the first time, and realizes his father skipped over huge, boring blocks of text. he read his son only The Good Parts. so he decides to edit that shit out himself and release the abridged version he loves so much. add into that some complaining about his wife and some extra blah blah, and that’s pretty much it.

you remember the scene in the movie where The Man In Black/Westley almost slaps Buttercup for what he believes is lying? in the book he actually slaps her. not that his actions seem supported or endorsed by the text, but still, there you are. Buttercup does push him off a cliff soon after, though, so. i wouldn’t call that ‘even’ exactly but, shrug

Vizzini, in the book, has a fucky leg and his back isn’t quite straight, and he’s referred to repeatedly as a “humpback” or “hunchback” which needless to say is Not Kosher

that, as i recall, is it. i hope i’m not forgetting anything. now onto content/trigger warnings:

alcoholism. this shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve seen the movie: Iñigo has some, shall we say, issues

Fezzik’s parents were... terrible. CPS would be all over them. spoiler: basically they emotionally blackmailed their son into fighting professionally, which they knew he hated, by telling him they’d abandon him if he didn’t

Buttercup has some kinda messed up (read: unsettling but in no way graphic) nightmares after leaving Westley when they’re found by Prince Humperdinck at the Fire Swamp, mostly involving bearing children to the Prince who she once again is set to marry

the slurs and whatnot i mentioned above

violence, obviously. nothing worse than the film as i recall.

that’s it i think. 

okay. all that said. did i enjoy the book? yes i did. a lot.

now, you might be thinking: jesus, Kathleen, after all the shit you just listed? and to this i reply: listen. there is no Unproblematic Media, so you either enjoy some things that are flawed, or you enjoy nothing at all. there is plenty of objectionable shit in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit! fucking plenty! and i love those books! and so do plenty of other people! in my own humble opinion, the good story is worth the shitty bits, because the shitty bits aren’t like, fundamental to the plotline. the story isn’t built on offensive humor or nasty, bigoted attitudes. and they’re also not the most egregious examples of Objectionable Content i’ve come across- not by a longshot. there are levels to offense. there are tiers of bullshit. this is on a far lower tier than a whole host of other things i could mention. but if any of this stuff i’ve listed crosses a line for you, i totally understand and respect that. that’s why i’ve bothered to list it at all. imo, how you respond to objectionable content is important: you don’t ignore it or excuse it, you acknowledge and criticize it. and if you still enjoy whatever the thing is, you allow yourself to enjoy it, without getting hissy or defensive with people for whom the objectionable content ruined the book/movie/whatever. 

there you go, there’s my disclaimer for having enjoyed the book. your mileage may vary.

okay. so. review time.

Buttercup is a far more interesting character in the book than the movie, for which the movie can’t be faulted all that much, because you can’t easily translate a character’s inner monologue/unspoken thoughts to the screen, especially not with the time limit that comes with the medium of film. but watching her struggle with her feelings and life choices (and... lack thereof, since her choice is between marrying the prince and being put to death, which isn’t much of a choice, even if she tries to reason it out later by telling herself she COULD have said no... and initially did) creates far more of a bond between her and the reader in the book than, personally, i felt watching the movie. also she has a great line after Westley calls her beautiful at their reunion- she says something like, ‘everyone’s always calling me beautiful, i have a mind too, why don’t you talk about that’

Both Westley and Buttercup are immature, naive, and foolish in the beginning, and if Westley strikes you as Extra Dickish, a) rewatch the film! he did act like a bit of a dick, there, didn’t he? b) remember that in the story he’s a young man between the ages of eighteen and twenty five, which in my considerable experience is the age at which young men are generally at their peak of Asshole. sorry dudes

and not that Buttercup herself is a complete peach! she deals very poorly with her emotions in general and acts kinda shitty herself once or twice. i won’t say too much lest i spoil everything that’s different between the film and the book.

Prince Humperdinck is also a more three dimensional character; still a rat bastard tho.

onto Fezzik and Iñigo.

as i have said in other blog posts, these boys are... pretty much the whole reason i sought out the book. and... jesus. 

you get all the way into the tragic backstories that were only hinted at in the film. okay, Iñigo’s backstory was more than hinted- but of course you go so much deeper in the book- and Fezzik’s was less than hinted, reduced mostly to a peek at the insecurity that Vizzini exploits and preys upon to keep him in line. not that you’d have to expend a great effort to him to keep him in line; his personality is docile and non-confrontational. truly not the slightest bit aggressive by nature. he’s also kinda clingy and needy, which is a thousand percent understandable given his childhood, and tbqh doesn’t need to be browbeaten for Vizzini to keep him on his short, cruel leash. which makes it all the more painful! hurrah! 😭

also you actually get to meet Iñigo’s father, Domingo Montoya, in a flashback, aaaand... i kinda love him. probably predictable if you know me.

anyway. tragic backstories. which further illuminate the emotional and psychological issues that make them so dependent on Vizzini, and turn them to lives of crime in his employ. poor boys! oy gevalt. sympathy abounds; i honestly don’t know how you could go through the book and not fall at least a little bit in love with this duo, whose friendship is precious and adorable and a balm to the soul that is aching from their painful life stories and unhealthy coping mechanisms. they’re each, very plainly, the only friend the other has in the world, and are constantly helping and bolstering one another. it’s heartbreakingly sweet. i think those boys will be alright as long as they stick together.

and now, the repeated theme of the book, that is presented with far less intensity in the film: life isn’t fair. which, one supposes, is true. but while the narrator’s framing of that assertion may give you the same misgivings they gave me- bitching about his fat son and his less than ideal relationship with his wife- you can also step back and appreciate it as a wee pearl of wisdom. life is often unfair, but that doesn’t mean it’s altogether bad or that you can’t enjoy it. idk, that’s my attitude, man. 

i could talk about the ending here, but i won’t. at least not too much. not to spoiler-ish-ly. if you don’t want to know anything about the book’s ending at all, feel free to not read the last bit here, except for the very last lines which are bolded.

ready? yes? no?

...

the ending to the book is different than the movie. there is a more philosophical, open ended conclusion than you could really get away with in a movie. at least this movie.

just throwing it out there: i believe in happy endings. ones in real life. but i kind of disagree with the author a little bit, in that i don’t think happy endings necessarily have to be perfect and unblemished to qualify as happy endings. that may be the way “happily ever after” is generally presented, but to me, “happily ever after” means, maybe some shit happened, but none of it was completely devastating, and in the final analysis, life was satisfying. that’s the kind of real life happy ending i’m aiming (and hoping) for. this might sound vague but i hope it’ll make sense if you read the book.

if you wanna do that, btw, i read it for free online at allnovel dot net.

[canaryatlaw]

mmm. I have a lot of conflicting emotions about things right now. mostly nothing to actually do with today, just stuff that’s been floating around in my head and being exacerbated by not knowing what’s going to be my future. Like if it’s NY that’s going to be a whole new world I’ll have to adjust to, and even if I stay in Chi I have no idea what I’m going to do job wise. And everything being in flux like that just makes it so difficult to plan practically anything. And on top of that I just have so many messy emotions regarding friends and relationships and I’m trying to make sense of it all but my brain doesn’t work correctly because it’s actually depending on 3 different antidepressants to change the chemistry, so I can do more than literally just sleep all day like last summer. and antidepressants are great and I’m very thankful for them, but sometimes there are gaps, and things just don’t work right, or past experience makes you paranoid about certain behaviors and desperately trying to prevent the past from repeating itself while also trying very hard to not come off as clingy because I know that I can be very clingy and I really hate that. Trying to convince myself I’m not being purposefully excluded which I know in all rational thought I’m not, but my mind is not always rational and has such feelings anyway. Sigh. Anyway, that's enough rambling, I should actually talk about my day now. It was fine, pretty good. I woke at I want to say 10:22, and before I looked at the clock I thought it was much earlier than that, like 6 am but no it was later so I got up and had some breakfast, after which I got in the shower to continue the whole morning shower thing (and omg, my bangs looked so good all day, I’m so obsessed with them). My normal hair routine is to use shampoo every day, then every 3 days use the special color depositing conditioner I have, as recommended by my hair stylist to keep it from being oily, and it’s worked pretty well so far. I only brought the conditioner with me because shampoo is shampoo for the most part, and after I used the stuff they had here my hair had a very weird feeling to it, like hard and would like, make noises and shit if you pressed against it lol, so I took a very tiny amount of conditioner and worked it through my hair which seemed to help a lot. My mom, my uncle, and I ended up going to this giant mall not too far from them (my aunt was totally pooped from partying yesterday and just wanted to sleep). It was pretty cool, a really big place, so we mostly just walked around there for a bit and went in different stores. We got some lunch in the food court from a soup and salad place that I’m pretty sure has places in Chicago, I got the crab and corn chowder which was very good, there was a hint of spice but strangely enough it wasn’t the burn my tongue spice but more like I could just feel it in my mouth afterwards. Idk, it was weird. We took a look in Brookstone trying to find something for my dad being that father’s day is next weekend and his birthday is two days after that (both my mom and my dad have birthdays super close to mother’s day and father’s day respectively, which is very convenient tbh 😂) because he likes their kind of gadgets and such, but they didn’t really have much, just like, stuff for a grill, speakers, and a bunch of different massage centered products, so that was a bust. We ultimately ended up leaving without buying anything (which is honestly rather impressive) but we drove back and stopped at a Tim Horton’s on the way, because Michigan, I got a small white hot chocolate because of course I can’t have coffee, and we chilled out in there for a bit before going to the house. Upon arrival we all just chilled for a while, and eventually got around to the topic of dinner, there wasn’t much in way of options at the house since my aunt was down for the count, so we ended up getting chinese food that I ordered online and my uncle and mom went to go get. I’m finding that the term “lo mein” can have many different interpretations depending on where you are ordering it, because several times in Chicago I’ve had types that didn’t match the one I’m used to, and this was one of those as well. It was still pretty good though, and I ate rice and fortune cookies and all that good stuff. By the time we finished it was about 7:30, and we watched a little tv before switching over to the Tony Awards!!! Which I realize I did not liveblog on here at all lol, I had to make a decision if I wanted to live tweet it on my main internet peeps account or my IRL people’s account, and I ended up going with the latter because that’s where my actual theatre people were. Overall I thought it was pretty good, Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles were great hosts. This review is probably not going to be in chronological order of the show, just warning you now. When they honored the Parkland drama teacher for hiding SIXTY FIVE FUCKING CHILDREN in her office for two hours before the all clear was given, and of course she should be credited as many of the more outspoken student advocates from Parkland were in the drama program and credit it for giving them the means from which it express their opinions. man, I cried so damn much. And then they had them all sing, SING, ONSTAGE, AT THE TONYS, as high schoolers, man, that has got to be such a dream come true. The girl who had the Joanne solo towards the end of the song fucking KILLED IT, I was watching knowing she had the high note at the end and I’m just thinking please don’t crack please don’t crack and she didn’t, she fucking NAILED it in an incredible show of talent, like dude, that’s insane. So I enjoyed that part of it. It was interesting that Mean Girls performed so early on. I was wondering what song they were going to do, and I understand why they chose what they did as it featured most of the cast, but I also think it wasn’t the strongest song(s) in the show, so that wasn’t all that helpful. Taylor Louderman sounded either very nervous or sick, her voice was pretty shaky, but she pulled through. I fucking lost it at Karen, I knew just from listening to the OBCR that she was perfect for the role, and tonight just confirmed that, she was great. I wish my girl Janis got to do more (I had been thinking maybe they'd do Revenge Party) but at least she got in there. Other things, let’s see, I hadn't heard of The Band’s Visit until tonight, so I certainly wasn’t expecting them to largely sweep the awards, I guess the voters (or whoever determines the winners) were really feeling it. Not gonna lie, Hailey Kilgore from Once On This Island was fucking ROBBED for the leading actress Tony, she had a stellar performance and she totally deserved it. Loved their number as much as I did when I saw the show back in January. Frozen was interesting on a few different levels. I had been thinking about how they were going to split the musical into two acts, and how Let It Go might be too early in the story to make it the act one finale, but there’s no way in hell you’re going to get an act one finale that even holds a candle to it. So I looked it up and they ended up just making Let It Go their act one finale, probably a good choice. When I saw they were doing for the first time in forever I was like oh we’re gonna end up switching to Let It Go, they had to, so of course I was right and they did, and man, they nailed it so well. It was clear they had to get that scene exactly right if they wanted to be taken seriously as a show, and they managed to find an actress who can actually hit the notes on a level comparable to Idina Menzel, because if she didn't that’s all anyone would be talking about. But she fucking killed that song, made it her own, and even managed to hit an extra high note that was not in the movie score, I was really impressed and I might go see it honestly, I’m trying to think, I wasn't as engaged with the performances of shows I’m not terribly familiar with, Carousel had a great dance number but I didn’t get much else out of it. The Spongebob number was......something alright, I mean if nothing else he certainly did a great job embodying Squidward, so there’s that. I’m trying to think if I have anymore feedback but it’s 1 am here and my eyes really want to close so I’m gonna try to keep it short. The De Niro thing was fucking hilarious and I love that it happened. I am cautiously curious about the harry potter play, I know a lot of fans thought it was trash, but it did do fairly well awards wise so there might be some good in there. Alright, that’s the end of my day and that’s it for now, my eyes really want to be close so that is what I’m going to do. Goodnight my lovely friends, Good luck on your Monday.

[elizabethrobertajones]

13x08 watching notes

You guys, I literally can't cope with Sam dressing like this much longer. I am being personally attacked. WHo EVEN SELLS ORANGE PLAID.

expectations: best case scenario, some literally unholy lovechild of 7x20 and 12x12.

Heists mean side characters and good heists mean fun side characters. From the promo stuff it looks like we have a couple of quirky side characters, who aesthetically vaguely reminded me of the Doctor Who bank heist episode from the Clara period of the show, just because quirky side characters to bolster a heist episode. It's probably quite easy to beat the mood and justification of ridiculousness from Doctor Who, especially peak Moffatt era nonsense, out of the water, but this is Glynn so I'm expecting good characters, good characterisation, but pooossibly some random plot hole or some sort of back and forth of characters/scenes that's hard to follow that doesn't necessarily hurt the episode but does make it a headache later :P

[note with hindsight: *just hands Glynn a trophy for it and walks off*]

It's essentially the same thing you forgive under Dabb vs cars (aka not a problem unless you make it one), but it doesn't really lend itself to writing a heist either so this is in no way the same level of "Uhoh" as a Buckleming episode but it is a hmmm I hope people aren't arguing in circles about some way the plot worked and ignoring the good stuff when I get online comment :P

I wasn't sure how this fit into the overall picture of wtf the demons were up to before yesterday, but with the promo scene with Bart, selling him as essentially the new (I mean... potentially since season 6) king of the crossroads but maybe not styling himself that way, we may or may not get another overt canon dive like 12x12 showed us how Crowley got his upgrade, to tell us how long this guy has been around behind the scenes (and SENSIBLY staying off the Winchesters' radar), but this character very literally is Crowley2.0 as people have been calling him in the sense that he is what Crowley was when we met him both with the actual job title AND narratively, and in this case probably very content with his job as it is especially with the danger at the very top, and I hope for his sake he doesn't get ambitious, because it would be great to have a character like this survive just for story stability - yeah even though he's another white dude might as well just lump it unless this episode immediately replaces him with someone better but intent on doing the *exact same* job properly - just to have some stability and a second player in the Hell storyline. Especially if they maintain an uneasy relationship with him that he really is the last resort for help Crowley really wasn't since like season 10.

It establishes another position of power in Hell's hierarchy and it's a fairly safe job where a smart demon can accrue a lot of power - Crowley was shown to have a whole bunch of resources and a lot of it predating becoming King of Hell, specifically because it was stuff gathered as a crossroads demon/through controlling that flow of trade. TBH it's better placed than whoever is trying to lead the demons because they have all the resources. I think in 11x23 Crowley said his minions took everything and ran? This dude would be one of the key placed people to do that because he has all the stuff and connections to all the souls collected in deals. Whether that comes up or not I'm just going to assume he did :P

Anyway in the story it creates another character where we basically already know everything about how they function, because Crowley, both on a random world building and originally how Crowley was in the narrative sort of level. It sucks he's getting replaced on a "I did actually quite like him most days" level, and it's definitely a "get 2 people to do the same job 1 man was doing" thing but then the writing had been so bad to Crowley for a couple of years since they ran out of things for him to do that maybe stripping back to basics to get the narrative role he used to offer without all the baggage is sensible >.> If a character takes on so much of a life of their own they can't do the stuff they used to offer without it being an issue like removing any tension about giving them magic things they couldn't obtain themselves, or offering sincere opposition and attempts to kill them from the throne of Hell, then unfortunately for Crowley, this is a great choice. Asmodeus represents all the shit I didn't like that they kept making Crowley do, Bart represents the side of Crowley introduced by Edlund and maintained at least until Edlund left the show (Crowley was his baby even more than Cas was - he just dipped in to write the best Cas episodes but he introduced and pushed Crowley as a character... funnily enough at the end of season 8 both their natures were changed dramatically and permanently). Based on 1 promo scene, I have to admit, Bart is all the bits of Crowley I liked best, while coming across as a bit of a cheap knock off in the way he tries to butter up to the Winchesters, a bit too knowing, a bit too under-informed, while Crowley ran loops around them just in their opening conversation. 

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OMG it's sleeting so I am going to roll the dice and get a lift to yoga from the same person who plain forgot to pick my mum up and take her wherever they were going for about 2 hours last week when I wisely decided to get the bus. See now I have extra time, the episode is downloaded, but... I don't have enough time. Nooo way :P

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Other generic pre-ep thoughts: this concept is goofy but I seriously don't trust it to stay that way because you never trust this show to stay that way. We haven't seen Asmodeus in a non-BL episode and while he is essentially their pet character he's still plot relevant. I'm not exactly on the side of "we HAVE to get Casmodeus before this is all said and done" as in I'd really love it but it seems so easy to bungle in a BL episode. On the other hand, just because Cas is locked up doesn't mean we can't see Misha in an episode while this state of affairs continues (and just because there's no spoilers doesn't mean it's not happening) and Glynn having a crack at Casmodeus sounds like a perfect set up for the kind of stuff we'd want to see out of it, and be a curveball to throw in here.

I'm just going to assume we're not seeing Mary again for a while and this is all set in the main universe.

I assume Jack isn't in the episode but we may or may not get a lead on him at the end, or else be left on "well we have a lead/half a lead on him" because I sort of feel like if he literally breaks the universe next episode after this he'll be pretty easy to find again :P

This may all be some way to force some conversations about how Dean and Sam feel about Jack on the other side of the turning point, especially if it's our last chance for them to be in the limelight until the other side of Wayward Sisters midseason fun. And if Jack has broken the universe next episode, we need to have their current stances laid out before they go rushing in to deal with that. So this could be a fairly light episode for character discussion.

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HI back from yoga

the recap immediately gets into Jack stuff so hey maybe he is in the episode, maybe it's just explaining better why he is not in this episode because the reason why NOT is just as important.

Then just way too much having to recap last episode to get us up to date on what Sam and Dean have been through with all that. I like that they included that Ketch said he was his own twin considering Dean says "twinsies" in the promo scene, as, of course, this may be a really important theme. Twins that aren't actually twins. Cas and the Empty, Ketch and "Alexander", Dean and Crowley2.0, Dean being fed up of things that look like other things and the shapeshifter & ghoul...

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Anyway. "NOW" - Cambridge, England. Okay then. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. *rubs a Union Jack on it to make it more British*

This is your weekly reminder to read these notes in a shrill British accent.

Whoever this is outside looks like she's up to something.

This mueseum:

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130991708770/justanotheridijiton-jerry-wanek-on-supernatural

I'm not gonna read into that immediately because its been completely dressed up for the vampire!Dean episode and it's been polished up for this episode. But we get a long look at the stained glass roof and that was a centrepiece for the vamp episode.

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*she continues to be up to something*

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Wow, great security. Bust open a door and no alarms go off? It's the 2nd door that doesn't work, after Dean failed to get the automatic door to open for him in 13x05.

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Mmmm drawers of old scrolls and spooooky writing.

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Just... shove it in your handbag.

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Oh yep she's a demon, that's surprising.

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This is a great way to do a robbery, tbh. Ethics about possession aside, you can burn a vessel and let them take whatever physical damage or legal ramifications of being found in the room where something was stolen, but if you run into problems, just possess the next person. Especially someone with clearance, if you couldn't find them earlier...

I suppose her not being able to open the door earlier was an omen for her not having all the information - not knowing that Bart was going to stab her as soon as he had what he wanted from her, and that she wasn't working for Asmodeus's whim at all, but Bart was going rogue with it. This is another suggestion of the dramatic irony at work - Dean couldn't open the door, he had no faith, and it seemed like to HIM that no one was helping him. But of course Cas had already come back, the automatic door had opened in that sense, but he didn't know so he's encountering this block. This demon powers through it as well without setting off any alarm bells and she should have had some about the whole double cross coming. Likewise, Dean's surprised by Cas's return.

Bart establishes himself as a Crowley-alike instantly, by having a random demon minion to double cross, and to go to the Winchesters. He already has Dean on speed dial which means his number must get circulated among the demons, or Bart has sought it out already from their sources. Whether he's had it a while and just decided to pounce...

I guess it's also like the opposite of Cas phoning him and we don't hear that side of the conversation - I mean we hear Dean on the phone here, but we're staying on Bart's side of the camera, and he's enticing him in with what he needs to find Jack. Again, more dark mirrors of stuff that's already happened... Dean getting a lot of phonecalls he needs to follow his faith on.

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Dean immediately on screen in his bi plaid doing that thing with the gun that's... suggestive. Sitting there obessesively cleaning his gun.

Sam emerges, in a shirt that is going to be a Problem.

*mutes Sam*

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Sam was the one who talked to Cas. I wonder if Asmodeus phoned Sam up rather than the other way around. Like, don't be suspicious, just check in every day and see how they're doing... Just phone one of the brothers at random.

Anyway we already know, of course, that it's not Cas, and here we are with more dramatic irony, the same problem as Casifer before they knew, and it's underlined by Sam being the one to talk to Casmodeus instead of Dean. Fewer opportunities based on what we see on screen for Dean to work it out.

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And now we see the other side of the phonecall, tracking back in time to show us the same thing over again, but now we have Dean's POV on it too and he's not at this disadvantage, at least, with the way it's all been set up. He gets to snark back etc although Bart has the right word to stop Dean hanging up on him.

I do like the snark about Hell street locations :P

Sam's like "a demon!" whispered even though it's obvious and I think Dean clued into it which means once again Sam's being the GA, or a filter for them, and even though he says it silently, he's still spelling out what he thinks it is when it's blatantly obvious to us what it is as we watched the cold open and his side of the start of the phone call already.

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"if I had a way to find *your boy*" - that parenting theme again, and he's addressing it to Dean since that's who he thinks he's solely on the phone to.

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We get a look at a ton of shop fronts and I suppose they're all made up?

The Smile Diner is already incongruously happy - more irony, just that it's all smiles for what would be an understandably tense meeting.

Anyway: "BANGTOWN beauty & barber" "Fine art bartending LEARN TO BARTEND", a restaurant...

A Chinese-owned phone shop "Ketaiya" which I suppose is selling phones, as it says "iphone8.8" in the window but also would fit an idea of calling home, as shops like this exist for most immigrant populations, as a place where they can make cheap phonecalls home. In this part of the country I'm most used to seeing Arabic, Slavic or Eastern European versions of this but I assume it's the same deal. We get cage imagery over the front of this shop, obviously as protection for it as it has a bunch of iphones in it, but the idea that Cas can't call them because he's in prison is right there, and it makes him the lil green mascot in the window.

And then the smile cafe is the next thing along. :)

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"He could work for Asmodeus" smart, but wrong *as far as we know*, and Sam is like "what if he's telling the truth", so this scepticism seems to be flipping their roles from last episode, buuut on the other hand Dean is being defensive and practical and Sam is again entertaining things villains tell them.

"After Crowley I told myself no more demons" it STILL sounds like bitter but civil exes. And you'd bet that "after Crowley" is not "in the last month since he died" but "since that time we had a wild elopement"

but hanging a lampshade on exactly what Bart is doing for them in the narrative, and of course that Dean is going to be predisposed to see him as a Crowley2.0 exactly as we do, so that adds even more depth to the promo scene.

Sam like "you said we need a miracle, maybe this is it" and then Dean calling out that demons don't give miracles - they give deals they can SELL as miracles. Who of the two of you has been jerked around more by demon deals? Oh yeah the one of you who sold your soul because your father's demon deal spiritually broke you already. (I mean yeah Sam has had it PLENTY hard in other ways but Dean and crossroads demons is a very different story to Sam)

"Let's hear the guy out." "And after that we kill him."

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I continue to be enraged that Dean is wearing sensible black and at least MUTED purples and Sam's wearing the orange jacket and a plaid with like, hazard day glo orange strips sewn into it.

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:) Smile Diner :)

it's horrifying, but it has homemade burgers. I have no clue if this is something they scouted out or repainted but the brickwork having yellow lines is like WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING in film language, like DO NOT ENTER police tape coding. IRL it would be whimsical, especially with all the smilies. On screen, it it horrifying. There's red signage and green neon boxing the window I think they're gonna sit in, and red and green are the poison codependency colours I think? According to Zerbe? I don't know if that's the dynamic here but it's certainly not GOOD, especially boxed in by yellow and black hazard warnings.

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There's a pretty bridge and a sunset/rise in the sign. It's incongruous to the smile theme at least because it doesn't directly relate to smiling, and is just a random image. I would assume it's symbolic in some way... Cas is of course the sun, this does mimic the Gas n Sip logo (especially as it has a maroon version), and the road seems to lead away from the sun across the bridge. They're not helping Cas going in here, that's for sure :P

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Lots of potted plants in here, and one behind Bart.

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"The famous Winchesters!" "Some random demon." Dean is in a power play with him and now they're face to face rather than at a disadvantage over the phone, he's gonna win this one. Watch.

Bart offers a nickname to them, which could be a power play to say hey I'm so powerful we get on nickname terms because I allow you and you should be grateful or whatever, but his name sounds like an old powerful demon name (he and Asmodeus both have old school "us" endings to their names) and so he's actually neutering the part that makes his name sound powerful and impressive. He may be preempting Dean's infamous nicknaming habit, but Dean does it to be dismissive or to humanise. And he's not gonna get the latter treatment :P

Again, offering them to sit and then trying to get Dean on his side with pie - gesture after gesture of power, being the one in control, and knowing them, and the pie is the first sign he's done his Winchester Homework, which bad guys notoriously get wrong or misread. In this case, he's got Dean down as the stupid dumb muscle who can be bribed with pie, and I assume missing aaall the complexity of why demons fear him so much.

He labels Dean a "disrupter" when Dean has been tasked with maintaining the natural order. Dean has only ever tried to STOP bad stuff happening, and though he's ACCIDENTALLY helped unleash a bunch of stuff, it's never been because he WANTS to. He's helped cause a lot of the disruption in Hell with his actions, but that's because Hell is bad and he wants to stop it doing bad things. In general Dean's big victories have been to try and secure the natural order staying as it is, with his two biggest victories being Swan Song and settling things with God and Amara.

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I love how the framing here has all that green light behind the Winchesters, but aside from a line of green behind Bart's head, he's got this innocent white flowery wall and some roses behind him.

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Again, Sam snatches up the spell, Dean doubts immediately, I guess if not that the spell is real that why a demon would just GIVE it to him without ulterior motives. Just be upfront about the ulterior motives :P

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He re-introduces himself as first a cross-roads demon and then THE cross-roads demon, a clarification again. He doesn't say king of the crossroads, but he does smirk at Dean, and says helping people is what he does... Yeah, to a degree. They have to PAY for it. But it's that smarmy salesman charm, this time mixed with someone who looks like a thug boss, the sort who dresses nice but has goons.

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I mean we KNOW he does, but his look is very typical of nice suit, close-cropped hair, and just generally heavy set like he's used to being intimidating more than relying on his words, when you go to cast this guy.

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Dean says they don't listen to/help demons, just kill them, and for one thing Bart's got to know about Crowley, but he says "How Dean of you" like he knows Dean is the one who just threatens to/will kill demons and not think about it. I mean Dean could be showing he's learned from experience. But of course then, the great meta about him negging Dean, by switching focus to Sam, who's already been established even before they get in the diner that he's going to be more willing to listen, that he's the "smart one" aka the one more likely to make a bad decision by listening to people he shouldn't while trying to help.

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And, of course, Dean eats his pie, and we already made the parallels to other scenes like this in diners, but Ishim stands out the most, throwing money at Dean to shut up and buy himself some pie. In this case the pie is already here, and Dean's allowed to be suspicious but also eat the pie because hey, it's here.

Bart treated Dean like he was the stupid pie guy so Dean, who doesn't trust him an inch, acts like the stupid pie guy, while not giving any ground. He is not bribed by the pie, but Sam can't believe Dean's eating it.

There's a world of metaphor there about Dean and seduction. Because of course Bart came on strong to Dean, but Dean wasn't buying that either, the coded second layer of the conversation about him being Crowley2.0 and thinking maybe he can find a way to unlock Dean's interest in dudes... by offering pie of course. Doesn't work like that, you have to earn it. And the coming on too strong is the first weakness he has in not measuring up to Crowley, despite how it all seems like he has the ~perfect plan~ in place.

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They're STIIIILL in these shirts

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Wow, that's some old Biblical stuff. Guess that explains why Dabb tweeted that, pretty quickly. I don't know much about the Queen of Shiba but the idea she's a nephilim is kind of amusing.

I'll have to leave that to the experts but anyway, more douchey guys, although this time King Solomon is keeping tabs on someone like a dick, so um. Welcome to the club of symbolism this part of the season? I assume this is the same guy from the Song of Solomon that we saw Jack glance at in 13x02, and it's more romantic stuff as well.

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Sam's like "Jack is out there in the world, and he's alone and he's scared and he's dangerous", which is exactly Dean's stance from 13x01 saying better to keep Jack in the Bunker with them so the only people he'd hurt are them. Yes Sam still seems to care about Jack, but he is also now valuing him practically, and seeing he's dangerous, and it's caused this flip in his attitude to one mirroring Dean's but obviously with much less hate and upset about what happened to Cas etc

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Heist HQ!

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Quirky random demons! Hat and headphone demons.

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Hahahah they're called Smash and Grab. Smash has flowery DMs so I love her. Grab is wearing that hat voluntarily so I am not so sure about him at all.

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PS: in America has flipping the bird with 2 fingers become a thing or was that a peace sign? When I was a young'un I was told that you always had to do peace signs palm out because showing the back of your hand with the exact same gesture was as bad/worse than giving someone the finger.

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Is Smash human? Since he said Grab is a demon that leaves an empty space over what she is.

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Lol, Dean realising it's a heist. "What is this, a heist? Hold on, is this a heist?"

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Hahahahahha his favourite My Little Pony... Come on Dean, you kept the little pony you cut off that car in 7x06. You literally can not throw stones in this house.

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Luther Shrike looks like if he was on UK TV he'd be played by the guy who played Walder Frey (David Bradley).

There's some stuff on the board that looks like the Sumerian(?) that Kevin translated the angel tablet into. Since we already had Kevin back on screen, it seems superfluous to mention, but it gives me a 4 in a row for mentioning Kevin in an episode this season so BINGO and more dramatic irony that Sam and Dean don't know he's responsible for Lucifer coming back, or, indeed, that Lucifer is back.

(With a bonus grumble from me that it's a reminder, in this season about a nephilim, that we still don't know what the angel fall spell's specific wording was)

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Oh boy the "hell and back" thing. Ouch. So we're apparently delving THIS now? Is this penance for 11x10 and Dean not seeming too bothered to go back down there aside from token nervousness about the whole thing in the acting? Anyway getting flashbacks to that out of the blue... Look I am a smol sensitive Dean girl you can't just throw that at me. D:

It's interesting the perhaps king of the crossroads can't swing this with a random soul. I would assume it's specifically blood of someone CONDEMNED to Hell and saved/brought back. And woah I have it paused right after the flashback to collect myself, but either this has to get a Cas mention or it's one heck of an empty space in the story that Cas saved Dean and is the reason he's viable for this.

And lol lol lol lol see above like THREE PARAGRAPHS AGO I am never ever going to be over the angel fall spell and the fact it required grace in such... suspicious... circumstances of nephilim and cupids, and the whole theme of clarification, and how we have these such specific spells - virgin blood in 12x22, archangel grace last episode, and human who has been to hell and back now...

I'm just saying, I'm gonna be on my deathbed when I'm 150 like "the angel fall spell needed the grace of an angel in love with a human, come fight me, Carver" and then I give up the ghost just so I can go beat him up in the afterlife.

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Bart beams at Dean, wanting his blood. Dean offers it up just to get this over and done with, but he says, no, straight from the tap and anyway you two are extremely competent in a weird crisis, why the heck would I not exploit that I need your manpower for this?

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Shrike is human who has been to hell and back - obviously a dark Dean mirror because apparently he's a sadist and murderer, and Dean's entire thing is whether he's a killer or not for doing this job he does and I have gifsets and meta blahing on and on about that but yeah basically 2x03 set up that for Dean about how you do the job because you like/need killing or you do it to save people, and his torturer arc, and his Mark of Cain/demon descent... Nuff said for now.

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UGH so Sam pulls Dean aside and says, "we want that spell - we NEED that spell" which is a huge clarification, and literally the want/need theme you are probably aware I bang on about a weeeeeeeeeeeee little bit. In general it's the "use your words" theme which does not harm Sam for the reminder but also is a huge Destiel theme because the need/want thing is from the crypt scene/10x19 with the call out on the crypt scene from Dean's subconscious and the ongoing issue of whether Cas feels needed or wanted, with the fact he feels "needed" called out in OH WAIT 13x04, aka last time out for Glynn... the fact the clarification is coming now in the other direction is because this is a Sam thing anyways, and - UGH I have it paused with him on screen and he seems to have an even worse shirt on? - it's not about Destiel subtext for him it's just using your words and in general bolstering the presence of the theme. Of course they don't just want the spell for kicks, they have a serious reason for needing it. In fact Sam's concern about Jack going from emotional concern for Jack himself to seeing Jack as a dangerous crisis is encapsulated in turning a desire into an obligation.

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"He'll never see us coming"

"they're coming"

More dramatic irony, immediately showing us that on the other side of the story the bad guy has more information than they think he does, and that they aren't going to have it as easy as they think. That Bart has already been made as a traitor and that Asmodeus knows his next move will be exactly this.

Asmodeus may not even be *on screen* in this episode and he's being written as more intelligent than he has been in both Buckleming episodes, which is super unfortunate that he's supposed to be an intelligent character and we have to judge the characterisation of these unfortunates who are main BL property off their depiction in OTHER episodes...

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And yeah Shrike may chat with demons but he has demon traps, exorcisms memorised and he toes the line of a horrible human being but not demonic himself, but such a hair's breadth away that demons and demon interactions and generally knowing wtf is going on with demons is just his life.

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He has a really pretty grate which I think is specifically in the hall so that he can exorcise demons out through it. It probably goes straight to Hell

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His windows also have bars on them which look like random jumble to an unfamiliar eye but are of course iron warding

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I think he also has grapevines. He lives on a vineyard with barbed wire and demon traps on the gates.

The metalwork is the coolest thing in this episode and this episode is not half bad so far

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Oh my god Dean called out poor Smash for her amazing boots and called her "Winona" - she DOES bear a passing resemblance, but hey leave the boots alone.

Anyway that moment just to show they're top and tail under a blanket in the back of the Impala which is pretty funny to me - I'm never sure you can actually fit anyone in there like that but they want to prove me wrong.

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I'm like 1000% sure Sam's ruse doesn't work, because Shrike knows they're coming but he's let in anyway because why not. Let's have some fun. Interesting that Sam's the one made to do this. Having to lie and we already KNOW he's been caught out.

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Anyway more focus on the boots... 3 times and I'm super worried we're gonna have to identify some remains by the flowery boots >.>

Or more positively it could be used to fuck with us in some way

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"Dean? Don't get dead." "you too." Aw.

Is Grab in the trunk of the car?

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Iron warded door. Yeah, that's normal.

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For these guests, the rug is pulled back, the demon trap is plain to see on the floor. We see Sam from above, like he's being watched.

Shrike's front room/office is like Metatron's desk? I swear he had that lamp. Cuthbert's house... I swear that's Bobby's wallpaper or one in a similar hue with appropriately similar patterns to at least make a sort of sense of familiarity.

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Awww Dean and Smash. He calls her weird but then spots she's drinking the delightful sounding does what it says on the tin NERVE DAMAGE, and then he says he used to live on it as a kid, despite its illegal amounts of caffeine.

Ew and she's getting it expired on ebay.

Dean, she may be bonding with you, but don't drink it. It's literally called Nerve Damage.

Welp

he's gonna be bouncing off the walls after 1 sip

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OH they have to summon Grab I guess?

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"Cool."

Hahahaha

Dean's babysitting the weirdoes.

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Heh, calls Dean "chief"

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HAHAHAHA Smash told Grab off screen that Dean was just a pretty face :P

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WHOOPS looks like Dean just got puppeted by his own blood. Like a couple of weeks ago or something I was writing about a worst case scenario for Jack's powers being that they completely overwhelm him and he's like, inside waiting to be busted out, perhaps as a conclusion of the crypt scene/swan song repetitions from an external evil possessing and controlling to an internal force making it happen - a slow process but it really has switched, and it has been a fairly smooth slope down :D

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Also that was hilarious. Poor Dean.

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Dean's being poisoned with NERVE DAMAGE and Sam's being poisoned with homemade gin. If that's what it really is.

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Hahahahahah Sam picking up a basilisk fang. We've all seen Harry Potter

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LOL Sam knows random knowledge about basilisks and gorgons. Of course it's a test, and Shrike would know what it was, but good on Sam for recognising it. I watched Tall Tales so recently I'm still giggling about him recognising a crocodile belly scale, but now I just think Sam has an affinity for identifying the weirder monsters. He must have read a load of junk about them in the MoL bunker.

His persona as the collector guy wanting to sell to Shrike is basically Sam but with a bit more nervous bluster, which might be explained by knowing how dangerous this guy is and that Sam is having to pretend. He's not even wearing clothes as a get up here.

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OH BOY Sam's big gambit is Ruby's knife... I remember in my 8x02 watching notes (hi Dabb) I was amused that they kind of forget that that knife is one of the most valuable things they own and they just dropped it in the weapon bin with a warning, rather than considering even trading it for the tablet or whatever even as a ruse... Just the idea they go around laden with magical artefacts that help them all the time like this which would actually be priceless to collectors - like in 12x06 Asa having an angel blade on blue felt in a glass case.

I don't think there's been a strong bias about which one of them has an angel blade and which one still uses this knife in fights since Carver era, but Dean took it to Purgatory, while Sam seemed to have more consistent possession of it for a while, Dean was the one who wrangled it from Ruby in 3x16 and sort of formally took ownership of it on behalf of the Winchesters.

Given the emotional background to this season of Sam's powers being explored through Jack, though, it is interesting (since they have enough angel blades they could just swap to using them all the time instead of this knife, which is a relic of Sam's darkest times) to just give it up, but quite aside from its worth to the right market, it has an enormous emotional weight of the season 3-4-5 drama for the Winchesters, and remembering it as Ruby's knife ties it to Sam. He still uses her knife and keeps her memory close, perhaps just as a reminder. But that weight is there and bringing it up is a reminder of all that, because so often we just see it as a tool, but this is asking us to stop and CONSIDER what that knife actually means, how much it's worth, and how even though they could stop using it these days, they don't, but what it would mean to Sam to give it up.

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Dean reeeally not getting along with Grab. Who, of course, is the demon in this mix. The fact Smash is not a demon is only brought up in that scene where Dean is talking about her working with demons - it's taken for granted that she's human and perhaps that is the default, but not when you're expecting a room full of demons as we might be when meeting them. So. More empty space fill in the blanks, use context and people using or not using definitions to not be surprised that she's human.

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Anyway Grab calls Sam stupid and Dean gets so angry he stops and turns around even though the spell's been dragging him along so there's a ridic Swan Song mirror for the collection - while "puppeted" by the spell, "defensiveness" of his brother halts Dean's progress...

Aaaand he's off again. Not enough? :P

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Hey creepy underground cellars. That's never bad.

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LOL Dean gets called HANDPUPPET

Mr Fizzles can tell when you're being a liaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

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"I will kill you." "I bet you say that to all the girls." Awww and here was I thinking Dean wouldn't get flirted with any more this episode.

That was literally from the Crowley handbook - 9x10/9x11 made a huge point out of it.

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This murder cellar connects to 12x01, 12x12, and 12x20, with the cellars being where Sam was kept and the twig people were made, and 12x12 for the basement Ramiel kept his shit in. Crossing them all over into this is super fun.

I guess this is where Smash does her thing?

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GREAT door.

I hope that thing doesn't bite

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It almost certainly bites

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Oooh Shrike thinks Sam is a demon.

He didn't see him not get stuck in the demon trap out in the hall.

He has some of the info but not ALL of the info - in this way, while Bart sent them to deal with curveballs, Sam has turned out to be the curveball instead.

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Ow that's a big hole to blow in the books, that were nearly Sam.

He conveniently slides back to his knife.

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On the other hand re: curveballs, if Shrike thinks he's a demon, that shotgun blast wouldn't have killed a demon but it will kill a Sam.

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Sam just goes and stabs the dude.

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"As long as I'm on my property I can't die."

Well that's annoyingly cheaty

I wonder if it's symbolic of something but I can't instantly link it to anything so I have to move on.

There's something very like the Cain stuff with Dean in 9x11 between Sam and this guy, especially as they matched up as equals in knowledge about gorgons or whatever earlier.

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MAW

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DEAN LOOKS INTO THE MAW

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Dean does not like spiders.

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Hard same.

Why is he always so relatable

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I'm cackling so much at his reluctance to put his hand in there. It's like the not wanting to go in the hole in 13x06 but so much funnier because... spiders.

There was an eel tank at the local aquarium when I was a kid which had a game EMBEDDED in the side of the eel tank to put your hand in and feel what an eel feels like.

I'm having, like. PTSD flashbacks to this and the Tiger Head in the museum which terrified the living daylights out of us as children and we wouldn't even go past it because it looked so fierce with its big open mouth

this is literally combining two of The Most Horrifying Things about my childhood into one

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Plus biting for blood = needles to draw blood which is a rather more recent thing what with recently coming down with a mystery chronic illness and spending 2 years fishing around for a diagnosis via endless blood drawing, so put that one on the list

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I believe in you, Dean. You're stronger than me.

He's stronger than me

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I love him more than I have ever loved him in this exact moment

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He had to account for the fact that Shrike might regularly go in here so of course it won't take YOUR HAND or something.

Of course it's a massive suspense thing for a teeny weeny pinprick. Of course.

This is like the dead opposite of the Werther Box - it's just a key for the lock, not like... the entire murderous thing Cuthbert designed

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NINJA reflexes to save Smash there

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Bye Grab. You were a dick.

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OH NOES Shrike is here, with the demon knife, covered in blood. That's not worrying for Dean to see AT ALL.

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Smash just legs it.

Awww she seemed to care about Grab at least a little... They had matchy matchy names.

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Dean wants to go watch Game of Thrones.

Walder Frey knock off prefers to read the books

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Uh

how did Sam get here.

I'm gonna assume like... not!Sam for now, since he saved the day so fortuitously.

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Bart lurkin' outside.

Not surprising at all that Smash has a deal with him. I doubt he's letting her off easy, either, she's going to be sent right back.

-

Does Shrike just walk through this thing and ignore all the darts because they can't kill him?

-

"Shrek" 

-

Sam sure has some quick and easy insights into the keypad.

-

"Like in Entrapment"

"Did you just say Entrapment?"

... Did Sam just get busted over his pop culture knowledge, by Dean, slower on the uptake than what I thought was weird for Sam?

-

Omg they're sending Shrike through because the darts can't kill him. This is ridiculous

-

That *was* ridiculous, but funny

-

Winchester problem solving.

-

Awwwww Smash is back, if it's really her.

Sam figures out she has a deal.

He also has a real side-eye of Dean. If he's actually Sam I got to re-evaluate him through this section :P

-

If not, I have another case of something impersonating Sam while doing The Eyebrows

More horrifying: this is Sam actually doing The Eyebrows

-

Oh god it's full daylight all of a sudden and Sam's plaid

is orange

under the orange jacket

I hate Sam Winchester

undying feud levels

-

Guess this is the edge of the property where he can't be killed? Be hilarious if they get him over the line somehow to kill him

-

STUNT DRIVING

-

Suddenly backstory and emotional music plays.

Starting to think nothing’s up with Sam though, like, if he actually was replaced or not, because it was really funny imagining it and not letting them get the drop on me if it happened, and Sam being called out on his references etc, but we're getting pretty far into it all like leaving the property, having this moment, etc, so maybe it was just a fake out and Sam BAMF'd himself free off-screen or was never even tied up

-

Seems to just be a story of life, though that Shrike's kid died so soon after he was saved, and it was a "waste" of a demon deal. He seems like he must have already been a certain sort of person to know how to MAKE the deal...

What's in the trunk...

Ooh I wondered if it would be as soon as Bart wasn’t forthcoming. So a 6x04 parallel as well (or 6x10, which dealt a lot more with them having to work for Crowley).

-

Oooh they were off the property. WHOOPS. It *was* the gates. I thought so but I didn't figure he'd be so stupid to face them head on.

Although it was over Bart's bones so it was a risk he had to take to leave?

-

And now we have a new problem :P

-

Awww poor Smash

-

And there's the rest of the spell. Do they take it?

-

Oookay I was thinking Sam would have to be Sam for this part and he and Dean are making emotional decisions together and Sam's picking the correct path so... I guess I have to assume 100% this is Sam again? Mittens isn't talking to me about stuff from this episode like there's too many spoilers for her to humour me about stuff. Even what I thought were silly things.

-

And now Smash/Alice is in peril after they made the decision that they do not want to get involved in Bart's shit because he's a shitty person.

-

Bye bye Bart :3 Nice move, Dean.

So basically, yep, Bart tried so hard to be what Crowley was to Dean in their opening interaction and all his set up to come across as like... something Dean had been missing? That Dean might WANT a demon ally to be on the hook with/have on his hook, even just have on his SPEED DIAL, because to him that probably meant being able to manipulate the Winchesters and so on...

But as I figured from the opening, he just completely underestimates them, including that Dean is way way way waaaay smarter than he gives him credit for, so OF COURSE Dean wins by outsmarting him, by doing what soulless!Sam STOPPED Dean from doing in 6x04 and just torching Crowley on the spot because what did they REALLY owe him and how much loyalty could you really have from a demon as uneasy business partners... So Dean outwits him, and in a move almost exactly like 13x06 he sets up the tools and someone else gets the kill but it's Dean who outsmarted the monster.

And whooops half of half a spell? Not even half... it's all gone.

Whoooops. Well at least they saved Alice. And they're putting her on a bus, as they usually do with characters they won't see again.

-

There's like 2 minutes left, which is always an ominous sign.

-

Anyway *waves goodbye to Alice*

-

*Dean pats Sam on the shoulder and we get the last look at Sam smiling*

Aaand to the Bunker, where Dean is getting them some beers while wearing his black Henley.

Like the whole thing resolved with that dude and Bart is dead and all (... they better find someone to replace him although constantly subbing in random "I'm the new king of the crossroads" characters might get a bit ridiculous, we know there's going to be an opening someone will take... I really hope that was a cue to get us to whoever takes over... If not they just make it even more frustrating that I’ve been waiting 7 years to know if someone replaced Crowley or he was doing both jobs, and now it’s made even more clear there’s a job for a secondary powerful demon in hell to show up in this role and the head crossroads demon is a serious position with power and such... It’s such a frustrating hole in the world building to overlook and I've been over-thinking it for longer than I’ve been on tumblr by a good few years.)

-

anyway Sam n Dean are talking

Is Sam going to explain how he escaped from being knocked out and showed up with perfect timing, or was that the plot hole?

-

Nah, they just have a nice talk about the job and how saving people is fun, and all. And Dean being optimistic. Yay! It's a similar call out to 13x06 and why Dean was so obscenely happy in the cowboy room, but Sam is now seeing that Dean is permanently feeling better even in ridiculous situations, and his mood really has permanently resettled to optimism and cheerfulness again and it is NOT just the cowboys.

-

Okay so I probably need to watch the last part of the episode again but I am now weirdly curious about what happened to Sam - though we know he's great at escaping things, but Shrike put his life into doubt to Dean, and we had no reason to assume he'd leave Sam in a place where he could easily get out, I'm guessing now that the way he showed up looking like he COULD have just killed and/or maimed Sam with that bloody knife, and I even pointed out that to DEAN'S eyes it would look sooo much worse than if it was as simple as Shrike knocked Sam out, and immediately legged it to the safe to check on it while just hoping unconsciousness would be enough to keep Sam down. (He has an iron skull after being knocked out so many times - like that thing where you kung fu your hands to have tons of micro fractures in order for the bones to heal stronger? That's Sam's head.)

He seemed to be put into question after he showed up again and I began to doubt it again as soon as they left the property because it would make no sense to leave Sam behind and just take a fake with them for the emotional resolution of the episode. Especially once they got into it and it was blatantly a straightforward emotional resolution to the episode that Sam had too much of a stake in for it NOT to be him at that point.

BUT Dean questioned Sam's reference to a thing right after he showed back up, while Sam was coming up with some hilarious ideas for solving things in a way written which you COULD think he was not!Sam and someone with more info/their own stake in this (e.g. the worry Asmodeus was coming) just because it was Sam at his most mercenary to come up with the "just send the guy who can't die over the traps to spring them all" plan... We KNOW Sam can be like that but at the same time... Sam being like that can also be some other person who would think like that as the LEAST WORST thing they thought that day instead of the actual worst.

Anyway it was all set up in such a way that Dean calling out something he didn't expect about Sam means he's questioning the people around him when they behave uncharacteristically - because he KNOWS his loved ones. He understands when they aren't behaving like themselves. He gets a secret out of Sam that he watched something he'd never normally watch just for Catherine Zeta-Jones, which Dean has to concede, while struggling with how much to mock Sam. It's interesting they use the empty space of Sam arriving without explanation to cast him into doubt, then have him doubted, verbally putting something out there that Dean stopped to question what Sam was saying. They brush it off, and it ends up being nothing, but considering the looming possibility of Casmodeus - and the fact that Sam started the episode saying he'd talked to Cas so they have literally been decieved THIS episode without knowing it (and Dean didn't get to verify if it was Cas or not - another reason to phone Sam instead of Dean)...

I wonder if it is leading up to Dean calling out Casmodeus about not being Cas? That this fake out might have been a time it really was Sam, but we and Dean were given a set up to doubt Sam was there in one piece, us with dramatic irony and Dean with just plain not knowing, and so they could play with this concept and it just tapers off - maybe we take the reaction about C Z-J as proof, maybe we eventually decide Sam has to be Sam after all and there's nothing going on here because he's involved earnestly in the emotional decisions at the end of the episode.

But it was interesting. Unlike with Ketch and his twin, it was the sort of set up where I wasn't certain we wouldn't finish the scene and then cut to Sam tied to a chair and bouncing it over to a nearby sharp object to saw himself free and run and stop the drama, at least until the end of that part of the episode. Once we were back out in the clear light of day it was like Sam's disgusting plaid was all the proof we needed it was really him :P

[shuakkinda-blog]

Mingyu crushing on you !! // scenario

A bullet-point scenario starring everyone’s favorite housewife and puppy Mingyu!

Request scenarios and reactions on my page if you’d like :)

- I love Kim Mingyu

- you know why?

- it’s because he’s just so

- confident

- and talented in so many ways (BOY DO I LOVE TALL BOYS WHO CAN DANCE)

- and shameless

- and legit the type of guy you’d wanna bring home to your parents

- he’s a m a z i n g

- and if you’re the person he develops a suuuper huge crush on

- well god damn you are one lucky girl

- ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE YOU INTO THE STORY

- you’re a few weeks into your internship at pledis, and you’ve already met a handful of svt members

- but not all of them

- so one day, you’re busy putting away some finished paperwork for your job at the company building

- you hit an intersection between two hallways when all of a sudden

- a huGE ASS TREE COMES RUNNING INTO YOU FROM THE OTHER HALLWAY (yall should know what I mean by tree lolol)

- you get knocked onto the floor, and it looks like whatever hit you took a fall as well

- the paperwork in your hands go flying all over the place, and the back of your head hits the wall pretty loudly

- as you rub the part of your head that hurt, the “tree” (a really handsome one, I must say) looks to you as he rests on his side, eyes widened and mouth slightly agape at the sight of you

- you recognize him

- it’s one of the members you haven’t talked to before

- he’s not just any tree

- he’s the visual tree, Mingyu

- “OH MY GOD I’M-I’M SO SORRY- ARE YOU OKAY???” he panics as he gets off the floor and kneels next to you to check if you’re fine

- your eyes squint at the slight pain, but you nod yes anyways. “Yes, I’m fine.”

- it really hurts actually lol

- he helps you sit up against the wall and checks your head, figuring that the pain could only be coming from there since you’re clutching it like that

- he notes the pain in your face and shakes his head

- “don’t lie, I know it hurts.”

- you try to convince him that you’re fine as you begin to collect your scattered files, but he grabs your hand before you could grab another sheet of paper

- “come here,” he says and assists you in getting up. he gets you to sit on a chair in one of the vacant offices

- once you get settled he continues, “I’m gonna go grab an ice pack from the freezer downstairs. Don’t pick up another piece of paper from the floor while I’m out.”

- one side of you is thinking

- “aw this guy is so sweet and considerate, I’m mELtiNG”

- while the other side is just

- “bitch don’t tell me what to d0 lmao″

- so you get up to collect the rest of your sheets in the hallway before quickly scampering into the room again to pretend you were there the entire time

- you hope the guy is dumb enough to not notice that there’s suddenly no mess in the hallway when he gets back

- and luckily he’s too busy thinking about the pain in your head to care about the papers at the moment

- so he comes rushing back into the office with a small cloth and an ice pack

- he takes your hand off of the part of your head that you were holding and places the ice pack there

- “I’m so sorry, really. You don’t know how bad I feel right now,” he says while holding the ice against your head

- “No, it’s okay,” you reassure him. “I should have been looking before crossing.”

- “I was the one who slammed into you though,” he replies. “I shouldn’t be running around here in the first place.”

- you hate to waste his time so you take a hold of the ice pack and get up from your seat

- “I can put the ice pack back in the freezer later. Thank you for your help, Mingyu.”

- “oh,” he says. “Are you sure?”

- you nod

- “okay, I’m sorry again. Really.” You can tell he’s being sincere

 - the both of you exchange bows and you proceed to leave the office with your files

- “hey, you’re y/n, right?” he asks

- “yeah, that’s me. I’m surprised you know my name,” you say shyly

- he laughs, “yeah the other members talk about you sometimes. I’m actually surprised you know my name too, since there’s so many of us.”

- “well, they told me to watch out for a tall and clumsy guy around here named Mingyu, so I figured that guy is you.”

- Mingyu’s jaw drops, but his shocked expression turns into a smile

- “wow, from what I heard about you from the other guys, I really wasn’t expecting you to be this sassy,” he scoffs

- “well, it looks like they haven’t told you enough,” you laugh and leave the room *high-fives self*

- as you’re putting all the files away in their respective places, you can’t help but think of how sweet and cute Mingyu is

- like, sure he just bodyslammed into you a few minutes ago

- but his accommodating nature was so niceee

- and he’s got looks on top of that :33

- you can’t possibly think he could get any better oh boy just wait

- little do you know that Mingyu is still cursing at himself for messing up in front of an innocent intern

- a pretty cute one too lol

- he wishes you guys could’ve met in a better way

- but it’s okay, he thinks to himself

- to make up for it, he’s gonna make an actual effort to get to know you and fix his reputation

- he was drawn to the unexpected level of sass you gave him a piece of

- well, if you’re gonna give him a slice of your attitude

- he’s gonna give you a slice too

- a slice of homemade cake, that is

- bc the poor puppy would still feel bad about what happened the other day

- he’ll find you a day after the incident to hand you a slice of cake that he made himself

- you’d insist that you don’t deserve the slice, since you think half of the incident was your fault

- but he’d literally open up the container of cake and shove a piece of it into your mouth

- “iF YOU DON’T ACCEPT THIS, THEN I’LL ACCEPT IT FOR YOU,” he says

- “I also spent 3 hours trying to make this last night, pls take it :(”

- “you’re cute too,” he’d say in his head

- so you taste it and

- omg 

- it’s not cake

- it’s heaven

- you immediately compliment him on the cake, and he blushes

- “if he can make this cake by himself, then I guess he isn’t as clumsy as the others say???” you think to yourself

- he has redeemed himself

- AND THUS your friendship with Mingyu begins !!

- it wouldn’t take long for him to fall for you though

- believe me when I say he is a softie

- this makes Mingyu the fluffiest crush-er

- he’s so into making his thing for you obvious

- but 99% of the time you’ll take the hints he gives you as jokes

- he’d also be super willing to do couple-ish things with you even if you guys are just friends bc this boy just cAN’T WAIT

- he wants you to know that he can be a really good potential boyfriend

- so whenever you guys hang out, he’d try extra hard to be funny, impress you with his skills, and ofc flirt

- “someone’s looking really pretty today~” he’d say. he’ll probably flash a smile and wink as well what a grease ball

- “shut up, Mingyu. we all know I look like shit today,” you’d reply

- “but you look beautiful all the time,” he’d say in his head

- his flirting would be so frequent

- the members would see it too and probably want to puke

- but it would be so frequent to the point that the members would think he’s just messing with you

- they wouldn’t actually think it’s a crush

- if anything, Mingyu would have to talk to Wonwoo about liking you if he can’t keep it to himself any longer:

- “hey Wonwoo,”

- “yeah?”

- “what if I told you that... I actually like y/n?”

- “wait, rEALLY?”

- “yeah, man.”

- “LOL I thought all of the flirting was just for fun.”

- “nah, dude. I actually meant it.”

- Wonwoo would ask Mingyu if he is actually gonna confess or something, and Mingyu would definitely say yes

- but he doesn’t know how to do it???

- like, he’s got the guts to confess and everything

- but planning out a cute way to tell you how he feels would be difficult

- he doesn’t want you to laugh at him when he actually confesses bc the last thing he wants you to think is that his confession is just another one of his flirty “jokes”

- Mingyu wants you to catch onto what he’s trying to say right away so that the whole moment stays special :’)

- Meanie YES would have to brainstorm through a whole lot of confession ideas

- and then the perfect plan will hit them

- so on one fine day

- Mingyu would text you during one of your intern shifts

- “Y/N Y/N Y/N”

- “what do you want now,” you’d text back

- “are you in the company building rn?”

- “yeah, why?”

- “meet me in the practice room asap k byeee”

- “uh okay?”

- so you finish up whatever you were doing before heading down a floor to the practice room

- but when you arrive at the practice room, you check the tiny door window

- there’s no lights on???

- all you see through the window is pitch black

- “is Mingyu even there?” you think to yourself

- you hesitate for a moment, but a part of you just doesn’t ask and opens the door anyways

- you look straight ahead and find a orange glow coming from the floor

- it’s a cake with candles

- and being illuminated by the cake is none other than your favorite germ ball

- Mingyu

- “dude, wth you look really creepy right now,” you’d laugh

- Mingyu would try hard to hold in his laughter and say

- “shut up, just come here.”

- “can I turn on the lights at least?” you ask

- “NONONO just sit here please~”

- so you walk over to the cake and sit in front of it. Mingyu is sitting across from you. the cake is all that’s in between you and him

- you spot an envelope to the right of the cake with your name on it

- he spots your glance at the envelope and says “go ahead, take it.”

- “Mingyu, if you think it’s my birthday today, you’re about 6 months off.”

- he’s nervous

- “IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK. JUST OPEN THE ENVELOPE FOR GOD’S SAKE, Y/N.”

- so you do

- and inside the envelope is a card with a little heart on it

- you open up the card and read its contents:

- “y/n I know this will sound stupid but please just answer this question:”

- “do you like me?”

- “if so, blow the cake candles.”

- “if not, just use your hands to blow out the candles.”

- tbh the idea did sound kind of stupid but

- you blush

- he’s caught you off guard

- and for real this time

- truth is that you’ve liked him since you guys first met

- you always thought his flirty jokes were all to poke fun at you

- they were cute

- but you didn’t really think he meant it

- everything was slowly coming together now

- does he... really like you??

- welp it’s time for you to throw another snarky comment to make suRe

- “you’re trying to get me to burn off my fingers, aren’t you” you say

- and you expect him to snap back at you

- but he doesn’t:

- “y/n listen, I really like you. I just wanna know if you feel the same.”

- “just please answer the question.”

- so

- you take a deep breath to work up the strength needed to blow out the candles

- but just before you can blow the candles out

- Mingyu quickly shoots out a breath of air and beats you to it

- and he swiftly takes your cheek in his hand to plant a kiss on your lips

- DSJKFHDSLHBGIUJGBSGKDJFBGLIFDUGJBDN;OF WHAT IS LIVING

- you smiled into the kiss and he followed

- he lets go of your lips after taking in the moment

- “that kiss might be sweeter than the cake I made for you.”

- you punch him in the shoulder

- “you’re gross,” you laugh

- he moves to your side of the cake to give you a warm hug in the dark

- “but I wouldn’t have you any other way,” you say with a smile

[evenstevensranked]

#23: Season 3, Episode 3 - “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend”

Twitty’s new relationship with Allison Wong starts monopolizing his free time and Louis' jealousy emerges once again. Meanwhile, Ren and Donnie get caught up in some heated sibling rivalry for a change! 

I love when “kid” shows grow up a bit and we get to see our characters in juicy situations -- Like, immature middle school relationships. LET’S GET INTO THE DRAMA!

We see that Louis and Twitty have found a hobby in "foam-hunk diving." Don't even tell me you didn't want to try this (or STILL want to try this.) If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that this episode inspired us all to foam hunk dive:

One day during their routine excursion, Twitty notices Allison Wong standing nearby. It's so ridiculous (and slightly inappropriate?) how they have her drink from a water bottle in slow-mo while a deep voice sings "ohhhh, babehhhh" in the background. This is Even Stevens, not Baywatch. Louis encourages Twitty to go talk to her. Their conversation is awkward -- complete with a foam hunk sticking out of Twitty's neck. And I use the word "conversation" lightly because it's literally exactly what you'd expect interaction between two 8th graders to be like (a.k.a. The smallest small talk ever.) But, that's apparently all it takes for Twitty to return to Louis with the good news "She likes me!" and they celebrate by flailing around in packaging materials, as all mature men do.

I would also like to point out the incredible name for the packing supply warehouse, which I just noticed today: 

“PACKRAMENTO Packing Supplies” - Not only is the totally legit logo abnormally bright, terribly superimposed, and made on Microsoft Paint... but it’s one of the greatest and worst puns I’ve ever heard. 

Then it cuts to the subplot, where Donnie is preparing to give a rock climbing demonstration on... a giant rock wall that they've named after him. Why? I have so many questions. Was Donnie the school's star rock climber too? What middle school even has a rock climbing program? Lawrence Jr. High does because this is Even Stevens, fool. 

Everyone is there in the stands, including Twitty and Allison who have already started dating??? They're cozying up to each other and everything already. 

ok they’re honestly pretty cute tho

Just as Donnie is about to do his demonstration, coach Tugnut interjects and performs a cheer for Donnie. This is so disturbing, lol. The opening line is "Donnie Stevens, muscles that bulge" - CALM DOWN, TUGNUT. He also says “Leading his teammates to a steamy hot shower!” Again: Holy crap, Disney. What de heck. Tugnut was definitely a coded gay character... and an unfortunately creepy one at that, dang. 

Wexler, Donnie, and Tawny are me. 

He then insists that Donnie doesn't ~shine~ without an opponent, so Ren unwillingly volunteers by jumping up and screaming at the top of her lungs after Louis pours ice down the back of her shirt. This leads to a "family grudge match" (Tugnut's words) between brother and sister, which we seldom see and it's a cool lil switcheroo! The sibling rivalry is always centered around Louis and Ren specifically. So it's interesting to see what that dynamic is like between Ren and Donnie. Like, you forget that Louis and Ren have a brother sometimes! To Donnie's shock and embarrassment, Ren beats him. Uh oh. This births the main through-line of the subplot which is the two of them competing at literally everything ever in life after that because Donnie is being a sore loser. 

At lunch that day, Louis’ jealousy takes center stage when Twitty invites Allison to eat with them. They’re all giggly and lovey dovey -- gushing about the fact that both of their names start with “Al” and they love strawberry ice cream but hate vanilla. Ya know, the kind of solid foundation all enduring relationships are built on. Louis ain’t havin’ it. Twitty even says that the two of them are going to craft club after school, when he usually goes to Louis’ house. God forbid.

This scene also brought us one of my favorite Louis gifs:

I can taste the salt from here. No one wears jealousy as strong as Louis Stevens. 

I’m just gonna wrap up the subplot now, like I usually do.. because they’re always much shorter than the main plot and so intermittent that it’s just annoying (and extra work for me lol) to keep going back and forth! Sooo yeah. Basically Donnie starts an unofficial battle against Ren over everything: Like who can put away groceries the fastest and a spur of the moment limbo challenge. I love the limbo scene, because how on earth is Steve in regular clothes one second and tropical vacation clothes complete with a coconut drink the next? Because this is Even Stevens, fool. 

“This is like that impromptu family fun you see on television!” Steve says, as we watch them have impromptu family fun on television. That’s some sorta fourth wall type joke right there.

Donnie ultimately challenges Ren to a rock climbing rematch... and she beats him fair and square again. Donnie is cool with it this time around and adjusts his negative attitude towards losing! Yay! I also forgot to mention that Tugnut very harshly slapped Donnie’s butt before he started climbing at both matches. Yikes. Ren and Donnie are all happy and proud of themselves for not letting competition come between them, and Tugnut is miserable over precious Donnie losing to his sister. They should probably rename it the Ren Stevens Rock Climbing Wall though. The person it’s named after couldn’t even climb it successfully.

I love this. It’s so nice, tbh. The end! 

Back to the Twitty and Allison drama. Twitty stops by the Stevens house after craft club and brings Allison along with him. Louis just about dies. He just can’t handle it at all. I’d like to mention that Louis was reading a “swimsuit edition” of Steve’s bird watching magazine as Twitty walked in??? What? Is it just pictures of girls in bikinis posing with birds? Why is that a thing? Because THIS IS EVEN STEVENS, FOOL. Twitty also brought a wind chime he made using sea glass and Allison puts it to the left of Louis’ bed. Later in the scene, Louis walks to the right of his bed and the wind chime hits him in the head. Twitty forgot to mention he also installed a brain and legs into the wind chime. This whole scene is kinda sad though because Louis tries to hang out with them, but everything he suggests is only suited for two people. Like a bunch of hilariously titled board games: “2 On a Plank,” “Two to Tango,” “Third Wheel,” and “Odd Man Out.” Sounds like a fun time! 

I love how “2 On a Plank” shows, like.. 5 people on the side of the box. 

Louis clearly doesn’t know how to be alone or allow his friends to have other friends/significant others, so he immediately decides to replace Twitty any way he can -- Starting with asking Tawny to date him again. “As of right now, you and I are officially back on!” Tawny can see right through him as usual and tries to make him see that he doesn’t want a girlfriend, he’s just using her to fill the void. There’s a great bit here when Louis presents a daisy to Tawny and refers to it as a rose lol. That moment has been gif’d and literally has 400k+ notes on here! Wowie!

Tawny’s words of wisdom fall on deaf ears because Louis turns around right away and runs to Tom as a last resort. “Welp, now you’re officially my best friend!” he tells him. As if it’s that easy. Despite sort of being friends, (I say ‘sort of’ because Louis tends to treat Tom like poo on his shoe) the two of them obviously don’t have much in common and Tom is way too uptight to be bffs with Louis. Tom is absolutely elated to have a “best friend,” though. :( He asks Louis if they should talk to each other before school in the morning to make sure they don’t wear the same thing, but Louis insists that’s not gonna happen. And he’s right... the chances of that happening are literally zero. But leave it to Tom to somehow manage to take “best friends” to the next level: 

I’ll never understand how or why this happens on TV shows all the time. 

Louis tries to take Tom foam hunk diving with him, but Tom’s uptight nature sucks the fun out of everything. So much so, Louis just ends their new best-friendship right then and there. There’s only one thing I dislike about this episode, and that’s the way Louis treats Tom. As usual. It’s pretty hilarious though... Tom says he can’t hop the fence because he doesn’t have his fence climbing gloves. Oh my god. 

Louis attempts to go dive by himself, but it’s just not the same. It also makes him look like a crazy person flailing around in hunks of foam and beaming with joy by himself. I’d like to point out that “Louis” does a flip into the hunks, except it’s definitely not Shia: 

Shia couldn’t do his own stunts??? lol. The flip was pretty simple! This dude’s wig is so different from Shia’s hair and he has a receding hairline. 

Just then, Louis hides as Twitty shows up with Allison and surprises her with the vat of foam hunks. She’s seriously unimpressed. She calls the idea of jumping into it stupid. One thing leads to another and they decide to break up, dramatically parting ways.

I love how this screencap really illustrates that it was the foam hunks that tore them apart. Imagine? “How did your marriage end again?” “My wife wouldn’t jump in a tub of packaging materials with me.” -- This is why middle schoolers aren’t ready for relationships. 

Louis is beyond happy that they broke up at first. He’s just excited to have his best friend back. But, unfortunately.. all Twitty can do afterwards is mope around. He can’t stop thinking about Allison. This brings us to the end of the episode and the reason why I really like this one. In the end, Louis decides to put his friend’s feelings before his own and convinces Allison to go foam hunk diving with them. Awww. She pops up out of nowhere and pleasantly surprises Twitty! Tom shows up too and the four of them have a good old fashioned blast. 

It’s like when friends get caught in the rain and have a cinematic, grand old time -- except this is Even Stevens so it’s foam hunks that fall instead. 

And that’s it! Idk man, I just always liked this episode. I’ve said it a million times but I live for teen drama lol. It’s just refreshing and entertaining whenever this show decides to explore relationships. We get to see quite a few here as well! There’s Twitty and Allison of course. But then there’s Louis and Twitty’s friendship, as well as Ren and Donnie’s rivalry. This one is kinda stuffed to the brim with it, but I really enjoy the main plot. Even though Louis was super jealous the whole time, the resolution always makes me happy. Just goes to show that he’s a good friend, even though selfishness can get the better of him sometimes. This episode also kinda doubles as a Twitty plot which is cool. Oh, and Shia does his “WAHHHH-HA-HA-OOOOOO!” scream at least 10 times in this episode. Five of which are in the first 2 minutes, so there’s that. I actually just realized that this episode is basically the same plot as All About Yvette, except reversed and less cheesy. I feel like I mention that episode a lot for some reason lol. 

I also want to let you guys know that I’ve created a Redbubble account to start selling some Even Stevens-related designs/products. I’ve been working really hard on the designs and cannot wait to post them!! Ahhh. I have so many ideas! haha. (Like *cough* Twitty-Stevens Connection band merch *cough*) It’s gonna be fun. I was inspired to do so because I saw that Lizzie McGuire, That’s So Raven and other Disney Channel “classics” have some new official merch for sale through Hot Topic. But of course... Even Stevens gets nothing. So once again, I’m taking matters into my own hands here lol. I always try to search for Even Stevens merch, but I can never find anything. So I’m making these products for myself as much as I’m making them for y’all. I’ll be sure to let you know when the stuff is posted. 

ALSO Brookwell/McNamara (the show’s production team) followed the blog on Twitter. I feel so validated and ~official.~

Thanks for reading! As always, I encourage you to chime in via Disqus below.

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[songofsaraneth]

WHEPHEW what a busy weekend. journal-blogging it up bc it was a Good one and i wanna remember it

friday after work started with the birthday party for the town multicultural center!! one of my housemates plays in a marching/brass band and they performed at it, everyone drank free margaritas and had chips/salsa/cupcakes, and then we tried to play a pretty unsucessful game of 4-square with some children and made me realize what a difference height makes in that sport (we had to play in like, Ultra Squat position to be on the same level as the kids, so basically Leg Day).

friday night was ALSO the first Bike Party of the year, where everyone puts on costumes for that month’s theme (this one was “safari”), meet up behind the bike shop and the guy with the solar powered speakers on a bike trailer starts playing a bunch of music, and then we bike up and down main st and wave to the tourists and then have a roving dance party around town. usually in the culverts below the roads, under the highway bridge north of town, or along the bike path past the campgrounds (sometimes picking up extra people from the campsites who feel like partyin). generally you get to an area, dance for 30-45minutes, then bike to the next, dance more, etc. VERY EXERCISE I always forget how tiring it is ;_; but this is the last time it’ll be on a friday for a while cause Tourist Season, so it’s probably the last one me and all my housemates could get to together. we wore our matching zebra onesies (that we got for our blanket fort house party back in february) and there were two other zebras also in attendance. another friend dressed up as “the jungle” and i’m jealous I didn’t think of that first. it was VERY COLD THOUGH like FUCK it snowed for twenty whole minutes in the morning. luckily the onesie is  pretty warm. but we didn’t bike home till about midnight and i was So Sore the next day

saturday!! i was lazy and slept forever which was Excellent and then in the afternoon, met up with another mermaid visiting from Salt Lake with her family! i met up with her at her hotel and we swam in the pool for like 40 minutes before Noping out because it was cold and just sitting in the hot tub to chat instead lol. it was fun though! i’ve never met up with another mermaid for swimming before (the other time i tried we were rained out, but went to the aquarium instead, which was also super awesome) so that was neat! she had a Kariel sequin tail, which i’ve never seen up close before (40,000 sequins!!!!!), so that was cool. 

after that i went to a friends bday party! which started out totally normal (chatting, lots of food, his dad was in town so talked to him a bit), then did a pinata (did u know adults trying to smack a pinata is even more hilarious than than when children do it), then chatted a bit more and at like 10pm people started dancin. except three dudes were sort of alternating selecting songs were like, trying to make the styles as opposing as possible (hardcore rap followed by slow lyrical ballad followed by bouncy disney) and it became kind of a competition to... keep dancing anyway??? no matter how weird the songs got?? culminating in a swaying Hug Circle to My Heart Will Go On, squiggling amoeba-like through the living room and kitchen to envelop Music Selection Dude #2 Who Hated That Song but was standing by the computer and we were worried he was gonna change it, and then everyone just... slowly grabbed his body and held it horizontally, then lifted him into the air and slowly spun him in circles just below the ceiling before gently lowering him onto the floor (where he remained perfectly motionless) and doing synchronized hand waving over his body. IT GOT REALLY WEIRD. but no one questioned it everyone was perfectly silent or singing along to the lyrics until the song ended. what the fuck. i haven’t been part of something That bizarre since college (tho to be fair, there were a Lot of those moments in college). anyway party lasted until a bit after midnight.

TODAY SUNDAY!! at 9am met up with folks to go WHITE WATER RAFTING! it was the going away party for a friend, so we got a bunch of gear together/a pal’s free boat rental for working at a river company, and some personal boats, so 3 boats and about 12 people. second time ive been on the river this season, the first was february and Very cold/total splash guards against the water, but today was the first decent day this week! about 50-60F all day, though the water was a lot colder (although what the fuck is going ON this is the DESERT we should be like in the 70-80s range this time of year). everything went great at first, the rapids were easy, we rafted for a couple hours and then docked at a winery with a helpful pier, and jumped inside for buffet lunch and optional wine tasting. which like, WHAT an excellent concept, i hear they’re doing brunches soon, and whitewater rafting into/out of a fancy brunch seems IDEAL tbh.

...buuuuut we got to the first rapid after the winery/last rapid we were gonna hit of the day and just. totally flipped. we lost back left paddler (who took a drink of wine from his beer can like RIGHT as we went into the rapid smh) almost immediately, and i turned to see what happened to him (i was back right), and noticed that our captain/acting guide was just ALSO GONE??? I still don’t know HOW he fell out i guess he just catapulted on the first big wave... everyone (sans myself) was pretty drunk and at high water level (~15,000cfs) you can go straight through (or, RDTFM, aka “right down the fucking middle”, thats ur whitewater lingo for the day), but it was only at like ~8000cfs today so instead there was just... a rock. so chuck (acting captain) pops up a second later and manages to grab the boat, i haul him in, turn around to see charlie (back left paddle) somehow on the other side of our raft now floating the rapid, and two of the front paddlers trying unsuccessfully to reach him.

 then i look forward and OH GOD there is ANOTHER huge dip in front of us leading to aforementioned rock, and I sort of leapt to the left side/charlie’s spot to try to paddle off it, but no one was paying enough attention to coordinate and so we slammed it and the boat went riiiiiiight over. like, the most dramatic long-ways flip i’ve ever seen, threw/shoved us all down into the water. mostly i was thinking “OH FUCK” but also “SHOULDN’T HAVE BOTHERED PULL CHUCK BACK IN”, was under for maybe 5 seconds total, then popped up right behind the raft. pretty much everyone managed to hold onto the tie line and somehow i guess we also landed on charlie again so he had a hold as well. until we hit the next rock anyway, which popped the boat up for a second/swept me underwater and under the boat, and i ended up hand-over-handing it out onto the front side. which was easier for visibility/expectations but also i could see 10 feet in front of me that my backpack had come unsecured and was floating down the river without me, holding my phone (thankfully in a lifeproof/very waterproof case bc i’m not a Fool who takes electronics on rafting trips with no backup) and driver’s license and glasses hostage. and like 80% of me was ready to dive after it but while i’m an idiot i’m not That much of an idiot so i held onto the boat instead and watched it get farther and farther off. the first of our boats that went through (a  dinghy with two passengers) was waiting for us downstream and seemed like they were gonna get it, but then one of our people got swept way downstream so they were on mission Rescue Susan instead. but anyway after a very charged minute or so that felt more like ten, we managed to kick ourselves into an eddy and get over to the shore. 

at which point i became very confused bc our group now had 3 more people in it than were in our boat??? which is when i realized that our third boat, whcih had been behind us, had also capsized and dunked all passengers. but theirs was still trapped in the current (for like 5 whole minutes just bouncing on top of the first big rapid) so they all swam sans gear to where we ended up. anyway i sloshed to a nearby beach where some concerned rafters were watching (turned out to be our #3 boat guide’s coworkers, who’s company we were renting gear from, whoops), and over a ridge, and saw that boat #1 had sucessfully reclaimed susan, and a kind kayaker had saved both my backpack and one of our paddles. we dried off for a bit and checked everything over miraculously, the only casualties were some hats and sunglasses, one item per every person who flipped. the river gods were kind in their choice of sacrifices today. then we boated the last mile out and lay in the sand warming up until our car shuttle finished, and my friend who’s bday party i went to the night before & his gf & dad boated up RIGHT after us (they were also all at the multicultural center event friday) and laughed at us for having flipped. ah tiny desert towns. you see Everyone everywhere all the time. and i’ll see them again on wednesday for D&D so more mockery inbound.

anyway i got home and me n my roommate (also on the trip) took some VERY long/hot showers, drank some hot chocolate, and then watched cop drama tv shows in bed under the covers for 2 hours before ordering takeout soup and laying in bed some more. now i am laying in bed and about to go to sleep bc i’m exhausted but apparently still enough of an insomniac to never go to bed before midnight.