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plush-anon · 4 years

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Happy Halloween Scooby Doo! Review

Muahahhhahahhahahaha! Thanks to the Walmart tradition of stocking movies for sale weeks before the intended release date, I have myself a copy of what claims to be Scooby Doo’s FIRST Halloween adventure!

…in spite of movies like Witch’s Ghost and Goblin King, holiday specials like WNSD’s A Scooby Doo Halloween (which had a haunted Scarecrow too…), BCSD’s EL Bandito (for Dia de los Muertos - obvs not the same, but most companies act like it) and Halloween, The NSDM’s Halloween Hassle at Dracula’s Castle, and the DTV short film Scooby Doo and the Spooky Scarecrow (which, ironically enough, did NOT take the opportunity to feature Dr. Jonathan Crane).

So let us take a look now at Happy Halloween Scooby Doo! and see whether this film will be a graveyard smash of a treat, or a black licorice bomb of disappointment.

Full review (and SPOILERS TO GO WITH IT) are below the cut in my new review format; if all goes smoothly, I’ll go with this for future Scooby films.

WARNING: This review is very long.

One minor note before we begin: the Special Features actually include BCSD’s Halloween, WNSD’s A Scooby Doo Halloween, and PNSD’s Ghost Who’s Coming to Dinner

...so they were AWARE this was not the first Halloween adventure of the Scooby gang, and yet still use that tag line. Hm.

Still, kudos for including them - this’ll help boost the reasons to keep this movie, if it turns out to be a real Milk Dud of a movie *ba-dum tish* :D

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The movie starts off rather abruptly, actually - no slow pan over the setting, just WB Animation credit and BOOM, we’ve cut to a Halloween parade and Elvira is talking.

I’m of a mixed opinion including Elvira on top of having Bill Nye and a Batman Rogue - while she most certainly fits the Scooby aesthetic, it doesn’t feel as grand an impact after her weird little cameo in Return to Zombie Island (ugh) and I’m not sure how well the movie will balance her in wait a minute

wait just a

WAIT A MINUTE

Did - did that parade float skeleton just sing Crystal Cove as the town’s name?

oh no.

Oh No.

....also their song is terrible and they should feel terrible.

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Fred: We got him! Banh Mi Shop, second floor!

me: the heck is a Banh Mi Shop? *mild googling noises*

So I guess Jonathan Crane really had a craving for a Vietnamese sandwich before he enacted his Halloween scheme.

...you think he’s a lemongrass chicken type of guy or a BBQ pork guy? It’s always hard to guess at these things, esp when coffee and pumpkin spice aren’t on the table (as per fanon, of course)

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Velma: We have a flawless track record!

So I guess WB is just gonna ignore the past few DTV retcons established in 13 Ghosts and Return to Zombie Island?

I mean that rather defeats the purpose of them existing at all, but fcuk YEAH I can get behind throwing that retcon garbage out of canon!

And STAY OUT!!

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Shaggy, talking about ghosts being real: I’m like the boy who cried wolf - I keep warning you but like, you won’t believe me until I finally get eaten!

Yet again, Warner Bros makes a wolf reference to Shaggy. Yet again, I am torn asunder between wanting werewolf!Shaggy in a new Scooby property, and fearing for the appearance of werewolf!Shaggy in a new Scooby property.

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Velma: Point is, being afraid is a waste of time!

Scarecrow, LITERALLY EXPLODING THROUGH A BRICK WALL three buildings away:

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He’s floating through the air and t-posing to assert his dominance 🤣🤣🤣

Gods bless animation 😁

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Daphne @ Shag and Scoob locking themselves in the van: Are you serial?

Me: wait, SERIAL? *re-reads captions* yup, that says “serial”.

Is this an editing mistake? I don’t think that works here…unless that’s supposed to be a joke on how they always do this. But then why would that be an irritating surprise, they literally do this EVERY episode 🙄

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Oh hey, Red Herring’s Party Screams truck has Red Herring running out of it

Could this be a hint to how the story goes? The villain appearing on a literal Red Herring?

Naaaaaah, WB’s not THAT smart

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So if we take @captainbaddecisions crack theory on Jonathan Crane being Shaggy’s uncle seriously, does this mean that Jonathan is using magic to fly, float fear toxin orbs around himself, and making things explode, a la the family trait of Crack Theory A?

Logically he’s probs using wires or magnets or some shit, but it’s a fun thought to entertain 😁

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Welp, we finally get the opening credits! … with Jonathan Crane smashing through the Mystery Machine’s windshield, set to a slow poppy song straight from the 60s, and spewing the title of the film out in glittery pink mist.

All the while Scooby and Shaggy throw candy at each other, deliberately obtuse to the cloud of fear toxin enveloping their friends and the townsfolk, the steady destruction of the Mystery Machine they’re laying in as multiple cars crash into it and send it spiraling, and the general mayhem and destruction that Scarecrow is causing

Never change, guys, never change

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I just choked on my lemonade

There’s an article plastered to the roof of the Mystery Machine titled “Talking Dog Confounds, Ignites Ethics Debate Over Dog Labor”

ahahahahaha

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Annnnnnnnd there goes the Mystery Machine, tumbling in the air and over the roads with Shaggy and Scooby still inside without seat belts. Will they perish in this horrible road accident? Will Death finally come to claim them at last?

Of course not. This is Shaggy and Scooby we’re talking about - I’m almost positive they can survive anything up to and including a nuclear bomb. This is child’s play to them.

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So they “capture” Scarecrow… by pinning his cape to a tree with crossbow bolts.

And they do not try to at least tie up his arms or his hands in ANY capacity.

JUST the cape.

...you know, Velma, for a team with a “flawless” track record, you guys are making a hecking TON of mistakes in facing against one of Batman’s ROGUES GALLERY, ESPECIALLY with no Batman in sight, good freakin’ grief. 😩

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Yaaaaaaaaas, this Scarecrow design is LUSH

He’s got the lank, the height, the BTAS costume colors, the elongated face with beaky nose and pointed chin and angular cheekbones, the eyebags like Gucci, the furrowed brow… honestly the only thing missing is the more reddish color hair, and even that isn’t mandatory. I love 😍

Not to mention the HOT DAYUM voice he has - low and velvet rough and so godsdamned particular in a way that could either tie in to obscuring a southern accent as in fanon or just as a stringent academic, oh my yes. He’s voiced by someone called Dwight Schultz, who’s most well known for playing Captain ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock in the OG A-Team show, and someone called Reginald Barclay in Star Trek TNG and Voyager, if any of y’all know that character in particular.

And of course, the first line he says is a delightfully wry “Oh, but I AM getting away with it,” with the sort of smirk that absolutely lends credence to why he’s a threat to Batman, and not some simpering wimp that can be defeated with some crossbow bolts in a tree.

I think I’m going to enjoy this movie at least somewhat, so long as we get to see him 🥰🥰🥰

(tho on a side note: Daphne why on EARTH are you trying to film Crane saying the meddling kids line? Do you have a video compilation of past villains who’ve done that, and you hope to add his to it? Was your phone damaged when you went up against the Riddler a few DTVs ago and you want a second shot at recording a Gotham Rogue saying it? Bc I don’t think a Gotham Rogue would be too pleased with seeing himself as a Mystery Meme on the Youtubes, you get what I’m saying?)

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Okay, so the floating orb things are explained away as fear toxin bomb drones somehow… despite looking nothing like the other drones and being much smaller with no visible propulsion, while also flying unassisted through and around objects to explode against places once flung…

(tho interesting note, none of them are aimed directly at the crowds, just behind them - odd, that)

But how did he heckin’ FLY at the beginning?

Yeah, they show him wearing wrist-mounted grappling hooks at the end of the intro song sequence, but they are NOWHERE IN SIGHT at the beginning - and I do mean in sight, since he emerges against a backdrop of flames. There was nothing there (see the T-pose above for further evidence), and nothing there when he FLEW THROUGH THE MYSTERY MACHINE’S WINDSHIELD AND FLEW BACK OUT AGAIN. And these things are pale silver, which stands out like crazy against the darker backgrounds, so no hand-wavy ‘they were always being used’ bullcrap we’ve seen in other movies.

Hmmm *scribbles in notepad* note to self, add notation concerning Crack Theory A on magic!Shaggy to “Uncle Crane” theory files - evidence denotes that Crane is able to fly (or at least hover in mid-air unassisted) for terrorization purposes. May boost strength of CTA by family association, lending credence to magic inheritance along the bloodline...

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“Avocado Toast Generation”? Crane, I honestly don’t know if you really mean that, or if you understand just how much that phrase gets under any Millennial/Gen Z kid’s skin. Having seen multiple variations of your character, it really could swing either way (tho kudos on the dead switch idea - very nice 👍🏻)

Although this does lead to an interesting stand-off: Fred, upon seeing the town threatened with 3 days worth of fear toxin, immediately moves to let Crane go, while Velma stops him and refuses to consider compromising if it means Crane escapes. They both look legitimately frustrated at the other for taking the stance they do.

Fascinating~

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Hmmm

Crane honey, I don’t know if your drones are made of flash paper and hope, or if Scooby and Shaggy are using the reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaally old candy (the stuff made about ~3 years ago most neighborhoods give out to the teenagers that knock around midnight on Halloween) to shoot them down, but either way you may wish to speak with the manufacturer about this

Then again, this IS Shaggy and Scooby - they probably could’ve spat marshmallows at the drones and brought them down with equal success and explosions

(and good on them for shooting those down! Atta boy 👍🏻)

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Aw dang it

1. They still have Crane captured and now in handcuffs (despite having… you know… NOT been bound by anything except cross bolts in his curtain cape thing)

2. Dwight Schultz has decided to pitch his voice higher and more nasally than what he has. Hopefully this is more of an incredulous sort of pitch than something that sticks for the rest of the movie, ugh.

Also, I think they’re framing the movie to be more Velma-centric this time around - she’s the one explaining to Crane how they tracked him down, apparently through a piece of fan mail he sent Elvira (is that the only reason she’s there? Also why was Velma examining random pieces of fan mail for toxins, Elvira probs gets hundreds a week irl) and it looks like they’re framing something up on how fear isn’t something you can pretend isn’t there. neat!

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whajit

53rd?

53rd?!?!

ONLY 53rd?!?!?!?!

Boooo, Scarecrow’s WAY more popular than that! I call foul

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Okay why is Daphne’s schtick so far to spit laaaaaaame slang after every sentence Velma says

I would rather this not be her schtick

Actually could she go back to filming mystery stuff, bc at least I can pretend it’ll build into the OG Zombie Island Daphne

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Phew, his voice has returned to its low, raspy goodness

also, Crane needs to learn about personal space, good grief

(interesting clue brought up tho - Crane only steals tech that CAN’T leak his toxin, ergo it can’t be tracked until he releases it. Sensible use, given that Batman probs tracks it if it does.)

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Velma: I’m not afraid of you, Crane. Fear is an illogical reaction to an imagined threat.

Crane:

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Crane: Fearless, then. Intelligent. Proud and stubborn. You remind me very much of the one person in this world I care about.

uhhhhhh

Yourself? Harley? Edward Nygma? Ichabod the raven? Idk, I’m honestly curious as to where this thread will go 🤔🤔🤔

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Fred, leaning against the Mystery Machine: Guys, it’s gonna be okay. She told me!

O_o

Fred? Honey? Are you sure you weren’t supposed to join Crane in the transport vehicle back to Arkham?

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OH SWEET JESUS SHAGGY GREW YAOI HANDS

WHAT THE HECK

THAT’S WAY MORE UNNERVING THEN YOU GUYS NOT BEING AFRAID ANYMORE

(although the fact that they’re both unsettled by NOT constantly shaking or having their heart racing is honestly kind of heartbreaking. Y’all need therapy, good grief)

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Shaggy and Scooby just chewed up candy (wrapper and all) to make themselves a Halloween costume of… what looks like barfed-up candy (ew)

Before then proceeding to dance so well that everyone around them also starts dancing in a 60s-70s era rainbow light show and giving them candy

I worry for these two sometimes - that kind of power seems to be getting to their head 😬😬😬

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Oh hey, acid green toxic waste is spilling from an 18-wheeler onto the Fear Toxin drones and emitting a purple pink haze that envelops a pumpkin patch! That won’t do anything suspicious at all I bet!

(wait is Poison Ivy going to come into this at some point)

(also major kudos to the music here - very 80s horror synth, I like)

----

So the Pumpkins have grown faces, limbs, consciousness, the ability to fly and a lust for human flesh

And they appear to be led by the Pumpkin King of the Pumpkin Patch mentioned in the Charlie Brown Halloween special

He’s not as friendly as I pictured him being, sadly 😕

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Why is this random ass cop coming up to FD&V to say that they’re in over their heads… AFTER the mystery’s been solved?

Like dude, you’re only making yourself suspicious at this point, go home

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Huh, interesting - the gang are being interviewed for a tv news network while they’re considered the town heroes

Why am I getting bad vibes from this…

Eh, it’s probably nothing

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Velma: {Shaggy and Scooby} are, um… REALLY into the Halloween spirit.

Shaggy: THIS ISN’T COSPLAY, VELMA!

I’m dying 😂

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Holy Shit

Velma just snapped and went off on Shaggy and Scooby for acting scared and doing nothing to help wrap up the mystery

(even though these guys are the ONLY reason that the gang didn’t have to choose between setting Scarecrow free and poisoning the entire town for 3 days straight, but hey, what do I know - I’m just writing an in-depth reaction post to this movie and taking note of details like this, clearly I know nothing *eye roll*)

Last time I saw Velma critique the guys’ usual mystery solving shenanigans, it was much more low-key and without knowing they were nearby

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence

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What the

Bills?

Bills?!?!

Fred just mentioned that fixing the Mystery Machine was going to leave a hefty bill and that they may need to get dishwashing jobs to earn money

Which is more of a job you might expect a high schooler to get on the go and yet

They actually have to pay bills

How old are they here??!

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wait a tic

THIS is how they introduce Bill Nye?

He just calls up Velma with no explanation other than Velma saying “Oh hey, it’s Bill Nye!”

I just - what?!?!

How do you know him so well that he can just pull up your number and call you, and then geT YOU A NEW FREAKING CAR LIKE

WHAT?!?!?!?

Was there a Scooby episode with him in the past two years where the fcuk did this come from

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Also the car is dressed like Bill Nye

And he can talk to the gang directly as the car

So that he can solve mysteries with them whenever he wants

This… this was not what I was expecting to come about from the Bill Nye cameo

(alas, poor predictions of being Crane’s roommate, you will not come to pass this day) 😔

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Ooooo, purple haze throbbing on the horizon! That’s always a good sign of things to come! 😀

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And now Daphne’s… asking Elvira to mentor her fashion wise. And Elvira’s taking her on as her unpaid intern/personal assistant.

Yooo, movie, can you pick a direction and stick with it for Daphne? You’ve gone from her spewing outdated slang to wanting a costume for trick-or-treating, and now this.

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Welp, now I can say I saw a giant pumpkin dog vore an old woman

I didn’t WANT to see that mind, but I guess I can say it now 😐

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OH SHIT NO

IT TURNED HER INTO A FLYING PUMPKIN SHAPED LIKE HER FACE

ABSOLUTELY UNSETTLING, 0/10 WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

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At least we get a nice scene of Daphne kicking the pumpkins’ collective butt

Something normal

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Elvira: WOW! You’re a regular Mary Sue!

*falls over cackling*

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And now there’s a giant purple fissure opening up in the concrete to swallow the town of Crystal Cove whole

(good, i whisper softly into the darkness of my living room. Let it fall)

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Man, I feel so bad for this single father right now

He’s gotten wrapped up in all of this nonsense with his daughter, and he is just Distraught at being chased by Jackal Lanterns, having the town collapsing under his feet, and having to gorge jump in his sedan to get away from the worst of it

It’s okay, Mike Dad - we would feel the same way in your shoes

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Hologram Bill Nye is wearing Cat ears and cat whiskers/nose, and is cleaning his hands like a cat cleans its paws

Why was this the movie we found out Bill Nye was a furry

Why Warner Bros

Why would you inflict this upon us in a Scooby Doo-Scarecrow mystery

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Hey, can Jonathan Crane return now? The movie needs its dignity back.

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A clue on the whys here - the town was built on top of a MASSIVE lithium deposit, with the talks to mine it being scrapped due to environmental concerns. That’s actually a decent lead in for why some

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Welp

The Jackal Lanterns just went full Mad Max with the Halloween Parade floats and cars

No, I don’t have any idea why either, just roll with it

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Nice, they confirmed that Fred’s full name is still Frederick Herman Jones XD

Also a great little action sequence with Daphne - while there’s not much movement, they frame the scene dynamically, with some good quick wordplay. Very nice.

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Velma has a mind palace

Aight

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Velma: Shaggy, I could kiss you!

Oh, to hear this as a child, when I still hardcore shipped Shelma *sigh*

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Oh thank gods we’re going back to Scarecrow again

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Shaggy ate some Scooby Snacks, leapt out of a moving vehicle, and onto the backs of two flying pumpkins that he promptly reined in to fly to Crane’s prison transport

...yet again, I am amazed at the sentences I am led to type for Scooby Doo DTVs

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Ah, how very Hannibal Lector of you, Jon

Man, he actually looks very meek in normal clothes - red long-sleeved shirt and grey slacks

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Hmmm

So Crane ISN’T behind the Jackal Lanterns - in fact he’s outright befuddled by them. This means his whole spiel to Velma earlier about both of them being caught in the same trap was… metaphorical? The breakdown doesn’t actually go into WHY he thinks they’re in the same trap - Crane’s whole schtick is tied to accepting fear, not denying it, so why would they be the same?

Either way, someone is using both him and Mystery Inc to do something to Crystal Cove (please be Red Herring, please be Red Herring, please be Red Herring)

Actually, that reference at the beginning really WAS a red herring - they framed it as being Jon the whole time when it wasn’t. Kudos!

Additional kudos to having Jon be seen more out of mask than in - he is a looker, and I aim to look as much as I can ;)

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Annnnd Daphne’s now trying to convince Elvira to switch clothes with her

I don’t get it - how on earth did we get from Daphne trying to find a good costume for trick-or-treating to asking Elvira to switch oh there it is nevermind.

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There is literally a scene where a giant buzzsaw is slicing towards Crane

and he just

stares at it

going “huh, that’s different”

And I LOVE IT

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And here we have another fascinating scene: Velma going to free Crane from his cell, as Daphne tells her to just leave him to die by pumpkin

I’m wondering if they meant to draw a parallel between the two here - Velma starts by reciting a nursery rhyme, then overcoming her fears in order to release madness to take control. It’s not done very cleanly - mainly bc we barely have any time with Crane in this movie - but I wonder if they meant to insinuate that Crane was like Velma once, where he refused to acknowledge he was afraid, which caused him to lose focus on his initial goals

Idk, ignore my ramblings

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Crane, smirking: I’ll need my personal effects - extenuating circumstances.

Me, fanning myself: I’ll need you to remove yours first

(i am not even kidding, Crane is an absolute DILF in this movie and it flusters me. Stupid sexy animation)

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YAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS

SCARECROW TO THE MOTHERFCUKING RESCUE BABY, SCYTHE AND FCUKING ALL!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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FCUK YEAH THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

HE HAS A DANCE LIKE QUALITY WITH SOME OF HIS FIGHTING MOVES

VIOLENT DANCING BRINGS THE GIANT JACKAL LANTERN DOWN BABY

THEN HE BACKFLIPS AND GYMNASTIC SWINGS INTO THE VAN

ROCK IT SCARECROW FCUKING ROCK IT

(minor note here, but the subtitles show Dr. Crane instead of Scarecrow - unsure if that’s more that the movie calls him Dr Crane or if it indicates he’s acting more heroic than villainous)

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GODDAMNIT

THE GIANT PUMPKIN SNUCK VINES INTO THE VAN AND STOLE HIM BACK

WHEN CRANE WAS... wearing a seatbelt before, but isn’t now.

...

BOOOOO

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Yet again, we find a Scooby movie that attempts character development, but with Velma

Unlike Shaggy’s Showdown however, I’m mixed on how successful it is.

For starters, Velma hasn’t been this cocksure in other DTVs we’ve seen, so it’s a bit odd to see it now. While not 100% out of place - after all, the gang DID capture one of Batman’s Rogues Gallery on their own - it still feels a touch forced. Compare that to Shaggy’s Showdown, where Shaggy has ALWAYS been a coward (one that, in more recent years, writers have had willing to abandon his friends for safety), so the character development there feels more natural.

The progression of events with Velma actually work somewhat okay - but again, here’s where past DTVs come to bite them in the ass. The past handful have had the gang be wrong, have had them fail, or catch the wrong guy. This makes Velma’s attitude here at odds with the other films, something that sticks more due to a character that’s appeared in the past few films as a minor inconvenience - a Sheriff who keeps telling the gang not to interfere, they’re doing things wrong, etc. If this had been a character who was completely wrong in the past AND SHOWN TO BE WRONG FOR HIS OPINIONS, while the gang never guessed wrong, this would work much better. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and here we are.

I think it would have flowed better if Velma’s cockiness came solely from catching Crane on their own. Have a random cop character or reporter or whatever (just not the recurring cop), insinuate that the gang is in too deep with Scarecrow, that he should be handled by the adults or professionals or whatever. Velma could bristle, overcompensate, and THEN fall from her pedestal like we see, reach out to the gang and commiserate over feeling scared, and grow. Again, it’s not too far to reach for, but they handle it poorly; as a result, the outcome feels a little more shoehorned in.

It’s an honest shame, bc we haven’t had a Velma centered story since Frankencreepy, and we all remember what a hideous fcuking mess THAT was *shudders*. Still, it somewhat gets its point across, I guess.

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Fred why did you rip your shirt off

Actually better question why do you not have nipples

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Awwwwwww

Velma just apologized to Shag and Scoob for snapping at them earlier, and admits how she doesn’t appreciate how much they make Mystery Inc what it is

Also she eats a Scooby Snack with them and admits they taste pretty good

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Huh

Velma’s mind palace is the Mystery Machine driving through space

Also Shaggy and Scooby are able to telepathically follow her in and communicate with her

Literally, they actually followed her into her head telepathically, and show her their memories of things she hasn’t gotten to see tonight (while also possibly enhancing her ability to remember things, given how much DETAIL she captures perfectly of things that she would maybe have glimpsed in a millisecond AT MOST)

...another tally for Crack Theory A of magic! Shaggy and Scooby *scribbles*

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Fred, be very very thankful that there are no people operating those pumpkins in person cause uhhhh

Those traps would be spraying red instead of orange

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Another weird music choice - the gang goes up to fight the Jackal Lanterns, but the music is the same 60s bubble we heard earlier

Not terribly atmospheric, really

(wouldn’t a Smashing Pumpkins cover of Scooby Doo be more appropriate, or did you guys spend all your money on hiring Elvira and Bill Nye?)

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Dang

Velma just admitted her fears and jumped into the mouth of the Mega Pumpkin, before getting Fred to use the app from earlier to shut it down, revealing it to be a giant drone surrounded by smaller pumpkin drones

This feels… counterintuitive, but I’ll try to explain at the end

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Okay

I’ll admit it

The Whodunnit is actually pretty decent in concept

There was a sprinkling of tidbits that could be assembled for the final conclusion and still make a decent amount of sense, all to find the sheriff doing it

Only he isn’t a sheriff

He’s a former Tech CEO who was also busted by the gang years ago in a case the Sheriff kept bringing up throughout the movie - due to his prison sentence, he lost more than half his wealth and the opportunity to expand it further with the Crystal Cove Lithium deposits

He was also someone who sold tech to Crane for his fear toxin distribution, where he got the idea to frame him for it

(tho on a side note, Crane is an absolute dork and a terrible liar - just look at the email he sent XD and that profile pic, my gods)

He deliberately picked at the gang for the past few DTVs (specifically 2: Return to Zombie Island and Curse of the 13th Ghost) to fracture their confidence, undermine them, etc - all so that in one fell swoop, he could retake his fortune, frighten everyone in town away from the mines so they couldn’t interfere, frighten away the gang (while also ruining their reputation as mystery solvers), and take Crane off the docket so he couldn’t identify the CEO when he pretended to be the sheriff

This… is actually a pretty damn good plan, for a Scooby villain. He was patient, manipulative, and clever, learning how best to tie up loose ends and win back what he lost. A clever revenge story that came so close to coming to fruition, and could have honestly been sold convincingly…

...if it hadn’t been done so much better in Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

Yeeeaaaah, this movie basically lifts the rough framework up from that one - past mystery villain comes back to attack the gang and ruin their reputation (tho this one decides to also make his fortune back and tie up loose ends with former criminal contacts, a la Crane). Gang is embarrassed in front of the news folk, another villain is framed for it (like Old Man Wickles of the Black Knight fame), and the gang must reconcile to foil the villain for good.

Although it also??? Merges elements of Frankencreepy in it?? The movie is focused on Velma, who is struggling to admit when she’s wrong (which ties into her fear, somehow… I’ll think on that point a little) and things purportedly go haywire when she won’t bend. This… isn’t illustrated as well here, since there’s very little direct cause-and-effect from Velma’s actions that would prove this point - that insisting her way is the right, best, and therefore only way to go ends up making things worse.

As much as I despised Frankencreepy (and I DESPISED IT), it did do that part well - showing that refusing to budge on something can lead to you hurting your friends (literally, in that one), and that admitting you were wrong and need help isn’t the end of the world.

(that movie also had former villains returning to gain vengeance upon the gang using psychological warfare, hm - may need to go over that one again, unfortunately).

It’s a shame, too - the basic elements for this plot are all here, they just need to be polished and reworked a bit to make a really fascinating movie.

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Anyways, back to the asshat CEO who just… faked being a sheriff. Because white people can get away with that so long as they have the outfit and the car *throws up hands* (the sad part is this is probably something that actually happens)

As he drives away we see a familiar silhouette looming in the cornfields, watching him approach

Velma had Bill Nye on speaker, so he could record the entire confession for the federal officers nearby (who were taking Scarecrow back to Arkham), and track the phone signal to his exact location

And right as his holographic call cuts out, we see the shadow of a Scarecrow looming over him, causing him to scream.

When the feds arrive at his final location, both his body and the money have vanished. The car still sits, engine running, before the crows leering over him from the field vanish into the sky.

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Now that he’s dead, the gang walks and finds themselves at a Halloween party, with friendly faces and good food. The mystery is solved, though the culprit may never be found again.

Then Daphne admits to NOT trying to steal Elvira’s costume for Halloween, but instead trying to steal Elvira’s identity and replace her.

Something that she’s apparently nearly gotten away with on past mysteries working with Phillis Diller

*sighs* movie, why couldn’t you just stick to the costume schtick? This is just… so much worse.

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From there, Elvira walks off to wrap things up, reveal the monster face on the back of her head sans wig (which was also a monkey), and start the credits, where we see the gang working to bring the Mystery Machine back to its former glory a la Frankenstein pastiche.

This movie… this movie is a hot mess, but at least it’s an OKAY hot mess.

It really does feel like someone started writing a decent Velma-focused movie concerning the Scarecrow and a past Mystery Inc villain interfering, but was bogged down by notes from higher-ups: Wait! Write in Elvira! Also write in Bill Nye! Hey, let’s have a Mad Max car chase with the Jackal Lanterns! And have Daphne obsessed with literally becoming Elvira! Also make reference to things that we’ll insist be explained this way instead of a way that makes sense! Great!

(seriously tho, we never find out who Crane cares about most that reminds him of Velma, what the heck?)

It’s like two or three different scripts were smooshed together without being cleaned up - stuff is said that doesn’t get resolved, the celebrity guests don’t get to breathe much and feel squished together, and the build-up for the villain feels… less impactful, even knowing that he’s been in the past two films.

It might have worked if he’d been in… let’s say like 5 or 6 DTVs in a row, speaking roles for dissing the gang growing in each (ex start with “Good job kids! But maybe next time, leave it to the professionals, okay?” and growing more bitter from there), but only 2 feels kind of meh. Still, I do appreciate the clues we got to collect together, and they all work in the final breakdown of the scheme - some DTVs can feel like they pull stuff completely out of nowhere, so kudos there.

I appreciate what they wanted to do with Velma - give her a character development arc similar to Shaggy’s in Shaggy’s Showdown. Unfortunately, it wasn’t set up quite so neatly: they blended her ‘refusal to admit fear’ with her overconfidence that she was always right, and it led to a weird conclusion. To face her fears, she leapt into the Giant Pumpkin, which… proved that she was right all along about it being fake, and that solves things somehow. It doesn’t address how she can get something wrong sometimes, it doesn’t really address what she’s afraid of (which is honestly quite good: she’s afraid of failing in a way that allows bad guys to escape justice and in a way that hurts her friends), it’s just a bit of a mess. Points for aiming the focus the right way (and in a way that DOESN’T sexualize the underage teenage girl, unlike some DTVs cough cough Frankencreepy cough cough), but it’s very very messy how it goes about it.

The movie actually balanced pretty well for the whole gang - no excessive focus on one leaving the rest in the dust (too much at least - Fred was a touch underdeveloped, but nowhere near as annoying as past iterations have been. Shaggy and Scooby were kind of meh in some places but great in others, while Daphne was just odd. I think they were trying to recapture the BCSD Daphne characterization, but they failed. Still, she did spend some good time kicking ass with the pumpkins, so that was fun.

Now for the Rogue, Jonathan Crane. If you like Crane, this movie gives you: maniacal Scarecrow, calm and creepy Crane, a brief glimpse at fanboy!Crane (he admits in his own awkward way that he’s a fan of Elvira, and later tells her he loves her work - it’s fun), and (best of all for me) a heroic Crane - one who helps the protagonists and ends up kicking ass pretty damn well, brief as it was. And while DILF Crane is always a treat, he feels underutilized in this. In comparison, Scooby Doo/Batman Brave and the Bold really utilized a lot of different aspects of Riddler, to the point he actually does feel pretty menacing by the third act. It’s a shame we don’t quite get that with Crane, but I do love seeing him 1. More out of mask, and 2. Acting as a good guy (in his own way), so he’s enjoyable on the whole.

I kind of wish that the whole movie was spent more with Crane, but again, the script is a bit of a mess on this part - the fact that he’s not completely screwed over is a goddamn miracle.

Elvira was… okay. She didn’t have much of a purpose beyond getting the plot started and giving Daphne some hooks to play off of. Bill Nye (abrupt as his introduction was) did provide some necessary elements to the mystery, as well as the tech; he wasn’t too bad by the end. (still a touch bitter we didn’t get ex roommate Nye, but hey, what can you do)

Humor was… mixed. Some good, some meh, but very few long enough to feel painful. Some bits felt extraneous at times, but they did help to build to the conclusion, so points for effort.

At the end of the day though, I’m probably keeping this more for Jonathan Crane than anyone else. It does have a lot of fanfic potential tho 🤔🤔🤔

That’s all from me tonight, folks! Hope you enjoyed my own little breakdown of the movie.

#happy halloween scooby doo #plush reviews: final thoughts #jonathan crane #scarecrow #spoilers

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wobbuffet-propaganda · 5 years

Text

Steer clear of the pokeganda discord server.

Hi everyone! Former member and mod of the ‘ganda server, here. If you’re any form of marginalized identity, I would recommend you stay far away from it.

In this post I’m gonna be talking about my experiences with it. While I so fucking wish I had receipts to prove a lot of this, the server had an incredibly weird obsession with “avoiding drama” and if you ever got into any kind of disagreement with another member, you were pressured pretty quickly to delete all your messages on the matter so other people weren’t exposed to them. So I didn’t end up saving a lot, unfortunately. You’ll have to take my word for it, although I did get a few screencaps at the end as I realized how south things were going.

TL;DR: the mods of the pokeganda server are incredibly tyrannical, more or less play by their own rules, and are far more concerned with a “peace and love for all, even abusive people! we don’t want to be mean!” environment than one where the most vulnerable people actually feel protected.

So! I joined the pokeganda server through lea / leavanny-propaganda, and it was pretty standard as far as servers go. Open to all, shitposty and friendly, def my cuppa tea.

Some time into this, i wanna say a few months (weeks? idk) I had a disagreement with another user (Nix of granbullyganda) they used some cissexist language and I asked them to not do that. They egged me on a little, I got a little mad, and after a few hours of them talking to me like a 4chan troll and thinly implying i sounded like a crazy SJW, mods intervened and they were banned for abusive language. Pretty much everyone in the server was on the same page at this point, and Lea elected to call for some more mods.

I applied, having modded like a million other pokemon servers, and got in. Sheep, the original owner of the server, turned tail and left quietly and none of us really noticed. Lea’s a minor and still in school, so naturally they needed some extra hands.

For the most part things just kinda carried on, modding didn’t entail much beyond asking people to format their intros correctly and cleaning up vulgar or offensive posts that slipped the minds of members posting. Until a week or so ago.

I can’t remember who, but a member of the chat posted a meme that referenced drug use, and Steph (absol-propaganda) said something like ‘don’t do drugs, love yourself instead.’ I, a recovered addict and absolute beacon of self-love, joked--‘Bold of you to assume I can’t do both.’

Steph then started going off on a much more serious tangent about how she lived with an abusive addict, talking about how much of a piece of shit the addict was, phrased in such a way that it was very very clear she was blaming this person’s abusive behaviour on the drugs. I was... shocked, honestly. I thought it was a joke at first. My initial response was kind of an incredulous “woah, okay, please don’t fucking say that!” it definitely could have been more polite, but I was. Kind of unable to get my bearings, I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me.

Eric of magikarp-propaganda then jumped in with a similar story to Steph’s of an abusive addict they knew. I tried to explain to them that this talk was making me uncomfortable. I also tried to keep a level head and explain to them that addiction was literally a disability, a disability that I had, and told them that what they were saying was like implying that I’m abusive because I’m autistic, or abusive because I suffer from chronic pain (two other disabilities I have, don’t worry!)

To her credit, Steph backed out but Eric kept on. I was getting visibly agitated and yeah, I lost my temper and got emotional and probably shouted some. I didn’t say anything abusive or terrible to Eric but I was just short of begging them to please stop saying what they were saying. Lea cut us off and I went back and (regrettably) deleted all my posts.

Steph then left the server without a word. We had a brief DM session after that, where I gave her a piece of my mind for what she had said to me. Steph was one of the only people in the server who openly defended me, previously, and I was heartbroken that now she saw me as sub-human. In this interaction, she told me--an addict--bluntly, that despite what psychology, science, and common sense say, addiction is not a disability. She told an addict that people do drugs because they want to, and no genetic predisposition has any effect on this. Then she blocked me, as I was breaking down at the horrible shit she was saying.

I asked the other mods what was to be done about Eric. They said nothing to them, even though they had been horrible to me. Regardless of what you think of our disagreement, I kept asking them to stop saying something that was triggering me, and they refused. I slept on it.

I woke up the next day and nothing had changed. There was nothing in the admin chat about what consequences Eric’s actions would have. I asked if anything was going to be done. They kept asking me what I personally wanted done. I told them that I had no say in the matter, because I was literally the victim in the situation, and for me to decide what happened to my perpetrator would literally be an unethical use of mod power. They pushed back against me.

At some point, we reached a consensus that Eric was to be given a warning for their behaviour. None of the mods wanted to give this warning, almost all of them claimed they were “too nervous” about “being mean” and “constantly reminding people of the rules. I tried to bring up the point that this was... LITERALLY our job as mods. This was literally why we existed.

Rather than any of us giving Eric the warning, one of the mods who IS FRIENDS WITH STEPH, A PERSON WHO IS AN ENEMY OF THE VICTIM IN THIS SITUATION, literally HAD STEPH MESSAGE ERIC THE WARNING. You heard that right: A mod, who’s job is to MOD, asked someone who is no longer in the server to mod for them. This was when I started feeling like I was literally going crazy. I pointed out how unethical this was, how sketchy this was, how uncool this was. I was more or less immediately villainized. The mod in question then started acting like a child who’d been caught red-handed and tried to guilt trip me. I’m paraphrasing, but they said something like ‘Fine, maybe I’ll just LEAVE. I’ve been wanting to, anyways!’

Because I called out a super fucking sketchy thing they did. There were NO rules at this point. No one in this chat could be bothered to tell anyone that something was not okay. This was the last thing I sent before my termination. No one in the mod chat responded to it.

Maybe it’s the autism, but I don’t see anything wrong with what I’ve said here. What the mods were doing in this server, if I may use an analogy, reminded me of in politics when someone will say they “can be friends with anyone regardless of beliefs.” On it’s surface, it sounds sweet--peace and love for all, right? But if you actually think about it, nothing about it is good. It leaves the vulnerable vulnerable and the bullies bullies. It means you stand for nothing. It’s equality but not equity.

Another member of this server literally implied I was born an abuser because of something I cannot help, and I did what you are supposed to do--I asked the mods for help, I asked the mods what was being done about it. I received nothing.

This was their response to my above message. To literally take my privileges away because I questioned their authority. I did not use my mod power to abuse anyone, control anyone, harm anyone, anything like that. Even when I could’ve taken the wheel and just banned Eric for acting shitty to me, I acted not as a mod but as a normal user in the server with no more power than anyone else. And they literally took my influence away because I dared to question them.

“you took the situation too far”-- I did not. I got emotional because my trauma was literally public forum, quickly realized it was unproductive, deleted my posts so they would not reach any more eyes, and asked the mods for help.

“harassing us for not doing anything”--I did not. You can see my messages above. I asked for clarification on what they meant by this. They refused to tell me. If it was just that I sent a lot of messages, I don’t really know what to say to that. I ramble and overexplain and ask a lot of questions when I’m scared and confused. I’m fuckin’ autistic.

“harrassing messages I sent Steph”--Steph sent me harassing messages, and apparently either cherrypicked them in such a way that it made me look like the inciter or doctored them. I asked them to show me these messages. They did not.

“inappropriate post you made on your blog”--I did not make an inappropriate post. On my personal blog, a blog not at all affiliated with my work as a ganda blog, a blog that very few people from this side of tumblr follow, a blog that at one point was INCREDIBLY active in the addiction community, i made this post.

It is not inappropriate. It is a post about an unsafe person that I made so other addicts who might be emotionally compromised/triggered in the way I was can preemptively block them/avoid interacting with them. I said nothing about the situation on this blog, not wanting to incite any drama but wanting to keep my friends safe.

None of this breakdown I am describing was public. It was all behind closed doors and I literally did everything in my power, short of being a fucking dictator myself, to get the mods to lift a single finger about it. They couldn’t. They couldn’t even give an abusive person in their server a warning. They had to get someone else to do it.

I asked them why they were doing this. They refused to clarify. They just kept saying “it’s for the best.” They made a private chat to decide this behind my back. I was given no say in my own case. I was given no voice to defend myself. I questioned their authority and they took my voice.

The ‘answers’ were not answers and the chat was short lived. Here’s what I got.

This was a little under an hour ago. They have not replied, and I doubt they plan to.

Right before this, I went to the server to say goodbye to all the friends I’d made there. I didn’t make a big deal, just said I was heartbroken and needed to step away. Invited them to join me on my own pokemon servers, of which I have plenty.

The mods removed me before any of my friends could say goodbye. I was not allowed to even keep in touch with any of them. I did not see a single goodbye before I was banned.

So yeah. This is apparently what happens if you speak out against anyone in this server, no matter how politely, professionally, and calmly you do it. They will not only take your voice but they will erase you entirely and cut you off from the community. I am literally just a marginalized person who asked the mods for help in dealing with some oppressive language and a person who wouldn’t let it go, and I got my privileges revoked and about a hundred of my friends stolen from my hands.

I applied to be a mod in this server because when Nix started attacking me, I realized that a community had been fostered where they felt it was acceptable to do that. I wanted to change that. I have a loving heart and a firm hand and I wanted to use both to help settle disagreements and let the most vulnerable know they had someone in their corner. It seems, however, that was a futile effort. Historically people see me as an angry bitch because I speak my mind and when I see someone I say something. But you can’t have one angry bitch in power, because when she’s the victim, she stops being an angry bitch and starts being a crazy bitch in all her hysterics. There weren’t any other bitches on the mod team, and you know what they say about representing yourself in court.

You may draw your own conclusions from this. Do not harass any of the people mentioned in this post, do not send them asks or any violent rhetoric. In my heart I do not want to hurt anyone, and that is why I am making this post. If someone had told me this was the community I was getting myself into, I would have never joined and got attached. I want to spare people from what I went through.

I am also not looking to discourse. My mind is made up on the way I was treated, and more importantly, the way I saw others treated in my time as a mod. I do not intend to change my mind. I intend to protect.

In my heart, I am a pacifist, and I will not pick a fight with anyone who does not deserve it.

Mirror Coat.

#pokeganda

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migleefulmoments · 4 years

Note

"That’s because she’s a toddler that stomps her foot and throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get what she wants or the attention she feels entitled to for doing absolutely nothing meaningful with her life." Hahahahahaha, Abby talking about herself again. This miserable woman has some serious psychological issues if she can't recognize that what she is describing is her own pathetic attitude and existence. It really is woeful behavior, Abby. For the love of god, stop and employ some introspection.

I’m always amazed at her complete lack of introspection and her inability to understand who is doing the feet stomping and attention-demanding but I’m more floored that the tinhat enablers can’t see it. The endless narcissism memes and quotes posted without an iota of irony by Leka, Cassie, and Flowers are frankly baffling. How can they not see it?

I suppose Mia could be a stomping toddler princess-we would have no way of knowing because we hardly ever hear her speak and we certainly do not get to hear her thoughts and feelings about life. The only time we get any access to anything that might resemble a thought or feeling is when a friend reblogs s social media post from her private IG. It’s super rare and we have never seen anything resembling a “toddler princess”. To get from a smiling photo of Darren and Mia on the red carpet to “she is stomping her feet and making demands” one must believe a long, fabricated backstory created purely to fulfill Abby’s fantasy-a fantasy that is rooted in deep-green jealousy rather than anything real.

Mia is well-liked by her friends, her bar staff, and Darren’s friends, coworkers, and peers. We know this because they post it on social media. People write really nice -and often very specific-comments about what they like about Mia or what she brings to their lives. Abby, on the other hand, spends her days raging over Darren maybe might possibly could ogle men on the Hollywood set and that would be someone’s fault-ok it would be Ricky’s fault. She’s angry about Darren’s new home-shocker, she doesn’t like it. She’s pissed that D-Criss News reports Darren’s life like it happens aka she doesn’t scrub her blog of all mentions of Mia and/or Photoshop her out of pictures like DACN does. The only one demanding respect is Miss Abs who was quite angry after being called out and argued “I am the one who constantly tries to explain his actions and constantly tries to assert my opinion”

There is only one person stomping her feet and making demands and her name starts with “Abby”.

“I was just saying to a good friend, with SK, my patience has expired. And that’s how I feel about everything involving d and this tragedy. At least if he was working there would be a distraction. It’s May. We’ve gotten one night about d. One. The rest have been overshadowed and that includes his 3 awards.

And if my patience has run out, imagine how d&c feel. I just wish I knew how we got here. It’s my worst nightmare times a thousand, maybe a million. And I’m disgusted with everyone surrounding him. And angry. Very very angry.

Please may he win. If he wins, this will just be a difficult bump on a long road to the finish line and victory. Please, please, please. This can’t be his life. Because he’s not living”.(X)

“...your one sentence resonates, “fans of d who want him straight see M as the only one who makes him straight…”. That’s not a me problem. That’s a them problem. That’s pathetic. Essentially, what you are saying, and truly what I believe so we agree, they support m because they realize without her d would be allowed to be his queer self in love with another man. And that truth petrifies them.

And this fandom, in which I am a loud voice, points out every damn flaw and they hate it because they know they can’t erase it. So they counter by praising that worthless, vile, malicious, greedy woman. And bullying us. And creating blogs to hate us.

And yes a side effect, m gets same increased praise because of it. And that’s a negative. But we also make her life hell but continuing to publish facts. And we scare the fuck out if her fans. And I have no intention of stopping. Because the truth always comes out in the end. M will lose. Maybe not today or even next year. But in time. And I will take pride in knowing I was a massive thorn in her side and played a part in her demise.

D is going to win. And I will see it happen.

Love this gem of demands

You know what I miss?

D having projects that I was excited about and looking forward to. The ONLY one he has upcoming that i am remotely happy about is M/idway, and that makes me sad in many ways as that is the direction his career should be going and instead it has stalled.

Instead, this entire year was things I do not care about and I am not interested in.

SK? No thank you, not only do many (not all) use him mercilessly, but everything they touch, whether professional or personal, is the PBB show. And while I appreciate his loyalty, i really do, and I understand he is an owner, he has grown so far beyond them, this should not have been a primary focus of the entire first half of the year.

R/oyalites? That one is hard no for me. first we have the Jumping Jackass as executive producer. Need i say more? Of course I will. It is also in a format i found wholly uninteresting and is being written by 2 people that i don’t believe have grown beyond their college years. In addition, i think it will be used as a vehicle to promote ass kissers, but that remains to be seen.

TB? Nope, have not even watched it in its entirety more than once. A commercial for a food chain i don’t like and that supports Donnie as the ONLY acting he has done until just recently seems like an utter joke. I recognize it was well done, but not when it is the only thing. Commercials and ads should be supplementing his acting career, not be his entire career.

EF? I should be excited, i have a ticket. But to see who? 6 weeks from Saturday and not even D is confirmed as performing. And even if it is an amazing line up, RR and PBB have their fingerprints all over it and pull focus. (future Abby LOVED Elsie this year)

I WAS excited about CG music, but what happened there? They started a fan club, promised an EP and nothing. Instead C/huck has released his own album and included at least one song that was supposed to be on the CG EP.

Fine, there is CIM, that was fun, but fleeting. So i guess I was happy about this. Wonder what happened to the video?

I think this is the thing that makes me almost more angry than anything. Fine, they forced him to marry that woman, and that breaks my heart and is near impossible to watch. I hate every second of it. But not only do I have to watch that shit show nearly everyday as their life may as well be a reality show, there isn’t even the work to use as a distraction.

I assume and hope there is a plan and this is temporary. I do.He deserves so much better than what has happened in 2019.

Sorry, in a glum mood and this is what happened.

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rwbyconversations · 5 years

Text

The weaknesses of Volume 6

As someone who had sub-zero expectations going in, Volume 6 was overall a really good season of RWBY- in fact I’d called it the best overall Volume since Volume 3, if not overall, the best season we’ve had so far. Everything seemed to come together for this season, and most of the fandom has agreed that the opening salvo of episodes was the best the show had, and that the season hadn’t had a dud episode until the group reached Argus. I know some parts of the fandom don’t love the Argus episodes but I found something good in nearly all of them so I can’t say it was a complete waste of time.

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and while Volume 6 was unmistakably a huge improvement over the previous Maya seasons, especially Volume 5, there are still several areas the show can seek to improve on as the show moves to the chilly frozen north of Atlas. So in this essay, I’m going to highlight the (ultimately small but notable enough to warrant talking about them) weaknesses I found in Volume 6.

1) The show needs to more efficiently handle its villains (and why Cinder and Neo’s plot was a drag)

Weird that I’m saying this in the season that gave its longest episode to exploring Salem’s origin story, but Volume 6 had a lot of difficulty managing the pacing of its villains, and the largest subject of its focus arguably didn’t need to be in this Volume. I’m talking of course about Cinder and Neo’s plot this volume.

Now on paper, giving Cinder more spotlight should be what I want. After all, I wrote an essay last year detailing why parts of the fanbase weren’t fond of Cinder, so giving her focus should ideally be able to remedy those problems, right?

Well, that’s the problem. In that essay, I talked about how Cinder’s two biggest flaws as a character were that she was very boring, and how her lack of backstory made it difficult to really care about her as a character. Cinder has effectively been the same character for six volumes in a row and much like Volume 4, the show has a golden opportunity to finally change that and give her a new narrative arc only to waste it.

Volume 6 should have been a drastic wake-up call for Cinder. Unlike at Beacon, where she lost due to Ruby’s sudden intervention and the awakening of her Silver Eyes, Cinder lost at Haven entirely thanks to her own failings. Raven beat her handily in straight combat and goaded her into the entire train-wreck of an operation to begin with, which for a power-focused individual like Cinder, should have really been an igniting spark to get her to begin seeking some introspection on why she’s lost twice in a row in failing to burn down the Academies. But sadly, just like in Volume 4, right as Cinder appears to be getting an arc about her recovering from her loss at Haven, she just ignores it and goes right back on her murder-Ruby train, as if she’s stuck in a Groundhog Day loop.

Cinder’s refusal to move on from a basic arc of “Plan to destroy an academy, enact the plan, get slaughtered, blame Ruby, rinse and repeat” has made her easily the least interesting villain in the entire show. At this point we’re six years in and barring a few contextual clues, Cinder has no backstory, no sympathetic traits, not even any character development to differentiate her from her Volume 1 self. And this after the season where she dominates the villain screen-time until the final third when Adam hijacks the plot.

Cinder’s plot in Volume 6 is therefore largely just setup for Volume 7, in that it explains how Cinder survived Haven and how she reaches Atlas. Along the way, she encounters the in case of bad season break glass button Neo, whose out for revenge and gets a really cool fight scene that’s ultimately just there for fanservice.

Let me repeat. Good fight, really liked it. Let me also repeat- just there for fan-service. This is not an inherently bad thing, but it does have weaknesses.

Neo was always coming back to the show and part of me feels like she was always being held in reserve in the event of a really bad season, so that the next one could have her return and generate some hype since her fan-base are that loyal. And sure enough, Neo’s return did see a notable collection of fans who had dropped the show after 4 and 5 coming back to see their ice cream queen return in a non-Chibi format. I won’t fault the crew for using a plan that worked. Where I take umbrage is that this fight was not necessary. It was a good fight, but I’d have much rather taken a Cinder scene of her actually recovering from Haven and thinking about why she lost again. Instead, Cinder and Neo effectively hijack all the villain screen-time for the rest of the season. And as someone who doesn’t adore Neo like her fans, this made their arc very tiresome, especially when the hints we got of the other villains were far more intriguing. I could talk a lot about the symbolism and thematic choices of the Mercury/Emerald scene in Chapter 9 but I’d struggle to find a lot to say about Cinder’s plot that wasn’t just “Setup for Volume 7.”

The other problem of course is that the rest of Team WTCH are sorely underdeveloped. Hazel at least is interesting again now that he’s several miles away from Ozpin, Tyrian came back and was a delight and I loved seeing him all-but-begging Merc and Em to run so he could hunt them, but Watts remains crucially underdeveloped. He really needs to step up in agency in Atlas because his sardonic wit can only carry him so far, and the man’s voiced by Christopher Sabat, what more reason do you have to give him more to do? The man made the virus that Cinder used to cause the Fall of Beacon, can he be given some agency now please?

Ultimately, Cinder’s plot didn’t need to be the focus for the villains and yet again, the fragments of focus they got showed how much more interesting they were as antagonists. While ultimately Volume 6 did finally give Mercury and Emerald more screentime than Volumes 4 and 5 combined and reminded the audience why you should be paying more attention to them, the rest of Team WTCH desperately needs development, Watts in particular. Cinder remains the worst villain in the entire show in my opinion, and it’s a shame that she’s almost guaranteed to be the one that makes it to the end of the show. I can only hope in Atlas she finally gets time devoted to what makes her tick, but at this point I’m almost at the point of not caring. It’s been six years, I won’t start caring for Cinder now if the show finally remembers to tell us why she joined Salem.

... also I just think Cinder’s new costume sucks and I’d rather Em and Merc get new ones over Cinder and Neo buying extensions for their wardrobes.

2) Cordovin was a joke and she really shouldn’t have been

Show of hands, who actually took Cordovin seriously? Yeah, me neither.

Even during the fight scene, the heroes don’t take it seriously. Having a fight the characters aren’t taking seriously isn’t an inherent flaw but it does mean you can’t expect us to turn around and take it seriously five minutes later.

Cordovin was a wasted character, and one that the show shouldn’t have undershot in all of her scenes by making her the punchline of nearly every joke. Her long-winded rant at the gate scene in Dead End is a huge factor in why a lot of fans, myself included, consider it the weakest episode of Volume 6 despite picking up in the back half. It just drags on for so long that Cordovin outstays her welcome from her first scene.

Additionally, the show not taking her seriously steals a lot of gravitas from the mech battle, and plays a large role in why I think the mech fight failed to really excite a lot of fans outside of key moments like Ruby’s missile run and canon shot. Being alongside Adam’s confrontation with Blake and Yang didn’t help but even on its own, the mech battle drags. Not quite to the same extent as Haven dragged, but on rewatches I was making liberal application of the skip button. That lack of gravitas itself goes on to hamper Cordovin’s serious moment in the season finale where she realizes that her ego allowed the Leviathan a straight shot on Argus and undergoes a soft redemption to let team RWBY leave the city. However, this moment of taking Caroline seriously comes after the plot has made it clear that the entire reason the Grimm attacked Argus was because of Caroline over-reacting to Maria and breaking out her mech instead of scrambling fighters as Qrow predicts they will. Caroline is solely at fault for the Leviathan getting as close to destroying Argus as it did, so it’s difficult to care when she pulls her head out of her ass to do her job.

A lack of investment also means a lack of emotional dedication, which I think showed in the lack of fanart Caroline has generated since her reveal. Her design being very drab and militaristic doesn’t help matters but unlike say, the Yang/Adam rematch where the stakes were present on an emotional and thematic level, Caroline failed to excite the audience beyond a few funny memes.

The additional problem with lacking in emotional dedication/investment is, again, we don’t have enough interest in Caroline to take her seriously, she goes in one episode from the Kooky Racist Grandma to someone we’re expected to sympathize with. And additionally, asking the fans to sympathize with a character whose opening scene includes a not-too-subtle dig at her Faunus traits was asking a lot of the fandom, especially after the previous years showed that the show’s handling of the Faunus racism plot was... varied in quality.

In short, Cordovin basically took a shotgun to her own foot in her first scene. Establishing her as an over the top comic relief character before expecting the audience to care when she broke out a walking advertisement for gen;LOCK was an extensive reach for the writers to try and unfortunately they fell flat. Trying to make the audience care for the problem she herself created is a similar long-reach. Hopefully this extended comedy sequence depiction of the Atlas military will be left behind as Volume 7 heads into the heart of darkness itself.

3) Oscar desperately needs limelight

Oscar’s been in the show now for three volumes. He spent much of Volume 4 on his own, much of Volume 5 as Ozpin’s meat-sack, and now in Volume 6 he finally gets to... get some clothes. I like them, but they’re not suitable compensation for the character development that he clearly had stolen from him.

Oscar is easily the most underdeveloped main hero right now, and it’s a problem that’s haunted the series since Volume 4. Oscar wants to be a hero much like Ruby herself did as a child, but this sole fragment of backstory is never used to make a connection to Ruby. Aaron Dismuke, bless his heart, is giving this show his all and his impression of Shannon McCormack’s tones must be applauded, but much like Cordovin he’s not given much to work with. In a way, he’s almost the hero’s version of Cinder- a character who keeps finding themselves in situations where they should realistically develop as a consequence... only for each time they do, it either gets shuffled into the next volume or relegated to offscreen happenings.

Volume 6 really should have had Oscar undergoing some kind of arc, be it his fear at being persecuted by Team RWBY and Qrow due to harboring Ozpin, his fear as his days as himself become more and more numbered, his acceptance of the fight against Salem or, most glaringly, his running off while the team is in Argus. But every time, Oscar just powers through these circumstances and never gets to develop from them. He never holds it over Qrow that he attacked a child, that Yang indirectly called him a bastard, he never thanks Ruby for having his back after the train crash, and he brushes off Jaune’s apology for smashing him into a wall and alleging he’s Ozpin masquerading himself as Oscar.

Argus is really where Oscar should have stepped into his own. I was looking forward to him going solo and having to fend for himself for a short while, maybe have a scene where he forces Ozpin to come out and talk or gets to chat with Ozma himself about his place in the war against Salem. Have him be scared of losing his personality and just becoming another body for Oz to inhibit, have him be angry that his dreams of being a hero have been cruelly dashed on the rocks for some agenda he never signed up to. Oscar should be an emotional hurricane and instead he’s just a gust of wind.

Seriously show, you had a golden opportunity for an Ozma and Oscar scene since we know Oz can speak to his past selves, and you know Arron has enough range to do both roles at once, why do you spite my farmboi.

But he got a coat now so I guess that’s technically development. Kerry admitted in the Rewind for Volume 6′s finale that some parts of the season got pushed to the next one as they usually do, and I can only hope that Oscar finally expressing emotion was one such scene because Christ alive, he needs it after all the times he just got over crap offscreen this year. I want to like Oscar, he could easily have one of the most tragic arcs of the entire show if they went with it, but the show really needs to give me something to like about him in the first place. Or else he really will become the heroic Cinder, trapped forever in a nightmarish world of never getting to properly develop in spite of countless opportunities being handed to them on a silver platter.

... I still think Oscar lifted Qrow’s wallet for that costume btw.

4) The reaction to Jinn’s story felt lockstep

I don’t have as much to say on this point but I find it rather saddening that all of the characters have much the same reaction to the truth of Ozma’s past- “Salem can’t be killed, you were leading us on for nothing”- when the weeks around the Ozma reveal had the fandom reacting to the story in a far more diverse way. Even in the hiatus we still have arguments over whether Ozpin was truly in the right or if the story was painting Salem as the true innocent party, to say nothing of the takes that Salem and Ozma’s relationship could be seen as an early iteration of Arkos or even Taruadonna with Salem as the abuser.

The fandom had such a diverse range of reactions to Jinn’s story, with everyone seeming to have their own take on the episode and the truth wherein. Some people even used this to ponder if Summer Rose had learned the truth during her time and tied it in with Red Like Roses 2, where she laments having made a necessary sacrifice, to ask if Summer had learned the truth and bitterly signed on to the war against Salem in the hopes that she’d be able to turn the tide thanks to her Silver Eyes.

“Just because I have to give you this origin story doesn’t mean you’re gonna take the right lessons from it.”

Some idiots even decided that this meant Oz was the main villain now, but I’ve learned to drown those people out.

But the show itself has a very flat range of reactions, with nearly everyone in-universe only taking away from the story that Salem cannot be conventionally killed and that therefore their entire journey is pointless. Everyone had the same reaction, with the only levels of variance being how angry they were at Ozpin and Oscar, ranging from Ruby’s “ask first if they have a plan and then be angry at Oz specifically” to Qrow and Jaune’s “physically assaulting a fourteen year old child.”

It almost makes me wonder, if the characters themselves didn’t take anything from the lesson barring Maria connecting the Silver Eyes to the God of Light and that “SALEM CAN’T BE KILLED,” why should the fans? No one took this and went “OK so we can’t stop Salem with force, maybe try talking her down?” Their minds all immediately went to not just being able to shoot her.

Jinn’s story was great, but the reaction to it in universe felt very lacking and I only worry that the more people are told about it, the more chances we’ll get to hear a variant of “Salem can’t be killed.” It’s a shame that such a morally gray out of universe debate has been stripped to its raw components in-universe.

Conclusion

Volume 6 was really good, I really liked a lot of it and it still warms my heart that I can say that about a season of RWBY post Volume 5. But there’s still a lot of work that can be done behind the scenes to fix up the flaws remaining. I chose three big flaws here but there are a few more I could bring up for quick points (mostly: Weiss getting shafted entirely in V6 feels like an overly corrective backlash to her constantly getting slaughtered in V5, Ruby’s agency does not substitute for a character arc and she still needs one, the introduction of the Faunus in Ozma’s flashbacks felt very contrived, Ren and Nora continue to feel useless to the wider plot but at least this time Ren wasn’t getting bodied every fight, so on and so forth), but ultimately we got more good than bad, and you don’t throw out an entire batch of apples just because of one rotten one near the top. I can forgive a lot more when the overall product is good, and Volume 6 certainly was a good season. Hopefully with these smaller problems fixed, which mostly just extends to “Give Cinder and Oscar onscreen development,” Volume 7 and onwards can keep the show moving forward into a brighter future and a better tomorrow.

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albionawakened · 5 years

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Fill in the questions/statement as if you are being interviewed for an article and you were your muse Tag 10 people to do this meme, (repost, don’t reblog)

TAGGED BY: @selina-taylor TAGGING: @jumpcitybirdcaged @ladybeunlucky @doctorharley-md @dokolivialivoctavius

1. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Albion, but I go by Mage as well.

2. WHAT IS YOUR REAL NAME?

I’m a Magus, I know what that kind of question entails. I certainly won’t answer it.

3. DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU WERE CALLED THAT

I stole a title from a Lieutenant. It’s a long story.

4. ARE YOU SINGLE OR TAKEN?

It’s. Complicated.

5. HAVE ANY ABILITIES OR POWERS?

Yes, many.

6. STOP BEING A MARY SUE/GARY STU.

I’m not a product of Fan-Fiction.

7. WHAT’S YOUR EYE COLOR?

Oh, what did I have them as... Oh, yes. Hazel.

8. HOW ABOUT YOUR HAIR COLOR?

For now it’s a lovely shade of red, with black streaks in it.

9. HAVE YOU ANY FAMILY MEMBERS?

Only those I’ve adopted.

10. OH? WHAT ABOUT PETS?

Do mortals count?

11. THAT’S COOL I GUESS, NOW TELL ME ABOUT SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE.

Being pestered by questionnaires, I suppose. And the odd things people use for formatting.

12. DO YOU HAVE ANY HOBBIES/ACTIVITIES YOU LIKE DOING?

Mainly I read. I do watch some of this ‘Television’ as well.

13. EVER HURT ANYONE BEFORE?

Well, I am a professional criminal.

14. EVER… KILLED ANYONE BEFORE?

Who hasn’t?

15. WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL ARE YOU?

Heraldic.

16. NAME YOUR WORST HABITS.

Treating everything like a game?

17. DO YOU LOOK UP TO ANYONE AT ALL?

No. I don’t think I do.

18. GAY, STRAIGHT, OR BISEXUAL?

I suppose I would qualify as ‘Bisexual’.

19. DO YOU GO TO SCHOOL?

I have taught in the past.

20. DO YOU EVER WANT TO MARRY AND HAVE KIDS ONE DAY?

Already have, darling.

21. DO YOU HAVE ANY FANBOYS/FANGIRLS?

See: Question 10′s answer.

22. WHAT ARE YOU MOST AFRAID OF?

Being stuffed back into a rock. Shan’t happen again, but it’s not something one just walks away from.

23. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY WEAR?

Whatever I want.

24. DO YOU LOVE SOMEONE?

Lots of people, darling.

25. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WET YOURSELF?

... is this question meant for toddlers?

26. WHAT CLASS ARE YOU? (HIGH CLASS, MIDDLE CLASS, LOW CLASS)

Class is an arbitrary construct people make to explain why they look down upon others.

27. HOW MANY FRIENDS DO YOU HAVE?

Never enough, honestly.

28. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON PIE?

More, please.

29. FAVORITE DRINK?

Cocoa.

30. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE?

Home.

31. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SOMEONE?

Plural.

32. WHAT’S YOUR BRA CUP SIZE AND/OR HOW BIG IS YOUR WILLY?

The glory of magic is that I can change what I want, tho I suppose the proper answer is ‘Surprisingly Large’.

33. WOULD YOU RATHER SWIM IN THE LAKE OR THE OCEAN?

I get enough Lake jokes as it is.

34. WHAT’S YOUR TYPE?

Feisty, I suppose?

35. ANY FETISHES?

Yes, but if you wanted to see them you could follow some resources I’ve already shared.

36. SEME OR UKE? TOP OR BOTTOM? DOMINANT OR SUBMISSIVE?

Depends on what I want, tho... I don’t know why you’d ask a woman what terms from Yaoi she’d fit into.

37. CAMPING OR INDOORS?

Indoors.

38. ARE YOU WANTING THE QUIZ TO END? I’m waiting for the night to fall.

#Let's start some memes #Character Details

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synthaphone · 5 years

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doing this whole OC meme thing for me mostly, very likely not interesting to anyone else (because I’m not really explaining who any of these guys are and I don’t expect anyone to know all of them, also its formatted badly and i didn’t edit it well) so i’m putting it under a cut

The oldest OC I still bring back occasionally is Bluebell, who is an alien creature I invented in 6th grade. She used to be named Hana, because I was taking Japanese lessons and was in that phase of elementary school where you think that naming your characters after a word in another language is always the best and coolest idea

The newest OC I have that’s like, a main character is I guess Viarnne, but my newest OC that’s not a fan character is Slice the rainbow layer cake dragon

I can’t pick a favorite OC very easily- I love Pike and Tu personality-wise a whole lot out of my Dialien characters, and I think Viarnne is my favorite Neopet right now. OH also i love my old character Alkaline

picking a favorite OC design is even harder- of my neopets, Alxxa has the coolest design I think, both to draw and as far as general appearance goes. For all original characters, my favorite for a long time was the character I made whose design was... literally adapted from Alxxa but not a Neopet. I think I called it Tiramisu?? its been a while since I’ve actually drawn Tiramisu

My main reason for making OCs is sort of different for different types of characters- I think part of it is that I legitimately want to tell stories, but the biggest thing IS that I just find character design fun, in particular designing and drawing creatures.

Uhh it’s different for different characters but it usually involves finding something fun to draw and then drawing it a bunch, to see if it stays fun, or if I can keep it fun. If I don’t have fun drawing a character, they tend to sort of fall away- like, you don’t see me drawing Jukebawks often, even though I had fun coming up with a design, because she’s... hard to draw, and doesn’t have as much range of expression as a lot of my other characters. (plus I don’t have a personality for her- if I have a backstory I’m really invested in for a character, I can basically draw very similar pictures of them over and over again and have fun because I like their story so much, which is probably a bit of a flaw)

I don’t really ship my OCs with anyone else’s- I’ve never even really shipped my OCs with like, canon characters from anything? I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of shipping my characters with someone else’s, but I’m not very good at communication or roleplaying, and a lot of my characters aren’t really what I would call ‘shippable’, so it tends to be easier to just work by myself on that kind of thing.

uhhh i have a couple ocs who I ship but i’m really self conscious about doing so, so i talk about most of them almost never. I ship Sam and Viarnne but I want to actually have a story where it makes sense for them to end up forming a relationship like that, so for now i’m mostly focusing on how their friendship will work (also, just like, assume none of my OCs are fucking I guess?? even the ones i ship together- that’s one of those things that’s just never really been interesting to me, and i mostly just don’t want to deal with jokes about it because like, please?? i like relationship stuff but i just don’t get anything out of sex stuff, jokes or otherwise, most of the time. also please don’t take this as a moral judgement if that’s something you do, i don’t care as long as its not like, something morally reprehensible, you do you). oh i also have Alxxa and Sensurround (neopets), Zotyre and Gyronaut (neopets), Alkaline and Skurl (original story), uhhh kind of not sure if Tu and Iris are gonna end up having a romantic relationship in my Dialien story, i need to do more thinking

weirdest... oc... uhhhhh i’m not sure what that would entail, exactly. my fursona might be the weirdest just from like, not having any sort of world or story or anything, she just floats in space and picks up space radio signals and stuff

I don’t really have enough villain ocs- I guess at this point, Chexerton is kind of a villain, he’s like a shitty space security guard for Virtupets. most of my completely original stories don’t have villains- Dialiens (it needs a better name- maybe just Dial) is more about mental health struggles and potentially capitalism or colonialism, and with LOSER (a story i think i have barely ever talked about on here, its the one with Skurl and Alkaline) i straight up can’t decide whether its a fun road trip where character flaws are explored and then like, amends are made, or if it ultimately ends with the characters not overcoming their flaws and destroying each other. its kind of been both in my mind for a long time which is why i can’t write it- can’t decide whether the relationship should be ultimately healthy or toxic

This is a tough question- I don’t think of my OCs as real people, exactly, that I could be mean to or ‘torture, muahaha i love seeing my babies suffer’- but they’re deeply personal to me, and I don’t think its always useful to see them as constructs unworthy of being treated with kindness. I guess what I would consider being ‘nice’ to my OCs is trying to realize them better and have them make sense and function properly in whatever stories I’m trying to tell using them. In that regard, I guess there’s some I theoretically ‘neglect’ by not really focusing on them very often, or by getting tired of their stories but never officially ‘getting rid’ of them?? Plus I don’t have time to develop literally every character I’ve ever had. I have all kinds of old OCs that i’m not planning to do anything with anymore, but they meant something to me at some point, and its not like they’re going to pile up and take up space in my house if I don’t, like, sell them. I like knowing that if I ever need to look back at my old stuff for ideas, there’s a bunch of stuff I might be able to use or repurpose again someday.

Again, I don’t really think about it as ‘killed’. I guess I don’t have the main character from Skurl’s original story anymore, who was like a mammalian Invader Zim-esque fantasy evil fortress knight?? and Skurl was the funny animal curmudgeon sidekick. I made that protagonist up because the story needed a protagonist, and he never even really had a personality to speak of- his rival was better defined, the mad scientist from the idea had a more interesting character design- basically every other character from that story I might bring back, but that protagonist is probably gone for good. Maybe I’ll bring back his weird ear decorations that smushed his fabric-y rabbit ears down, those were kind of the most interesting thing he had going on. OH if you mean literally killed off in a story, in the nightmare angst version of LOSER Skurl ends up like, not DEAD exactly, but severely fucked up to the point where he’d be better off dead. And Viarnne is technically dead

Oh man years ago I had an OC named O-BR who was a robotic panda bear toy who was possessed by the soul of some dude who died who was a father, and now is kind of the robotic parental figure of the child who owns the bear toy. i don’t think that actually works well as a story- i never even figured out what that dude’s name was, just the name of the bear. it’s name was O-BR because its ears were like, floating purple plastic cheerio shapes that hovered next to his head. this was another ‘i’m obsessed with invader zim’ era character

80% of my Neopet OCs at any given time- also 80% of my non fandom based OCs at any given time. I don’t have time to come up with stories for all of them, and I tend to just focus on whatever is interesting enough that I remember it

I hate drawing Jukebawks... i’m sorry jukebawks........ maybe i should like, offer her up for trade, but i’m not sure anyone else would want her?? i like the idea of her!! i should actually probably design her to be easier for me to draw, in all honesty. When it comes to writing though, Moe has given me so much grief because I honest to god don’t know how he fits into the story and group dynamic in Dialiens. He’s like, kind of an asshole loner who keeps to himself and doesn’t want people to bother him?? i’m not even confident he uses ‘he’ pronouns. i don’t know

this feels like its more designed for people who have more humanoid ocs where they’re heights are more, like, similar, so being short or tall is a thing?? like, for Neopets, Alxxa’s the tallest because he’s really long, and Viarnne is the shortest because he’s an oval that’s like a foot tall. as far as the only character heights that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, the Dialiens, tallest to shortest, are: Pike, Moe (not counting the ears), Iris, Chives, Tu

I guess my oldest ocs are Zotyre, Gyronaut, and that mutant Moehog lady- youngest would be Chilston, i guess. and as far as OCs, i have no idea, i don’t think enough about age. approaching characters from the angle that they’re Cartoons!!!! and then deciding to try and give them nuance later means that everyone’s just sort of nebulously adult-ish

Do I dislike any of my OCs, like, as characters, or as people? I think Pike, despite being one of my favorite OCs, would irritate me quite a bit in real life, because his personality is heavily influenced by traits that annoyed me about other people I’ve met, but like, trying to see them more sympathetically?? but he’d get on my nerves. Iris fits this a lot too- I don’t think I’d like Moe much either?? i dunno its a weird question, i like them because they’re my characters and also because they’re not real. i don’t think most of them would be friends with me or anything if they were real, even if so many of them are based on parts of me

oh i’ve made self inserts- i definitely had a self insert Invader Zim character that i drew maybe a single time, and then pretended to be in daydreams in my head while bored during school. she had an angsty backstory. then after that i pretended to be Trigger in my daydream stories all the time in school for like, 3 years (like, during points in time where i was zoning out during class, or walking between classes)

uhhhhh I regret not doing more with these characters, and i regret that i can’t answer a lot of important questions about characters I’ve had for years Now. i’ve had them for years, so they feel really definitive and rock solid in my mind, so they’re hard to change, but also they’re really not as nuanced as i want them to be. its a bit tough

well someone in freshman year of college who i ended up cutting ties with because of some kind of wild friend group drama and like, important political and philosophical differences, actually knew me from deviantart and remembered one of my OCs. that was pretty wild. that’s one person though... uhhh, are any of my OCs popular?? I’m just excited when anyone finds a character i’ve come up with interesting. I’m glad other people seem to like Viarnne!!! it fills me with terror that i’ll like, ruin him by writing a bad story, but its also exciting and validating to come up with a character story and for other people to also enjoy it

uhhh its Viarnne again. i drew him to try and demonstrate how a robot Kiko could be an appealing character design and it backfired on me. i love drawing Orb with a Face and Arms and i am happy when i see him as my active pet on neopets. I guess Pike also qualifies- when I initially drew the Dialiens, I had very vague personality ideas for them, and I felt like he would be the bully. he has since become very much NOT the bully (like, he seems more like a person who would get bullied) and I’ve grown really fond of him. also i created Trigger to be a Chuck E Cheese style mascot back before fucking Five Nights At Freddy’s existed and destroyed that that as an original idea (fuck you FNAF i have two characters now who are basically... that and you can’t ruin that for me. i was here FIRST (this is a joke its not even that great of a premise, my shit isn’t horror, and i’ll deal)). he was also based on a glow in the dark grey alien and a skeleton and lived in an abandoned pizza entertainment building and was basically an evil villain, and then high school me decided that instead of being that he was gonna be a mutated teenager and it was going to be really angsty. I don’t really have as much interest in that backstory anymore??? but I sure had a lot of fun with it for like 4 years so i think that counts

#my ocs #original characters #long post

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alittleyellowdinosaur · 5 years

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The Dragon Prince Season 2 Review

*SEASON ONE SPOILERS IN THHIS SECTION* i love this show and, unless another Voltron situation happens, that’s not going to change. But I find myself... disappointed with this season. Mainly bc it felt like a season of filler episodes. Yes we had some developments, largely with Caleb’s magic and his relationship w Claudia, as well as Claudia and Sorens relationship and Virens Evil Plan™️. But 3 of the 9 episodes were on just Caleb and Claudia in one place, with the same issue that could have been resolved in one episode leaving room for more, and 2 of the remaining 6 episodes were mostly backstory on Caleb and Ezran’s mother. And while yes, I was very excited to learn about her it was just... lackluster, as it was told as a story by Viren and not a more meaningful way, such as Caleb’s memories, or in a letter from his mother, for example. The remaining episodes were mostly focused on Caleb’s magic. It just felt like filler as these things could have been dealt with in more exciting ways. I hate to bring up Voltron, but in the episode where Shiro connects to the black lion, that was still engaging and didn’t feel like filler bc there were exciting things happening during this, and their was a deadline. In this season, very little action happens, and most of it is in backstory, and the things that (in this case of the one episode of voltron) took one episode, took a whole season, even though about the same progression took place. It’s just boring, and made the season feel like filler.

Especially because the whole time there is never any real danger or time pressure. Rayla begins the season saying “danger is coming” but Claudia and Soren show up later that episode I think and don’t wind up being that dangerous. The rest of the season there is no real time constraint except us being told, not shown, that they need to get Zym to Xadia soon. Although you might say Viren causing trouble is the danger, it’s not really present in the narrative as he isn’t sending people out to get the trio and the trio has no idea what he is doing.

Now for some LARGE SPOILERY points I’d like to make about the season (I apologize if formatting gets weird here, I’m writing this one my phone and it, well, is tumblr. Also I can’t find the mobile version of the read more button.)

In this season there is a lot of development of Caleb’s romantic relationships, specifically with Claudia, and briefly at the end with Rayla. Although I admit I have not looked up their exact ages, appearance wise, to me, Caleb looks 15 or so, and the girls look late teens early twenties. This, to put it simply, makes me very uncomfortable. In Season one, I was perfectly fine with Caleb’s puppy dog, schoolboy crush on Claudia. It was realistic to how a young teen might feel towards an older friend as he is first hitting puberty, and I found it cute. But now Claudia is reciprocating, and not just in a motherly, older sister way. She’s doing her hair up, she’s goin on a date with him, and they nearly kissed. I find this unacceptable as the age differences between them are too large, and regardless if the young one is a boy, that’s still very much not ok. Maybe technically she’s only a few years older than him, but as it isn’t stated and appearance wise she is much older seeming (since you can’t expect viewers to look up the wiki, this is what I have to go on), I strongly disagree with this, and the same concerning Rayla. He is, from my interpretation, 15. That’s not ok and I’m extremely mad about this. I hope it gets resolved in a way that is appropriate but I worry it won’t, and I worry more about the message that sends to young boys that they should let older girls hit on them when that’s no more ok than an older man hitting on a younger girl.

My second big complaint is how lgbt rep is handled in this season. Bc yes, we got some!!! And they died two episodes later!!! Not even, if you do some critical thinking as to why their daughter is ruling as a child queen with no parents. But yes, they kill the two lesbians who show up, although they are very much canon, kissing and a kid and all. They kill them, and although it is necessary for the narrative and not just thrown in there to get rid of them, it still sucks bc it’s still the trope that hurts so many of us. Now do I think this is the only lgbt rep we will get in this show? Absolutely not, I firmly believe we have yet to see the true lgbt characters revealed (still hoping for Amaya...) and I don’t believe this was all we will get, however those episodes haven’t been released yet and as of our knowledge this is all we have, and it’s a kill your gays trope. I just can’t agree with this, even though again, it was necessary to the narrative and wasn’t just a dismissive death and move on.

Oh and one last quick thing disliked. In this season, Soren briefly becomes a quadrepeligic. It’s handled rather well, in my opinion, with Soren trying to find the good in it and crack a joke as is his way, and Claudia nearly having a mental breakdown bc she doesn’t have a spell to help. But then she pulls one out of her ass and heals him. And although I am not disabled nor do I have any disabled friends, I find this a bit rude to the community (please do tell me if I am wrong about this however and you believe the disabled community is fine with this as I am not certain). The community doesnt have a magic solution to solve their disabilities. That’s not an option. And in my, admittedly unknowleable opinion, I think they should have let Soren remain disabled and truly showed how that affects the life of someone who previously relied on fighting. I think it would have added a whole other layer to the show of both diversity and intrigue. Do I think this was a slight at the disabled community? No I don’t, simply concerning how we know they don’t have a problem putting characters into the show with disabilities, and doing it well too (Aka Amaya making tasteful jokes about being deaf and using actual ESL, and Vallads, a pirate character from this season who DOES use magic assistive technology to deal with his blindness and it works amazing). But I do feel this was a wasted opportunity for character growth for Soren by helping him realize fighting skills aren’t all that make him who he is, and also an interesting way to creatively work in magical assistive technology (a la the flying wheelchair from A:TLA)

Lastly I’d like to talk about some good things about this season bc I’ve bashed it enough for one day don’t you think? Viren’s whole thing with the mirror was boring as hell yes, and only contributed to the filler season feeling, however it was intriguing and I’m curious to learn more about the man in the mirror, so I appreciate that mystery. I liked the development of Claudia and Soren and how it showed what might be the start of Claudia’s descent into Dark Magic. I enjoyed the whole part where Callum was sick and struggling with using dark magic, and how it was taken as a bit of a joke on the deep important hallucinations, while still being a deep important hallucination. Also the inclusion of memes (“one does not simply walk into Xadia”) and the pirate Vallads. I just find this shows ability to make light of itself to be really enjoyable and part of why I love it so much. Ezran is as always an absolute bean and he grows so much in this season. Caleb acknowledging why Rayla struggled to tell him about his father and not letting it drive a wedge between them like it would in so many shows (and would be frustrating like it always is) was so mature and I loved it. Claudia’s development about her mother, Queen Sarai’s whole section, and Harrows letter were all amazing bits of development, especially in the case of Claudia, about how hard it is on kids when parents divorce, while also acknowledging why there was a divorce and that it wasn’t bad that the mom did it. Also the explainations Of magic and the Sunfire (I think that’s what they are called) elves were awesome (who else is now shipping Amaya and that one leader elf??) I think a lot of the development was super amazing and I loved it all, and by no means do I think this season will be a blight on the show as a whole, I just think it very much had some faults and I look forward to seeing some more plot focused episodes!!

#the dragon prince #tdp #review #cartoon #dreamworks #bo one is going to see this but i had some stuff to get off my chest

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theharellan · 6 years

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rules & stuff

General

Thank you for coming to my rules page! I'd appreciate it if you could read over these to prevent future misunderstandings.

This is a Solas roleplay blog. Solas is a character from the latest Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Inquisition. He plays a large role in the story, and thus this blog will be spoiler heavy. If you have not finished DA:I (and all its DLC) then please take caution when you follow this blog. I don't tag spoilers for any DA:I content and I would hate to spoil anyone.

Here are some basics!

mostly canon, semi-canon divergent

independent, elective

will roleplay with mutuals only

21+, not open to smut

single ship

tags triggers

Rules last updated April 2021.

Interaction

i am semi-selective & (mostly) not exclusive

I will only be roleplaying with mutuals for the foreseeable future. Starter ask memes may be turned into threads, but please make a separate post!

I will roleplay with multiples and do not practise exclusivity for either Player Characters or Canons. I have mains whose interpretations/universes I default to so that I can write in a semi-consistent universe. All duplicates I roleplay with exist in different universes.

i am singleship

This is the "(mostly)" part of the "not exclusive thing." On this blog I only ship with Iander Lavellan and am closed off for romantic ships. I am, however, incredibly interested in developing non-romantic ships- both positive and negative. As Ian is a companion OC and not Inquisitor, he exists in my Solas's universe regardless.

i reserve the right to follow & unfollow as i choose

This blog is not follow-for-follow. I like to keep my dash relatively slow moving. As mentioned, I do try to keep the opportunity for non-mutuals to roleplay with me or chat.

As for unfollowing (or soft blocking) I won't usually explain why, usually it's one of these couple reasons:

Inactivity (the main one tbh - if I see you're back I'll refollow!)

Offensive material (homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, etc)

Untagged Negativity / Vagueblogging (it makes me anxious)

Untagged character hate (especially Solas or Merrill hate)

As one final note on following: I don't send in passwords. I promise I read your rules before initiating interaction.

sending & receiving memes

Don't use me as a meme resource. Not all IC memes will work for two characters, so if it doesn't fit feel free to reblog. But OOC memes, symbols or asks you can send out of character, which require no interaction to send. I don't care if we're not mutuals, and I promise if you send me something I'll check to see if you reblogged it and send you something in return. I'm not a big fan of the "reblog from source" solution for non-mutuals, I just... pls. Send me something.

on messaging

I will not roleplay using Tumblr's IM system and prefer not to roleplay on IM platforms (Discord, etc) period. Feel free to message me OOC, it's open regardless of whether or not I follow you.

My Discord is also available for mutuals. Just shoot me a Tumblr IM or ask and I'd be happy to provide it!

Threads

please be patient

I am currently attending grad school and am a graduate assistant on top of that. Roleplying is a hobby, please respect that.

Before you message me asking about replies please check here for a list of my Solas threads or here for a list of Solas replies I currently owe. If you are on this page, I know I owe you. If you're not, please mesage me and let me know! I'd appreciate it, I like to keep it updated.

i'm open to any format

Banter, para, multi-para, novella are all possible. I prefer to reserve longer threads for plotted or intense interactions, and shorter threads for more casual roleplays b/c otherwise there's way too much navel gazing. Shorter threads are also much more likely to get timely replies.

I don't format beyond small text, and will roleplay with you regardless of whether you do or don't format yourself. I do use 100x100 icons (except in specific AUs where I have no icons to speak of), but am open to iconless roleplay if you don't use them.

Tagging

common triggers on this blog

This blog regularly features themes of slavery, fantasy racism, and mental illness (specifically: depression, depersonalisation/derealisation, ptsd). All themes present in the Dragon Age series will also likely appear here at some point, even if it's OOC discussion. These will be tagged when referenced.

my tagging policies

I track the tag #theharellan

I tag general triggers and will tag others upon request. My format is: #(trigger)+tw. For example a blood trigger warning would be: #blood tw.

I will also tag content warnings for things that include, for example, character death (like so: #character death cw).

NSFW is a rarity on this blog. When I do write or reblog something even vaguely NSFW it will be tagged #( nsfw )

For a full list of the tags I use often on this blog, please refer to this page here.

my tagging requests

For my comfort, please tag...

#Animal Death TW (especially pet death)

#NSFW

#Gore Images

#Negativity

#Solas Hate

My Solas Interpretation

I've been roleplaying Solas 3+ years at the time of writing, and I've expanded upon his interpretation over this time. Here are probably some of the most important things to know about my interpretation.

some notes for elvhenan-era characters

Please at least skim this post especially if you roleplay a character with knowledge of Fen'Harel.

If you roleplay an evanuris, please do not assume Solas is your friend! This has become less of a problem since Trespasser, but I'm keeping this just in case. He has no love for the evanuris (save Mythal) and will just want to fight you.

I am open to discussion so our interpretations of Elvhenan better match, but there are some things I'm not interested in changing. If you diverge from canon in a way that rewrites the evanuris as wholly benign and erase slavery from the narrative entirely, then we're not compatible.

some notes for everyone else

Do not suspect Solas of being Fen'Harel without my permission! He is canonically very careful with his identity. The exception to this will be Elvhenan-era characters, but even in those cases don't just sweep in and out him.

My Solas was not Solas first. What I mean by this is, he had several names before choosing the name Solas. I headcanon that Elvhenan elves had a pretty fluid view of names, similar to how Abelas likely was not the name that character was born with. That being said Solas is his real name.

My Solas is queer. He is panromantic, asexual, and agender. My reasoning for roleplaying him as such can be read here, but tl;dr there is no such thing as a cishet in Elvhenan.

As stated previously, he is in a canon relationship with the companion OC Iander Lavellan. I don't expect you to know the ins and outs of their relationship by any means, but it is common knowledge within the Inquisiton. You can read a summary of their relationship story here.

I write the events of Inquisition as having played out over the course of about three years rather than the canon one. My default Inquisitor does both Jaws of Hakkon and The Descent prior to the end of the game.

I've tweaked Solas's behaviour during What Pride Had Wrought to flow better. You can find a more detailed description here.

In canon Solas says some very bigoted stuff about dwarves and qunari. This holds true for my Solas, but I tend to write him as developing/learning better throughout the course of DA:I (which is supported in part by canon, but due to banter it comes across inconsistently). This isn't to say he's cured of his racism b/c it is always an ongoing process, but that he's aware enough to try to check himself.

His ultimate goal is to tear down the Veil and use his powers as a Dreamer to reshape the world to create a future for the elves/spirits- and, more specifically, the rebels he fought with before the creation of the Veil.

As one final note please refrain from making egg jokes at him or me. I'm so tired.

OOC Stuff

about me

You can call me Tas! I use she/her pronouns. I’ve been in the Dragon Age fandom for like 8 years now and I’ve been rping for like 18 years total. Probably more. I made this Solas November 22nd, 2014.

I have a personal blog (queenaeducan) and my discord is available to mutuals, just shoot me an ask!

Name: Tas Age: 26 Pronouns: She/Her Interests: Elves & cats

For Non-RP Blogs

Hello! I'm happy you're here! Feel free to send me inbox messages addressed to either myself or Solas. I encourage you to reblog my writing, meta, drabbles, graphics, etc! I only ask that you respect the fact that my Solas has a Lavellan of his own, and I won't respond to asks that imply another love interest. Also if I've reblogged writing from another rp blog, please look at their rules before reblogging it yourself. Not everyone is comfortable with it being shared throughout the fandom.

So in list form the rules are:

Send me asks

Send Solas asks

Like my rp threads / Like p much anything

Reblog my headcanons

Reblog my metas

Reblog my drabbles

Reblog my graphics / promos

DON'T reblog promos of other rp blogs

DON'T reblog text posts from other rp blogs without reading their rules/checking with them first

Remember my Solas has a love interest, and it isn't your Lavellan. Please don't send him asks about him being in a relationship w/ someone who isn't theshirallen(Ian).

If you reblog something I made/wrote pls remember I check the tags in hopes of seeing something nice.

Thank you!

#( ooc )#( mod notes )#[ for me to add to my sidebar for mobile users ]

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kip-quest-blog · 6 years

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It’s been a good year.

We’re coming up on KipQuest’s first year anniversary and it is with a heavy heart and a conflicted soul that I announce that I am going to be closing this blog.

What happened? D:

Nothing happened in the traditional sense. I came out here for a good time and I had a good time and then I stopped having a good time. So I decided that drastic measures needed to be taken. I don’t have the desire to quit pokeask blogging, or blogging in general, or art, or storytelling, or any of that.

I just want to quit this particular blog and all the other blogs attached to this primary blog outside of my artblog (which I made a sideblog for this exact reason) and Maat’s blog. The disconnect has been months in the making and it is not at all related to my mental health or my motivation for art, or even my lack of physical energy. I’d just rather be doing literally anything else and that’s a really really bad thing for a long term project.

I tried everything I could think of to get myself going again. Memes, interactions, hiatus, total disconnect from Tumblr, a different, less stressful blog. I tried a lot. And it didn’t work. Ideas just fall flat and die sometimes so I am taking my own advice and just doing what I want to do.

Where are you going?

I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to write a blog from start to end. I’m going to have a plan. I’m going to reevaluate myself and my life choices. I’m going to do something self-indulgent and something that I will be passionate about, even if I’m just a cliched and tropey mess. I don’t know what the blog will be or the format, or the style, or even the name. I don’t know anything right now.

I don’t even know if I’ll have an answer for that question anytime soon. I will, however, be on my artblog, drawing art and dumping it there every once in a while. I’ll still be drawing pokemon like a damn nerd and I will still love it. I will probably take all the art prompts I have stockpiled and go through them as I figure out what the fresh hell I am going to do.

I’ll still be on this primary blog while I work on my other things. All the memes will be posted on my artblog as I finish them. (Though I run mostly on a queue.)

How can we reach you?

Please for the love of god, follow me on Twitter. Interact with me on Twitter because 1v1 convos are not happening and that’s because I’m busy all the time with other things. Twitter is where you can see my hilariously awful jokes and updates that get pruned out so my art is the main attraction and I can still have my fun.

My discord is not open because it’s going to be the same deal. 1v1 convos are just not on my agenda unless you’re alright with me never speaking or just saying the same tired things all the time. (i’m tired/busy/sleepy/busy) Maybe someday I’ll be in a group discord where I can talk to a lot of lovely people at the same time. (I’m already mod in one, but it has been capped for now.)

Will you tell us what your new blog is when it’s made?

Maybe. I won’t try to use this blog to promote my new one because I feel that it is disingenuous to use this thing I didn’t finish to promote something I hopefully will. Pride? It’s more like guilt. I’d hate to be a disappointment again. I’d hate to disappoint you again.

What about this story?

I can give you the very short version of what I had originally intended for Kippy’s KipQuest under the cut if you want to know the story at the most surface level. There, you will see my incredible lack of planning. I will not elaborate much more than this in the interest of not writing a novel. I apologize that all the nuance is gone. Rip all the worldbuilding.

Just in case, you decide to not read under the cut (it’s all story stuff anyway) I wanted to say thank you for all the good times. I learned a lot about art, myself, and commitment. I asked a lot of questions to a lot of people and learned so much about others. It was fun while it lasted. This is not the last you will see of me. But this will likely be the last update post I make on this blog.

You know what they say, right? Better luck next time.

Kippy would have made their internal struggle known to their mother that they didn’t know whether to pick a boy name (Skipper after Amelia’s father) or a girl name (Pankaja which is a name related to soil though the language of origin escapes me). Kippy’s mother, Amelia, assured them that no matter what they ultimately decided, it was their choice to make and that she would be proud of her little kipper.

Kippy, who was born male, chose Pankaja as her official name but still likes Kippy as a nickname. She then takes on female pronouns and begins to make her way into the world at large. During this time, Jalon, a Honchkrow leader of the village Kippy lives in, has her put on a team prematurely because Jalon does not like that Baaba challenges his authority.

Baaba confronts the Grand Psion - a sort of gauge for an individual’s potential - and demands that he tell the truth about Kippy’s potential. The Grand Psion, who was most certainly lying about Kippy’s abilities at the request of Amelia, claims ignorance and Baaba doesn’t buy it, so he storms off with renewed vigor to get Kippy trained in the only way he knew how.

Amelia has the Grand Psion lie about Kippy’s potential because Kippy was born a Bad Egg because Amelia had a lot of trouble with having children. Amelia had a number of previous attempts with her mate, Armament - who was a Garchomp that died in the line of duty - but they all either miscarried or just did not hatch when they were supposed to. She begged the Grand Psion to lie about Kippy so Kippy wouldn’t get herself killed in a military life. Kippy never finds this out.

Kippy is paired with Pepin, a Buneary who failed to live up to his family’s astronomical expectations, and Pax, a Swablu who hates being a Priest and fulfilling the role of a “healer” despite having the ability to use Heal Pulse. The three of them are sent off on a mission that was not meant for them to complete, due to a mix up between assignments.

They end up delving into a cavern and finding evidence of humans existing as well as the Red and Blue Orbs and the Meteorite, which were placed in this deep cavern to keep Columbia, a radically violent and nihilistic Origin Jirachi, from continuing to hunt down and slaughter other Jirachi to gain their power.

Kippy releases Columbia, who very nearly kills the three of them on sight and disappears into the Realm of the Fairies, who have begun preparations to make an attempt at truce.

Bellatrix, who had saved Kippy and Arimus from the approaching Fairies in the beginning, ended up returning to face those approaching intruders head on with her partner, Ronnie. Ronnie is a Gardevoir who did not gain the Fairy typing when the original Blight swept the land. Nobody knows why this was, but that is the only reason she is accepted in the Valley of Darkness.

That Fairy party was a party sent by the highest order of fairy nobles to attempt a truce with the smaller neighboring land before a hopeful collaboration to unify with the Land of Dragons. The Prince of the Fairies was sent as a means of instilling an element of trust, but Bellatrix doesn’t believe that the instigators of this divisive conflict have any positive intentions in mind. She mega evolves, kills most of those present on both sides, and flees into the forest, where she succumbs to the dangerous power that mega evolution entails and falls into madness fueled only by fury and rage. Ronnie survives only because the Fairy Prince, Adelaide, stabilized her.

When Kippy and company return to the village, Jalon panics because he assumed they were going to do something simple, and instead came back with items that belong to the Land of Dragons. In order to maintain control of his people, he accuses Kippy and company of being insiders and mounts an attack using only his Murkrow flock. Pax’s trainer was an Eevee and she jumps in to protect her trainee, evolving into a Sylveon to have a better chance of fending Jalon’s lackeys off, though this solidifies the accusation that Kippy and co (and by extension, their families) are spies for the enemy.

Amelia immediately and instinctually uses her combined strength with Pax’s trainer, and Baaba, to give Kippy and co a chance to escape alive. It is never determined whether their families survived this attack because Kippy never ends up going back.

Baaba finds them in the hills outside of the village. Kippy is panicking, but Pax and Pepin are able to calm her down well enough for the four of them to figure out where they need to go. Baaba says that the Land of Dragons would be their best bet because he knows someone who has clout.

They are discovered by an adventuring party of Fairies, are captured, and taken back to the main hub where all the decisions are made. They are granted amnesty because the Fairies are attempting to make peace with the surrounding areas.

The Fairies are under the control of Xerneas, who is a fragmented and corrupted being that was created by The Bastard Palkia. Xerneas itself is an instinctual being, who has complete and total mind control over all Fairies on this world when it is awake. It only ever seeks to destroy anything that would oppose it, as well as anything that it deems a danger to it. Xerneas had been asleep for a while, but the damage already done had to be slowly undone, which proved to be almost impossible considering that the sight of a Fairy usually meant a fight was going to break out, so peace talks were rare and were hardly ever successful.

Kippy wants to help, naturally, but has no idea how to do so. She thinks that the Jirachi she released would be able to help, so she goes looking for it. Baaba stays close by for the longest time until he is attacked during another encounter with Columbia and is revealed to be a Zoroark. Kippy takes this rather well in the moment, but later confronts Baaba about it.

Baaba explains that pokemon in the area all live on a massive island created by the same Mewtwo who gave Bellatrix the ability to mega evolve. This area used to be a secluded safe haven in Kalos, so many pokemon who were harmed by experimentation make up the population, which is why there is a rather tumultuous civilization in the works. Columbia offers to spare this world if they can convince the slumbering native Jirachi to appear so Columbia can take it. It is assumed that Columbia’s attempts at seeking the native Jirachi failed, and he claimed that he was “helping” the mortals because he is a god.

Columbia is an elder god, but he is also a creation of The Bastard and is therefore, fundamentally broken on every single level of his existence. This doesn’t really matter, but Columbia spins it in a way to make himself look better, and to get Kippy and Baaba to call the native Jirachi. This works later on and that Jirachi is shredded and consumed by Columbia, who then departs to find more Jirachi to consume after flipping all his middle fingers up at the preps.

Baaba does not accept Columbia’s offer, but Kippy comes up with a plan to trick Columbia into a false sense of security. This plan fails miserably. Columbia kills the native Jirachi, and in retaliation for mortals even attempting to lie to him, wakes Xerneas up from its deep slumber. He naturally has a big villain speech explaining how Fairies are indeed evil by design because The Bastard doesn’t care about what it makes and leaves things to fester. Even humans have harnessed Fairy energy to create devastating weapons and this is no exception.

Xerneas arises and takes control of all the Fairies. At the same time, in human civilization, Magearna and the Ultimate Weapon designs are finished and deployed. The rise in harmful energy leads to a chain reaction where Xerneas’s instability directly contributes to the creation of a second, more unstable Yveltal constructed of corrupted energy.

Yveltal flees, spreading devastation and destruction everywhere. The world begins to end and there is a bright light in the sky.

Kippy and co try their best to help, but they are divided on what to do. Xerneas needs to be stopped, but there is chaos unfolding around them as they try to escape the Realm of Fairies and make their way to the Land of Dragons. Baaba has stayed with them, and no longer assumes the form of a Rattata. When they make it to the Land of Dragons, Baaba seeks out and finds the oldest dragon there, a Charizard named Basil.

Basil is upset at how these events have unfolded, but when the gods are involved, it never ends well. He promises that his attacks will be swift, but he is not optimistic. Kippy is worried, though by this time, she has evolved from a Mudkip/Gible into a Garchomp. There was a lot of tears shed and fear throughout this transitionary period, but she is determined.

Columbia has disappeared, but his presence alerted Marty, a Celebi who immediately arrives to survey the damage. It’s too much to bear. The end of the world is coming naturally, so he begins his job to tie up the loose ends and let the world collapse in itself. Despite Baaba begging that Marty not do this, Marty does not listen. Baaba lashes out because he wants Kippy to be okay. That’s his partner. His most trusted companion. And he is too smart to let her go so easily.

Marty explains that it’s better for all of existence if this world dies naturally instead of being ripped apart for no reason. Xerneas must be contained. Baaba asks Marty if Xerneas could be contained, would that allow the world to be left alone. Marty makes no promises, but does hint that their time would be extended, as everything dies eventually.

Baaba and Kippy convince Pepin and Pax to go back to the village to reiterate the information that they learned. They also convince Marty to go with them to confirm their story. Baaba and Kippy then go to Xerneas, who is deep within the forests, wandering and screaming.

Baaba has a special tool that he plans to use in order to get Xerneas under control. They fight, they win, Kippy mega evolves, and Baaba uses a Master Ball to seal Xerneas away.

It, at one point, would have been made known that Baaba is from human settlements in Kalos, where he was born before his mother made a deal with Mewtwo to create this supposed sanctuary. Humans had done a lot of fucked up shit prior to this and his mother was the result of experiments in testing pokemon’s potential. He carried with him a couple of tools from the human settlements because he inherited that human level of intelligence and planning.

Once Xerneas is sealed away in the Master Ball, Baaba explains to Kippy that there is a whole other world out there to explore and he remembers fondly traveling through Kalos a little bit before his mother whisked him away from humans as a whole. He says he wants Kippy to see the world for what it is, a wonderful place, but humans are also not to be messed with. Baaba explains that humans treat pokemon differently and sometimes badly and he wants to change that, but the only way he knows how is to show them. He offers Kippy the opportunity to go with him to Kalos. Kippy accepts.

Baaba also offer this opportunity to Pepin and Pax, both of whom have evolved fully. Pepin accepts. Pax does not.

It ends with Kippy and Pepin willingly being put into customized pokeballs and Baaba assuming the form of a human before it’s assumed that they go to Kalos and change the human world as well.

That’s all ey wrote. Hopefully the next time I do this, I do a better job.

#ooc #blog update

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spamzineglasgow · 4 years

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(HOT TAKE) Quarantine Phenomenology: The Curious Case of Daddy Conte, by Denise Bonetti

‘Teenage by design’? SPAM founder and editor-in-chief Denise Bonetti, tapping into her Italian roots, takes us on a whirlwind journey around the lustful theme park that is meme space in the time of quarantine. For many, especially those who aren’t on the frontline as key workers, self-isolation is thrusting us back into a rude adolescence. Having exhausted our usual channels of recursive entertainment, where better to look than to the political (yes, wybi?!) heroes of meatspace to fantasise the intimacies and reassurances we’re otherwise deprived of.

(CW: sexually explicit references)

> Comedian Dan Sebree tweeted that this whole quarantine situation is the closest any of us millennials will get to retirement. The joke is funny because it’s most likely true: the idea of people in my age bracket (mid-20s to mid-30s) ever retiring seems like a fairytale we tell ourselves to keep our boomer parents happy, something we play along to because frankly it’s easier than sharing the extent of our doubts in the future. (Find someone in their 20s who can say ‘when we all retire’ without a shred of irony).

> Sebree is right, most of us are playing retirees now. 80% of your salary to repot your plants, make sourdough, and fend off waves of existential dread here and there: not too shabby - if you used to have a stable job, that is. Things obviously aren’t so chill for quite literally everyone else: NHS workers, shopkeepers, supermarket employees, people on zero-hour contracts (which make up around 9% of all the UK workforce under 25), gig economy workers, freelancers by choice, people whose employers can’t be bothered putting them on payroll, and have therefore decided for them that they’ll have to be freelancers - the list goes on.

> Yet beyond the retirement vibes, there is a stage of life that seems even more appropriate to represent the mood that this pandemic isolation has been creating. We are feeling manic and depressive, anxious and idyllic, bored and obsessive; we have been dying our hair and we’re allowing social media challenges and email chains to make a comeback ( 😩). We’re raging that we’re being told how & when we can go out, and we want to see our friends like our life depended on it. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we’ve all gone back to being teenagers. (For some of us, the transformation is even more literal: everyone who’s had to move back to their parents tag yourselves.)

> In ‘Glitching the Collective Mind’ a three-part essay published on SPAM a few months ago, Dan Power noted how ‘spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world)’ can easily give way to ‘feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity’ by way of ‘saturating the mind’ with the infinite possibilities of content. In the same essay, Power reflects on the nature of the virtual space this content is localised in, what Grafton Tanner has called the ‘virtual plaza’: a non-place through which ‘we drift and consume, lulled by the saccharine tones of muzak’. Power argues that what the ‘non-local’, ‘homogenized’ structure of the virtual plaza takes away is precisely that something around which the occupants can build a sense of identity: ‘When the features which distinguish one place from another are removed, stable sense of belonging and understanding are removed with them’.

> Although Power could not have predicted this current weirdness, I am interested in his linking the internet’s hypertrophic, endless-scroll format, eradicated from any sense of place as we know it, to its capacity both to strip us of our identity, and to reduce us to a melancholic, manic mess - a passive, wide-awake anonymous content-consumer, lying in bed between waves of anxiety. A teenager who is grappling with their identity because they’re not quite sure where their emotions are coming from - literally and metaphorically.

> Critic Amanda Hess has recently written in The New York Times about the comfort of playing childhood video games during the lockdown. ‘It’s not so much that I miss my childhood’, she writes as she becomes re-obsessed with her 11-year-old self’s favourite game, Myst, ‘as that I feel seized by it’. And I, currently taking a break from a 12-hour The Sims 2 Bon Voyage build-mode marathon to write this, can only confirm such claims.

> I’m sure the fact that we gravitate towards this simple kind of pastime has a lot to do with the fact that no one can be arsed engaging with highbrow content during such traumatic times. (Let me take a break from following the dead count on BBC News by watching Battleship Potemkin, said no one ever.) However it’s not only that we’re drawn to accessible content, it’s that we are drawn exactly to the kind of activities that our teenage selves used to be into. (Otherwise, explain why The Sims 2 is having a resurgence - sixteen years after its release [!], and not either of its two successors.)

> If nostalgia is generally understood as originating more in the disappointments of reality than in the draw of the object of nostalgia itself, then the grimness of the pandemic is also to blame for the current millennial vintage trends. As Hess observed elsewhere, the quarantine has forced us into lockdown with the very devices designed to amplify our obsessions, cranking up that very fixative impulse that makes adolescence the curse and blessing that we all know.

> In Italy, where the full lockdown has been going on for over 5 weeks now, the signs of this 30-going-13 epidemic are in full swing. Everybody knows about Italians competing with each other on who can sing the cringiest medley of 00s songs from their balconies. But there’s something even more beautiful that the Italians are doing, and The Answer May Shock You. Platonic love has infiltrated every corner of Italian social media, and the object, I tell you, is no one other the prime minister Giuseppe Conte.

> Just like teenage love, the obsession is platonic socially-distant just as much as it is carnal. ‘Giuseppe Conte’ has reportedly been amongst the most searched terms on Pornhub over the last few weeks. Spurred by sheer investigative rigour I decided to carry out further research on the platform, and can confirm that the PM-themed content abounds. The material itself varies from adorably chaste, SFW picture montages of the prime minister (‘ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER GIUSEPPE CONTE MAKE YOU CUM HARD’, as uploaded by user TheMinisterOfLove), to the literal hour-long speeches that the PM has delivered to the senate, to more visually explicit heart-reacts to the government’s directives (‘HUGE CUMSHOT WHILE LISTENING DADDY GIUSEPPE CONTE’).

> Pornography aside, the memes have taken over the Italian gram and Twitter. It all started when influencer and entrepreneur Chiara Ferragni regrammed to her 19.5m followers a post by the Instagram page @daddy.conte back in March, erroneously crediting it to @lebimbedigiuseppeconte (Giuseppe Conte’s Little Girls) - now two of the most popular hormone city pages dedicated to the PM. The content is genuinely too much and too good for me to present exhaustively, but I need to show you some favourites so you can get with the vibe (all from @daddy.conte):

[‘Italian daddy locks his girls home’]

[’From today, I declare your smile illegal’]

[’There’s a smile underneath that face mask’]

[’hey baby’ / ‘daddy come to me, my parents aren’t home’ / ‘WHAT’]

[’don’t you dare get close to my girls’]

[’who wants a goodnight story?’]

[’Hi gorgeous, if you’re reading this it’s because i’ve been trapped in a wormhole the only way for you to free me is to stay home until 4th April please do it there is no time i know you can save me baby’] [lol at how quickly this has aged]

>The spinoffs quickly proliferated, I’m talking dozens and dozens of pages devoted to the PM’s fatherly aura and classic good looks - most of them with not a huge amount of followers; a sort of decentralised, massively participatory network of adolescent erotic surplus. Some of these pages specialise in things like the PM’s smile or dimples (for the more faint of heart), inscribing the phenomenon in that Renaissance love lyric convention of praising the object of love’s beauty through a catalogue of their body parts.

>A similar sexy/cute type veneration also seems to have developed radially around other Italian political figures such as President Sergio Mattarella, however predicated on a completely different set of desirable traits. Conte’s cult is all about a sort of sub/authoritarian kink power dynamic: ‘Dom daddy tell me what to do’. (Problematic? Potentially. However, wholesome? Absolutely). Mattarella’s cult is inevitably linked to the Italian President’s political function, that of protecting the Constitution, coordinating the three branches of government while heading none. A sort of hands-off grandaddy figure there to break up fights, if you will. Combined with his sweet mannerisms, the result is more of a GILF, sitting-together-on-the-porch kind of desirability, as hinted at by the following meme: (@lebimbedisergiomattarella)

> As a testament to this systematic linkage between quarantine and teenage emotional turmoil, the same dynamic of desire has also developed around political figures in the US. Foremost examples are New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (who we now think might have nipple piercings), and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear - a ‘clean-cut sex symbol for the coronavirus age’ according to this Salon article explaining how ‘his calm and empathetic leadership’ (read: wholesome daddy energy) have thousands of thirsty people in self-isolation lust after him (via memes, of course).

> The ethos of memes in general is already teenage by design (hypertrophic, impulsive, obsessive, thriving on a sort of possessed desire towards repetition that I refuse to compare to masturbation). But there’s something special about the dreamy, sublimated, Platonic, cute-aggressive nature of these memes in particular that makes them the epitome not only of #quarantinevibes, but also of the virtual plaza’s mood, more broadly. Quarantine has exposed and legitimised, exacerbated and normalised, the internet’s power to make us regress into horny, anxious blobs. And memes like these are the very crystallisation of that ambivalent process.

> Analysis aside, we love a meme (always already), and we love a femme fandom moment. We stan the birth of a wholesome masculinity mythology for 2020. I can think of worse Internet Utopias. Now back 2 The Sims.

Text: Denise Bonetti

Lead Image credit: @onlyconte (Instagram)

Published: 17/4/20

#essay #essays #Denise Bonetti #masculinity #memes #meme #Giuseppe Conte #Italy #sexy #quarantine #coronavirus #hot take

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geekade · 7 years

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Some Thoughts About Suicide Squad

Hi Geekade readers! I’m not taking to coding as quickly as I’d hoped, and find myself making the hard decision between using my Pi to learn and code or to install Retropie and play games, so I thought I’d take a brief departure from my normal tech talk to discuss another passion of mine: Harley Quinn.

She’s possibly one of the best, most tragic female characters in literature. There’s no one on earth in a better position to be fully lucid while they go insane than she is, nobody who consistently and knowingly chooses her own imprisonment and torture more frequently. It’s like if Jack Sparrow had a law enforcement degree and still made all the same decisions while pirate hunters repeatedly and desperately offered him help and companionship. I could go on, but I have an actual point, so I’ll spare you. As you can imagine, I was both fearful and thrilled as I awaited the Suicide Squad release, rightly imagining Margot Robbie to be absolutely perfect for the part, and wholly unconcerned with the building, meme-fied humiliation of Jared Leto’s Joker. (The Joker, arguably, is inessential to Harley’s transformation‑PLEASE ask me about this, I’d love to tell you.)

Suicide Squad was fine. It was nowhere near the let-down of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (which I’d awaited for 4 years by the time it was regrettably released in theaters instead of burned in the dead of night in ditches somewhere), but nowhere close to as satisfying and funny-while-successfully-introducing-otherwise-unknown-characters-to-mainstream-audiences as Guardians of the Galaxy had been. However, if you’d like to watch Suicide Squad, but also would kind of like to watch a good movie, I’ve got news for you.

Suicide Squad is essentially a DCCU remake of the DCU movie Assault on Arkham, which was released a few years beforehand. It’s, honest to goodness, basically the same movie but instead of being potentially a waste of $9-14 dollars, it’s GREAT and a totally appropriate use of maybe $4 to rent on Amazon Prime. (I know, no smarthome stuff and I still manage to be a shill for Amazon. They’re not even paying me.)

Assault on Arkham is a part of a set of movies and shows that I don’t feel could possibly get enough attention - the Batman Animated Universe, encompassing everything from Batman: The Animated Series (arguably the definitive Batman) to the more recent The Killing Joke, and the upcoming Batman and Harley Quinn (which, AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH). In Assault on Arkham, Mark Hamill returns as the voice of the Joker facing Kevin Conroy as Batman, and Hynden Walch as Harley (Princess Bubblegum/Starfire/Penny from Chalkzone.)

I highly suggest that you go watch Assault on Arkham, but just a warning, there are spoilers ahead.

Assault on Arkham takes place at a time after the Suicide Squad had already been formed, so it saves us the trouble of a full origin tale, but it also begins with a bit of a changeup in the team - both from the Suicide Squad movie gang, and from the formation of the squad in the animated universe. We’re treated to the more characterized and strangely sympathetic King Shark in place of Killer Croc, who in the Suicide Squad movie is bold and violent, but not much else. We’re also introduced to Killer Frost, who is an icy villainess a-la Livewire from B:TAS. She’s sassy and has what appear to be magical ice powers; like Elsa, but mean. Black Spider, a bloodthirsty, crime-hating vigilante also joins the team, apparently only grudgingly in the company of everyone else. We keep Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and Harley Quinn herself, but the dynamics of the team are the same. One hulk, one killer-killer, one elemental, one nutty Australian robber, one entrepreneurial dad, and one crazy former therapist.

Oh - and one sacrificial lamb. Both movies kick off with a “proof of concept”‑someone nobody particularly cares about to prove that Waller will actually blow their heads off. In Assault on Arkham, it’s a raging Red bull called “The KGBeast” who nobody would ever mourn, and in Suicide Squad, it’s “Slipknot,” the man who can climb anything. This proves for us how cruel Waller really is‑and in both movies, Waller gets called out as the devil. This is a reference to the comics, as well as simply a fact. Waller is probably actually Satan.

See‑in each movie‑not only is Task Force X Waller’s vanity project (which is entirely unnecessary and completely inhumane, not to mention a complete violation of the constitutional rights of the prisoners involved), but the main conflict faced by our hostage heroes is a mishap of Waller’s own making. In Assault on Arkham, Waller had slipped a Suicide Seed into the Riddler’s neck to test her prototype, and he figured out how to disarm it, so, she created a fistfull more, stuffed them into some other criminals, and sent them to murder the Riddler. And also, the Joker has supposedly hidden a dirty bomb somewhere in Gotham and Batman is tearing the city apart to find it. (SEE DC? You still could have shoehorned Batman into this movie too.)

But all the plot-relevant stuff aside, the meat of Assault on Arkham is Harley and the Joker. They start the movie out broken up, which, if you follow their relationship as obsessively as I do, you’ll know is not actually an uncommon thing for them. Harley and Mister J are currently canonically canned. She’s even been out with Bruce Wayne on a legitimate and mutually enjoyable date. Heck, she only lives about 40 minutes from me, in Coney Island in a shabby apartment with her pets and pals and her primary non-monogamous partner, Pamela Isley (Ivy). But in Assault on Arkham, Ivy is is still incarcerated, and H&J are on the rocks.

It’s heavily implied, in Assault on Arkham, that Joker had thrown Harley out of a moving car and left her for dead, which might sound familiar because it’s almost exactly what they did in Suicide Squad‑but that’s hardly the only thing he’s done to her, and it’s hard to tell if Dr. Quinzel’s rage in the confrontation in Arkham comes from that particular assault or from his complete and utter destruction of her legitimate career, social abilities, criminal record, and sanity. Let’s say both. Harley starts Assault on Arkham out confidently and unconvincingly unattached and reinforces her apparent split by banging Deadshot.

Ok this part, I see why they didn’t snag for Suicide Squad. Will Smith is 48, and Margot Robbie is 26, and while she’s “Daddy’s Little Monster,” I personally don’t want to see her have a fling with someone who was already on Season 3 of Fresh Prince the year she was born. (Yes, Jared Leto is 45 and no, I don’t want to see her with him either.)

When, in Assault on Arkham, Harley (spoiler) breaks into Arkham with Deadshot, she (spoiler) runs into the Joker in his bulletproof cell and (spoiler): it doesn’t go well. He taunts her as only Mark Hamill’s Joker can, in the seductive and deranged varying pitch of a madman, and she is...triggered. (I got puns.)

She manages to keep it together while firing to help Deadshot with the task they’re there for; planting a small hacking device‑Batman-y technology that allows everyone else to sneak in past security, and here is where I pause to rant about Harley Quinn some more.

She knows that his cell is bulletproof and fires at it anyway. This convinces all of the onlooking guards that she’s currently deranged, and convinces Deadshot that she’s (oh, spoiler) not thrilled with the Joker. Her rampage allows Deadshot to complete their first mission, but it also helps the Joker to escape.

It takes Joker what seems like an hour to realize what she’s done for him, what she later confirms she did on purpose for him. This is one of my favorite pieces of evidence that Harley Quinn is the real criminal mastermind behind Joker’s modern accomplishments. For the other, watch “Mad Love,” Season 4 Episode 21 of Batman: The Animated Series, which Suicide Squad also clipped a bit, free on Amazon Prime. Harley has full knowledge of the entire schematics of Arkham Asylum, because, you know, she worked there, and throughout the movie uses passcodes and shortcuts that move the whole team forward, and she chooses to let her puddin loose in the halls, so she can catch up later. Yes, spoiler, she was faking the whole time, and is more than happy to be daddy’s little monster again. She’s even been hiding the dirty bomb.

Ask me what she gets for it.

So, you might at this point be thinking: Gabbie, you’re bizarrely passionate about this clearly unhealthy couple, but also, this movie sounds nothing like Suicide Squad.

Well, you’re wrong. About the second part, at least. Let me take you through it.

Amanda Waller wakes up one morning and decides to randomly create a huge problem‑murdering the Riddler (or releasing the Enchantress, in Suicide Squad). Granted, nerdy Nigma isn’t nearly as frightening as Cara Delevigne slowly building one of the mechanical space worms from Avengers in downtown Chicago, but both are problematic, and both are entirely Waller’s fault.

She pulls together her team of criminals, puts them through a suit-up montage, kills one of them, then drops their helicopter literally out of the sky into a situation that she does not explain to them fully. The Joker and Harley have some sort of private understanding between one another, as could probably have been expected. In both movies, Harley has a camaraderie with Deadshot. Harley also notably does a Matrix” lean in both movies for no discernable reason.

Inevitably, our villain-heroes are actually the patsies. Also inevitably, both the elemental and the tank are killed in explosions of the neck-bomb or fiery variety. And in both movies, the Joker appears to die in a helicopter crash, though in Suicide Squad, we actually get to see the happy couple reunited, whereas in Assault on Arkham, we’re merely told the body wasn’t found, which, for the Joker, is as good as proof that he’s alive.

To be totally honest with you, my main conclusion is that I’d have killed to see Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in this Suicide Squad movie instead of the one that we got. She was the one part of Suicide Squad that makes watching it worth it, and while Princess Bubblegum did an amazing job in Assault on Arkham, I’d really like to see a live-action portrayal of Harley having her own hidden agenda, but giving us a full range of emotions and a tiny taste of her‑hate?‑for the Joker.

The Suicide Squad Harleen transformation was painfully unfulfilling, but the canonical story of their mad love is actually very interesting. While Suicide Squad paints Quinn as the Joker’s dupe‑tortured to madness and turned to a crime queen‑the older story is a little more compelling. Over multiple sessions, Harleen realizes that the Joker is able to make her laugh again after years of unwavering, humorless professionalism and ambition. Their sessions become discussions, and she falls in love. This not only makes the Joker seem more dangerous, capable of corrupting a psychiatrist with only his words like a genial, gentlemanly, green-haired Charles Manson, but tells us a lot about the good doctor. And it really makes Harley’s blow-up in Assault on Arkham an incredible moment, especially considering that it’s a dupe. How self-aware is Harley? How actively, and independently, is she choosing the Joker again and again? I for one would have enjoyed seeing that explored in Suicide Squad, just a bit more than I enjoyed the pin-up show we got instead.

I hope I’ve convinced you to check out Assault on Arkham. It’s really an amazing movie. And I hope I get a little bit better at Python, so that next month I can get back to writing about technology instead of rambling justifications of clown-on-criminal romance.

#Movies #Comics #articles

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dustin-parrish-blog · 7 years

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Do You Need Help? | Dustin & Tad

Date: Tuesday, 3rd January 2017

The first day back at school after a holiday was always difficult, for both teachers and students. Nobody wanted to be there, certain people were still hungover, and everyone was used to sleeping in and being with their family. The first day back was a bleak reminder that there was still work to be done. Tad tried to make these days as easy as possible when he could, letting the kids do some review games and not giving them homework. Everyone was uncomfortable and on edge, and if he could help, why wouldn't he? However, this particular day, he was certain he was far more uncomfortable than the kids were. His stomach kept protesting and growling as though he'd skipped breakfast, and his joints had started to ache halfway to lunch. These pains had started shortly after he'd spent the night by the river where he released his frogs, making sure they were safe and not being eaten by some nocturnal beast. But today was worse, and he wondered if he was getting too old to just sleep outside like that, or if he'd contracted something while he slept. As soon as the lunch bell rang, he slowly made his way to the nurse's office, making every effort to appear like everything was fine as he entered. He gave the nurse a smile, and waved at her helper- he thought the kid was named Dustin? "Hello! Could I bother you for some advil? I think I'm getting too old for New Years." He laughed, then turned to Dustin. "Hello to you too. What are you doing in here?"

Today was the worst day ever. Literally. Worse than the day that his favourite jeans ripped, worse than the day that he failed an assignment due to a classmate’s prank involving a meme and worse than the day that Donald Trump became president. No, today was far worse. Today was the first day back at school after the break. The day had already started out great when he’d overslept after maybe getting three hours of sleep. After dragging himself to school without breakfast Dustin had promptly fallen back asleep during English class, leaving him with detention. On top of that, he suddenly remembered that he had agreed to help out in the nurse’s office today. Which was why he found himself spending the break with no one but the nurse, trying to stay awake as he sorted out medical supplies. So far, the break had been quiet, except for a few hungover students who pretended that their headaches were actual migraines and not, in fact, caused by drinking. Once he heard a familiar voice, Dustin’s head shot up, trying to find anything interesting to get him through the remaining time. Maybe someone was bleeding to death. That might wake him up a little. He was almost disappointed when the person coming in was no, in fact, bleeding or dying from an obscure illness. He seemed to just have a headache, judging by him asking for advil and his comment about the New Years. Dustin was very much familiar with this person. It was his Biology teacher, Dr. Jones. Dustin gave him a small smile. Biology didn’t suck half as much as most other subjects. “I’m actually a registered nurse, I graduated from college five years ago. The only reason you find me in your class sometimes is I get bored,” he joked and put down the box of tape he was holding. “You alright though? People don’t usually come in here unless they feel really unwell or they’re skipping class. And I doubt it’s the last option for you.” He grinned.

Tad would usually laugh at the kid's deadpan jokes, when he caught them, but today all he could manage was a chuckle, and even then, it hurt. "Well Nurse Dustin, that must be the reason half your assignments are late. Maybe I shouldn't grade them at all and just give you an A." He waved the kid off, rolling his neck. "I'm just a little sore. I did some field work over the break, and I think it's catching up to me now. Or at least, that's my story. You know how much I love getting out of class. Did you enjoy your break as much as I did?" He dry swallowed the pills, stomach grumbling slightly. This was going to get annoying fast. If he ate the kind of food they had in the school's vending machines, this problem could be solved, but he couldn't. He wished he could.

Dustin looked at his teacher in offense. "Well, some of them might be late, but at least all of them are fu- friggin' great, okay? Like, you don't see me half-ass an assignment. So I think it's okay if they are late. And also you can always give me an A so you don't even have to read them. This makes your job a lot easier, don't you think?" Dustin shrugged as he listened to him. "My break was pretty good. Not long enough though," he complaining, frowning when he saw Dr. Jones take the pills without any water. "You should always take pills with water, don't you know that?" he complained, walking over to the sink to fetch him a glass of water. "I'm not sure you're qualified to teach us Biology, actually." Was that a stomach grumbling? Definitely not his own, he'd stuffed his face with a brownie at the beginning of the break. "Uh, you shouldn't swallow those pills on an empty stomach, either." He pointed out.

"I'm teasing, Dustin. Keep doing your work and you'll get an A even if I do read them." The kid wasn't wrong. Tad was someone who valued quality, so he usually let it slide when assignments were late as long as they were done carefully. Sometimes certain students just needed a little longer to learn, and even more time to get it down on paper. That was just the way their brains worked, and stressing them out with deadlines wasn't going to help anything. That was his opinion, at least. "I don't think anyone wanted the break to end. But I'm glad it's over, since we're that much closer to spring. Everything will come out of hibernation, it'll warm up, and summer will come before we know it." Summer meant he could take the school's frogs and be a hermit for a few months. "You're a sweet boy. It just wants to talk today, even though I just fed it." He accepted the glass of water and drank it. Usually water would help regulate his system when something funny was going on, but when he'd drained the glass, it felt like nothing had made it down there at all. Strange. It reminded him of something... "Tell me again how long you've been helping here. Do you like it?"

Dustin frowned. "What do you mean, even if you do read them? Surely you're reading all essays we submit, right?" With some teachers though Dustin had the feeling that instead of reading and grading homework by quality they simply threw a dice and let fate decide about the grades. "Well, in that case, if the headmaster didn't even want break to end, they should have just prolonged it. Have a three-month Christmas break. That would be cool," he said. Spring and summer was indeed something to look forward to though. No longer would it be so cold he had to wear a coat outside. He frowned a little when he heard his teacher talk about his stomach as if it was a person, it just sounded a little strange. "Maybe you've not eaten enough?" he wondered aloud. "And, uh, I've been working here during some breaks since the beginning of this school year. I like it, really helps me learn how to treat simply injuries," he said with a smile. It was definitely helpful in addition to the healing magic he learnt at home. Several times he'd tried to use his magic on a few patients, but he'd always had to be careful not to get caught and so he could only use a little magic since anyone would get suspicious if they came in to treat a few bruises and have them magically disappear after a few minutes.

"Of course I am. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn't?" Sometimes he wished he didn't have to read their essays. Dustin was a good, comprehensive writer, but Tad couldn't say the same for his classmates. Sometimes he wanted to interrupt the english classes and demand someone teach the kids proper formatting. "I ate what I always eat..." It reminded him of all the times his cousins would act like they were starving, and then one of the older ones would scold them. They all had achey joints too. "That's a skill that you'll value your whole life." But, now that he thought about it, hadn't his cousins been infected with something? Something that had made them really sick? If he really concentrated, he could almost feel something squirming around in his gut. Great. His hand drifted up to his chest reflexively. "This might be a strange question, but do you know anything about... other ways of healing?"

Dustin raised his eyebrows. "A teacher who was getting tired of his job? A lazy teacher? I dunno." He rolled his eyes when his teacher said that he ate what he always ate. This was very much not specific at all. For all he knew, what he ate every morning could simply be a piece of gum or a single apple, which would explain his stomach noises. The last question confused him a little. There was no way that his teacher knew anything about his special interest in healing magic. He was so damn careful with anyone finding out. “Oh, you mean like homeopathy? I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I mean, it’s completely impossible that only the traces of something can heal you.”

"Both, maybe." Tad cleared his throat. "No. I mean other ways. Something that might be considered strange by certain people." Even as he asked the question, he regretted it. He couldn't just ask him if he was involved in any nonhuman things in the middle of the school: it would be very unprofessional of him. Besides, even if he said yes, he couldn't exactly turn a magic tapeworm into a teaching moment. "Nevermind. I absolutely don't want to scare you, or... involve you in something you might not be ready to take part in. I'm going to visit the cafeteria for some salt. Please excuse me." With a smile, he bobbed his head and headed for the door. With any luck, he could have it out before lunch was over... the question was, could he still teach with salt poisoning? He could absolutely try.

Dustin frowned. His teacher absolutely could know that he was a warlock. There was nothing giving away his secret. Just because he was good at picking up skills from the school nurse didn’t mean that he was using his abilities to heal students. At least never in an obvious manner. Dustin was going to just ignore this, but then his teacher continued speaking and it was obvious something really weird was going on. He’d never seen one of the teachers act so strange. Something was up. Why the fuck was he talking about getting Dustin involved in something he wasn’t ready for? And what did he need salt for? “Wait,” Dustin said, frowning in confusion. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.” Tad waved away Dustin’s frown, heading out the door and down the hall. Hopefully the kid would stay in the nurse’s office and not follow him. He could grab the salt, lock himself in his classroom, and be done with it. Of course, it would have been ideal if he could do this outside, but he didn’t have time to go running around in the forest today. By some miracle, he was able to sneak into the kitchens and grab a few full salt shakers without being stopped. He tucked them under his arm and walked confidently back to his classroom, like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Dustin stared after the closed door of the nurse’s office for a while, puzzled by his teacher’s strange behaviour. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really wrong, and his words hadn’t lessened his worry even one bit. “Nothing is wrong” - this is what he’d tell his mother whenever he got back a failed French exam are a spell he’d been practising in his room in secret had backfired. Nothing is wrong was the biggest lie he told in his daily life. He frowned. “Sorry, I just remembered there’s something I really need to do, I’ll be back in no time, all right?” Giving the nurse his most innocent look until she agreed that he could go, Dustin went back out into the hallway. No sign of his teacher. Damn. Luckily he didn’t have to search for too long because when he did find him, it was in his classroom. Dustin shut the door behind him.

Tad was in the middle of pouring the salt into a container he could more easily drink out of, one of his sinks steadily filling with cold water to help convince the thing to get out of him, when his door opened and closed. Shit. He jumped, spilling a good amount on the clean counter, his head jerking up to see who it was that had just come in. Of course it was Dustin. Why wouldn't it be Dustin? He appreciated the kid's tenacity and good heart, but he wasn't good at lying to make people leave him alone. "Dustin? Do you need something?" He kept his tone even, going back to preparing the salt. Maybe if he acted like he was just preparing a lab, the kid wouldn't be suspicious.

Dustin frowned at the sight in front of him, staring at his teacher in confusing. What was he doing with all those salt shakers? Why was he pouring salt into something else during the break? And why was the sink filling with water? He tried to think of any biology lesson that could explain this, but unless he was showing his students that objects floated in salt water - lame, if you asked him - there was really no explanation for this. "Yeah, like, an explanation for what you just said in the nurse's office. Like, when you were talking about scaring me, what did you mean?"

Tad took a breath through his nose as his stomach growled, louder than before, but he kept friendly for Dustin. "Did I say something about scaring you? I don't recall. Maybe we can talk after class, right now I'm setting up an experiment." He set down the salt- now carefully measured at a dose that would flush the thing out of his system while keeping salt lesions from being too deadly, hopefully- and pointed at the door. "Please. I'm going to take care of something and I seriously doubt you want to be around for it. Why don't you go back to the nurse's office?" It felt odd that he was asking a student to leave his classroom, both because it was a communal place of learning, and because he should have ordered it, being an authority figure. But he was, and if Dustin didn't leave soon, things were probably going to go downhill fast.

"Yeah you did. You did say something about me not being ready to take part in something," Dustin pointed out. He was about to go and leave him to do his experiment when he heard his teacher talk about doubting that Dustin wanted to be around for whatever it was he was going to do. He frowned. If this was a simple class experiment, why couldn't he be around for it? "Oh, can't I stay and watch you prepare the experiment? I love biology," he retorted and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Something fishy was going on here, he could practically smell it in the air.

"... oh. Well, if you insist on staying, you'll be part of it whether you like it or not." If the kid was dead set on staying, Tad couldn't force him to go. "If you insist, I'd appreciate your discretion. And I promise no harm will come to you, even if it gets a little ugly in here." What was he doing? He should be insisting that he leave, or just wait, or do anything except get rid of the parasite when Dustin was there. But on the other hand, maybe it would teach him a lesson about being too curious; if (when) he didn't like what he saw, and it could encourage him to be more respectful of people's privacy in the future. Hopefully that's all it would be, and not turn into a 'holy balls what are you call the wardens and start a witch hunt' thing. He made sure he gave Dustin an unhappy look. "This is your last chance to leave. Please consider it." With that, he calmly held the salt container, taking a deep breath before swallowing the portion down like he would a shot. It stung like acid, burning his tongue and throat as it made its way down; a few granules stuck to his lip, and he dabbed at it with a paper towel. It came away bloody.

Dustin narrowed his eyes at his words. What the fuck was going on here? Honestly, what the fuck? He’d seen a lot of teachers nearly lose their minds. This was high school, after all. Being trapped in a building with hundreds of teenagers had to affect them, too. But this was not like anything he’d seen before. “I’m not fucking leaving,” Dustin replied, arms crossed over his chest, both incredibly curious but also weirded out. He didn’t bother apologising for his swearing. This didn’t seem like a normal teacher-student conversation, not really. What was he going to do, give him detention? He wouldn’t leave now. He couldn’t leave now. Not before he knew what the hell was going on with his biology teacher. His eyes widened as he registered him swallowing the container full of something. Judging by the salt shakers on the desk, this could be salt. Or maybe it was something far worse? Fuck, salt was already pretty bad. When he dabbed at his lip with a paper towel, there was blood. Fuck. Taking in too much salt could kill you, Dustin knew. Wasn’t there the case of a child that had died after their mother had forced them to eat a cake made with salt instead of sugar? “What the fuck are you doing?!” His heart was beating loudly as he realised that maybe, this was what his teacher had been doing all along. This was him trying to kill himself. And if this wasn’t salt, then maybe it was something poisonous from the chemistry lab. A split second later, Dustin reached for his phone, struggling to unlock it so he could get help.

Tad breathed through his nose. The salt hit his stomach like he'd swallowed a bath bomb, all fizzy and stinging against him. Apparently the little critter liked salt about as much as he did, because it jerked away from the stuff instead of absorbing it. All was going well so far. But when Dustin raised his phone, the anxiety started to mount. Was he going to film him? "Please, put it away," he said, the words catching on the blood that was welling in his throat. Fuck, that hurt. "I'll explain when it's done." He peeled one of his gloves off and dipped his hand in the sink water, hoping the critter would get the idea and leave already. Luckily, it seemed to want to be parted with the salt just as much as he did, and started up his throat within seconds. He barely had time to put his hand to his mouth to catch it before it had exited fully. Outside his body it didn't look so evil. It just looked like a tiny person-shaped bundle of twigs that was just looking for food. Gently, he dropped it in the sink and watched it to make sure it was moving- he didn't want it to die, and he'd be setting it free where he found it as soon as the salt poisoning wore off. Then, he rinsed off his hand and put his glove back on, the tissue once again raised to his lips. He honestly had no idea what Dustin was going to think, and he couldn't really think of a lie to feed him. Shit.

“I’m just trying to get help!” Dustin explained loudly, getting more and more confused by the second. If he wanted to explain once it was done, he didn’t exactly plan on dying, did he? Watching his teacher put his hand into the water and then to his throat, he stepped closer despite several thoughts racing through his head telling him to get the fuck out of there and get someone who could deal with this. Peering into the sink, at first he thought that his teacher had accidentally swallowed an insect or a bug and then placed it into the sink, but this didn’t look like anything he’d seen before? It was tiny, as small as his thumb maybe, and looked like it was made out of tiny sticks. It was moving, too. “What the fuck is that thing?!” Dustin didn’t even register that he was swearing in front of a teacher. Eyes wide open, he stared at the moving, tiny creature. “Was that- did you just swallow salt? You’re aware that salt can poison you, right?”

Tad was much calmer now that the creature was out of him. What had his siblings called it again? "It's an Alp-Luachra, if you believe in that sort of thing. Otherwise it's just a funny-looking bug. There's no need to swear in my classroom." He sounded like an old man with pneumonia, his voice all raspy and thick and quiet. Maybe he'd show a movie today instead of lecturing. "I know it's poison. For some folk more than others." He cleared his throat and succeeded in bringing a good amount of blood into his mouth. In his stomach, he could feel the salt spreading and clinging to him, raising lesions and drawing even more blood. Shit. The last time he felt like this was when he ate those gummy worms that he'd stolen from his friend's lunch, way back when he was still in elementary school. He couldn't say he missed the it. "The show's over, I'm afraid. Why don't you show yourself out?" He tossed the bloody tissue into the trash and grabbed a new one, pressing it over his mouth again.

Dustin furrowed his brows. "If I believe in what sort of thing?" he questioned his teacher. He'd never heard of an Alp-Luachra before, but that didn't mean that it had to be supernatural. He'd never heard of a lot of small animal species before. "You just- you just took a shot of salt in front of your student and spit out that- that thing there, but I'm not allowed to swear in front of you?" Dustin huffed. Was he kidding him? His mouth opened again in shock as he realised how bloody that used tissue was. And there was no way he could help him. He didn't know a single thing about treating internal injuries or salt poisoning. "Hell no," he just mumbled and shook his head when he was told to leave. "You're bleeding. From your mouth. I'm not letting you die here. You need to see someone. Maybe the nurse."

What was the thing his siblings had said about it again? "It's little fae creature that sits in your stomach and eats what you swallow and gnaws on your joints. Or if you don't believe in that, it might very well be a strange kind of bug." He knew he was being cryptic, but he didn't have the energy to lie right now. "Yes, you're not allowed to swear at school," Tad huffed, "and I told you to leave several times. But you decided not to, so you got a front row seat. What, did it scare you? Did you not like what you saw? Then maybe you should have listened to me and left." He wasn't being malicious, or using a harsh tone, he was just trying to make sure the kid understood that there was a price to that curiosity. But, it was endearing that he was so stubborn about the whole thing. He chuckled, the noise grating around and bubbling in his throat. "I'm not dying from a little salt." But he also was bleeding from lots more places than his mouth. "And I'm absolutely not going back to the nurse. This will stop on its own no matter where I am, and in ten minutes, I have a class to teach. I believe you have a class to attend as well." Despite his efforts, his voice grew quieter and quieter the longer he spoke. Definitely a movie day, then.

Dustin frowned when his teacher mentioned the 'fae'. "So, like a tapeworm?" he asked him. "Except that it's supernatural, I assume. How do you know about this stuff, how did you know what it was exactly? Are you fae?" he wondered out loud. He didn't think anything would surprise him any more, least of all his biology teacher turning out to be some supernatural creature. Unless he was a warlock, too. Was that why he'd asked that strange question about alternative ways of healing in the nurse's office? Did he know that Dustin was involved with this kind of stuff? Did he have some sort of magic-dar? "What are you going to do, give me detention for swearing in front of you? I could always go to another teacher and tell them about this, you know," he bluffed. He would never tell another teacher, because that meant telling someone uninvolved about the supernatural, which went against everything his mother had been teaching him. "I'm not scared of that." He pointed at the sink. "But for a moment I thought you were killing yourself with that. I didn't even know for sure it was salt," he explained. He didn't want to leave, not yet. Not when his teacher was bleeding. He couldn't just leave him like that and get back to class. "But you're bleeding," he pointed out. "You should get your throat and stomach looked at. You could come up with a lie of swallowing something by accident, I don't know. But you shouldn't just ignore it."

Tad coughed in surprise when Dustin so casually asked him if he was fae, which probably ruined any credibility he had in denying everything. And he didn't say the word like it burned him, or like it left a bad taste in his mouth. "You're a brave kid, Dustin. I guess you deserve to know, since you're not scared. Yes, I am fae, and no, I don't eat people or lure them to their death. I teach high school." Still, he remained very aware of the dangers of admitting something like that out loud. "Salt doesn't mix well with my skin, as you can see. But I know how to treat it, and I don't want to be fussed over by the nurse." And he had no desire to sit through a 'treatment' that was probably pointless, or that he could do himself. The kid was right, he wasn't going to send him to detention for swearing. "Today, I won't send you to detention. But no promises for the future." He was joking. Especially now that Dustin had admitted he thought he was killing himself, which caught his attention. He wasn't going to commit suicide, but if he did, he wasn't going to do it at school, where he'd traumatize a bunch of students. What concerned him was why Dustin had jumped to that conclusion when he saw him swallow the salt. There were plenty of other explanations for it, but the one he chose had to reflect something, right? He smiled gently, eyes crinkling up behind his tissue. "Hey. Suicide isn't something that you need to worry about with me, okay? I appreciate your concern and willingness to help. Is suicide... something you think about a lot?"

Even though he'd just been called brave, Dustin still didn't like to be called 'kid'. Somehow, that word took away from the compliment. As if he was only brave for a 'kid', but not really brave. "I didn't think you were luring people to their deaths. I mean, I think I would have noticed it if your students started disappearing around you," Dustin replied. After just witnessing his teacher swallowing salt and swallowing up the supernatural version of a tapeworm, the admission that he wasn't human didn't strike him as something incredibly groundbreaking. He wasn't afraid of him. Maybe it was because he'd seen him almost every day at school during biology class and it seemed silly to be afraid of his teacher. "Well, I could still tell someone in the future..." Dustin mumbled. "And I really, really hate detentions." His eyes shot open at his teacher's next question, frowning at the look on his face. "It's not," he answered truthfully. "I only ever really think about it when a teacher of mine acts super eratically, bolts to his classroom, tries to get me out of it countless times while assuring me everything's fine when it's not, then warns me that if I stay I'll be 'part of it' before swallowing some stuff I don't quite recognise." He shook his head. There was no reason why his first thought when seeing everything happen had to be 'oh, I bet he's got some fae parasite living inside him and he's trying to get rid of it with salt'.

Who says I'd be targeting high school students, Tad almost said, but thought better of it. There was only so much talk about killing and methods, however hypothetical, he could allow when his partner in conversation was underage and one of his students. "I trust that you won't tell anyone, even though it's true you could." He knew his nature would be kept secret; Dustin didn't seem to be surprised to hear it, and he obviously knew enough about nonhumans to mention fae, so Tad guessed he was either nonhuman or a gifted human. Or he was close to one. He winced at the description of his earlier actions. Hadn't he been more subtle than that? Obviously not subtle enough. "Okay, that's fair. Um, sorry for scaring you. But the worst is over and this guy," he motioned to the sink, "is going back to the river tonight." Or maybe tomorrow evening. He didn't feel like tramping around in the river tonight, though maybe a soak in the natural water would help him feel better... he definitely needed to rehydrate after all this blood and salt. "And I need to find a movie for the class to watch. Do you have a recommendation?"

Dustin shook his head. "Yeah no, I won't tell. Unless there's going to be a good reason to tell someone." He didn't say out loud that he would of course tell someone if his teacher endangered another student. Or if anything weird was going on. "It's okay. I'm just glad you're not dead," he replied, frowning when he heard that the creature would be going back out to the river soon. "Isn't it going to get inside another person and cause harm there?" he wanted to know. "I'm not saying you should kill it or anything, but maybe keep it safe and locked up so this can't happen to anyone else?" He suggested. He wondered if his teacher meant actual movies or biology documentaries, though probably the first since why would he ask Dustin about documentaries? "Uh, Blue is the warmest colour is a nice French coming-of-age movie," Dustin told him with a smile, not mentioning that at some point, he'd heard there were fairly graphic lesbian sex scenes. It would be hilarious if he showed the movie to class not knowing about what was to come. And his biology teacher fully deserved that after making him miss most of his break.

"Thank you for understanding." Tad hoped he hadn't made a mistake, letting Dustin know about his nature. He shook his head. "There's no reason to not let it free. It's not really that dangerous, and I'm sure it has a place in the ecosystem it came from. And I don't think it would get along well with my frogs if I took it home with me." Not to mention he didn't want it anywhere near him; he didn't wish it any harm, but he needed it to be gone. "But if you want to keep it, I don't have any objections." For a second, he believed that Dustin was giving him a wholesome recommendation, but something about the set of his mouth and the glint in his eye told him it was a bad idea. Instead, he waved his hand. "Documentary it is. I'll let you watch David Attenborough's frog film. It'll be a nice treat, don't you think?" The guy's gentle demeanor with the animals and soothing voice automatically made anything he produced among Tad's favorite documentaries. He was pretty sure there was a copy of 'Fabulous Frogs' in the school's library. All he needed to do was write it on a sticky note for the sub to go get it and he'd be free to sneak out. Being home and safe sounded great right now. He cleared his throat one last time, grimacing when it stung and bubbled. "Right. I should be going, and so should you. I appreciate your help."

Dustin frowned. "Not dangerous? But it was in your stomach, was it not?" He didn't see some parasite that could get inside people's stomach was not considered dangerous. What had his teacher called it again? Maybe he could find out more about it on the internet. For a split moment, Dustin was tempted to say that he wanted to keep it, but then he thought better of it. He didn't know if this thing could escape glass or anything else he would have to keep it in. And he couldn't risk Lea getting infected with it. He mentally groaned at his teacher's response to his movie "recommendation". First of all, it was disappointing that his little prank hadn't worked, but also he really didn't feel like watching a movie about frogs. Animal and plant biology was his least favourite part of biology. He much preferred human biology as it was actually useful for when he practised healing. "Right, that'll be awesome, for sure," he replied, turning towards the door. He better had to get back to the nurse's office and explain where he went. How would he excuse his absence? Maybe he could just say that he'd gotten sudden stomach problems. "Uh, no problem? And don't worry, I really won't tell anyone about what happened." He wasn't sure he had actually been of any help at all. It had all happened so fast.

#touchofchatzy #tad #chatzy #monster mash up

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xonismsx · 6 years

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so as no one knows or even really cares, i have a verse where peter is the dada teacher at hogwarts. in this verse, he is married to myrtle who is still a ghost, but died as an adult. the myrtle blog i was writing with deactivated so i don’t have taylor’s explanation about how it worked, but the ship had a really special place in my heart because of how absolutely in love they where, this is pretty much entirely for myself but anyone is welcome to read it if they’d like. below the cut is a compilation of drabbles or cuts from threads that i want to be able to go back to

i’m also not sure i’ll be able to write with another myrtle because of how much i loved taylor and her portrayal. myrtle developed such interesting relationships with peter and obviously still means a lot to me

one other thing to note is a copied and pasted everything and did not change any of the formatting to match my current style.

everything taylor wrote will be on a blockquote to make it easy to differentiate, though our writing styles also make it pretty obvious

also note this is long af in case anyone is interested in reading it/some of it

the first bit is actually in the typical canon verse where peter is a student and myrtle still died as a student but i wanted to include it all the same. i also want to note that their younger selves did not get along at first in the slightest. myrtle was rude and insulting and peter was easily hurt but eventually they found a rhythm and formed a sort of friendship.

the prompt was non-sexual acts of intimacy, specifically reading a book together

[ When he returns, she holds the book out to him. The lovely book that made her smile when she received it had made her head hurt when she tried to read it. Fixing him with a distant gaze, she spoke in an equally passive voice. ]

’ Turn the pages for me while I read, please. It makes my head ache when I interact with the living world for too long. ’

[ Without another word, she sits on the thankfully dry ground –rather a compliment within itself, she thinks, as she did not flood the place as she knew he would be coming– and motions for him to join her. ]

and the book theme leads us into this next bit

just before he was meant to leave hogwarts for the holidays, peter made his way over to the long since abandoned ( by students at least ) girls washroom on the first floor. it had occurred to him during his christmas shopping that although she wasn’t quite considered a friend ( & she likely didn’t see him as one either ), he felt the need, but perhaps simply want, to pick something out for myrtle as well. she was always so, herself, & he doubted there were any that had gotten her a gift for christmas, let alone many who visited her besides him.

upon entering, he called out for her. once he received no response, he assumed she might be elsewhere in the school on one of her rare excursions, & so decided to leave the very neatly wrapped present on on the the counters where it might remain dry should any flooding occur. in hindsight, he supposed a book might not have been the best thing to have brought to a girl that frequently flooded the room in which she inhabited, but at the time, the idea of bringing her something to take up at least a few hours of her time seemed nice.

it was a muggle book, which he supposed was another unnecessary risk, but he had read it himself & thought it was utterly brilliant. it was adventurous, slightly absurd, but extremely entertaining & very funny from what he got out of it. the book was the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy by douglas adams, & he just hoped she enjoyed it. she was dead after all, she could use a little bit of cheering up. it had a note on it as well, for just such an occasion & it read as follows in absolutely terrible ( but for once with perfect spelling ) handwriting:

Happy Christmas, Myrtle. I wasn’t sure what you would like, but I thought you might enjoy this. Be sure to wait to open it though. I won’t know, or care really if you’ve opened it before you’re meant to, but at least try to hold off until Christmas morning. From that little rat of a boy, Peter

[ every once in a while, myrtle had to leave. the frozen-over black lake was always her favorite destination, with it’s ice caps thinning in some places just enough to see her reflection.

she was an ugly thing, not worthy of anyone’s time. no, she reminded herself, that wasn’t right. or maybe it was. where she stood with peter in terms of a relationship was an area as opaque as her skin. she was swimming in murky waters again, and for the first time in fifty years, she was afraid of drowning.

myrtle thought herself a poison as she pretended like she could feel the glassy ice under her hand. she traced patterns into the light dusting of snow that settled along the top, heaving a sigh as she realized her little drawings were just hideous eyes.

she couldn’t sleep any more, but if she did, it would have been in black and white. black, white and a splash of garish yellow. any other colors didn’t matter, they couldn’t shock her enough to die. yellow had.

scratching out the doodles with her nails that would never grow, myrtle stood and wiped away any offending tears. it was christmas, where was her cheer?

it was dead like her, she knew that. wandering back to the castle, she recalled the faint memory of firelight against the sweeping navy blue of the ravenclaw common room. she remembered sitting up all night, wanting to catch anyone who left her a present. myrtle never caught anyone, for no one ever did. her presents were given to her when she went home for the summer.

floating back into her bathroom, she wondered why she bothered. so young was she when she died, and so very scared of death itself, she remained behind. it was curious parody of life she led, one that, perhaps, left her a bit less empty than she had been in life.

at least she had her books. the size of the hogwarts library had doubled in size since she was alive, and every so often she could find someone to turn the pages for her.

musing over what she would read over the break, when she might actually be able to visit the library during the day, she nearly missed the package sitting safely on a counter.

expecting the worst, she did not touch it for a very long time. she had no faith in hogwarts students any more, and rather expected some hideous prank. it was hours before she even dared to read the note.

her mouth fell open when she did, hanging like an unhinged basket. she wondered if she should cry before realizing she couldn’t. she was too busy smiling.

it always hurt a bit to interact with the living world, but she ran her hand down the side of the packaging. what it was, she knew, but not the specifics.

leaving the gift where it was, she floated to her window. myrtle knew she would not need to make a trip to the library at all. ]

this next one was a drabble taylor wrote another huge turning point in their relationship with their younger selves. it was a kiss meme, the prompt was ‘ghost kiss’

[ He didn’t have any idea what it was like, to be so cold and so empty. All Myrtle could feel was pain in one form or another. She couldn’t touch things without a searing headache, couldn’t leave, couldn’t let it go.

Peter had become her little rat. In him, she poured every bit of malice and misery she had in her unaging body. He, likewise, attempted to do the same, but it never reached her. She could feel if she tried, but nothing could feel her.

It was on a Wednesday when she snapped. It was raining buckets, the lightning flashing behind stained glass windows that appeared to be crying. She had been for hours and only stopped so she could speak clearly.

What he said didn’t matter, but it sparked a fire in her she thought long extinguished. Not one of desire but of unimaginable rage. She rushed at him, taking the sides of his face in a death-cold grip.

Myrtle pressed her lips to his. Could he feel it? Could he feel how sad she was? How all she had left was bitterness and pain? God she hoped so. Someone had to, the loneliness was killing her over again.

She pulled away, releasing him as her eyes filled up with tears for the millionth time in that decade. ]

’ I’m sorry, Peter. ’

[ And she was gone. Safe in her hiding spot where he —for once— could not see her cry, she hoped nothing she said touched him either. Myrtle was sad, she was lost, but it was a kind of melancholy that one had to bear alone. She was not so selfish to condemn someone else to it. ]

what started off the proper marriage. it was a meme “I will be married for 3 days to the first person in my askbox who says "Honey, I'm home"”. i sent it in, and this beautiful thread came about

’ Peter, I feel quite like this is some sick joke. You’re not a child –physically, I can’t say much for your mental state, I truly don’t know—, you wouldn’t do that, right? ’

[ She feels ridiculous either way. ]

’ Is this really binding? I think death has already parted us. ’

“myrtle, it’s much too late to change my mind. i’m afraid i was bound to you long ago. & i don’t care if anyone else sees it as binding. i love you. i have for a long time, & ( if you’ll let me ) i’d like to have the honour of calling you my wife. the only joke would be a cruel one being played on me by the rest of the universe were you to refuse me now.”

’ You bloody idiot, you’ll make me cry and smear my makeup! ‘

[ Despite her annoyed tone, she reaches for his hand. It might hurt a bit if she holds on for too long, but her need to prove he’s solid, real and telling the truth is something she cannot explain. After a moment, she smiles. ]

’ I’m not an idiot, I won’t let you get away. I- I think you’ll make me happy. ‘

the sensation of her cool skin against his own was unexpected to say the very least, but to hell if he wasn’t going to hold onto that fleeting moment of her touch. so rarely was he privy to it that he had learned to cherish to moments when she chose to interact with the living world; he knew the effect it had on her.

“the chance to make you happy is all i’m really asking for.”

’ I haven’t been happy in so long. I imagine I won’t be very good at it. ‘

[ She drops her hand, deciding not to tell him it’s because she wants to kiss him at the end of all this without a searing headache. ]

’ You will be able to stand me? I like to think I will make you content. ‘

“i have this long, haven’t i?”

his words sounded with a concurrent ( & teasing ) smile. after all, it wasn’t like their meeting had been a recent one. she had been so cold to him at first & in more ways than one, but for some reason ( only merlin knew why ) he kept coming back. he was inexplicably drawn to her at first, & now, he knew there wasn’t anything she could do that would make him want to leave.

another meme!! another kiss one at that

[ She’d never kissed anyone properly before, it was a miracle it worked out as well as it did. It required quite a bit of concentration, making sure that she did not simply pass through him as she put her arms around his neck. It was that bit of contact that gave her enough courage to press her lips to his. Myrtle knew she was cold —dreadfully so— but hoped that her utter elation would be enough for him. Pulling back, she offered a nervous smile. ]

’ I wanted to practice before the wedding, with my luck I won’t be able to do it right the day of. ‘

there had been no forewarning. there was just the swift movement of her lips to his. she was so cold, & her touch so light he felt as if were he to make any sudden movements she might break apart. even so, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. he never expected to be able to kiss her, or hold her ( at least not in the way he might with a living woman ) but knowing she was his was more than enough. she made him very happy, & he could only hope she felt the same.

“i’m sure it’ll be fine.”

& her smile was met with one of his own, although his was significantly more reassuring in nature.

here’s a couple of silly little thought meme answer (not sure why the writing is suddenly all small but whatever)

— Silly me, and silly him. I’m dead, there’s no point in getting married. But oh does it feel lovely to be… well, loved. So I’ll do it, I’ll do it because I’ve dreamed of it and because if I must marry anyone, it might as well be him. He would be the one to give me all I’ve ever wanted, wouldn’t he?

[ She knows she loves all of him, but perhaps loved his brain first. If nothing else, she loved his reading list before giving the rest of him a chance. True, he could not remember the ways to identify a werewolf (despite Remus being one) but he knew that she liked every flower under the sun, and that adventure books were her favorite to read. That was what really mattered to her. ]

surprise kiss from peter meme

[ she’s so surprised, she nearly passes right through him. realizing at the last second what he’s trying to do, she gives him a quick peck on the lips before pulling away. ]

’ A bit of warning next time, love? ’

next is a letter myrtle “wrote” for peter followed by a sticky note she left, though completely unrelated

Peter,

Love, how do you not own a copy of Candide? Going down to my office to get mine. Very disappointed.

this is a 6 song playlist taylor made for this ship

if i didn’t care — the ink spots

easy living — billie holiday

a thousand times goodnight — abel korzeniowski

love me as though there were no tomorrow — nat king cole

blue moon — frank sinatra

moonrise — brian crain

here is a moodboard taylor made

next is another kiss meme, but one i wrote.

ϡ for a kiss that lets you know I love you.

a year had passed since they had been wed. it had been so peculiar, but it seemed himself & his love were the only two that didn’t seem to care that one was living & one was dead. “til death do us part” seemed like an overrated phrase anyhow.

“happy anniversary, myrtle.”

that was when he presented her with the gift. it was a sunflower, still in the pot too. seemed a bit ironic to give a living plant to a ghost, knowing that eventually the plant would die, no? exactly. this particular sunflower held up only the appearance of living. in truth, it was neither living, nor dead. it was simply charmed to uphold the image of itself at the true pinnacle of its beauty, as if to mirror her.

“a sunflower. i read somewhere that they’re supposed to be a a symbol of admiration so it seemed fitting that i give one to you. & it’s been charmed. to always remain as beautiful as you.”

& with that, their lips met in a fleeting kiss. but that was all they needed. their love wasn’t conveyed through conventional means like touch, but when they did, the intent was clear. he believed she deserved the world.

and another kiss from peter

19. forceful kiss

he hadn’t the foggiest idea of what brought it on, but he would certainly be ｌｙｉｎｇ if he were to say that he didn’t find the surprise pleasant. he was used to a certain FORCE behind her words ( it came with the territory of being her ＨＵＳＢＡＮＤ ), but the force behind her kiss was all too unfamiliar.

a smile threatened to surface at the spontaneity of it all, but instead, peter settled on wrapping his arms around her ever fleeting form, intent on relishing each moment it lasted.

here’s some little things or silly little back and forth but that’s domestic married life for you (again it’s small, don’t know why, not gonna bother )

’ Just you watch. I’ll be the next Delia Smith! ’

the bowl ( & it’s now freshly mixed contents ) were placed on the counter next to her, as requested. & a laugh rung out at the proclamation.

“& when you do, i swear to purchase all of your cookbooks.”

SEPARATE THING

“never a dull day with you, is there?”

’ Oh shush, we had plenty of fun yesterday evening. Tonight I just want to sit here and listen to the radio. ’

SEPARATE THING

“do you have a valentine yet?” he’s joking, but how could he resist asking?

’ Valentines are for women without husbands. you are my valentine forever. And my date to any future Yule balls. ’

another meme prompted drabble taylor wrote. this one: crowds used to freak me out

her first deathday party is more alive than most of the school.

how she got the pins in her hair and the diamond necklace around her neck she doesn’t care, but it’s there and it’s sweeter than any sixteen.

for once, she’s happy. it’s dizzying and beautiful and just a bit like waking up drenched in cold water.

she’s smiling like she’s trying to make up for thirty years of sobbing, and in a way, she is.

her favorited records –scratched nearly beyond repair– play out a big band song that she probably had memorized when she was a teenager now. the words don’t matter, what does is that she’s dancing.

alone at first, as everyone starts that way, but then she’s dancing with him. all of a sudden, everything gets much clearer.

her laugh is drowned out in her ears and she doesn’t seem to realize that she’s the only one carrying on like she still has a heartbeat. as if she gives a damn.

she can flush, she can’t be short of breath, but she pretends she is as she winds her arms around his neck. is she dancing with him or is he just along for her giddy twirling? she doesn’t know but the rest of the guests do.

they’re all watching the horrifying spectacle of a woman gone insane.

she’s watching him again.

when she stops, everyone’s worried she’ll start to cry again. never in all their lives –or deaths– had they seen anything so embarrassing. myrtle rolls her eyes and takes peter’s hand.

’ Something slower, maybe? Where people can keep their noses out of our business? ’

she doesn’t wait for an answer before walking away with him in tow. her hand is firmly gripping his like a lifeline, even though she’s the one pulling him onwards.

’ I didn’t ask before. ‘

myrtle says when she finds an empty classroom. the moonlight’s nice, shining through the window, sectioned off by an ebony frame.

’ And I’m not asking now. Dance with me. ’

it’s not a request, but she does give him enough space to pull away. it makes her smile again when he doesn’t.

they look like they’re about to waltz when she realizes there isn’t any music. sighing in defeat, she lets her head rest on his shoulder.

there’s no music, there’s no dancing, but there could be.

pulling back just slightly, she smiles up at him. she’s not alive, but she could be.

gotta have some sad in here so here’s a drabble prompted by † for a kiss to say good bye forever.

well she’s not about to leave him, is she? she shoots a nurse a glare. obviously the woman’s never seen a ghost and her dying husband. the thought makes her stomach twist.

dies. died. will die.

it’s all so final.

it was never like that when she died, it happened so quickly. she looks to him in quiet terror. what if he goes quickly too?

without thinking, she presses a kiss to his lips. she’s in luck, he’s still alive when she does. sitting back, she does not feel accomplished.

sighing, she takes his hand in hers and ignores the stabbing pain. she kisses the back, very gently, wishing her lips were warm.

she sits with him for hours after he stops breathing, she won’t let his hand go. her head hurts so much she thinks she might scream, but she can’t even cry.

she is dead, but cannot die. she is, was and will be, all without him.

and to end on, taylor was given the prompt “peter has died and moved one without you” (obviously as an alternate ending to the above)

[ she knew it would happen one day. he was too free to keep locked at her side for eternity. she would never want that for him anyway. wherever he was, he was free. nodding, she did let a few tears spill over onto her cheeks. she did not bother to dry them.

is, was, will be. and all without him, too. it seemed she found a reason to cry again. ]

that’s all folks!

#miiserably #throwing her tag in here because why not #❘❙❚ ✘ ┊it all began with a book ▶ ❝ otp husband & wife ❞#❘❙❚ ✘ ┊ to follow footsteps ▶ ❝ p. v. 15 ❞#taylor

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