#does it make you feel good to insult fat people over a fictional character who happens to be overweight????

[kami-kun1003]

hello twst fandom. unfriendly reminder that Henrik being a horrible person does not give you a fucking excuse to be fatphobic. that is all.

[papercupids]

past the happily ever after - wong kunhang

pairing - wong kunhang x reader

genre - post breakup!au; angst; music producer! hendery;

summary - bumping into your ex reopens some unhealed wounds.

word count - 2k 

warnings - none that i could point out

as you waited for the employee to wash his hands and get back to you to take your order, you glance around the shop a little more, quaint little wooden tables are lined up messily and on top of them, matching brown stands which are home to almost 5 spoons, forks and knives respectively per table. The sunlight coming in abundance right in to illuminate every nook and cranny of the corner cafe.

It’s not too crowded here, maybe because 3:00 pm is not exactly the definition of a rush hour. 

the bells of the coffee shop rang and scanning the whole room, just to feed your curiosity more, you turned back. And when you do, you really wish you hadn’t, because just in the span of a mere second, your heart is ripped out of the place its caged in between your lungs because all of the time you’ve spent thinking about this moment did not prepare you for when it’s really happening. You turn back quickly, after freezing in your place when you first see him, and you’re scared that anyone who looks at you right now, including him, can see right through you and feel the trembling in your knees. But more than fear and awkwardness it was a simple debate of feelings of love and hate both that made you freeze right now.

 Countless accusations, numerous insults, you had so many questions for him, so many secrets to spill, it had come to an extent where you would imagine him sitting next to you jst to calm your overwhelmedness.

But you had later come to a conclusion. If your love meant nothing to him, neither will your hate.

 And hendery was just as shook as he spotted you and your face registered itself into his brain.

 the smell of pancakes, the small noise of it crackling on the pan, the sun pouring in just like in the cafe, but a little dimmer, the morning version of it. from the small windows of your apartment, soft music playing at a low volume and you’re humming along to it.

“y/n,” he calls out and that’s your cue to know he’s already up and you flip the pancake and walk over to him still lying in bed, adoring the rising sun from his position on the bed.

“Why did you wake up so early?” He mumbles groggily. “It’s your holiday today, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” you make your way back to the kitchen, “i just had a craving,” the pancake is perfectly golden when you take it out and place the batter for the next one.

A few moments later you hear the shuffling of feet before a pair of arms wrap around your waist and a face nuzzles itself in your neck.

“goodmorning, dery.”

“Mmh,” he inhales your scent as if it was the very oxygen he breathes, and when he does exhale it tingles on your neck.

Turning off the stove, you turn to him and catch his lips in a slow and chaste ‘good morning, honey’ and ‘i want this forever’ kiss. 

“Hey, y/n,” hendery currently has his hands in his pockets and you can hear the awkwardness in his voice, someone who was ever so frank and comfortable with you. You can swear this guy grows more beautiful each time you see him. The last was almost a fat six months later after you broke up with him, on an instagram story of a mutual friend of you both. You muted his story after that and it took you two weeks to stop listening to taylor swift after that. And now, it’s two years later but you still love this man as much as you did the first time you ever said it to him.

“hendery, hey, didn’t expect to run into you,” you pray that he can’t feel the beating of your heart which in your opinion is vibrating enough for your body to shake visibly.

“Yeah, me neither, how are you though? Long time no see,”

“Yeeah, i’m fine, just a little over the place.”

“Oh, well.”

The employee behind you both could literally feel the tension between you both from where he was standing. Either way, he needed to get over both of your orders before any one of you messed it up and made the other leave. It could strongly affect the revenue of this small cafe.

“Miss, what would you like to order?” He calls out to you, causing you to turn.

“Oh, yeah. A caramel macchiato, please.”

“And, you, sir?”

“I’ll have an Americano, thanks.”

“So it’s a combined order?”

And the next few seconds is just you and hendery awkwardly communicating through your eyes asking if the other’s okay with having coffee together and strangely enough even against your best interests, you both are.

“Okay, i’ll have it on your table in a few,” and the man disappears behind the curtain, quite proud of himself. If this one couple made it together, if they were broken up right now, their kids would hear of this cafe. He giggled and went on with his work.

As for you, it was not at all like the time you had once imagined in the shower how meeting hendery would be like. There were no slaps, no “fuck you’s” and absolutely no drama unlike how you imagined it in the shower.

You sat opposite on one of the round tables, besides the glass panel.

“So how have you been?”

“Oh, good. Just finished an album I was working on, a week ago. And damn, I'm tired.”

“Oh,”

 the music blasted through your ear and you hit the lower volume button as you rolled your eyes at hendery, if he continued to keep the volume this much, he’d end up losing his hearing, for sure. You try to tell him that, which comes across more as a shout than a normal tone to him because of your inability to listen to your own voice above the song. He nods carelessly, he’s just concentrated on your expressions as you listen to the track.

but it's just the way it was, life wasn’t always a happy ending, it was rough without any mercy. and you weren’t a fictional character, neither was this a fairytale.

You’re in his lab today, chocolate wrappers, guitar, papers here and there, the nightlife hours starting outside. And you are both sitting opposite each other, you’re sitting on hendery’s usual seat, a comfortable huge chair you loved to dominate whenever you’d drop by here and he’s sitting on a random stool that was lying outside, not complaining a bit.

“So, um,” you remove the headphones a few minutes later. And hendery listens in rapt attention, something you wished he did when you asked him to choose which dress he liked better on you,

“I hate to tell you this, hendery,” his expressions tighten as he tenses his jaw, “but, babe, you’ve nailed it this time around too!!!” You scream and envelope him in a hug.

And poor hendery is still shocked, but he hugs back as it soaks in his mind.

“This song is gonna be the shit people hear on loops, hendery, loops! This is a bop,” he pulls away.

“You really think so?” You nod your head.

He hugs you again, more tightly, “i love you,”

“So,” he drums his finger on the table after a long few minutes of awkward silence. The order still hasn't come. And you both have been looking at the other tables, there weren’t many people here.

“How’s life been for you, aside from your profession?” he asks.

“I don’t think I quite gave it much time, don’t regret it though, what about you?” your profession, for you, had been something of a coping mechanism in the past few years, it had been something you had given your everything to, and strangely enough it hadn’t packed up its bags one day and said, ‘we aren’t working anymore,’ and left.

“Oh yeah, no, i did try to make it work with someone, it’s going good for now.”

The last nail in your coffin. It takes up your entire energy to not flip the table over him and run away from not only the city, but the country and never leave a chance to ever bump into him again, because you see you did try to forget him.

But it never happened. It was just automatically that your hand reached over to the other pillow in your bed to ruffle hendery’s hair to wake him up to only be met with the cold side of the bed, and to take out two cups of ramen, only to quickly keep it back inside and to pretend it never happened.

“That’s nice,”

And thankfully, the cafe guy is coming over with your drinks.

And you sip on your macchiato as it gets awkward again. You can’t bear to look him in the eyes, no. It just cracks your very soul and you suddenly get annoyed with the fact that if he wanted he would have kept the girlfriend thing to himself, but he had to put it all in your face.

But your thoughts wander furthermore after this, does she get to listen to his songs firsthand? Does she get to eat the food he makes? gets to ruffle his hair first thing in the morning? gets to wrap her arms around him and feel his heartbeat?

 hendery slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He had fucked up. Big time. Plus the traffic wasn’t budging. He rested his head in his hands. The cars honked occasionally and the city lights hurt his eyes, an upbeat song was playing over the radio in a low volume and the car was warmer than the outside.

This was the third time in a row he’s done this. And he could feel the guilt build up in him, he wasn’t worried about your reaction to this.

You’d kiss him, tell him to not worry about it and go to sleep as it was probably late and he would be tired.

He was scared that this was gonna keep happening and he’s gonna wake up without you instead of you sobbing softly out in the living room. He was afraid he had messed you up too much. And what for?

The traffic clears as he presses the accelerator and lets go as fast as he can.

And back home you’re not disappointed, you’re just tired. You weren’t upset that hendery hadn’t showed up, but he hadn’t even texted you, surely it would take just a second.

But it was okay, he had work. It was important. You sighed as you slipped into your pyjamas and moved to the sofa to watch something.

And you hear the key turning then, signalling hendery was home, you stand up to greet him and as soon as he’s visible, a sympathetic look is plastered on his face.

“I’m sorry….” you hug him before he can complete and he hugs back with equal force.

“‘S alright, hendery, it’s fine.” And you rub his back.

And suddenly you hear a sobbing sound from him. A long and choked up noise and you pull away to get a good look on his face.

“dery?” You cup his face, “what’s wrong, honey?”

“Oh, babe, i’m not going anywhere.” You crawl close to him and wrap your arms around him. “I’m gonna be right here hendery, and things like these happen all the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that i love you, okay? I’m gonna stay. I’m gonna be with you as long as you want me to.”

“I messed up, I mess up all the time, why are you even here?” He’s sitting down now, crying in his hands.

He nods as his sniffles fade away slowly and you’re both just sitting on the floor, holding each other, knowing no one’s gonna go away. 

“And, um, y/n, i have to tell you something.” He finally speaks up. His body language tells you it’s been what he’s wanting to tell you since you met at the counter and you nod at him to continue.

“I wanted to apologise.”

You almost spit your drink.

“Why?” Even though you know the answer, you want him to confess his sins. Confess the fact that he threw a forever away in a matter of a moment, that he didn’t listen to what you had to say.

“I’m sorry for what I did, I truly and genuinely loved you and I made a huge mistake. Everyday I think about what could’ve been if I didn’t do what I did.”

loved.

But that made the two of you if he thought about it. It was okay now, now that you met him, now that he apologised to you, know that you’ll say “it’s okay,” to him, piece by piece it’ll start to get better. You believed it.

You’ll still love wong kunhang, but a little less maybe.

the silence in your home is biting. You can hear the low whirring of the air conditioner and the tick tocking of the clock. The text bell breaks the silence though, for a second, but it does.

“Coming home, give me 5 minutes.”

hendery wasn’t late. He just hadn’t came home for the entirety of last week. He has to work on this new album, he’d said to you when you called him this morning. Normally he had told you not to call him when he was working since it broke his link of working but it was out of hand now.

And he told you he’d come home today and talk.

You sighed as the lock clicked, and he closed the door behind him.

He throws a small smile at you, “y/n,” and he knows this is going to be hard when you don’t return it.

He sits beside you as you try your best to not let the tears fall, “what?”

“I’m sorry but this isn’t the way i want to see you, i want you to be happy-“

“Well, then damn, dery, keep me happy!”

“Will you let me complete?” You glare at him as you blink more to keep the tears at bay.

“Look, I realised that i want to see you happy, but i’m just simply, i can’t. So,” he takes your hand and grazes it with his own.

“So, i’m letting you go, y/n,”

“What the actual fuck ‘letting me go’?” Now there's no meaning in trying to keep the tears hidden, they come as fast as you stop trying to hide them.

“The thing is hendery, if you would’ve been sorry right now, i would have honestly had no problems in being here again and to end up in this same situation, i would go through it all again, but the fact that you just want back away is so disgusting,”

“Sorry would have meant that i would no longer do it again, y/n, and you know my work, I can’t keep promises,”

“So that’s it? We’re finishing this conversation and you’re taking out all the shirts from our wardrobe?”

His silence is a reply enough, and you can’t do anything but sit there as quietly as you shushing yourself and hoping this was someone else in min hendery's body and that tomorrow you’d wake up to him apologising and explaining how his body got swapped with someone else.

But it never did happen 

“It’s okay, hendery. You did what was best for both of us,” you take a sip from your drink. “I couldn’t see it then, but I do see it now,”

“You do?” He raises his eyebrows,

“Yes,” you nod gently.

And his phone rings. “Excuse me, i gotta take this,”

And he’s barely a few steps away from the table when he receives the call and says, “yes, babe, i’m coming i just met an old friend.”

And you smile. It was okay. You’ll probably cry yourself to sleep tonight but tomorrow will be better, and you will be better again.

[cctinsleybaxter]

2020 in books

2020 was a year of changed reading habits; people reading more than ever or not at all, some changing their tastes and others turning to old comforts. While there weren’t any huge overhauls on my end, more free time did mean a total of 32 in a wider range of genres. In the past couple of years I found a lot of the things I read to be kind of middling and ranked them accordingly, but this year had some strong contenders in the mix. With college officially behind me I love nonfiction again, and I really need to stop being drawn in by novels with long titles that ‘sound interesting.’ A piece of advice to my future self: they will only make you angry.

The Good

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky I loved the BBC radio play when I first listened to it back in 2017, but didn’t know if I could stomach the idea of actually reading the 700-page book, especially since I already knew the plot (spoiler alert: this had no effect and I gasped multiple times despite knowing what was going to happen; Fyodor’s just that good at atmosphere.) The story follows Prince Lev Myshkin, a goodhearted but troubled man entering 1860s Petersburg high society and meeting all of the wretched people therein as he navigates life, laughs, love, unanswerable questions of faith, and human suffering. I care about it in the same way I think other people care about reality TV shows and soap operas. I’m so personally invested in the drama and feel so many different emotions directed at these clowns that it’s like being a fan of Invitation to Love (with an ending equally upsetting to that of the show ITL is from, Twin Peaks.)

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksy I adored this book. The first half reads a little like a Wikipedia article, and I was worried that it was leaning too clinical and would be disaffected with colonialism and indigenous peoples, but even that oversight is corrected for as the text goes on. It’s not going to be for everybody because it really is just the world’s longest encyclopedia entry on, well, salt, but it’s written with such excitement for the topic and is so well-researched and styled for commercial nonfiction that I think it deserves any and all praise it’s gotten. We have to talk about that time Cheshire was literally sinking into the ground, and companies who were over-pumping brine water to steal each other’s brine water said ‘no it’s okay it’s supposed to that’ so were legally dismissed as suspects.

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy Cried. 10/10. The plot of Midnight Cowboy is very classic and actually has a lot in common with The Idiot, as 20-something Joe Buck moves from the American Southwest to NYC and meets myriad challenges as a sex worker. I’ve been obsessed with the movie for a few years now and the book made me appreciate it anew; I think it’s rare for an adaptation to take the risk of being so different from its source material while still capturing its spirit. The movie doesn’t include quieter moments like the full conversation with Towny or time spent in the X-flat, nor does it attempt to touch Joe’s internal monologue or his and Rico’s extensive backstories, but these things are essential to the book and are some of the best and most affecting writing I’ve ever read. Finally! The Great American Novel!

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I would firmly like to say that this is probably the best horror novel ever written. The setup is very traditional in that it’s about a group of friends facing supernatural comeuppance for a past mistake, but delivery on that premise is anything but familiar. A story about personal and cultural trauma that raises questions about what we owe to each other and what it means to be Blackfeet, with a cast that’s unbelievably real and sympathetic even at their absolute worst. Creepypasta writers trying to cash in on the cultural mythos of lumped-together tribes wish they were capable of writing something a tenth as gruesome and good as this. It could very well be a movie the visuals and writing style were so arresting, and I can’t wait to read whatever Jones writes next.

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas This is the least accessible title on the list since it’s a college textbook for people with background in film, but it was so nice to read a woman unpacking film theory with the expertise and confidence it deserves that I have to rank it among the best. I had an absolute blast reading it and am going to have to stop myself from bringing up the horror of 1960s safety films as a cocktail icebreaker.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The year’s toughest read by far, but also its most rewarding. Thompson uses mountains of documents, government-buried intel, and personal interviews to explain what happened at Attica from beginning to end, and does a fantastic job of balancing hard facts and ‘unbiased journalism’ with much-needed emotion and critical analysis. It’s more important reading in the 2020s than any kind of ‘why/how to not be racist’ book club book is going to be, and the historical context it provides is as interesting as it is invaluable. The second half drags a bit in going through lengthy trial processes with some assumed baseline knowledge of legalese (which I did not have. All that criminal minds in 2015… meaningless), but aside from that editing and prose are some of the best I’ve seen in nonfiction. 

The Bad

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn A friend and I decided to read this together because I’m obsessed with how insane the author is and wanted to know if he can actually write.

He cannot.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron Barron is an indie darling of the horror fiction scene, so I was excited to finally read one of his collections but can now attest that I hate him. If you’re going to do Lovecraft please deconstruct Lovecraft in an interesting way. I had actually written a lot about the issues I have with how he develops characters and plots, but one of the only shorthand notes I took was “he won’t stop saying ‘bole’ instead of tree trunk” and I feel like that’s the only review we need.

Bats of the Republic by Zach Dodson Look up a photo of this author because if I had bothered to glance at the jacket bio I honest-to-god wouldn’t have even tried reading this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone I went in with high expectations since this is an epistolary novella I’d seen praised on tumblr and youtube but oh my god was there a reason I was seeing it praised on tumblr and youtube. This is bad Steven Universe fanfiction. Both authors included ‘listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack throughout’ in the acknowledgements, and to add insult to injury there’s a plug from my nemesis Madeline Miller.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton The premise of this one plays with so many tropes I like that I should have been more suspicious. It’s a dinner party with stock characters one would expect of Clue, and rather than our protagonist being the detective he’s a man with amnesia stuck in a 24-hour time loop. Body-hopping between guests, he must gather evidence using the skillsets of each ‘host’ until he either solves Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder or the limit of eight hosts runs out. I read a lot of not-very-good books, and it’s so, so much worse when they have potential to be fun. This is how you lose the most points, and how I abandon decorum and end up writing a list of grievances: • Our protagonist can only inhabit male hosts, which I think is a stupid writing decision not because I’m ‘woke’ but because wouldn’t it make sense for him to also be working with the maids, cooks, and women close to the murder victim? • Complaining about the limitations of hosts makes some sense (e.g- there’s a section where he thinks that it’s hard to be an old man because it’s difficult to get to the places he needs to be quickly), but one of his hosts is a rapist and one of his hosts is fat. Guess which one gets complained about more. • One of the later hosts is just straight-up a cop with cop knowledge that singlehandedly solves the case. We spend some time being like ‘wow I couldn’t have done it without the info all eight hosts helped gather’ but it was 100% the detective and he solves the murder using information he got off-screen. • The mystery itself is actually well-paced and I didn’t have a lot of issues with it (e.g, there’s a twist that I guessed only shortly before the end), which makes it all the worse that the metanarrative of this book is INSANE. No spoilers but the reveal as to why our unnamed protagonist is even in this situation is stupid. I just know they’re going to make it into a movie and I’m preemptively going to aaaaaaaaa!!!

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The fact that this was the worst book I read all year, worse even than the bad Steven Universe fanfiction, and it won multiple awards makes my blood boil. I could rant about it for hours but just know that it’s a former theater kid’s take on perception and memory, and deals with sexual abuse in a way that’s handled both very badly and with a level of fake deepness that’s laughable. Select fake-deep quotes I copied down because at one point I said ‘oh barf’ aloud: -I’m filled with melancholy that’s almost compassion. It’s sad the same way. -[On a friendship ending] We almost never know what we know until after we know it. -Because we’re none of us alone in this world. We injure each other.

There are also bad sex scenes that I can’t quite make fun of because I think (HOPE?) they’re supposed to be a melodramatic take on how teenagers view sex, but I very much wanted to die. Flowers were alluded to. Nipples were compared to diamonds.

Honorable/Dishonorable Mentions (categorized as the same thing because, well,)

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North This book was frustrating because the first third of it is fantastic. It’s set up to be a takedown of the manic pixie dream girl trope, jumping from person to person discussing their relationship with the titular Sophie, and indirectly revealing that she was just some girl and not the difficult and mysterious genius they all believed her to be. Then in the third act, BAM! She was that difficult and mysterious genius and she’s now indirectly brought all the people from her past together. I wanted to scream the plot beefed it so bad, but the good news is I really liked this octopus description.

It was the size of a three-year-old child, and it seemed awful to me that something could be so far from human and obviously want something as badly as it wanted to get out of the tank.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore Cool new nightmare speedrun strat is to hear a 2-second anecdote from a documentary that people used to get radium poisoning from painting watch faces, be curious enough that you buy a book to learn more, and be met with medical and legal horror beyond anything you could have imagined. This was almost one of my favorite books of the year! Almost.

Radium Girls is very lovingly crafted and incredibly well-researched; one of those things that’s hard to get through but that you want to read sections of again as soon as you’ve finished. The umbrage I take with it is that it’s very Catholic. The author and many of her subjects are Irish and their religion is important to them, but it casts a martyr-y narrative over the whole thing that I found uncomfortable. Seventeen-year-old girls taking a factory job they didn’t know was dangerous are framed as brave, working-class heroes, but there’s not a set moral lesson to be gained from this story. Sarah Maillefer didn’t make “a sacrifice” when she agreed to the first radium tests, she agreed because she was terrified. She didn’t think she was helping she was begging for help.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing Tsing is an incredibly skilled researcher and ethnographer; there are so many good ideas in this book that I’d almost consider it essential leftist text… if I could stand the way it was structured. Tsing posits that because nature is built on precariousness she will build her book the same way, allowing it to grow like a mushroom, and thus chapters don’t progress linearly and are written more like freeform poetry than a series of academic arguments. Some people are really going to love that, but I’m me and a mushroom is a mushroom and a book is a book. I don’t think in the way Tsing does, and while I tried to keep an open mind it’s hard to play along when something is this academically dense and makes so many ambitious claims. As if to prove how different our structuring methods are, I’ve made my own thoughts into a pros and cons list

Things I liked: • ‘Contamination’ as something inherent to diversity • ‘Scalability’ as a flawed way of thinking (Tsing has written whole essays about this that I find very compelling, but a main example here is that China and the US have come down on Japanese matsutake research for being too ‘site specific’ and not yielding enough empirical data) • Discussing how Americans were so invested in self-regulating systems in the 1950s we thought they could be applied to literally everything, including ecosystems • “The survivors of war remind us of the bodies they climbed over- or shot- to get to us. We don’t know whether to love or hate the survivors. Simple moral judgements don’t come to hand.” • Any and all fieldwork Tsing shares is amazing; I especially liked reading about the culture of mushroom pickers living in the Cascades and their contained market system

Things I didn’t like: • Statements that sound deep but aren’t, e.g- “help is always in the service of another.” (Yep. That’s what that means. Unless an organism is doing something to help itself which then nullifies your whole opening argument.) • A very debatable definition of utilitarianism • “Capitalism vs pre-capitalism,” which seems like an insanely black-and-white stance for a book all about finding hidden middle ground • A chapter I found really interesting about how intertwined Japanese and American economies are, but it tries to cover the entire history of US-Japan relations. Seriously, starting with Governor Perry and continuing through present day, this could have been a whole different book and it’s a good example of what I mean when I say arguments feel too scattered (the conclusion it reaches is that in the 80s the yen was finally able to hold its own against the dollar. Just explain that part.) • A chapter arguing that ‘true biological mutualism’ is rarely a focus of STEM and is a new sociological development/way of thinking which is just… flat-out not true

For all the comparisons art gets to ‘being on a drug trip’ this anthropology textbook has come the closest for me. Moments of profound human wisdom, intercut with things I had trouble understanding because I wasn’t on the same wavelength, intercut with even more things that felt false or irrelevant. I can’t put it on the nice list but I am glad I read it.

[newsmutproject]

Easy Sells, and Harder Sells

After about a month of reading submissions, here are some tips from the NSP Editorial Team on what’s proving to be a “hard sell.” But first, what's more likely to garner you a “Yes, please!”

 I. Easy Sells

First and foremost: something gripping from the first line, with efficient use of the tight wordcount, consensual sexiness, and an approach that celebrates the diversity of human experiences, has a very good shot. 

The editors of Erato have a personal preference for what might be called “tasteful” word choice (”pussy” sometimes grates, but we get there’s not a wealth of alternatives; “love sausage” is right out, and we like to see “come” over “cum”). 

We’re excited when authors make love to language the way their characters make love on the page, embracing the playfulness and sensuality of words.

We also look for sex scenes that are immersive, using all the characters’ senses and showing their personalities. Editor Alex Freeman’s Sex Writing 101 post discusses ingredients of a strong sex scene. 

While stories that take place over multiple scenes or use summary can work well, in flash fiction especially, the tight focus of a single scene can be powerful--and an in media res opening can be especially good at catching our attention. 

SPECIFIC IDEAS WE LOVE TO SEE: 

Arousal nonconcordance. Let’s change some narratives around what it means to “want it”.

Couples with mixed or varying libidos, and how they support each other in that. 

Stories that change a narrative 

Related to the above, non-penetrative sex. Not that there’s no room for penetrative sex in Erato--there is!--but we definitely don’t consider it a realer, more normal, or better kind of sex. 

Editor TC Mill would love to see some small penises that are not presented as tragic or unsexy. I’d enjoy seeing stories where a smaller penis is a plus! 

We love to see stories that include body hair, cellulite, stretch marks, scars, and body fat rather than denigrating them or praising their absence. “Flawless [often white] skin” is as much of a cliche in our slushpile as the big cocks, and it doesn’t do much for us either. Meanwhile, check out the pictures, comics, writing, and art we’re reblogging as just a gesture at the range of people whose stories we hope to see told.

A sense of rapport between the characters is super sexy.

Experiments in writing style and structure are always fascinating to us--we’d love to include a variety of pieces that show off the different ways you can use language--especially when combined with body-positive, inclusive content. 

Humor is welcome--sex can be hilarious--but is especially successful when the characters are in on the joke (we’d rather laugh with them than at them. Humorous send-ups of society’s quirks and foibles may also do well. Stories where the joke is that characters have sex in unusual ways or are not normatively attractive will not be a fit for the spirit of this anthology.)  

We're thrilled to see #OwnVoices submissions, including but not limited to stories from writers who are of color, from outside the United States, working class, disabled and neuroatypical, and trans and nonbinary. 

All such stories will receive eager consideration, but our submissions to date have not included many stories with trans men, or with trans or nonbinary people with male or nonbinary (rather than female) partners - so stories bridging that gap will be exciting to us!

Consensual kink is splendid. We’re also super excited to receive poly stories, especially ones that fit lots of characterization into the small space of a flash fiction.

 II. Harder Sells

Stories that are very short (under 350 words or so) are often not competitive against longer pieces. Our tip: consider combining super short pieces into longer stories/prose poems around a certain character or theme–we’re happy to publish stories split into sections or chapters!  

If your piece is 2,005 words long, you can still send it in. If it’s 2,300+ words long, seriously consider more editing to make it truly fit the “flash” spirit and form.

Even when stories fit within our wordcount guidelines, they can feel slow-paced or have an unclear focus. Watch for padding, pleonasms, and meandering. 

A last thought on length: some submissions are “flash fiction” by virtue of being the mere synopsis of a longer story. This rarely works. 

Horror and tragedy are intriguing for us, but to see how well a story fits with this particular anthology, ask two questions: First, are all involved parties affirmatively consenting? Second, does any character suffer a permanent injury or death as a result of the sex? We’re looking for a “Yes” to the first and a “No” to the second, respectively.

SPECIFIC CONCEPTS THAT ARE TRICKY TO PULL OFF: 

First off, sex robots have become a bit of a meme among the editorial team. Few of these stories work for us, whether because of the consent angle, because we don’t relate to the anxieties about technology, because they’re more straight-up sci-fi than erotica, or something else. On the flip side, though, if you’re reading this and going “I will be the one to prove the sexiness of robots!”, please take this as encouragement. Also, sex with robots =/= sex robots. 

Infidelity plotlines–it’s not impossible to make these sympathetic or at least interesting, but the space constraints of flash fiction make it tougher.

Characters don’t need to be saints; flaws and mistakes are interesting. But stories where they constantly objectify or insult the people (esp. women) around them are not going to stand their ground against stories in which characters don’t do that.

It’s wonderful to see stories about sex workers in their personal lives (where the job is just one aspect of them), but stories in which the protagonist has sex with a sex worker because it’s the quickest way to write sex into the story often come off as rushed, objectifying, and/or emotionally flat. 

Descriptions of breasts by cup size or penis sizes in inches [or centimeters] (especially when above 8 inches) ring as unrealistic and, to us, uninteresting. 

Since all stories will receive a round of copyediting, a few typos or grammar errors will not lead us to reject a story. However, if the author seems to be on general bad terms with the Muse of Language (to quote “Slushkiller”), or inattentive to the reader’s experience, they will probably receive a rejection encouraging them to proofread more or seek a beta reader. 

III. NO-GOs

Sending stories with the following content will lead to a more or less rapid rejection, wasting both your time and ours:

Stories about characters under the age of 18.

Sex and kink acts (including voyeurism and exhibitionism) that all participants do not consent to.

One-sided sex generally (see: sex robots and many of the stories where erotic content is driven by hiring a sex worker). Solo sex and masturbation are welcome, though (since all participants are consenting and involved!), as are mutually consensual voyeurism or exhibition.

Sex between therapists and patients is a hard boundary for one of our editors, and this & similar situations for other professions are also likely to run afoul of our consent guidelines.

Concepts reliant on transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, and other asshole moves (this auto-reject policy does not include stories where these prejudices are acknowledged as part of a character’s lived experience). 

[zivitz]

I can’t reblog this post so I’m just gonna copy and paste my reply. And then I have better things to do with my brain space than respond to people who are  attempting to browbeat me into submission while simultaneously refusing to allow me to participate, explain, or elaborate on my POV. So I might be talking to myself here, but it makes me feel better. To my followers, I’m sorry for the novel.

@trashpandabarnes ( @trashpanda-barnes) wrote:

yeah, abusing and gaslighting your “daughter” whose family who burnt to the ground, whom you tried to manipulate and sacrificed AGAINST HER WILL, as she ACTIVELY EXPRESSED HER DESIRE TO FREE HERSELF FROM YOU but you threw her off the cliff’s edge because u want power, because you don’t actually care about your “daughter” but are ALL about making her tragedy of negligence and abuse ALL YOUR OWN self-vicimized manpain is totally the characteristics of a fantastique dad™, ooof i could go on and on on the Gamora thing alone but then there’s Nebula who you mistreated her whole life and constantly pit her against the only person who she felt like she could have a connection to, and never passed up a chance to insult her, saying killing her would be a “waste of parts”. Boi oh boi @zivitz never fucking have kids dude if you think saying/doing this kind of shit to your kids is still gonna get u the award of father of the year bc no matter how much u claim u love ur kids, it doesn’t fucking excuse the abuse and also never have a girlfriend if this is how you think women are to be treated in fiction/otherwise —its 2018, women deserve  better than to  be treated as plot device for a self-importance asshole’s cringey angst. Get tf outta here with your apologist attitude, dufe. Thanos shows no remorse or no acknowledgement of faults and therefore, no character growth. He is stubborn and self-absorbed and a deadass weak villian. Marvel went about wrong with constantly trying to sympathize him, he’s a purple egoistic maniac and that is not an appealing character trait and should NOT have been glamorized by marvel for edgy fanboys like you with barely one working braincell, end of.

First of all, and this must be embarrassing for you- I’m not a guy. At least, I hope it’s embarrassing, because you’re making a fuck of a lot of assumptions based on this belief and they’re all wrong.

There seems to be a lot of thought going around that I am, and I quote, “pro-Thanos”. That I defend his actions or justify them in any way. That I think he’s a swell guy who’s just a misunderstood woobie. Or something. I think you’re confusing me with the Loki fangirls, but whatever.

Thanos being both capable of love and actually loving Gamora doesn’t make him a good person. It’s pretty clear throughout the movie that Gamora is literally the only person he loves. At all. In the universe. Except for himself, that is. Just because he’s capable of loving Gamora doesn’t mean he loves Nebula- I mean, clearly he fucking hates her. He doesn’t love the Black Order. I have a hunch that they started out as his ‘children’ in terms of being under his protection, guidance, and doing his bidding, but he was taken by Gamora and she became his daughter in thought and deed as well as word.

I have never ever said he was a good father, either. He clearly was not; no good parent puts their child through that kind of pain. No good parent rips a child away from their family, kills them, forces them into a life they neither are ready for nor would have chosen. A good parent (even most bad parents) doesn’t pit children against each other. Gamora had an abusive childhood, flat out. No one’s arguing that. Thanos is a big fat child abuser. He abused her (and Nebula, and probably the Black Order) to suit his own purpose. It was bad and wrong and fucked them all up royally and none of them deserved that.

Now take a step back and get the fuck of your high horse for a minute, and look at it from Thanos’s perspective. He is the hero of his own story. That’s what we were meant to see in Infinity War. A peek at the story from his point of view. Not that we were supposed to believe he was right, not that they were saying he had a point, or that we should sympathize with him. We’re not supposed to see character growth because he’s not the hero and there is no redemption. We’re just seeing how things look from his vantage point.

He saw his world die and couldn’t stop it because no one was strong enough to do the terrible, awful thing that would have saved it.  And he saw the same things happening all over, so he decided he was the only one strong enough to do what needed to be done. And he worked hard at it. He collected his ‘children’, those he could raise and train to be strong like him and carry out his work. Carry on his work, if it lasted beyond his lifetime.

Gamora came along and was Different. In that deleted scene, he said himself he saw himself as alone and he was okay with that (he says in a voice that very much says he was Not Okay With That) because he had ‘a new vocation’. Until Gamora. He loved her. Took her under his wing, trained her, challenged her to be the best she could be. Gave her a family. Thought she, his favourite daughter, would be his heir. Wanted her to choose it, choose him, and let her leave when she didn’t instead of dragging her back and punishing her. He doesn’t really care that she’s rejecting him because he loves her regardless, but is hurt by the betrayal of her lies because she was the one person he trusted completely. He hurts her, but only as much as he has to to get what he needs. If he didn’t need to, he wouldn’t hurt her (we see this again and again- he could have killed Bruce, Groot, Cap, Wanda- and he didn’t. He just wanted them out of his way). His Vocation is more important at this point. And even then, he struggles with the decision that he must sacrifice the one person he loves and again be utterly alone- and live with the knowledge that he’s killed his child, his ‘everything’- for the sake of the Greater Good.

That’s how Thanos views himself. Is that how I view him? Not really. I mean, objectively speaking he did pretty fucking unspeakable things for what he thinks in his own incredibly misguided way is the right thing to do. Did Gamora deserve all that? Fuck, no. No one does. Did he love her during all of that, think he was doing what was best for her? Yup. Was it actually what was best for her? Fucking hell. No.

I love Gamora. I feel a great affinity for her because I grew up in an abusive household, where I was groomed and manipulated to be what my mother wanted and needed me to be. I was made in her image, to be useful to her and do what she needed and prop her up. I was her enabler for a long time. I didn’t break away from her until I was long into adulthood. And yet, I was loved. My mother thought she was doing the right thing by me. She thought she was making me into a strong person. She was doing her best to make me the best I could be by her vision. Because she loved me. She was wrong about what she was doing. She fucked me up in ways I’m still learning about.  I can see both worlds: the one my mother inhabits, and the real world.

I feel Gamora. I really, truly do. But liking Thanos, being able to see how he sees himself and yes, even feel bad for someone who’s suffering even if they’re a crazy abusive monster, doesn’t mean I have to agree with him. Doesn’t mean I think he’s justified, doesn’t make me an apologist. Doesn’t mean I love Gamora any less.

And it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. That I support abuse, abusers, or would abuse anyone in any way. I work with very young children precisely because I was abused and no one helped me. And I want to keep that from happening to other children, to keep them from growing up like I did. It’s my own version of “There are little girls like you across the universe who are in danger. You can stay with us and help them.” You make a lot of assumptions about me, and we all know what they say about that. This is fandom, but we’re all people here. Maybe check yourself before you go shooting your mouth off about shit you know nothing about.

[shireness-says]

Playing the Part ch. 4: Stick to the Status Quo

Summary:  As a stage manager who’s clawed her way up from bottom, Emma Swan can handle just about anything thrown her way. But does that include handsome lead actor Killian Jones? A CS Broadway AU. Rated T. Also on AO3.  Prologue  Ch. 1  Ch. 2  Ch. 3

Title pulled from High School Musical, because my excellent beta @snidgetsafan (thanks as always!) suggested it and it was a little too perfect to pass up. It's performed by schools across the nation every year, so I say it still counts.

I haven't done so lately, so I think this is a good time to remind people that my theater experience is all on the community theater level, not the professional level. Things that happen in this chapter or in this fic may or may not be realistic, leaning towards the latter. I hope you enjoy it anyways as a lovingly crafted piece of fiction.

Tags: @kmomof4, @winterbaby89, @thejollyroger-writer, @mythologicalmango, @onceuponaprincessworld, @idristardis, @teamhook, @courtorderedcake, @aerica13, @revanmeetra87, @snowbellewells, @searchingwardrobes. If you want to be tagged going forward (or taken off this list - I won’t be insulted!), shoot me a message, and I’ll make it happen.

Enjoy!

Tuesday starts alright (at least as much as Tuesday mornings ever do). As everyone involved in the production has fallen into a new routine at the theater, Emma’s stress level has dropped significantly. The creases are slowly being ironed out on the tech side, the cast is fully off-book, the choreography looks fantastic, and she had even managed to get home in time to hang out with Henry for a little bit before his bedtime. Not bad for a Monday - and hopefully a pattern that sets the tone of the rest of the week.

Henry does trip her up a little at breakfast. It’s early still, but Emma had wanted to make breakfast for once - sort of as a “thanks for being a great and patient kid” gesture, since she knows it’s been a hectic few weeks and not likely to get any better. Nothing special, but Henry really loves the pancakes from the box, and she cooks up a few slices of bacon to go with. Unsurprisingly for a boy his age, Henry falls upon the meal like he hasn’t eaten in a week. Emma’s not complaining; it means he’ll be sent off to school with a hearty breakfast instead of the usual Pop-Tarts or toaster waffles, and they’ve never been much for leftovers.

Breakfast conversation (or at least what passes for it with a halfway awake ten-year-old) is happy, if predictable - talk about upcoming tests and projects, how his friends are doing and the like - before Henry turns the conversation back around on her.

“So, is it going better?” he asks. The words are seemingly normal, even casual, but something is setting off Emma’s mom alarms all the same.

“Yeah, we’re all settling into a routine. Still on schedule,” she replies. “Any particular reason you’re asking?”

“No, no, just… making conversation,” Henry hurries to answer. After a pause to shovel more pancakes into his mouth, he continues his inquiries in a almost painfully casual tone of voice. “So… have you seen a lot of Killian lately?”

Emma casts her son a suspicious look, grabbing the plate of bacon before answering his question. “I see him every day at rehearsals, but not any more than the rest of the cast. Why, should I have?”

Ok, that last part isn’t strictly true. Killian has a way of showing up when she least expects him to, often to offer his assistance on things he doesn’t strictly need to concern himself with. But Henry doesn’t need to know that. Hell, Emma doesn’t know how she feels about that - no need to drag her kid into that.

“Oh, no, definitely not,” Henry hurries to add in a move directly stolen from Mary Margaret. “Just, you know, I had a great time hanging out with him the past couple of days. He’s a really nice guy.”

It’s the emphasis that really drives home Henry’s intentions, and Emma groans loudly when she realizes. “Aw, kid, not you too.”

“I’m just saying!” Henry protests, loudly and enthusiastically. “He’s super nice, and he totally has a thing for you.”

“How do you even know that?” Emma demands.

Henry just shrugs in return. “Robin says so.”

That elicits another groan from Emma. God, this is not the conversation she wanted to be having with her kid this morning. “When were you even hanging out with Robin? And don’t get me started about how you two are apparently gossiping like a pair of sorority girls.”

“We were not!” Henry tosses back, affronted at the mere suggestion. “And you were doing something else. Talking with Scarlet, maybe? I don’t know. Robin’s a cool guy, he’s teaching me about the light board. And he says Jones is totally smitten with you.”

“Well Robin needs to watch his fat mouth,” Emma grumbles petulantly.

“Would it be so bad?” Henry says, switching gears to that pouting routine Emma is usually weak for. “I’m a big kid now, you know, you don’t need to drop everything for me anymore.”

“I’ll always drop everything for you,” Emma promises solemnly, choosing to ignore Henry’s point.

In return, her son just rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah, I know. Super-Mom or whatever. I’m just saying… if you wanted to go out and have a life… I’d be fine with it.”

That’s her kid - trying to look out for his mom, even when she doesn’t ask for it. “I’ll keep that in mind, kid.”

Emma thinks the subject has been exhausted, but with a mischievous smirk, Henry lobs one more verbal missile. “And if you are going to get out there on the dating scene… I do really like Killian.”

Emma affectionately sticks her tongue out at her son in retaliation before shoving the bacon plate back under his nose. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eat your breakfast.”

The thing is, early morning heart-to-hearts over pancakes have a way of lingering, and even if Emma had brushed off Henry’s prodding at the time, she finds herself still thinking about those words when she arrives at rehearsal. Her son is a great kid to be so concerned about her and her social life, but it’s not like she’s lonely or something. Honestly, she doesn’t have the time; she’s got great working relationships and a great kid and some pretty great friends (even if Mary Margaret is concerningly optimistic and Ruby can sometimes drive her nuts). Sure, she hasn’t really been in a relationship since Henry was born - a few flings on the weekends Henry was with Neal, a smattering of dates that never went further - but she’s not desperate for a man in her life. Emma’s got everything she needs, just the way things are now.

Of course, that doesn’t stop her from thinking dangerous and romantic things when Jones shows up with her daily hot chocolate and a smile. She may not need anyone, it’s true, but maybe Henry has a point. It could be nice, to actually be involved in an adult relationship. Killian really is a nice guy, handsome to boot, and, as pointed out by far too many people in her life, clearly besotted with Emma. When Killian grins at her as she takes that first marvelous sip from the cheap to-go cup, Emma finds herself thinking: would it really be that bad?

The answer, of course, is yes. The fact still remains that they work together. If Emma has one hard and fast rule for her non-existent love life, it’s not to mix business with pleasure - regardless of Jones’ feelings, regardless of Henry and Robin’s less-than-subtle hints (and God forbid Ruby or Mary Margaret catch wind of those conversations), and definitely regardless of any attraction Emma may or may not feel towards the man (because honestly, the more time she spends in his company, the more she’s moving away from no and towards yes, absolutely yes). So, despite everyone’s wishful thinking on that matter, the answer is still that it would be an awful idea.

(It won’t stop her from thinking about it, though.)

Thanks to that breakfast conversation with Henry, the morning isn’t going at all the way Emma had planned. But still, it’s got all the potential to be a good one all the same.

Of course, that all goes to shit by noon. Zelena has remained a problem, one Emma has known for a couple of weeks now that they’ll have to deal with, but Emma had been hoping she’d restrain herself to the status of a nuisance instead of actively working against the interests of the production. However, luck seems to have deserted them in that regard. Emma is consistently confused by the amount of criticism that Zelena is able to offer, considering the size of her part. Caroline Bingley is certainly an important role, but it’s not a sizable one - really only a few scenes and portions of two songs. And yet, the redhead has something negative to say about seemingly every moment of it. The best Emma can figure is that Zelena must have greatly inflated the role in her head, to the point that she’s decided that she knows best, and everyone else will think the same way.

“She’s a large character, darling,” Zelena is telling Merlin in that condescending voice she’s perfected. “I’m only doing what best suits the script.”

“Actually, I’ve got the same script as you do, and there’s hardly any direction for Caroline,” Merlin tells her yet again, a tired argument by this point. “Miss Bingley, while we all think her efforts and motives are a bit cartoonish, is all about the subtle dig, hiding her bite behind impeccable manners and passive aggression. Like I’ve told you before, I need you to tone all of your reactions down unless I specifically direct you otherwise. You’re wildly overacting.”

It’s only then that things become more heated, Zelena huffing dramatically as her voice reaches new piercing pitches. “Well any director worth his salt, one with a little more experience, would clearly understand my acting decisions, and see that they’re superior choices for the good of the production.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Merlin replies agreeably enough, apparently still trying not to engage beyond what is strictly necessary or stoop to her level of unprofessionalism. “However, as long as you’re part of this production, we’ll be doing things my way.”

The rest of the room is dead quiet as Zelena makes more and more of a scene. Most expressions vary from shocked to irritated to slightly scared on some of the younger cast members, though Emma spots an amused glint in Killian’s eye as their gazes meet. Honestly, he probably has the right idea; view this whole display as the ridiculous spectacle it is, instead of turning it into an even larger drama. Back at the proverbial center stage of the unfolding drama, Emma can see Zelena drawing herself up to a haughty stance, clearly preparing to deliver what she thinks will be a damning blow.

“Any other inexperienced director would appreciate my generous contributions. Frankly, your blatant disregard for my superior understanding of the character you hired me to inhabit makes me think you want this production to fail. Well, I won’t be around to see it.” Zelena dramatically flings her prop into the wings, a well-made ladies’ fan that Emma is concerned won’t stand up to being thrown. Hopefully Scarlet is around to catch it. “You can consider this my resignation! Rest assured, everyone will know about how poorly you’re directing this.” Zelena begins to stalk off the stage to her (now former) dressing room, before dramatically turning back to add a last word. “You’ll never find anyone to replace me with even a quarter of my raw talent!”

And in a final twirl of fabric, Zelena Mills exits their stage forever. Good fucking riddance.

Of course, that relief lasts for less than a minute before Emma remembers that holy shit, they’re weeks out from previews and one of their major cast members just quit.

Faintly through the blood rushing in her ears she can hear Merlin dismissing everyone for an early and extended lunch break, but Emma’s far too focused on the quickly intruding panic to process much else. As everyone else disperses, Emma all but collapses into one of the velvet-covered theatre seats. God, this could be the end of it all. Zelena is undeniably a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t underselling how difficult it would be to replace her on such short notice. Not to mention, the publicity… if Emma knows anything about Zelena, it’s that she won’t be making a quiet exit. No, Miss Mills’ style tends more towards the dramatic, towards making the biggest splash, and Emma won’t be at all surprised if she sees their production’s misfortune plastered across several websites and magazines by the end of the week. Not to mention how opening night creeps closer and closer, and their Thanksgiving Parade appearance before that… The more Emma thinks about any facet of this fiasco, the more she realizes that this is an absolute nightmare from every angle - in terms of time, publicity, practicality, and everything else.

Oh god, what are they going to do?

———

This morning’s rehearsal has certainly been… eventful, Killian reflects, watching Zelena make her dramatic exit. He can’t honestly say that he’s sorry to see the woman leave; in fact, he thinks it’s about time. Every day spent dealing with that woman was a Production in its own right, one that distracted from the hard work necessary to put together the real production they were all hired to create. Sure, Zelena’s departure might create some stress and possibly some delays in the short term, but Killian is confident that Merlin and Emma will lead them through it. Especially Emma.

The thing is, he’s not sure that Emma is quite as confident in that as he is. It takes a few minutes to find her after Zelena’s dramatic exit, distracted by the event and the ensuing rumble of brewing gossip, but when he does, Emma’s face is white as a sheet and she’s collapsed into a seat on a side aisle, panic written plainly across her face. At this point, crossing the room to join her is an irrepressible compulsion. Since admitting to himself his feelings for Emma, Killian hasn’t even tried to curb his impulse to assist her in any way she allows.

She clearly hasn’t noticed him, eyes glazed over with a million racing thoughts. She does, though, when Killian less-than-subtly throws himself into the neighboring chair, effectively shaking half the row and snapping Emma out of her reverie. He means to say something clever, something witty and funny, but seeing her still-anxious expression, Killian takes slight pity on her, offering a reassurance instead.

“It’s going to be alright, you know,” he tells her, injecting his voice with every ounce of confidence he feels.

Emma snaps her head around to meet his eyes, her incredulity apparent for all to see. “Is it? ‘Cus it sure doesn’t feel that way.”

“Of course,” he shrugs, calm as a quiet sea. “I’ve yet to see you fail.”

It’s meant to be reassuring, to give Swan her own boost of confidence, but instead it only seems to discourage her further. “Yeah, well, stick around,” she mutters gloomily.

“Oh come on Swan, we’ll manage. It’s not so bad.” That’s not strictly true, but Killian really doesn’t think this roadblock will be a death knell to the entire enterprise. At this point, he’s willing to say just about anything to pull Emma out of her bleak outlook on the whole affair.

Though he certainly achieves his goal of dispelling Emma’s blind panic, she instead whirls towards him in sudden anger over his latest words. “Yeah? Well, I’m stuck having to find a way to solve a major problem in a matter of days before it seriously sets us back, so I’m sorry if I don’t share your weird laissez-faire attitude about the whole thing. You might not be affected, but I sure as hell am, and I’m going to have to deal with the fallout!”

It’s quite the reaction - more of an explosion, really. Killian is just glad most people have already filed back to their dressing rooms or out to lunch, minimizing the witnesses to Emma’s outburst and the embarrassment she’ll likely feel later. He can’t resist raising a questioning eyebrow at her comments, however; Emma’s suggestion that Killian wouldn’t be affected by the sudden cast upheaval is especially ridiculous, considering his status as a major actor in the production.

Emma seems to process her words at the same time, letting forth a loud groan and dropping her head into her hands.  “And now I’m an asshole too, on top of the stress.” Turning her head to look at him, she props her face on one hand, features squashed and distorted by the pressure of her palm. “Do you ever get so caught up in your own problems that you stop thinking about anyone else?”

Killian chuckles drily. “I think that’s just a human thing, love.” He probably shouldn’t have added the endearment, but Emma’s far too distracted by the present circumstances to notice or care.

“Yeah, probably. Still, sorry. I know you have to deal with this too.”

“It’s quite alright, Swan, you’re already forgiven. I understand, anyways - we’re all going to have to deal with this, but you’re the one that takes much of the logistical burden of replacing her.”

“God, don’t remind me,” she groans, face again hidden by her hands. “I just need two minutes to just… not think about this. Ok? Just… don’t remind me for two minutes, and then I will haul myself out of this deceptively uncomfortable chair and go talk to Merlin and attempt not to show the meltdown that’s happening inside. Or, at least, make it a very professional-looking external meltdown.”

Conversation dissolves into a long silence, but Killian can still hear Emma’s rapid breaths. Despite any claims she might make to the contrary, mere avoidance of the topic isn’t doing much to calm her down - just allowing her to retreat into her brain, where he’s sure a full replay of the incident is lurking with a million imagined potential outcomes. Quickly, he searches for something - anything - to distract her with, before settling on an unexpected sight happening just inside the wings, barely visible from their vantage point down in the audience.

“I think I’m hallucinating, Swan. I must be. The stress of it all has finally gotten to me and I’m having a mental breakdown,” he declares, trying to be as deadpan as possible in an attempt to make his blonde companion laugh.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jones?” Emma impatiently sighs. Oops. It seems his phrasing may have backfired a bit. Nothing to do but plow on, now.

“Tell me - is that, or is that not, Will Scarlet attempting to put the moves on poor Belle?”

That certainly catches Emma’s attention, her head snapping up and frantically searching her surroundings. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“Unless I’m facing the previously discussed hallucination option, right over there. Center wing, stage left,” Killian replies, pointing. When you know where to look, it’s easy to see Scarlet’s cocky stance as he chats with Belle with a smile he must think is charming plastered on his face. The lady, interestingly, doesn’t seem opposed to his attentions; the look on her face is a little skeptical, if amused, but she’s made no move to send Scarlet on his way - a feat she’s more than capable of, regardless of her sweet demeanor.

“Well shit, you’re right,” mutters Emma as she witnesses the interaction. “Didn’t see that coming.”

“Well, we can’t be certain that anything will come out of this.” Killian had intended his words to be hedging, but they come out more snappish than he intended. Swan, of course, notices his tone, shooting him a concerned look.

“I’m not sure why you’re getting adversarial with me about this,” she remarks, causing a small flash of shame to shoot through Killian.

“I know. I’m sorry. I just… I worry about Belle, you know? We’ve gotten close these past weeks. I don’t want her to get hurt.” The word again remains unspoken, but hovers implied over the conversation all the same. They all know what poor Belle has already been through.

Emma smiles in a reassuring manner, absent-mindedly patting his knee in a comforting gesture that still manages to set his heart thumping wildly. Gods above, he’s got it bad for this woman. “If it makes you feel better, Scarlet’s a good guy. I know he’s a little goofy and mouthy, but he’s got a good heart under there.”

“That does help, actually, thank you Swan.”

They watch the possibly budding romance for a few moments longer before they spot Merlin heading over to their little corner, sporting his own worried look. Quickly, Emma recollects all her assorted paraphernalia, preparing for the inevitable meeting addressing how to proceed, but Killian is relieved to see that her face is slightly less panicked, the set of her shoulders marginally less stressed.

It feels even better when Emma turns back to Killian before she leaves, the most tentative of smiles on her face. “Hey, thanks for talking me down or whatever back there. It, uh…” she falters. “It means a lot that you have that confidence in me. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Swan,” he replies, smiling gently. “As I said, I’ve yet to see you fail.”

———

Regardless of Killian’s fantastic pep talk and his seemingly unending faith in her, it’s still a rough, stressful day, any hopes Emma might have for a nice, easy week absolutely shattered. Henry senses her rough day as soon as she gets home, having been directed back to the apartment instead of meeting at the theater after school, and drags her to Granny’s for dinner in a valiant attempt to cheer her up.

(Of course, having to pay for your own cheering-up dinner kind of defeats the purpose, but Henry’s a good kid to try. Not to mention, Granny gives them significant discounts anyways, to the point where Henry probably could have paid out of his allowance if Emma had let him.)

Thankfully, salvation arrives sooner than expected in a pencil skirt and fabulous high-heeled boots, asking in an authoritative voice to speak with Mr. LeMage, please.

As it turns out, salvation is named Regina Mills. Mills, as in the sister of the source of all their problems.

“I’m sure I don’t have to pretend about where I heard about this vacancy from,” Miss Mills the Younger explains. “For what it’s worth, you aren’t the first director she’s caused a fuss with, and you won’t be the last.”

It’s a hollow reassurance. Thankfully, Regina is already passing out resumes, offering them a proposal. “With your permission, I’d like to audition for the role she left. Frankly, I would have auditioned previously, and saved you all this mess, but I was committed to another show that was shuttered due to financial difficulties.”

Merlin raises his brows in surprise before replying. “That’s an awful lot of confidence. How do I know that that… shall we say, excess of confidence won’t result in the same problems that have led us to this conversation?”

Regina scoffs. She’s got presence and attitude, Emma will give her that. “Please. Unlike my sister, I’ve inherited a self-preservational gene that keeps me from actively sabotaging my employment. Not to mention an ounce of common sense.”

“And what are you getting out of this?” Emma thinks to ask. “Even you can’t deny this is unusual, one sister resigning and the other one showing up to make a run at the role.”

“Besides the steady job and a promising script?” Regina asks, her very eyebrows somehow regal as they lift into an elegant arch. “A healthy helping of sibling rivalry. Call me petty, but she’s been bragging about how the role was practically made for her for months. It’s been a bit hard to stomach. I like to think I could do just as good a job, if not better - though ultimately, that’s your decision,” she defers.

Emma hates to admit it, but she’s inclined to believe the regal brunette. She may have strutted in here, but she’s demonstrated an understanding that her sister is a nightmare and gone through the normal steps of seeking a role - providing a detailed resume of her past roles and asking to audition, instead of just assuming she’ll be given the part. Granted, she has effectively jumped the line by coming to see the director before the role was even advertised, but Emma’s willing to overlook that for the moment. They’re in a serious pickle at the moment, and Regina Mills offers a way out; Emma, for one, is willing to give her a chance to try.

Of course, watching Regina audition, she’s perfect - deliciously haughty in that same way her sister was, but with a hint of humanity underneath that makes Caroline Bingley into a real woman - albeit, a selfish one - instead of a cartoon villain.

Merlin’s still a little nervous, but Emma’s got a good feeling about Regina Mills. She’s got the job; now, time will only tell what she does with it.

———

The entire production breathes a sigh of relief with the arrival of their new Caroline - Emma particularly. Killian is himself intensely relieved, though that has less to do with the casting change and more to do with the fact that it removes a heavy weight from Emma’s shoulders.

He likes comforting her, likes being able to relieve her stress in any small way, Killian realizes after that fateful day Zelena stormed out and the even more ground shaking - at least emotionally - conversation that followed. If he’s honest, he wants to play that role on a more permanent basis. Of course, Emma Swan is a tough lass, a damsel who can resolve her own distress, but she shouldn’t have to shoulder that on her own. It’d be a lucky man who could be her emotional support, her shoulder to cry or scream on, and Killian not-so-secretly dreams of filling that role.

Killian wrestles with himself all week over the idea of asking Emma out on some kind of date, weighing Liam’s words of caution and his own common sense against the fanciful wish of his traitorous heart. He’ll admit that it’s likely still a terrible idea, but ultimately, the heart wants what the heart wants.

He’s not fully confident in his suit (though that’s likely more a matter of temperament on his part), but it seems like Emma isn’t necessarily opposed to his attentions. Sure, he probably hasn’t made his interest quite as blatantly obvious as he could have, erring more towards the side of light flirtation in a valiant attempt not to undercut in any way the respect she’s earned in her position, the authority it’s crucial for her to wield. Still, she always seems genuinely happy to see him, pleased by the hot chocolate he brings her whenever he has time, welcoming of his attempts at conversation and lighthearted teasing. Ultimately, that’s enough to encourage him to act, hesitance (and, if you ask Liam, common sense) be damned.

Still, it’s with no small amount of nerves that Killian resolves to ask Emma Friday afternoon after rehearsal wraps up. Things have gotten better as the week has gone on, Regina’s hiring and subsequent excellent work ethic doing much to ease Emma’s stress about the situation from Tuesday.

Gathering his courage, he approaches her as she’s loading up her supply box for the day. Emma seems happy to see him, though not surprised - a sign, perhaps, that his attentions have not gone unnoticed.

“What’s up, Jones?” she asks, curiously but not unkindly.

“Do you have a moment to talk?” he asks, scratching behind his ear - his own personal nervous tic. Does Emma know it’s a nervous tic? God, he hopes not, he’d love not to seem like a nervous wreck for this.

He doesn’t know if its his words or his tic that causes it, but her eyebrows are furrowed in a distinctly concerned way, Swan clearly thinking something is wrong. “Yeah, of course, what’s the matter?”

Quickly, Killian waves a hand as if to physically swat away her worry. “Oh, no, nothing’s the matter. At least I don’t think it is? Maybe you’ll think so, but I’m not intending it that way —”

“What is it, Killian?” Emma interrupts his rambling, a hint of impatience creeping into her tone.

Taking a deep breath, Killian takes a last moment to muster up his courage. “Well, I was wondering if you’d want to get dinner sometime. Or coffee. Or whatever would work for you, really, I know Henry takes up a lot of your free time, as he should —”

Killian quickly stops his rambling (again? Gods, this really is becoming a pattern, isn’t it) at the sight of Emma’s face. At best, it’s an uncomfortable expression, at worst an irritated one. Regardless, it makes Killian think that he perhaps misjudged his chances and how much Emma enjoyed their time together.

“That’s very… flattering, Killian,” Emma replies in a much nicer voice than he expected, “but I don’t date coworkers. Ever. It just doesn’t work. You’re a great guy, and I am flattered, but let’s just… keep things professional, ok?”

Red-faced, Killian nods, trying to retain what dignity he can. “Of course, Swan.”

“Great.” Emma gives a sharp nod as if to settle the subject before jerking a thumb towards the doors. “Then I’m just… gonna go. Have a nice weekend.”

“You as well,” he says softly as she retreats, impossibly lovely even in awkwardness.

Now it’s time for him to go and sink into the ground forever and definitely not tell Liam.

———

Emma is flattered; she really is. Under other circumstances, she might have even accepted. But honestly, what the hell was he thinking? Honestly, this week has gone from bad to worse, with barely any bright spots.

Partially, she blames herself; she should never have been so permissive of his attentions. But she had enjoyed being treated like an adult for once, like the attractive woman she still believes herself to be underneath all the stress and overworking and being 24/7 Supermom. He hadn’t been trying to distract her from her job, either, or compromise her authority - just helping in little ways, not to mention providing that welcome distraction the other morning during the Zelena debacle.

Still, she can’t. She’s a professional, one with a quasi-authority over Jones; she can’t risk undermining her career in what would appear to be a blatant show of favoritism.

Emma hates to do it, but she thinks it’s necessary to abruptly sever all but the most professional of connections to Jones; she can’t afford to do otherwise.

She only hopes it will prove to be a clean break. 

[snarktheater]

Ready Player One — Level Two (Chapters 26-27)

“I figured it out later that night, a few hours after Shoto left my stronghold.”

See, when I said that Wade making a mistake in the search for the Jade Key didn’t prove the book understands character flaw, I didn’t think the book would literally have Wade go back to having a random, convenient epiphany for the next step in the Easter Egg hunt. This book is the gift that keeps on giving, in that I rarely have to go very far to elaborate on my arguments: usually, all I need to do is turn the page.

The epiphany, by the way, happened because Wade was randomly folding the wrapper the Jade Key came in, and suddenly remember there’s a scene with a unicorn origami in Blade Runner.

The moment I said the word “unicorn” aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand.

…Okay, sure. That’s nice, I guess.

From this, Wade decides that the “test” mentioned on the Jade Key must be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. The book also exposits to us what that is, and what Blade Runner is. And while the book does mention the movie’s based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, I’m not getting the impression that Wade has read it. I mean, it doesn’t even mention at any point (in this chapter or anywhere in the book) the phrase “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Anyway. There’s a convenient re-creation of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner as part of the OASIS standard planet-building kit, meaning that building (and the Voight-Kampff test located in it) can be found on any number of planet. Do I really still need to call attention to the fact that the planet-building tool apparently contains hundreds of other assets similarly taken from existing properties, or have I made my point clear enough about the death of originality in this book yet?

So, Wade goes to the closest planet that features one such replica, Axrenox. It doesn’t matter what that planet is. Actually, not much of anything matters. I mean, the book spends a whole paragraph telling us about how Wade hopes nobody will steal his ship while it’s parked on Axrenox, but—spoiler alert—nobody will. I’m calling attention to it because it’s the second time Wade has expressed worry that someone would steal his transportation method, and the second time nothing comes of it. At some point you have to ask if someone’s not projecting a little too much. And I don’t mean the fictional character here.

Speaking of things that don’t matter: writing a good action scene as Wade goes through the replicants that guard the place. Because, yes, the planet-building kit includes guards in the building too.

The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer.

Shitty writing aside, I want to point out that the book really shows how much it understands Blade Runner’s theme and central message by…treating the replicants as disposable mooks in a John Woo movie. Like, sure, they’re constructs in a video game, but still. Good job.

Speaking of not understanding the point, remember how the clue was like “take the test”? Yeah, if you know what the Voight-Kampff test is, you might have gotten a little enthusiastic there, since that test is meant to ascertain the ability to empathize with others. Which would be hilarious to see Wade Watts take. Sadly, no, the test only acts as a gateway to a 3D recreation of a video game that Wade has already mastered.

I honestly feel like it’d be insulting to you if I were to recap what happens next in detail. It’s a game. Halliday dropped a hint at it in his will video, which is mentioned to justify Wade being a master at the game. There’s another case of the book using romaji to transcribe the title of the game in Japanese, even though, again, that name is just English words written with Japanese characters and phonotactics. There’s still no tension; I mean, we literally go from Wade explaining the rules of the simulation and how he can’t leave to…

I managed to clear all eight levels of the game in just under three hours.

Oh, sure, after that he tells us how he got close to dying at one point. Like…thanks for telling me I should have been worried in the time you skipped.

At the end of the trial, he gets to choose a giant robot from fiction from a list (some of which already crossed out due to being picked by the Sixers).

I stopped cold when I saw Leopardon, the giant transforming robot used by Supaidaman, the incarnation of Spider-Man who appeared on Japanese TV in the late 1970s. I’d discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn’t care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless.

Okay, so, I just rambled about the romaji, so I won’t do it again here, though you should know it still annoys me. But I will say I’m pleasantly surprised that Wade actually made a decision derived from passion for something. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen.

Anyway. Wade gets a toy replica of the Leopardon, and with that, he’s now cleared the Second Gate, and receives a hint to the Crystal Key’s location, in the form of a logo of a star inside a circle. This sounds like a pretty generic symbol, but Wade recognizes it. Probably because, if you look it up, it is actually distinct enough:

It just so happens the book describes it really poorly:

Then a symbol slowly appeared in the center of the screen: a glowing red circle with a five-pointed star inside it. The points of the star extended just beyond the outer edge of the circle.

The book skips over Wade leaving the Tyrell building, by the way. I guess the guards only prevent you from entering? I don’t know, because the book won’t tell me. Once he’s back on his ship…wait, I’ve gotta point this out:

And thanks be to Crom, the Vonnegut was still parked right where I’d left it, its cloaking device still engaged.

I already mentioned the ship would not in fact get stolen, but…“thanks be to Crom”? This isn’t even something he’s done until now. It’s just a random reference out of the blue.

Back to the plot. The red star and the image I just showed you are from a music album, 2112 by the band Rush. I don’t know anything about them, but the album is apparently about…

a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.

So…like this book’s world, then?

Wade somehow knows exactly which lyrics on the album are relevant to finding the Crystal Key: a passage about the “Priests of the Temple of Syrinx”, because there’s a planet Syrinx somewhere in the OASIS with a temple in it. And by “a temple” I mean 1024 copies of the city described in the album’s supplemental material. Because copy-paste is an excellent substitute for good ideas. You know, between this, the planet with hundreds of copies of Halliday’s hometown, the planet with hundreds of copies of that text adventure game, and oh, the fact that the game’s planet-building tool contains hundreds of licensed assets. I mean, you can make the technology to run a lifelike VR simulation, but procedural generation and original art assets are both out of reach?

No, I will never stop being angry about this. It’s lazy writing and lazy in-universe, and it heavily undermines the idea that the OASIS somehow dominated the market. I mean, think about it: right now, the videogame market’s latest trend is Battle Royale games. The first game that managed to put the genre where it is is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but because it lacked any original assets—and was frankly shoddily made because it was rushed into early release in order to be the first out—it was easily outdone by Fortnite, a game with a more competent team and actually creative people working on it, specifically because the concept alone isn’t going to make a game win on the market (and it also makes for very weak ground to sue people for copyright infringement once they beat you, Bluehole).

A concept can be replicated—don’t ever believe the myth of the indispensable lone genius, i.e. Halliday in this case, there’s always someone else, or a group of people, who can replicate your idea and probably improve on it while they’re at it. So I cannot for even a minute believe that there isn’t someone who couldn’t make the OASIS, except, you know, better. Hell, that’s what IOI should do, instead of investing loads of money into a contest to take over the OASIS with a very low chance of success.

Ahem. I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I? Well, that’s okay, because the actual action is as stilted as usual. Wade lands on the planet, and I guess IOI didn’t attempt to leave people to guard it or anything so he’s all alone. He finds the temple mentioned in the song, and figures he has to make an offering at the altar. Luckily, he instantly knows what other lyrics of the album are relevant, and they lead him to a secret cave behind a waterfall. If you think I’m rushing through the scene…barely. It takes him a paragraph to search the cave, for instance. The book’s as uninterested in this as I am. Which…you know, it shouldn’t be.

What does he find in the secret room in the secret cave, you ask? An electric guitar. It’s another reference to the album, but also, it’s stuck in a stone.

I grinned at the absurd Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times, so it seemed obvious what I should do next.

Yes, really. Apparently Arthurian legends are no longer widely known and the only reference Wade has is a specific movie adaptation of the mythos. Because that makes sense.

So Wade gets the special guitar, and it turns out he knows how to play it (in the OASIS, that is), and he’s randomly inspired to play the song 2112, even though there isn’t really anything prompting him to do. But it’s lucky, because it makes another clue show up:

The first was ringed in red metal The second, in green stone The third is clearest crystal and cannot be unlocked alone

Had the Sixers played the song and discovered this message? I seriously doubted it. They would have pulled the guitar from the stone and immediately returned it to the temple.

Yeah, so, because Wade played the guitar for no clear reason, Wade now has an advantage over the Sixers. Thanks, author puppetmaster! It’s not like giving characters a clear motivation to do what they do is difficult or useful to reinforce the book’s verisimilitude!

I mean, for real. Would it really be so hard to say Wade just…felt like playing the special guitar before he offered it at the altar in the table? It’s really not that hard.

Also, what the fuck is up with that hint? No, really. Now Halliday wants to encourage cooperation in his contest? Don’t you think it’s a little too late? Also, why do that at the last stage? Does that mean multiple people will get the egg at the same time…by design? That’s not gonna backfire at all.

Anyway, Wade returns the guitar to the temple, and when he puts it on the altar, it turns into the Crystal Key as planned.

my score on the Scoreboard increased by 25,000 points. When added to the 200,000 I’d received for clearing the Second Gate, that brought my total score up to 353,000 points, one thousand points more than Sorrento. I was back in first place.

As a hint for the location of the Third Gate, Wade only gets a stylized A. It’s actually the symbol of Halliday’s avatar Anorak—and of his castle. Because of course he has a castle in the OASIS.

the castle was impregnable and always had been. No avatar but Anorak himself had ever been able to pass through its entrance. But now I knew there must be a way to enter Castle Anorak. Because the Third Gate was hidden somewhere inside.

You know, Halliday making his own impregnable location inside of his own game explains a lot about why the OASIS is so permissive towards griefers. It was made by one.

Speaking of griefers, now that someone else has found the Crystal Key, guess who made an impenetrable dome around Castle Anorak? Yep, it’s the Sixers! And yes, there’s an artefact that lets you create a literally impenetrable barrier around a location in the OASIS. Again, who designs this?

The news of this soon reaches the gunter and clans, who all converge on the planet Chthonia, even though, you know, they don’t have the Crystal Key yet. But in spite of being in a really bad spot, Wade decides not to give up this time. I mean, it’s not like the Sixers having the exact same advantage (exclusive access to the Third Gate) didn’t make him fantasize about committing suicide three chapters ago or anything. That’s character consistency right there.

Yes, I’m still bitter that the book went there.

I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.

Well considering how the rest of the book has gone, I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat here.

So Wade emails Artemis, Aech and Shoto the location of the Second Gate and the Crystal Key, and prepares to put the rest of his plan in motion, while the book attempts to end “Level Two” on a cliffhanger.

Once I was sure all three of them had received my message, I initiated the next phase of my plan. This was the part that terrified me, because I knew there was a good chance it was going to end up getting me killed. But at this point, I no longer cared. I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.

I did say “attempts to”. I mean, this is the first time Wade actually has a plan, and the “reach it or die trying” has sort of been his MO so far. But hey. Nice attempt.

[wazafam]

Rodney Dangerfield is one of the most beloved comedians of all time for his sharp one-liners and self-deprecating humor. It wasn't until later in life that he moved towards movies, but that didn't stop him from making some classics in his time even if his acting career was not prolific.

RELATED: Fat Guy In A Little Coat: 10 Funniest Chris Farley Quotes

While Dangerfield rarely stepped too far away from the persona he established in his stand-up, his movies remain memorable and still get big laughs today. Fans can no doubt recall some of the funniest quotes from his movie career delivered in a way only Rodney Dangerfield can pull off.

10 Even In Hell, I Get No Respect

Little Nicky is not regarded as one of Adam Sandler's best comedies, but it does feature a pretty enjoyable cast of funny people. The movie stars Sandler as the kind-hearted son of the devil who must go to Earth in order to bring his demon brothers back to Hell.

Dangerfield has a fun supporting role as Sandler's grandfather, Lucifer. In one scene as the wayward demon brothers are preparing to leave Hell, they push Dangerfield aside. As he lies on the ground, he gets a nice winking line to his most famous catchphrase.

9 I Got A Face-Lift, There Was One Just Like It Underneath

The live-action take on the friendly ghost Casper is a nostalgic hit for some fans and a favorite for the Halloween season. The movie is a fairly fun family-friendly ghost story that is packed with a surprising amount of fun cameos, including one from Dangerfield.

RELATED: 10 Funniest Ben Stiller Movie Quotes, Ranked

In one scene, a character is possessed by ghosts and when he looks in the mirror, his face changes into different recognizable celebrities. Along with appearances as Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson, Dangerfield pops up to offer one of his trademark zingers at his own expense.

8 Whoa, Did Somebody Step On A Duck?

It's safe to say that out of Dangerfield's entire movie career, Caddyshack is the most beloved. The wild and hilarious golf flick takes a pretty simple premise, a lot of funny actors, and turns it into comedy gold.

Dangerfield steals many scenes as the rich, hard-partying club member, Al. He is meant to be a refreshing alternative to the other stuffy members as seen in this scene during a fancy dinner when Al lets out a noisy fart without shame and loudly jokes about it. No matter your age, fart jokes are always funny.

7 With The Shape I'm In You Could Donate My Body To Science Fiction

Another fantastic movie from Dangerfield's career is Back to School. In it, he plays a rich businessman who enrolls in college to help his struggling son make it through to graduation. The high-concept comedy is basically just an excuse for Dangerfield to do his regular schtick which works so well.

During the climactic diving competition, Dangerfield's character is asked to participate which he is not too keen on. He remarks "you could donate my body to science fiction." It is that kind of clever play on words that helped make him a legend.

6 After They Sacked The Quarterback They Went After His Family

One of the funniest things about Back to School is seeing Dangerfield's older character trying to relate to his younger classmates. This also gives him an excuse to talk about his own young days which is another big part of his comedy routines.

RELATED: Steven Seagal's Funniest Quotes From His Films

When assessing the football team at his new school, Dangerfield feels they don't match up to the toughness of his hometown football team. These kinds of exaggerated ideas are another hallmark of Dangerfield's wonderful humor.

5 Together We Made Mud

The "no respect" style of Dangerfield's stand-up comedy extends to all aspects of his life which makes it such a versatile setup. Another of the big areas Dangerfield likes to focus on is his failed romantic relationships so the fact that his character in Back to School is divorced leaves plenty of opportunity for these kinds of jokes.

When talking to some of the younger college kids, Dangerfield remarks that his relationship with his ex was doomed from the beginning. He explains, "I'm an Earth sign. She's a water sign. Together we made mud."

4 My Dinghy’s Bigger Than Your Whole Boat!

One of the funniest parts of Caddyshack is Al's rivalry with the movie's villain, Judge Smails. Though Al seems to think they are actually friends in his own strange way, the uptight Smails cannot stand Al's obnoxious and vulgar behavior.

During one memorable scene, Smails is christening his new boat as Al comes to say hello in his massive yacht. Not only does Al's massive boat cause Smails's to sink, but Al adds insult to injury by hilariously mocking its size.

3 Yeah, Well You Were The Inspiration For Twin Beds

Easy Money might not be as well known as Caddyshack or Back to School, but it is another fairly entertaining comedy that makes good use of Dangerfield's iconic brand of comedy.

RELATED: Don't Call Me Shirley: 10 Funniest Leslie Nielsen Quotes

The movie finds Dangerfield playing a man who stands to inherit his mother-in-law's fortune if he can change his wild lifestyle. Some of the funniest scenes involve Dangerfield facing off with his disapproving mother-in-law. After she chastises him one too many times, he unleashed this great insult.

2 Hey Baby, You Must’ve Been Something Before Electricity

It is endlessly funny watching Al continuously annoy Smails in Caddyshack. He is either totally unaware of how to agree he is making Smails or he just doesn't care. In either way, Al proves to have no boundaries.

While Smails is dancing with his wife, Al decides to cut in much to Smails's horror. To matters worse, Al openly mocks his wife with the biting line, "you must've been something before electricity."

1 Hey Everybody, We’re All Gonna Get Laid!

Despite Caddyshack having other big-name stars like Chevy Chase and Bill Murray in the cast, it is Dangerfield who gets to deliver the final line of the movie. And it may be one of the funniest and greatest final lines in cinema history.

After winning the climactic golf match and triumphing over Smails, Al turns to the gathered crowd and shouts, "Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid," leading to a massive party in pure '80s movie fashion. It doesn't make any sense but it's hard not to go along with how fun it is.

NEXT: I Have The Higher Ground: 10 Funniest Obi-Wan Kenobi Quotes

10 Funniest Rodney Dangerfield Quotes | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/3hOjbwe

[evilkitten3]

The Yuuei Dorm Laws

AN: Well, I did it for Fairy Tail… might as well do it for BNHA! Rules fic~ I wasn't going to post this at all, honestly – this is a joke thing I did for myself a while ago, but with all the angst I've been posting lately… might as well do something funny. I don't know if I can pull off a chatfic, so here's this instead. Anyhow, lemme know if you want me to continue this or whatever. Kitty out.

Title: The Yuuei Dorm Laws

Summary: The Heroics Department has moved into the Yuuei dorm rooms, and Principal Nedzu realizes that some rules should probably be put in place – for the teachers, the students, and anyone else who happens to get involved.

Warnings: General nonsense, reason being abandoned for the sake of humor, and Kacchan's potty mouth

Pairings: Everyone/everyone else (it's a list fic and I'm writing it – what the hell were you expecting?)

Aizawa Shouta – As a teacher, you should endeavor to act as a role model for your students. Showing up to class with a sleeping bag and a hangover, saying "today we're learning about spontaneous silence – anyone who talks in the next four hours fails," and falling asleep is not acting as a role model.

All For One – Stop persuading your guards to commit tiny acts of vandalism on school grounds. The government isn't going to let you go just because "the police force is corrupt".

Amajiki Tamaki – Asui is not going to eat you. Frogs do not eat people (or octopi or even clams, to the best of my knowledge). Please come out of the basement.

Aoyama Yuuga – Stop throwing glitter at people.

Ashido Mina – I don't care what Kaminari said. Do not cover his bed sheets – or anyone else's – in acid ever again.

Asui Tsuyu – If you see a student with compact eyes and antennae, you are not to beginning following them and whispering "frog food" at random intervals. Please apologize to the seven students that have locked themselves in the basement and convince them to come out.

Awase Yousetsu – "Killing two birds with one stone" is a figure of speech, not a challenge. Stop throwing rocks at Tokoyami.

Awata Kaoruko – Enough with the "fucking bubbles" meme. We get it.

Bakugou Katsuki – "Fuck the police" is not an excuse for setting off firecrackers in Iida's room, even if you do think he was policing you. This applies even if he is dressed as a police officer.

Bakugou Mitsuki – If your son asks you for a rather specific outfit, get context. If the words "dare", "evidence", or "Monoma Neito" are part of that context, please do not give your son that outfit. This applies even if "Monoma" is replaced with "that copy-cat bastard" or a similar insult.

Bakugou Masaru – You cannot adopt your son's friend group, no matter how happy you are that said group exists.

Bondo Kojirou – Cementoss is not trying to usurp you. That doesn't even make sense.

Bubaigawara Jin – Stop asking the students to help you become Deadpool. You are not, and should not ever be, Deadpool.

Chatora Yawara – You may not "forget" to apprehend a villain because the person she is attacking misgendered her. Arrest the villain and then scold the civilians.

Dabi – Todoroki does not need your help to be a deviant. He is doing just fine on his own. You are not "Super Fire Bros".

Desutegoro – Stop trying to schedule all your meetings on "February 51st".

Ectoplasm – Detentions cannot be assigned for an indefinite period of time, no matter how insulted you feel. Honenuki will not be in detention for "the rest of his goddamn life", and he was probably not trying to offend you anyway.

Eri – You were in a bad situation, and a negative reaction is understandable. That said, please stop threatening to castrate people with your horn. How do you even know that word; you're like five.

Fat Gum – The fact that Satou and Yaoyorozu also have food-related Quirks does not mean you need to mentor them. Two students are enough.

Fourth Kind – "Having a katana" and "having the right to threaten people with a katana" are not synonymous.

Fukidashi Manga – Your Quirk does not give you the ability to "see beyond the fourth wall". Stop trying to convince people that we are all trapped within a shounen series. That is ridiculous.

Gran Torino – "Kick 'em in the dick", while an effective battle strategy, is not appropriate advice to give to children.

Gunhead – Stop trying to set Uraraka up with Midoriya. You're probably right, but they have bigger things to worry about.

Hadou Nejire – Stop asking villains questions. You're supposed to be arresting them, not sharing good places to get shoes.

Hagakure Tooru – Bakugou's inability to hear what you're saying is not going to stop him from punching you for talking about him behind his back. He'll find out, you'll get punched, and no one will feel sorry for you. If you absolutely must insult him, either learn sign language or get a translator and do it to his face.

Hakamata Tsunagu – Not everyone is comfortable in denim. Deal with it.

Hatsume Mei – "It seemed like a good idea at the time" is not only a terrible excuse in general, but also a completely invalid one that does not explain the giant robotic velociraptor currently patrolling the school grounds.

Hikiishi Kenji – Killing people for misgendering you is illegal. Please find other ways to express your displeasure.

Honenuki Juuzou – Do not challenge Ectoplasm to a "who can scare the most children with only their face" contest. I don't care that you think it's a compliment; you're hurting his feelings.

Iguchi Shuuichi – Hoshigaki Kisame has not challenged you to a sword fight. Hoshigaki Kisame is not a real person; he is a fictional character, and you know this.

Iida Tensei – Your little brother has a lot of respect for you. Stop abusing that respect by suggesting he do ridiculous things. He will.

Iida Tenya – Please do not dress up as a police officer when inspecting your classmates' rooms. You are only asking for trouble. I don't care what your brother said.

Inui Ryou – Do not tell students to mark their territory. The janitor would like you to know that anything that gets urinated on is your responsibility.

Ishiyama Ken – If Bondo declares you his "eternal rival", you are to ignore him, not encourage his behavior. Insanity does not "build character".

Jirou Kyouka – Do not start playing the One Punch Man theme song whenever Midoriya is about to punch something. This holds true for All Might too, as well as anyone else who tends to punch things in an over-dramatic manner.

Kaibara Sen – Having a name similar to that of a fictional character does not make you that fictional character. Stop challenging people to Duel Monsters.

Kamakiri Togaru – Collecting insects is a perfectly reasonable hobby. Using them to terrifying other students is not. Please apologize to Kouda so we can take the anteater back to the zoo and you can come down from the tree.

Kamihara Shinya – Bakugou does not need to be followed 24/7. Surely the No. 5 hero has better things to do.

Kaminari Denki – This school does not need an electric fence. You are not permitted to skip class in order to act as one.

Kan Sekijirou – Please stop encouraging your students to try and one-up Eraserhead's class. This will not end well.

Kayama Nemuri – Do not put smoke bombs in the teachers' lounge ever again. I can and will start making you wear normal clothing if this behavior continues.

Kendou Itsuka – You are not Lady Flyswatter, Queen of the Bitch-Smack. So stop bitch-smacking your classmates.

Kirishima Eijirou – If someone asks you to pass the salt, they are asking you to hand them the white crystalline substance used for seasoning. They are not asking you to pick up and throw Bakugou at them. Please desist.

Kodai Yui – Stop trying to scare Bakugou and Todoroki. I cannot promise you will continue to emerge unscathed.

Komori Kinoko – You are not required to provide "magic mushrooms" to anyone who asks or doesn't ask. In fact, you are actively discouraged from doing so.

Kouda Kouji – You are not allowed to "do favors" for animals in the zoo. I don't care how badly that polar bear claims to need a cup of coffee, he can't have one.

Kurogiri – While I am personally unsure of the League of Villains' hierarchy, you seem to be the most mature. If there is anything to do to stop your cohorts from playing mildly annoying but otherwise harmless pranks, please do it.

Kuroiro Shihai – "It's because I'm black, isn't it" jokes are not appropriate coming from a fully Japanese person; even if you are technically black in color, you do not have African heritage. Stop before you offend someone.

Lock Rock – Tsunotori and Rin do not need you to adopt them, regardless of whatever Fat Gum told you. That said, if you have any pointers on avoiding xenophobia, I'm sure they'd be delighted to hear them.

Maijima Higari – Tell Hatsume to get rid of that raptor. Or at least make her do something useful with it.

Midoriya Inko – No, you cannot adopt your son's class. Yes, this applies even if they have all called you "Mom" at some point. You also cannot adopt the teachers or the villains. I don't know why I have to tell you this, but apparently it needs telling.

Midoriya Izuku – The fact that anyone with a sex drive seems to be attracted to you does not mean that you had a secret Quirk all along. Said Quirk is not "The Love Bug", and you will stop insisting otherwise.

Mineta Minoru – "Stuff a sock in it" is a figure of speech. You are not expected to eat socks, nor are you expected to carry around socks so you can try and force other people to do eat socks.

Mizushima Masaki – "Don't stop believin'" is not your official theme song. You're from Toyama Prefecture; I doubt you've ever even been to Michigan, much less south Detroit.

Monoma Neito – While Bakugou probably will do pretty much anything if you so much as hint that he's incapable of it, I feel like I should remind you that such a situation may not turn out in your favor, though one would hope you figured that out on your own when you (and everyone else in the vicinity) learned that not only does he see nothing wrong with clothing generally associated with women, he looks damn good in a tutu. And he knows it. Lording this over his head will only get him to dress in drag again. I have to ask you to avoid provoking him, if only because several students who thought they were aware of their orientation are suddenly reconsidering (which is, of course, absolutely fine, but probably shouldn't be happening at school).

Nishiya Shinji – You are not the Lorax. You do not speak for the trees.

No. 13 – You are not legally obligated to begin back-up requests with "Housten, we have a problem", and you will stop telling people otherwise.

Ojiro Mashirao – You chose the hero name "Tail Man". Now you're going to have to live with the consequences.

Overhaul – Todoroki Shouto has publically declared you to be the worst father of all time. Take a moment to think about that.

Rappa – Stop trying to fight Kirishima. I don't care how "badass" you think he is. He has homework to do. You can't fight any of the other students either.

Rin Hiryuu – If you are actually being bullied because of your ethnicity, please tell an authority figure (me, the principal). Stop trying to guilt-trip people into giving you food.

Ryuukyuu – Stop telling people that the Dragon Balls are real. They aren't, and you can't grant wishes.

Sakamata Kuugo – Do not try to convince students to "rebel against the tyranny of Sea World". You are not being as subtle as you think you are.

Sako Atsuhiro – If you absolutely must ask Shigaraki to give you "a hand", do not do so on school grounds. You can and will be arrested, no matter how funny the students seem to think you are.

Satou Rikidou – If a villain breaks into the school, alert the proper authorities. Do not bake them a cake in exchange for them leaving. Even if it works, you're just encouraging them to come back again later.

Selkie – "Captain" is not part of your hero name. You do not have the right to arrest people for not calling you that, especially if you are not on your boat at the time.

Sero Hanta – I understand that boys your age like to roughhouse. That is perfectly fine. I only ask that you not use your elbows, as you could do some serious damage.

Shigaraki Tomura – Please stop breaking into the school and taping up crudely drawn pictures of tap-dancing monkeys with socks mooning the viewers. While your creativity is certainly nothing to scoff at, this is inappropriate behavior. Also, you're a criminal, so you shouldn't be here unless someone arrested you. No, you cannot demand fuzzy pink handcuffs, even if Yaoyorozu is happy to oblige.

Shinsou Hitoshi – Stop kidnapping Aizawa's cats. I do not want our teachers sending death threats to students; it's bad for publicity.

Shiozaki Ibara – Smacking someone with a Bible is not an appropriate method of combat, no matter how much you think they "need Jesus".

Shishida Juurouta – Unless you can turn into a prince at will, you are not "the perfect candidate for a new Beauty and the Beast movie" and you will stop insisting otherwise.

Shiretoko Tomoko – I understand that the loss of your Quirk has upset you. However, breaking into All For One's prison cell to demand he give it back is not only very dangerous but also very illegal. I advise against it.

Shouda Nirengeki – I understand that Shinsou's actions in the Sports Festival made you feel uncomfortable. I do not understand why you think the appropriate "vengeance" is following him around and hitting him with a pool noodle.

Shouji Mezou – Mineta should not be trying to get people to eat socks. You should not be helping him.

Shuuzenji Chiyo – "The little shit had it coming" is not an excuse for refusing to heal a student, even if they did have it coming.

Sirius – Please refrain from lashing out at Harry Potter jokes. You knew exactly what you were getting into when you chose that name.

Sir Nighteye – Plus do not leave your All Might body pillow out in the open. Midoriya doesn't need any more ideas.

Snipe – Your active hours cannot only be "high noon".

Sousaki Shino – While on my campus, you follow my rules. Stop telling the children that anarchy is an option to alumni.

Takeyama Yuu – There is no law stating that you and Ashido have to watch "Monsters vs. Aliens" together. You should not be telling her otherwise.

Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu – There is nothing you or I can do to stop people from adding a "Tetsu" or two to your name. Learn to live with it.

Todoroki Enji – I have no say in the sort of activities the students partake in after school hours. Thus, should your son wish to gather a bunch of his classmates and egg his own house while you're away, I'm afraid there is little I can do to stop him. What a shame.

Todoroki Fuyumi – While I understand that you are happy that your youngest brother has begun socially connecting with his classmates, I have to ask that you not treat this as though it is his sixth birthday. Please stop showing up carrying pink cupcakes with hearts and smiley faces.

Todoroki Shouto – As amusing as it is to watch you infuriate your father, I must ask you not to break any laws. If you do, I will be able to stop you, and that is not something either of us desires. Full steam ahead (but only legally)!

Toga Himiko – Whether or not your hips are honest is none of my concern. Yours hips, as well as the rest of you, are not allowed on school grounds. Please stop flirting with/trying to stab my students.

Tokage Setsuna – If you are responsible for the creation of Hatsume's velociraptor, then you are also responsible for any damages in causes.

Tokoyami Fumikage – If you stand around dramatically on the roof, people will laugh if/when you fall. They will be justified in doing so.

Toogata Mirio – I understand that you are sick of Tintin jokes. I expect you to understand that Recovery Girl is sick of fixing broken noses.

Tsuburaba Kousei – Stop stalking Todoroki. I don't care if you're only doing it to protect him from the press, stalking is still stalking.

Tsuchikawa Ryuuko – You are thirty-one years old. Do not flirt with teenagers.

Tsunotori Pony – If Monoma tells you how to say something, double check with someone in your class first.

Uraraka Ochako – Please do not try and convince your classmates to refer to All Might as "Dad-sensei". Please also refrain from convincing them to refer to Midoriya Inko as "Mom". Please also stop trying to hook them up.

Yagi Toshinori – Do not encourage your students' delusions of grandeur, whether it's Bakugou claiming to be invincible or Midoriya claiming to be some sort of sex god.

Yamada Hizashi – Stop encouraging Jirou to annoy people with music. Stop helping her annoy people with music.

Yanagi Reiko – I am going to assume that you are the reason several people think the third floor girls' bathroom is haunted. You are not Toire no Hanako-san. Stop it.

Yaoyorozu Momo – I am legally obligated to advise you that providing Todoroki Shouto and his cohorts with eggs is, while not illegal, frowned upon. That said, so long as you can prove that you don't know what they're using them for, there's really nothing anyone can do to stop you from "feeding eggs to your hungry friends". Also, if Shigaraki Tomura appears and informs you that he refuses to be arrested unless it's with fuzzy pink handcuffs, do not feel obligated to provide them.

AN: That's chapter one! I won't be able to post it 'till later, so I'll write something else in the meantime… For those of you who don't know, "Toire no Hanako-san" (or "Ms. Hanako of the Toilet) is a Japanese spirit who was murdered in a bathroom and now haunts them. There are a few interpretations of her, but I'm just referencing her here. Lastly, don't expect this to make any sense. It's solely for shits and giggles. PWP ("puns without plot"), if you will. Anyhow, let me know what you think, and I'll see you next time! Kitty out.

[mbtizone]

Dennis Reynolds (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia): ENTJ

Dominant Extroverted Thinking [Te]: Dennis enjoys being in charge and likes being in positions of power and authority. He’s a planner, and spends a lot of his time coming up with and implementing the gang’s various schemes. He is very blunt and other people’s emotions are of no concern to him. Dennis is a huge control freak and has no problem organizing other people to accomplish his goals (Te-Ni). He’s known to snap when other people are being illogical, such as when the gang attempts to make plans that he knows will never actually work. Dennis is the one who works hardest to keep the gang on task and gets extremely frustrated when they lose focus, particularly when they’re discussing ludicrous ideas that can never actually come to fruition.

Auxiliary Introverted Intuition [Ni]: Dennis loves speaking in metaphor, particularly if insulting or threatening another person. When he has a goal, he knows what he needs to do to achieve it. He knows exactly how he wants his plans to unfold, and expects every step to go exactly the way he envisioned it. When something causes his plans to go awry, he becomes frustrated, angry, and usually throws a fit. Since Dennis is a sociopath and a narcissist, he uses his intuition to manipulate people or to achieve his own selfish ends, particularly in his carefully crafted plans to get girls to sleep with him. Everything Dennis does is strategic, deliberate, and has been very thoroughly plotted. Everything he does is a step in an overall plan (Te-Ni). The D.E.N.N.I.S. system is one of the most blatant examples of Dennis utilizing his Te and Ni. He also thinks ahead enough to believe that a woman won’t refuse sex with him on a boat in the middle of the water “because of the implication.”

Tertiary Extroverted Sensing [Se]: Material possessions are important to Dennis. In many instances, he uses them as a way to present himself as a superior to others. Though he likes to have things well planned out before taking action, he does a good job of adapting to unexpected events in the moment. Dennis takes a lot of pride in the way he looks. He is a tremendously sexual being and enjoys doing things to make himself appear more attractive. He often feels threatened when other people attack his physical appearance. Dennis wants the best of everything and refuses to settle for less.

Inferior Introverted Feeling [Fi]: Not only does Dennis dislike feelings, he claims he doesn’t even have them. He does not like to deal with anyone’s emotions and mentally checks out when they come into play. Morality is not a very big concern for Dennis. He is rarely shown to value any of his personal relationships, and prioritizes plots to advance his own agenda above all else. Often, Dennis will refuse to accept his own flaws or shortcomings. When Dennis is motivated to help another person, it is purely because of how their mental state will impact him, not out of actual concern for the person and their wellbeing. Dennis decides to create an online dating profile for Charlie when the gang finds out the waitress is getting married because he doesn’t want to have to deal with how Charlie will react. When the gang “breaks Dee”, he helps because her depression is “bringing him down.” In rare instances, he does seem to genuinely care about his friends, though these moments are few and far between.

Note:: Obviously, the characters on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are completely unhealthy. Dennis, in particular, is a sociopath, a narcissist, and seems to have serious rage issues. This, ladies and gentleman, is an ENTJ gone very, very wrong. Though, Dennis is one of my favorite characters on television, so I’m not sure what that says about me.

Enneagram: 3w4 8w7 5w6 Sx/Sp

Quotes:

Dennis Reynolds: Mm. I have contained my rage for as long as possible, but I shall unleash my fury upon you like the crashing of a thousand waves! Begone, vile man! Begone from me! A starter car? This car is a finisher car! A transporter of gods! The golden god! I am untethered, and my rage knows no bounds!

Dennis: Okay, Dee, this is truly pathetic, and you are really bringing us down, so we’re gonna help you out. We realize we may be in some ways responsible for the state you’re in.

Dennis: You know what I just realized? I don’t care about anything she’s saying. Not a bit. What I do care about is the fact that… Charlie might go postal if he finds out about this and kill all of us.

Dennis: Think about it. She’s out in the middle of nowhere with some dude she barely knows. She looks around her, what does she see? Nothing but open ocean. “Oh, there’s nowhere for me to run, what am I gonna do, say no?” Mac: Okay…that seems really dark though. Dennis: No, no, it’s not dark. You’re misunderstanding me, bro. Mac: I think I am. Dennis: Yeah, you are. ‘Cause if the girl said no, then the answer obviously is no. The thing is that she’s not gonna say no, she’d never say no…because of the implication. Mac: Now, you said that word “implication” a couple of times. What implication? Dennis: The implication that things might go wrong for her if she refuses to sleep with me. Now, not that things are gonna go wrong for her, but she’s thinking that they will.

Dennis: If you do not get my sister her stories and a new room as soon as possible, then I will come down on this hospital like the hammer of Thor. The thunder of my vengeance will echo through these corridors like the gust of a thousand winds.

Dennis Reynolds: You’re gonna wanna nurture that dependence that she’s feeling on you now, guys. Have her car towed, or you could slash her tires. Either way, make her depend on you for rides. Or you can use my personal go-to, which is to create a fictional angry neighbor who’s threatening her and tell her you’ll take care of ’em. Hit up a payphone so that she can’t trace the calls back to you, give her a call and say something along the lines of, “I’m watching you, you bitch. You’re gonna die tonight!” Dee Reynolds: Oh for Christ’s sake, you’re a complete sociopath! Dennis Reynolds: Don’t interrupt.

Dennis Reynolds: And then naturally, we bang. And this is the best bang of all because it’s very emotional for her. You see, she thinks she’s broken through my tough exterior and coerced affection from a man who was afraid to love. And then I slink out into the night, never to talk to her again.

Dennis Reynolds: Aw, merge, merge! You had your… Come on, you got, you have to seize the goddamn gap! People are so goddamn inefficient! Oh, goddammit! I don’t care if you’re old, seize the gap! You old fat bitch! You fat bitch!

Dee Reynolds: What’s going on with Mac and Charlie? Dennis Reynolds: It’s… I can’t get them to stay focused. They keep escalating the conversation into evil curses and opening leather shops in Arizona. Dee Reynolds: A leather shop, in Arizona? Dennis Reynolds: Yeah. Dee Reynolds: They’d be out of business in a weeks time. Dennis Reynolds: That’s exactly what I said.

Dennis Reynolds:Dee, you escalating shit is exactly what I’m talking about. We immediately escalate everything to a ten. It’s ridiculous. Somebody comes in with a preposterous plan or idea. Then all of a sudden everyone’s on the gas, and nobody’s on the breaks. Nobody’s thinking, we’re just talking over each other with one idiotic idea after another. Until finally, we find ourselves in a situation where we’ve broken into somebody’s house, and the homeowner is home.

Dennis Reynolds:Dee, you gangling uncoordinated bitch. I am not getting hogtied over your lack of grace.

Dennis Reynolds:[inner monologue] I’m gonna make Mac look so bad. My form is perfect, I’m like Jerry Rice. Feel that stride, so fluid and fast. I’ve got the stride of a gazelle. A beautiful, beautiful gazelle person. My body is achieving a perfect symmetry right now. It’s that long, lean muscle I’ve worked so hard to achieve. Hm, I should’ve popped my shirt off. Goddammit, really should’ve popped that shirt off. I wonder if any women are watching from the sidelines… [gets hit with football and is knocked unconscious]

Dennis Reynolds:She doesn’t need you here. You need to thrust her into a hostile environment so that she needs you to protect her. Frank Reynolds: I should dump her under the bridge!

Dennis Reynolds: All right, listen, this is Family Fight. This is a nationally televised program. This is a very big deal for us, okay? We’re talking… What are you doing? Are you stealing an ashtray right now? Mac: Yeah. Dennis Reynolds: Why? We have ashtrays, and you don’t even smoke.

Dennis Reynolds: I want to talk about faith. It’s not about whether something is true, or-or-or based in fact or reality or the laws of physics or nature or even basic common sense. It’s about whether or not we’re dumb enough to believe in it that matters. Oh, folks, who the hell am I to say that there is no God? Who am I? Or to say that anybody’s belief in the church doesn’t make their life better? Maybe it does. Or that this man, Dr. Jinx – who am I to say that he can’t cure diseases with his sorcery? I don’t know. I say maybe he can. And I believe that maybe he can. [chuckles] Ladies and gentlemen, if we believe… if we just believe… then we can do anything! [audience cheers] Dennis Reynolds: Oh, yeah, ladies and gentlemen. I feel it now! Do you feel it? Do you feel the spirit? Do you feel the invisible things around you that don’t really exist? Oh, it doesn’t matter!

Dennis Reynolds:But I will say this – the church’s scam? It’s a pretty good one. It’s effective. Look at all the money these people are giving to the church. So I say we use that model to raise money for your mom at Paddy’s. Guys. Let’s throw a beef and beer.

Dennis Reynolds: Mac, these gentlemen are courting me for my business savvy. How’s it gonna reflect on me if I promote my bodyguard to VP after a two-minute conversation at a ball game? Mac: It’s not gonna reflect on you at all because you’re not Brian LeFeve. Dennis Reynolds: …I’m not what? Mac: Dude, clearly you were floundering. Dennis Reynolds: Mac, I was gathering information so that I can more fully become this man. Look, look, this is about much more than just business. This is about the thrill of wearing another man’s skin. Feeling his innermost wants and desires and being in control of his every single move. That’s how you get off. Now don’t you guys want to get off with me?

Dennis Reynolds:[getting Mac to switch seats] You’re gonna switch places with Becky, right, because while I don’t particularly find you conventionally attractive, I do find you oddly sexy. Becky: Huh, excuse me? Dennis Reynolds: That was a compliment.

Dennis Reynolds:Dennis Reynolds: Hey, whoa, whoa, I’m sorry. Since when did you become the brains? Mac: Uh… I’m sorry. I’ve always been the brains. Dennis Reynolds: What? What are you talking about? I thought I was the brains. What the hell am I? Mac: You’re the looks. Dennis Reynolds: Well, yeah, of course I’m the looks, but I always thought of myself as the brains and the looks.

Dennis Reynolds:All right, buddy, now explain to me how exactly we are going to calculate the totals. Charlie Kelly: Oh, it’s easy, dude. You pour gas into the car using one of these funnels, right? And I count how much gas is going into the car. Dennis Reynolds: All right, let me- let me just stop you right there. How exactly are you planning on counting a liquid? Charlie Kelly: Uhh, I know how to count, dude. I’m not… Dennis Reynolds: Okay, you do it. You do it, Mac, because I can’t speak to him. I don’t understand him.

Dennis Reynolds:[interrupting her] You know what Dee, I don’t want to hear about your dream, okay? I hate listening to people’s dreams. It’s like flipping through a stack of photographs. If I’m not in any of them, and nobody’s having sex, I just… don’t care.

Dennis Reynolds:As I tried to explain before, you cannot get honey from a hornet’s nest. Charlie Kelly: I just don’t think there’s any science to support that, buddy. Dennis Reynolds: There’s some very basic science out there supporting that.

Dennis Reynolds: And although I seem relaxed, I’m actually incredibly tense at all times.

Dennis Reynolds:I’m a five star man! I’m a five star man! I’m a five star man!

Dennis Reynolds:My nose was chiseled by the gods themselves, Frank. My body was sculpted to the proportions of Michelangelo’s David. You, on the other hand – well, you’re a pit of despair. Frank, you disgust me. You disgust everyone. And you will never, ever be on that billboard.

Dennis Reynolds:This is crazy. I’m having feelings again. Like some kind of 14 year-old kid. You remember feelings, right? Mac: Yeah… I have feelings every single day of my life. Dennis: Do you? Mac: Are you saying you don’t have feelings?

Dennis Reynolds (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia): ENTJ was originally published on MBTI Zone

[robotnik-mun]

Robotnik Retrospective Part Four: All the Little People

And here we are, once again, to take time out of your life to discuss an outmoded variation of villain from a series of children’s video games! Are you lucky or what?

Heh, but I digress. Welcome to the fourth installment of the retrospective! Last time around we finally stopped beating around the bush to take an in-depth look at the doctor himself, analyzing his actions and observing his demonstrated personality and traits, taking a deeper look into what makes him tick. One thing though that was missing from that analysis was arguably one of the biggest parts of his character- Sonic the Hedgehog himself.

Well, I can safely say to you that that was a deliberate ommission- given how goddamn enormous that post already was, I felt it best to make this a separate section entirely, covering not only his relationship with Sonic the Hedgehog but with the other Freedom Fighters and taking a look at how that not only enhances his character, but their’s as well.

Let’s get rolling.

One of the great truths of fiction is that every great hero needs a great villain. Great villains provide a challenge to overcome, a threat to be beaten, a danger to address- they’re the great facilitators of change and growth within a story, plus, they help to keep things interesting. How they go about this is as myriad as the stories that they appear in- some threats are obvious and direct, some are insidious and hidden. At the end of the day though, all of them are part of what makes a hero (or if you want to be more flexible, a protagonist) great and what helps make their stories so compelling.

In short? Great heroes need great villains, and that’s what helps to make them great. What a lot of people don’t consider though is that the opposite is just as true. Stories are often just as much about the villains as they are the heroes, showing them as they try their damndest to defeat the hero and make their own ambitions come together, and what makes them impressive in turn is their ability to continually challenge the heroes as they do. A story where the villain always wins effortlessly is every bit as boring and unreadable as a story where the hero always effortlessly manages to win, with an extra dosage of unbearable given that villains have a tendency to do awful awful things to boot. Villains are every bit as enhanced by their heroes as heroes are by their villains.

It is with that conceit that I move onto this aspect of Robotnik and his being, which is probably the one that I love most of all- his relationship with the other characters, and what his presence brings out in them and compels them to do because of it.

Naturally, first and foremost among all that is Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic and Eggman’s rivalry is one of the most iconic of video games, and with good reason. Both thematically and visually the two are stark opposites- Sonic is a young, athletic, short blue hedgehog who prefers to settle problems with his own physical abilities and has many friends, while Eggman is a tall, fat old man dressed in red who eschews friendship and uses his brains to do things, expressed through the endless machines that he builds. Sonic lives and fights for freedom, whether it is his own or the freedom of others, while Eggman cheerfully enslaves others to power his machines and seeks to rebuild the world in his own image. Sufficed to say there’s a reason why those two are such an iconic pair- even in the classic era before either of them had a voice or detailed mannerisms to express, they’re able to play off each other in such a fundamental way that even just relying on visuals and pantomime there is something about them that just resonates so well.

As with everything else in this setting, SatAM takes the pre-existing conflict and spins it in a different direction to what was presented in the games or in the early Adventures series. Whereas in the games Robotnik was an obstacle to overcome and in Adventures Robotnik was a nemesis to harangue, harass and humiliate ala Looney Tunes, in SaTAM Robotnik was a deadly threat and menace that needed to be thwarted for the good of everyone and everything. In my opinion it was a fitting dynamic- Sonic is said to personify freedom as a character after all, and who better to oppose a champion of freedom than a corrupt, tyrannical authority figure striving to *destroy* freedom once and for all?

Naturally, this meant that Sonic was still the same daring, cocky, reckless but ultimately brave and heroic individual that he had been in the last iteration of things, but here there was a slight difference- uniquely for any Sonic series out there, there was a new dimension to the conflict here, an element that had never been present in any of the past depictions of Sonic and his fight with Robotnik. For here it is established that for all the jokes and insults that Sonic saw fit to hurl time and again at Robotnik, beneath it all... Sonic is very, very much afraid of Robotnik and what will happen if he should ever fail.

Despite what his attitude might suggest, Sonic in this series is very, very much aware of what’s at stake and what will become of his friends and family would Robotnik ever manage to defeat him once and for all and uncover Knothole. In “Sonic’s Nightmare” we get a glimpse of what terrifies Sonic the most- it is a devastating scene of his innermost fears, his speed being robbed from him while Robotnik manages to capture Sally. He is unable to reach her and is forced to watch as she is roboticized before his very eyes, haunted by her last words as she demands to know where he was when the brains were handed out. This dream haunts him deeply throughout the subsequent episode as events from the dream seem to leave the impression that the dream was in fact a premonition, and Sonic has to actively fight through the panic and overcome the terror to save his friends and ensure that this vision does not come to pass.

Naturally he succeeds with flying colors, but the fact remains that, no matter how reckless he gets and no matter how lightly he seems to take the doctor, everything he does to fight the guy is tinged by this fear. In fact, it would be pretty safe to say that one of the reasons he displays such constant confidence and defiance is not unlike the same reason Spider-Man does- it helps to cover for the very real, very abiding fear and doubt that Sonic feels and helps him to carry through against Robotnik, which in turn helps others by showing them to not be scared enough to fight.

It helps that we are shown precisely why Sonic fears Robotnik and hates him so. Sonic didn’t just lose his only family to the Roboticizer- he personally witnessed it happened and very nearly wound up suffering the same fate, and over the course of the series we are treated to more than one occurrence of other Freedom Fighters who never made it back- Cat in “Sonic Boom” is taken away and never seen again. A pair of Freedom Fighters in the opening of Blast to the Past are immediately captured and Roboticized and in ‘Game Guy’ he fails to rescue Ari from the Void. Then of course there is Bunnie, a constant reminder of what will happen to everything he cares about if he should fail, to say nothing of the pain that her condition causes her. One of the great writing conceits of this show is that few victories are ever utterly complete- in Sonic Racer, Sonic doesn’t get to win the race even as the side mission being pulled while Robotnik’s attention is on him goes off. In Sonic Boom, information about King Acorn is acquired, but Cat is lost. Sonic twice restores his Uncle Chuck to free will, but in both occasions has to lose him- first to when the liberation wears off, and secondly when Chuck is forced to live away and do spy work in Robotropolis, something he must continue to do even after his cover is blown in “Spy-Hog”. As well as the fact that at the end of the day, Sonic cannot really avenge everyone who is victimized by the doctor, nor can he always have a clean victory, particularly since no matter what, at the end of the day Robotnik still manages to rule the world. It’s a daunting thing to face day in and day out, yet still, Sonic gets up, goes out, and gives his all to push back Robotnik’s conquest, even if it is only by centimeters. It makes Sonic all the more admirable that even as the dread of what might be picks at him, he continues to soldier on and do his best, despite the danger and despite the odds being against him.

It is what helps me to truly appreciate this particular iteration of Sonic, which in turn helps feed into my love of Sonic in general- things are not easy for him, nor is he totally un-phased by what he’s up against. He’s been put through a lot thanks to the doctor, owing every terrible thing that has happened to him in his life thanks to the guy. His lost home, his lost family, friends lost or mutilated by the doctor’s actions, it is safe to say that Sonic is decidedly *not* fond of Robotnik. Several times over the course of the series he expresses happiness at the idea of Robotnik being dead and disappointment over Robotnik’s continued survival. When not joking about the guy, he has nothing but scorn and contempt for Robotnik, and he has plenty of reason for both. His playfulness in encounters with Robotnik take on a harsher tinge, done deliberately to piss off and undermine the aura of menace and control the doctor projects, because he is keenly aware that Robotnik is the biggest, baddest guy on the planet... and because of that, he knows the best way to get at the guy is by refusing to acknowledge that fact when fighting him, reducing him to a subject of laughs rather than terror.

For all this? Robotnik hates Sonic right back, and fittingly, he allows that hatred to consume him utterly, and this in turn is how Sonic manages to enhance Robotnik’s character- by giving him a very, very palpable weakness.

One of the great defining characteristics of Robotnik is his hatred. Hatred of others, hatred of the world around him, but more so than anything else, Robotnik is driven and controlled by his utter and complete hatred of Sonic and Sonic alone. This makes a great deal of sense when you consider where he is coming from- for ten years Robotnik has managed to reign supreme over the world, and any opposition that he encountered before Sonic and company was clearly not enough to stop him. Then comes along Sonic- a mouthy little teenager who, despite everything, is able not only halt Robotnik’s operations, but escape punishment time and again. Robotnik is a scientific genius, a former military leader who managed to win a war and who later managed to conquer an entire planet. Yet no matter what Robotnik does... no matter how close he gets, no matter what he does, Sonic always seems to slip through his otherwise ironclad grip.

Worse than that, Sonic is eventually revealed to have been the one to cost him his arm. This creates a parallel to the famous, destructive hatred that Captain Ahab reserved for Moby Dick, having lost ships and his leg to the great White Whale. Whereas Ahab had the White Whale, Robotnik has a Blue Hedgehog, and his pursuit of his prey over the course of the series fittingly leads to his own inevitable defeat. Over the course of the 2nd Season of SatAM, Robotnik’s hatred for Sonic reaches such an extent that it begins to spiral out of his control- this is the season where Robotnik doesn’t just want to kill or roboticize Sonic, but to utterly and completely humiliate him in the process, to break him in order to avenge his wounded ego. Some criticize this season for overplaying his hatred of Sonic and making him fall into the ‘BondVillain’ pitfall (as ‘Game Guy’ so illustrated), but I would counter that this is a very natural development for Robotnik as the continued victories of the Freedom Fighters and Sonic in particular begins to take a toll on his sanity. In particular, his focus on Sonic to the exclusion of everything else makes it clear that for as much as Sonic is legitimately involved in dismantling his plans, Robotnik has turned Sonic into a scapegoat for *all* of his failures, bringing his hateful obsession to murderous new heights.

Even before the second season though it was pretty clear that Robotnik’s hatred for Sonic went above and beyond ordinary. Each time he spoke of ‘the hedgehog’ he did so with a very potent amount of venom, and one incident in particular makes it clear that when it comes to Sonic, Robotnik’s hatred has always been self-destructive. There’s a spectacular scene in “Sonic’s Nightmare” towards the end- Robotnik and Snively are in his ship, in stealth mode, having narrowly escaped the destruction of a blimp designed to induce acid rain- don’t laugh, it’s a perfectly valid tactic for a man whose enemies live in the forest and who desires a lifeless world of machines. Sonic and Co cannot see them, but they are in a perfect position to attack. Robotnik readies a missile, but is then informed by Snively that the damage they’ve taken is too much, and if he fires the weapon there’s a good chance that they’ll go down too.

Faced with the decision between killing Sonic once and for all or saving his own life, Robotnik is given pause.

His finger hovers over the button, his hand shaking. It’s not a rash decision he’s making, but one where he clearly is weighing the pro’s and cons. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, he pushes the button. Thankfully for Sonic (and probably Robotnik and Snively), the circuits fuse, and the window of opportunity closes, forcing them both to return to Robotropolis, but the fact remains that Robotnik hates Sonic so much that he would willingly risk his own death if it meant Sonic were to die as well. He would *gleefully* shoot himself in the foot, provided that the bullet came out the other end and killed Sonic as well. It’s a beautiful and terrifying demonstration of the depths that he’ll go to kill Sonic, as well as a convincing display of how Sonic truly is his greatest weakness, more than setting his downward spiral during Season 2 as his desire for vengeance begins to go out of control.

In this, Robotnik is strengthened as a character, because he is given a very identifiable weakness that drives him to commit believable mistakes, and by the same token, Sonic’s own character is better off for it due to the very personal nature of his conflict with Robotnik and the struggle that Robotnik has made out of his life. Struggle drives conflict, and it makes Sonic’s victories all the better for it.

Ah, but it is not Sonic alone who ‘benefits’ from Robotnik’s presence! Others in the cast are similarly impacted, and for the better.

Enter Princess Sally.

Sally’s entire situation in life is incredibly tragic once you sit down and think about it. She was born a princess and destined for an easy life with a loving father... and in a flash, it was all taken away from her. Her home, her father, her future, all of it stolen by a man her father trusted- who she trusted. Forced to live in hiding while the madman who betrayed her father and stole her life turned the world into an industrial hellhole, Sally was able to rise against the circumstances and lead her friends in a nearly hopeless guerilla war against a seemingly unstoppable foe. She may be called a ‘princess’, but she is aware of how little meaning her title has- she is not a leader because of her blood but because of her actions. She leads missions into the city- a city her family founded and ruled for centuries, now twisted and corrupted into a blighted, lifeless mechanism designed to create endless robots and consume everything. She does this in person, risking life and limb along with her friends, whom she has known since childhood, fellow survivors all of them, time and again going into that nightmarish place for the sake of her people. For the sake of the kingdom that no longer exists.

She’s not even eighteen years old, and it wears on her something awful. Losing her kingdom, losing her father, having to watch out not only for her friends lives but the lives of everyone in Knothole, constantly planning and strategizing and hoping that this time isn’t the time where it all goes wrong. All the while having to be strong, and cool and calm and collected for the sake of her people, because she is their leader and alongside Sonic, she is a symbol of hope- of a possible return to better days. Leadership is her privilege and her burden, and it’s all she can do to not buckle under it on those days when things go wrong- and they happen. In ‘Blast to the Past Part 1‘ we open with such a failure, and her reaction afterward. The kind of stress this girl has been put under is unimaginable. She’s only sixteen.

And what of Bunnie?

Bunnie is a walking reminder of what will happen if the Freedom Fighters fail. Generally she is a cheerful and upbeat person, but even that doesn’t stop her from hating what she has become... what Robotnik nearly turned her into. Every time she looks in a mirror she gets to remember what Robotnik did to her and the fact that her chances at a normal life were dashed some time ago. At the same time she has not given into the despair despite how much she hates what she has become- she has instead learned to empower herself, taking what Robotnik did to her and turning it against him, using her abilities to fight his empire and make him pay for what he did to her and to everyone else.

So it goes with all the other Freedom Fighters- Tails is an orphan, a child being raised by children forced to take on the role of adults and who do their best to give him a normal childhood in the most horrible of times imaginable. Rotor must try his hardest to be there for his friends as an inventor and as someone to talk to when they need it. Dulcy hasn’t seen another of her kind in years. Antoine lives in terror because he can never felt safe again. Even in the minor characters it shows- everyone is in hiding, everyone has lost something or something to lose. Everything the heroes have been through has been because of Robotnik. Because of what he did... because of what he is doing.

Every life stolen...

Every moment of despair...

Every family torn apart..

Every child orphaned...

Every dream broken...

Every natural wonder desecrated...

Every civilization destroyed...

Every scar inflicted...

...all of it leads back to one man. To Robotnik. His deeds and the consequences of those actions reverberate throughout the entire series and at every level. He is an enemy who is everywhere, who controls virtually everything around the heroes. The world is dying by inches as he consumes more and more of it. The heroes do not have access to the same resources as he- everything they have is scrounged from his leftovers, and they must do everything they can to maintain their hiding places. Knothole is shown to have parts that break down, and Lower Mobius lives in constant dread of its energy source burning out. This is what Robotnik has done to the heroes. This is the position he has put them all in.

This is what makes their triumphs so amazing.

For against those odds, against everything that Robotnik has ever done to them, the heroes collectively continue to go out time and again to fight against Robotnik. To show that that will not simply lay down and wait for him to take them to the Roboticizer or for his SwatBots to exterminate them. They will rise up against the tyrant, rise up against him despite how badly the odds skew against them, and each time they will make him pay a little more for what he has done as they reclaim their lives, inch by inch and yard by yard. They maintain hope against him, against everything they maintain hope. The heroes of this show are collectively made all the more impressive for it, all the more heroic, for the simple fact that they fight back as hard as they do. Even Antoine is stronger for this- for as clumsy and constantly terrified as he is, he still goes back into Robotropolis over and over again to do his part. Even with everything that is flawed and imperfect about him, he is still brave enough to set foot in that horrible. Can any of you say you would do the same?

Robotnik is what makes Sonic and the others so great as heroes, because he takes so much from them and takes so much *out* of them when trying to fight back, that it makes their victories all the more meaningful even if they are not always as straightforward as we might like- and that’s perhaps what I like most about this iteration of Robotnik, because he helps so much in making me like Sonic and Sally and everyone else.

It isn’t just his interactions with the heroes though that make Robotnik more whole. There is of course the matter of the OTHER evildoers in this series.

Snively’s relationship is one that fascinates me most because of how much is implied in it. Snively initially debuted as a fairly typical Evil Lackey, though one marked by a fair amount of abuse from his employer. What gave him distinction though was what was revealed about his precise relationship with Robotnik- that he was the man’s nephew and that once upon a time, Snively admired and trusted him. The idea that Robotnik would so callously manipulate, use and abuse someone who once adored him is easily one of the most personally despicable things that Robotnik has done, and at once it makes you hate him more and pity Snively on an entirely new level, beyond what even his wretched status as Robotnik’s assistant/stress ball would make you feel.

Robotnik’s interactions with Snively are fascinating for the fact that while Robotnik enjoys belittling, insulting and hurting him... he does not treat Snively with absolute content. He entrusts his nephew to oversee important tasks and on occasion even listens to him. This would seem to indicate that for all the open contempt he has for Snively, he is at least aware that Snively is not an idiot (much as he enjoys calling him that). Snively in the meantime is shown to resent his position more and more, becoming defiant and catty in the second season. It makes sense given Robotnik’s own deterioration in that season, and the simple fact that Snively is surely aware that he is living on borrowed time. The world that Robotnik is creating would have no room for Snively, and if Robotnik were to ever win it would mean the end of Snively eventually. In time Robotnik would get bored of his screams and Roboticize him as well. Robotnik is able to grant Snivley his greatest moment in the series- surviving Doomsday despite being left to die, and emerging from the rubble to claim his seemingly fallen Uncle’s empire.

Cluck is another relationship I rather like, because of how typical it seems until you consider the implications.

It’s a real shame Cluck was chucked for the second season, as I really did enjoy her. At first glance she would seem to be the only thing in creation that Robotnik actually cares about, for he treats her with far greater affection than he does his own nephew. That impression only lasts until you realize why he’s so affectionate- she’s ultimately just another projection for his bloated egomania. Her entire existence is basically Robotnik going ‘Oh hey, nature? That thing you made? I made it better. So there!’. Robotnik doesn’t love Cluck because of anything genuine, he loves her because she is just another thing he can look at and admire himself for the brilliance he displayed in creating her. That’s how I see it anyway. Again, it’s a real shame she wasn’ kept around, but oh well. Point of order, I see Cluck was a brilliant testament to the raging ocean of self-centered narcissism that is Robotnik, and I love her for it.

You know what? I even like his relationship with Naugus.

Bet you weren’t expecting that, eh? Bet you were expecting me to rail against the fact that there’s something that utterly breaks down Robotnik’s aura and demeanor of unshakable and utter evil. Well I got news for you- I do in fact enjoy the fact that Robotnik is *petrified* of Naugus. He has every reason to be, having endured the sorcerer’s tortures back in the old days when he was assisting him with his experiments within the Void. It provides a humanizing element to Robotnik- a reminder that for all the evil he does and all the terror he inflicts, Robotnik is still a man, and like most men there is something he is afraid of. I appreciate that quality because it implies a limitation to eventually be overcome and conquered. It represents a chance to grow and develop into something more, and it helps to establish that Robotnik is not invincible. These are important things for a character to have, I feel, and so I actually enjoy that Naugus can bring such start and total fright to the Big Round Guy. Characters who are totally without fear tend to come off as boring, irritating or just plain stupid, to say nothing of suspense-breaking.

And with that, I conclude this portion of the analysis. Sufficed to say, while I like Robotnik on his own terms, the thing that really makes him shine in my eyes is not him and him alone, but rather what he does to others and what he brings out in the other characters. It’s a symbiotic relationship in my mind, the way that Robotnik is able to enhance them and how they do the same for him, and it’s a big part of what made this show so compelling to begin with. I love a good villain- even more than that, I love when a good villain has an even better hero to challenge and thwart him, especially when things are made difficult for the hero because of the villain.

Next time around, we will take a look at the others who were made in the image of SatAM Robotnik... and in doing so, tackle a rather sizeable elephant in the room. See you next time, boys and girls!

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of May

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

[apologies for the delay with this one: I was binging Good Omens and contemplating spending 200 quid on a pair of shades to match Crowley’s sweet pair]

Falstaff - Robert Nye I’ll admit that I was ready to embrace this book as fucking great right from the word go, because it seemed so up my alley; Falstaff is a titan of the carnivalesque and one of my very favourite Shakespeare characters, and so from the very premise I figured that there was very little that could go wrong. The book takes the form of the memoirs of Sir John Falstolf (no, I don’t know about the ever-changing name spelling nonsense) told over the course of a hundred days, and becomes a journey through history told from the perspective of the fat drunk knight and interjected with lengthy insults to his cook or scribes and even lengthier songs of praise for his own cock or his innumerable sexual exploits. Everything about this is fucking great. In the course of the book you’re given incredibly evocative descriptions of carnivals or tavern debauchery, followed by hilarious anecdotes on fantastically crude subjects, and holding it all together is a narrative voice that can effectively handle both the grandiose reminiscing and the tales of shagging and farting. I also want to praise this book’s fantastic blending of the characters of Shakespeare and other popular fictions of the time with the characteristic Falstaff flare, including one fucking genius link between the character of Bardolph and the stories of the pig-faced woman Tannakin Skinker. Shakespeare’s characters probably are not that difficult to adapt, or at least not inasmuch as adapting the character traits that I perceive as responsible for making Shakespeare’s characters great - you’ll inevitably get some people arguing that Falstaff is Shakespeare’s greatest character because of his complexity, but for me the fact that he is a corpulent tanked-up knight bloated at the seams with sack and fabricated tales of grandeur is enough to make him a quality guy. The archetype is captured splendidly by Nye, but the book doesn’t half remind us of how fucking amazing Shakespearean dialogue is by comparison to Nye’s attempts at Falstaffian humour, and thereby highlights the difference between Shakespeare’s Falstaff and the basic character shape. The book delves into numerous specific events of I Henry IV (and a couple from 2 Henry IV), often quoting lines from Shakespeare’s play verbatim, much to the deficit of the rest of the text that has to string it all together with writing that obviously is not up to snuff with Shakespeare’s amazing writing. The dedication to the plays from which Falstaff was spawned seems at times odd, when a good few chapters are dedicated to extrapolating on one minor event in Part 1, which, to my understanding, was but one of the jests that Hal pulled on Falstaff, and but one of the instances that he was called out for his obvious bullshitting. If Falstaff was repeatedly made a fool of by Hal, he wouldn’t have directly addressed only one of said instances as if it was a big deal, but of course, it was a scene in the play and so it had to be adapted in this book. Whether this was down to Nye not having faith in his own ability to make up more pranks that Hal pulled on Falstaff, or simply because he knew that he had to write in this sequence because he needed a direct link to the play, is a question that I can’t really answer. But let’s talk about Falstaff’s bullshitting, and the complexities that arise from it. Falstaff’s whole shtick is that he is a mighty bullshitter, spinning yarns of heroic exploits and trying to talk his way out of trouble, and thus it stands to reason that his memoirs would reflect this, right? As I first went into the book, I was fully taken in by what I was reading, for although it was dumb, the story was centralised within a world of farce and Rabelaisian carnival, a world in which French armies can be defeated by drunken Englishmen brandishing hogsheads for weapons, men can eat enough food for seven men and still demand dessert, Irishmen will stab you up the arse from below while you sit on the bog, and every woman is inexplicably attracted to a fat drunken knight. It also mythologised Falstaff’s character, that he was conceived atop the knob of the Cerne Abbas giant and that his father died from laughing at nothing in particular. Is this not enough to make the story worthwhile? Would second-guessing Falstaff’s words at every turn, cross-referencing them with what we know of the truth from the Shakespeare plays, not only render the reading experience a pointless trudge, but demystify this world of carnivalesque absurdity? Falstaff’s overblown postulating on whether or not he is lying, or indeed his reasons for lying, are enough to satisfy me without contemplating the book from a meta perspective. There is also the character Scrope, who acts as one of Falstaff’s scribes and uses his position to call out Falstaff’s fabrications for us in a dramatic way, but a) there are discrepancies in his so-called truths and b) he’s a colossal dickhead, so regardless of Scrope’s presence in the story, we’re given the option to still side entirely with Falstaff and his comical version of reality. This is my perspective, but it is worth considering that I am a vacuous fool incapable of complex thought, so adopt my opinions with caution. I do, perhaps, have a few criticisms about Falstaff’s gratuitous descriptions of sexual escapades, not because I’m a prude who can’t stand the mention of the secrets of our own sinful bodies, nor even because it is unjustified in the narrative (because of course Falstaff is going to brag and give too much detail, if not for the sake of posterity than to make his servant scribes uneasy), but because I don’t feel that it fits the comedic tone of the text. Shagging is a staple of fabliaux and folksongs, but the comedy comes from who’s doing the shagging, or where they’re doing the shagging, or the extraneous circumstances surrounding the shagging. This book just describes shagging, which is funny when considering, as mentioned above, the fact that Falstaff within the story is including such titillating or sensational tidbits to vex his scribes (a strand which reaches its high point when Falstaff makes his amanuensis transcribe his words WHILE he is in the act of shagging), but taken as it is, it doesn’t seem in line with the rest of the book and its comedy. When this story has to plod on without its Falstaff-centric source material (or indeed, even from 2 Henry IV, in which Falstaff doesn’t really do a whole lot), it can get rather tedious as it becomes a mere listing of historical events and Falstaff’s minor parts in them, but at that point the book is rather winding down anyway, so perhaps I can’t complain too much. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH, IF YOU’RE INTO SHAKESPEARE

The Hike - Drew Magary I picked this book up because I’d heard it compared to The Third Policeman in terms of it being a journey narrative, and I had a hankering for a book in which the story is not driven by the actions of the character, but rather the situation that they were thrown into, mainly because I’m interested in seeing how different authors go about doing this and not making the resulting narrative crap. Immediately upon going into this book, the acerbic narrative voice reminded me of John Dies at the End, and as the book continued and began to unveil other similarities, most egregiously the technique of using the bizarre weird reality-warping and monster-centric nonsense as a means of juxtaposing or disguising the book’s true content, that of the heinous DMC (that is, the deep meaningful conversation), I thought that I was in trouble. The reason why this is a book ramble, and not just a flat-out review, is that at this point I feel like I’m just rambling about the broad genre of contemporary American horror-centric weird fiction, and so to go through the book point-by-point may be a tad redundant when we already know exactly what to expect from the genre; a review would in all probability just devolve into quibbling about minor semantics. The story follows a man who, getting lost on a hike, stumbles into a world of nightmares and oddities, half of which were presumably inspired by the author’s obscure fears and the rest being absurd non-sequiturs to amp up the kookiness. It is nothing if not memorable, with its foul-mouthed crabs and murderous men wearing the faces of Rottweilers and whatnot. The book eventually develops to be smarter and more twisty-turny than such a randomly-selected clusterfuck of ideas might suggest, but these moments become transitory stops scattered amidst the rambling improvisational D&D campaign that is the main narrative. The story does have a habit of periodically bringing us to a formative experience in our protagonist’s life in the form of dream visions, with some interesting blurring between reality and fiction that doesn’t detract from the sheer fucking ludicrousness of the amount of shit that our protagonist has gone through, or at least the sensational self-reflective tone of these events’ retellings. This put me in mind of John Dies at the End, as did an ineffable sense of self-importance that the protagonist of this book seems to impart. I can’t properly word it, but there’s something to our protagonist’s narration, in that we see the world through his eyes but the retelling seems embellished somewhat to make him seem better off, and the fact that I noticed this at all speaks to me of shoddy characterisation. That’s not to say that the character is an unflappable badass the whole way through the story; it just seems like the character beats are cookie-cutter and that his moments of weakness or breakdown only occur because they have to, in order to make us feel sympathy for him. Both this book and John Dies at the End utilise new nomenclature on the fly for the horrors they find, but in all cases it just seems so pre-meditated, and the insistence on using these terms makes it seem like we ought to be on board with them as well, regardless of how stupid they are. Some of these terms are also tinged with an element of our narrator’s feelings of repulsion or standoffishness, in a manner similar to a downtrodden kid trying to stand up to a bully by referring to him with an insulting nickname. It’s all just rather tonally dissonant, the fact that we have to align with and appreciate our protagonist juxtaposed with the reality of our protagonist not really being that likeable. John Dies at the End (or at least its sequel) attempts to obfuscate the angst of its protagonist by admitting at the end to having a retrospective ghost writer, attributing the changes to the story and relatively inconsistent character fuckery to an unreliable narrator and details being altered in post, but this book lacks this safety net. What this book does have at the end is a bit of life-affirming reality-changing nonsense, and more importantly a fucking sweet twist at the end which, whilst not having much to do with the rest of the story (being dependent on memories and characters who didn’t have much to do with the overall narrative), leaves the story on a bittersweet note. In all my time spent reading classic literature, I’ve really missed experiencing twists that a) I didn’t already know about or wouldn’t have predicted, and b) actually have some fucking oomph. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: PROBABLY

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Mark Twain The question of authorial intent loomed over me as I begun reading this book. The introduction places the story firmly within the framework of Twain’s own righteous vengeance at the age he lived in, whereas I was under the impression that the book was naught but a dumb burlesque of middle English romances with some fun anachronisms thrown in for comedic effect. I thought that Twain’s ‘dream of being a knight errant in armour’ was funny as shit, but according to this introduction writer geezer Justin Kaplan (who apparently knows a better way of enjoying the book than myself), Twain’s dream ought to be interpreted as ‘a nightmare of being swaddled in iron, confined and helpless, just as Mark Twain was often to feel confined and helpless in his way of life’. As such, I sought advice from my friend, who told me to just go in with my unsophisticated cap on and I’ll be fine, and also took solace in Twain’s squib 1601, his exercise emulating my main man Rabelais in which famous Elizabethans hit the shit about shit and shagging, to adopt the mentality that Twain is just fucking about and that I don’t need to think too much about what I’m reading. Now I’ve sat through enough seminars of medieval literature to have heard every imaginable inane comment from every single vacuous shitwit grabbing at the lowest hanging fruit possible when it comes to pointing out the silliness of Arthurian romances; I’m a dab fucking hand, albeit unwillingly, at recognising all of this shit, and at suppressing my groans when slack-jawed fuckheads go over the same empty points about how middle English romances are ever so daft. “I mean, what’s up with all these knights running around attacking each other for no reason?!? That doesn’t make much sense!!” they all opine to each other, confident that they’re bringing something original and nuanced to the conversation, to jolly plaudits and insufferable guffaws. (No I’m not bitter about this, I have no idea what you’re talking about). Twain of course touches on all the usual points that you’d expect in a romance parody, but I needn’t have braced myself for an onslaught of unoriginality, as he does so with fantastic wit and evokes an actual comedic image rather than just commenting on the world’s lack of logic. He paints a delightful picture of naive and foolish knights howling with laughter at slapstick and ooo-ing and ah-ing at one another’s exaggerated tales, which is not only a great representation of Arthurian knights to explain their questionable behaviours, but justifies how they are so easily swayed and led by our protagonist Hank Morgan, the eponymous Yankee. I’m also a great fan as to how far they take the delusions of the Arthurian chaps to, believing with complete conviction that a swine pen is an ogre’s castle and that the pigs within are kidnapped noblewomen; there’s a lot of fun to be had with this, and as absurd as it seems, I’m glad that the explanation isn’t any more complex than it just being a result of everyone’s unyielding belief in everything. Our protagonist sets out to whip this century into something resembling nineteenth-century society, and putting aside the suspension of disbelief we must have in Hank’s apparent knowledge of every-fucking-thing imaginable required to accomplish this transformation (from building phone lines and electric fences to a ludicrously precise knowledge of the timing of eclipses), the story is a great romp of technology trumping magic and the grim realities of an unfair world, with some fantastic memorable scenes here and there. The plot somewhat meanders, the stories of Arthurian legend being rather directionless beyond the overarching call for adventure, and so we get a bit of that and we get a bit of blending in with peasant life, but overall the book is made up of a series of encounters and problems to overcome, which is fine to read for the most part (for some adventures are more fun than others). Though I want to pooh-pooh the idea that the story is a castigation or attack on the political structures and struggles of the time, and indeed can continue to pooh-pooh it so long as such content is if not subliminal than overshadowed by the story’s fun content, this unfortunately bubbles to the surface in an overt form when the book draws to a close, with a swift arrival of reality and sudden need for a bloody war. The mask of fun burlesque is stripped away to give us a galling look at a stubborn England, the denizens of which would rather die than change their faulty unfair ways. It’s not enough to tarnish the rest of the book, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth, not because it’s an objectively bad thing but because scathing attacks of that calibre and of that level of overtness seemed to come rather out of left field. The transformation of the book from one thing to the next is dependent on a swift plot progression that occurs in a short period of time and is conveyed by a massive exposition dump which rushes through the last chapter of the Morte D’Arthur and plunges us into a fight between the Church and our protagonist, a fight that the story, apparently now being a treatise on the inability for people to change and our helplessness in altering the state of things, must regrettably end with our hero losing. But now I’m prattling on about an approach to the text that I was adamant I was not going to take. Don’t let it tarnish the rest of the book; that’s all still good shit. WOULD I RECOMMEND?: YEAH PROBABLY

Tales of the German Imagination (trans. by Peter Wortsman): - ‘The Singing Bone’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, and ‘The Children of Hameln’ (the Brothers Grimm) - I struggle to place the Grimms fairy tales in terms of an analytical approach, and so it’ll suffice to say that these stories are exactly what you’d expect from the Grimms, in that they’re short and dark and make for easy reading - ‘Rune Mountain’ (Ludwig Tieck) - a proper romanticism story with a fantastic dream-like storytelling tone and incredibly evocative imagery throughout - ’St Cecelia or the Power of Music’ (Heinrich von Kleist) - a well-written actualisation of a cool suspenseful horror story concept with a few nice spooky bits, albeit with a rather slow middle and generally anticlimactic end - ‘Peter Schlemiel’ (Adelbert von Chamisso) - an amazing idea for a story that, while bogged down with unexplained magical objects straight out of Hoffmann’s fairy tales popping up every now and then to take the story in weird directions, and based on a social ostracisation that really does not seem like as big a deal as the story makes it out to be, is still very enjoyable - ’The Marble Statue’ (Josef von Eichendorff) - another story that brings to mind Hoffmann’s fairy tales (which I should perhaps instead just consider the archetype for German romanticism?), this time in terms of its romantic setting and soppy protagonist, and indeed its dumb allegorical dream-quest nonsense ending - ‘My Gmunden’ (Peter Altenberg) - so short that I didn’t really know what I was meant to be laughing at - ‘The Magic Egg’ and ‘A New Kind of Plaything’ (Mynona) - absolutely amazing little snippets of madness and laughter at oddity, the first story being an absurdist exercise in stupidity with a cast-aside veneer of meaning to the story, and the second being a jolly examination of a ludicrous idea - ’The Seamstress’ (Rainer Maria Rilke) - a compelling and vaguely unsettling story with fantastic character descriptions of the titular seamstress and an ending that casts our narrator adrift - ‘The Island of Eternal Life’ (Georg Kaiser) - a short and enjoyable story of rapid cartoon-like escalation, albeit with an ending more befitting a cynical satire on humanity - ‘In the Penal Colony’ (Franz Kafka) - a story I’ve read before and my favourite of Kafka’s writings; it’s dark and compelling (if a bit long-winded at point when describing the intricacies of the machine), and has a fantastic culmination (specifically the fate of the Officer) with elements of regret and serious fucking brutality - ‘The Blackbird’ (Robert Musil) - possesses a narrative voice that, while philosophical and high-minded, was not enough to embellish the story’s rather boring content (or at least seemed a tad misused when utilised to describe warfare) - ‘The Lunatic’ (Georg Heym) - over-the-top and gruesome and overall fucking hilarious; godspeed to ridiculously hyperbolic depictions of madmen in literature - ‘A Conversation Concerning Legs’ (Alfred Lichtenstein) - a conversation on one absurd subject, with dialogue that possesses all the necessary elements to make the humour work; it’s matter-of-fact and occasionally stupidly verbose to juxtapose the oddity of the subject matter, there’s rapid escalation from one train of thought to the next, and the conversation ends as abruptly and pointlessly as it had begun - ‘The Onion’ (Kurt Schwitters) - one of the first surrealist stories that I’ve read that has properly made me consider the ineffable and indescribable genius of the minds that concocted it, as well as having a pretty fucking sweet premise even before the text starts getting properly surreal and fragmented - ‘A Raw Recruit’ (Klabund) - a very funny story with a satirical premise I’m well used to - ‘The Time Saver’ (Ignaz Wrobel) - a story with an interesting abstract premise that is continuously built on in a manner that put me in mind of Krzhizhanovsky, but with an ending that didn’t seem very connected to the plot that preceded it (though perhaps that was somewhat the point) - ‘The Tattooed Portrait’ (Egon Erwin Kisch) - perhaps the funniest story in the collection, possessing the satire of people in power and absurd turns of fate to knock esteemed people down a peg as to be found in Gogol or my favourite Leskov short stories - ‘The Experiment or the Victory of the Children’ (Unica Zurn) - a story that takes the same general steps as Mynona’s ‘A New Kind of Plaything’, but seems less tongue-in-cheek and satirical and more like it’s trying to make some sort of grand statement - ’The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran’ (Ingeborg Bachmann) - purportedly a modern day fairy tale (albeit set in a mythologised past full of names for places and people I’m unfamiliar with), with the influence of modernism presumably being evident by the nonsense anticlimactic ending WOULD I RECOMMEND?: HELL YEAH

[superradgaydad]

80 questions

what’s your favorite memory? - probably the one of when my friend slept over, and we just curled up and watched jeff dunham on netflix

what song(s) describe your mood right now? - siberia by lights, or all for you by sister hazel

tea or coffee? - TEA

sunsets or sunrises? - neither bc it’s a bitch to drive during both lmao

vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry? - chocolate

rain or sun? - rain all the way

is your first language english? if not, what is it? - i’m too lazy to learn another language other than english, but I know some phrases in sign language

do you like your ice crushed or in big blocks? - big blocks bc then i can cronch it

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? - my chest, bc i hate how big it is, or my muffin top

who are you closest to, your father or mother? - probably my father

what time period would you like to live in other than your own - definitely medieval bc knights >:3c !!

is it hot or cold right now? - fUCKIN BELOW ZERO OVER HERE HOLY SHIT MY ASS CHEEKS ARE FROZEN TO MY PANTS

what is your accent? - i’ve been told i have a boston accent but i can’t really tell

has anyone ever save you from a situation? if so, what happened? - i don’t remember a lot of stuff that happened in the past so i’m not really sure??

who did you last hug? - my best friend :)))

who are your top 5 fictional characters? - hearthstone (magnus chase), kenny mccormick (south park), lance (voltron), chat noir (miraculous ladybug), and no-face (spirited away)

how have you changed in the past year or two? - my hair has gotten shorter and it’s been dyed different colors, and i’ve been more self conscious with everything about myself

biggest regret(s)? - falling in love

biggest fear(s)? - heights, spiders, the ocean, being rejected, the dark, being forgotten

is your room messy or clean? - messy af my dude

have you ever had a near-death experience? - umm i choked on a cracker once, does that count?

favorite scent? - my grandma’s laundry detergent lmao

would you survive a zombie apocalypse? - probably for a bit, but then i’d die in the dumbest way, like falling down stairs or getting stabbed by my own knife idk

what lyric(s) do you love? - “look into your heart and you’ll find the sky is yours”

what do you like about yourself? - my arms, my freckles, my eyes

what would you change about yourself? - my clingyness

do you like your handwriting? - yeah, as long as i can read it, i’m fine

how do you like to style your hair? - the poofier, the better

what time is it? - sUMMERTIME (god i wish)

what time did you wake up today? - 6:10, bc of school -_-

what are your bad habits? - biting my nails, not replying to texts, forgetting important things

what was your first fandom? - the pjo fandom :)

burger or pizza? - pizza, but i peel the cheese off

do you have any unusual talents? - no, i’m super boring lmao rip

when did you last feel infinite? - tbh i haven’t felt that way in a long time, so probably when i heard that my papa was doing better :’)

when did you last cry? - a week ago, i think. it was over how i can’t understand my advanced english class

who was the last person to see you cry? - my parents, bc they were the ones yelling at me

best movie? - i have literally too many favorites, but probably the star wars series or me and earl and the dying girl

best tv series? - gotham or sherlock

have you ever wrote fanfiction? - yes, but i don’t like to bring it up anymore haha

are you happy? - truthfully, no, but i’m trying :)

do you really relate to your zodiac? - sometimes

what year were you born in? - 2001

do you often find yourself jealous? - yES. mainly if one of my friends ends up in a happy and healthy relationship, while i’m over here dying

are you a fan of 80’s music? - yes!

what has been your most vivid nightmare? - i try not to remember nightmares

what has been your most vivid dream? - where green day broke into my house, and played with my cat while making pancakes and putting on my sister’s makeup

have you ever had your first kiss? - no, but i guess i’m waiting for that one person who i want to spend the rest of my life with

what has been your most intimate moment? - haha when i woke up next to my best friend, and we were like all intertwined and shit

do you usually start conversations? - no

are you superstitious? - i don’t know??

what do you believe in most, ghosts or aliens? - both. i believe that there is life after death, and that there are beings out in space. i’m pretty 50-50 on it

what song(s) do you hate? - any stupid/overplayed pop song on the radio

turn ons? - disney movies and panera mac and cheese

turn offs? - “those” girls (like complain too much, or obsess over how “fat they are”), people who insult others

are you comfortable with talking about your flaws? - not really bc then people know how to defeat me aha

what are your otps? - stormpilot (finn and poe), blitzstone (blitzen and hearthstone), and iko and kinney (i don’t know their ship name tho)

do you have any bizarre experiences? - umm stuff usually goes missing, and i hear sounds in my house when no one else is home, but that’s basically it

do you have a night/morning routine? - in the morning i shower before school, and at night i just get in my pajamas and go to bed

do you have a bittersweet memory? - when we were visiting my papa. sweet that we got to see him, but bitter bc he was getting worse

are there any friends that you miss? - my friends from montserrat college prep

do you have an enemy? - vIOLENCE IS AN ENEMY

are you a night owl or an early bird? - night owl

what is your dream job? - to be a writer, or an animator, or a comic book illustrator

if you had to pick a fictional universe to live in forever, which one would you pick and why? - either star wars bc then i could be a pilot and hang out with finn and poe all the time, or harry potter bc then i’d be a wizard!!

do you know any form of self-defense? - i took karate when i was younger, but i don’t remember anything from it

favorite planet? - pluto, bc it’s small and nobody remembers it’s there, and i can relate to that. also my favorite god is hades/pluto

do you consider yourself to be more masculine, feminine, or a mixture? - uhhh i’m genderfluid, so my feeling fluctuates all the time, but most of the time i feel pretty masculine

do you rely on others, or do others rely on you? - i rely on others more

what do you think happens when someone dies? - i think they kind of hang around for a bit, traveling through loved memories, and it’s all colors, but then i think they eventually pass on when they see that they don’t have anything else to do

are you a leader? - good god nO! me, as a leader? you’d all be dead immediately lmao

what question do you hate answering? - “why’d you cut your hair? boys like long hair” or “are you a boy or a girl? i can’t tell”

do you believe in guardian angels? - not really, except for mysterion in south park lmao

can you rap? - a bit, mostly twenty one pilots or hamilton’s guns and ships

how do you stay warm? - sweaters and layers upon LAYERS of blankets. heated blankets work the best :) also bonus points if you have a warm cat!

do you want to be in a relationship? - i don’t really know anymore

how was your day? - okay, what about yours?

are there any fictional universes you would not want to be in? - the hunger games, divergent, or the lunar chronicles series bc i’d get killed in literally all three

what fictional character do you relate to the most? - right now it’s eliza from eliza and her monsters, bc i bottle myself up in my room and draw my life away

who hurt you last? - relationship-wise: my ex. heart-wise: my papa

[ixnova]

yes, i agree, but these people in this post are not eating 25 twinkies a day.

Videogames: you can choose from twenty different eyelashes!!!! oh but you can’t be fat

[mumuonmission]

Gospel Freedom

True Christians won’t deny the freedom in the Gospel for salvation. We believe in the one true Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel that Jesus is God and that He came in the form of a human to live and die for our sins, resurrected and ascended back into Heaven leaving those who believe with the Holy Spirit. But how often do we apply the Gospel to our every day lives? How often do we live out the assurance in Christ in our daily troubles?

Jeff Vandersvelt would say that we’re all unbelievers at times, whether our hearts are regenerate or not. If you're like me, you’ve lived more years without knowing the Gospel than knowing, so the Gospel may still be a foreign language. What does it look like to live Gospel-centered lives where we not only know the Gospel, but we believe in it, and apply it? Vandersvelt says, “A life of true living is a life of faith in Jesus, a life of believing in Jesus in the everyday stuff of life.”

Being Gospel fluent is first believing in the Gospel and God’s power to make us more & more like Him through faith in Jesus. That is sanctification.

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:16-18

Paul speaks of the glory of Jesus being greater than the glory of the old covenant. My pastor once told me, “a sinner isn’t someone who breaks the law, for that would mean the opposite is following the law. A sinner is someone who doesn’t believe.” We have all struggled with unbelief even after being saved. We are Christians not because we abstain from sin, but because we believe in Jesus. We believe we are saved through faith in Christ through grace alone. (Ephesians 2:1-10) We maintain that salvation through that same faith in Christ. (Galatians 3:1-6) Salvation lives in us, therefore we live in freedom. God will give us the belief to behold Him, and through Him, He changes us. Believing in the Gospel is living in freedom.

Gospel fluency = Gospel freedom

We need to preach the Gospel to: -ourselves to fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:10-12) -other believers to encourage one another as long as today is called today (Hebrews 3:12-14) -unbelievers because it is the Great commission and it is the natural response to any good news we receive, to share it! (Matthew 28-18-20)

Here is a practice from “Gospel Fluency” to help you rehearse the Gospel. 1. Who is Jesus? 2. What did Jesus do? 3. What must we do? 4. What happens to us?

Take the time to think and write down the answers whether you’re doing this your self or with a group of people.

Here are some examples of what me and my friends came up with:

1. Who is Jesus fully man-fully God son of God sacrifice for our sins/wrath satisfying sacrifice - propitiation savior perfect man who lived a perfect life

2. What did Jesus do? atonement for our sins died on the cross resurrected made disciples abolished the law set us free comfort us turned enemies into friends got us adopted into the family healed the sick casted our evil spirits ascended into Heaven intercedes for us

3. What must we do?

confess our belief confess our sins repent believe get baptized

4. What happens to us?

we are no longer slaves to fear/sin. we’ve been set free. we’re children of God God lives in us we live on mission to make disciples

This exercise helps you break down the Gospel, now to apply it! If we believe in this Gospel freedom, we must respond to our every day issues with it. We must fight the fight of faith by believing in Jesus over any sin and area of doubt. A constant repentance (not just turning from sin-but what we believe in our sin) and trusting Jesus. We’re called to not only believe this but to share this. It is so easy to respond to the problems of others with our flesh. Sometimes we just straight up want to tell our friends unwise advice out of our emotions. But sometimes we mean well & try to give good advice but end up giving surface level “religious” advice. I don't think twice about telling my friend to leave a bad boyfriend or even give motivational weight-loss tips to a friend who complains about being fat. Both of these solutions aren't completely bad. They may actually be needed, but without the assurance of the Gospel your friend will not defeat their sin or live in their freedom. Good results do not equal Gospel freedom. How do we communicate in a way that not only leads to good results, but the belief that Jesus is better?

This Gospel Fluency link has several tools to apply and teach it to others, but I’ll share one way you can address everyday issues with the Gospel.

“What’s the question? Jesus is the answer. What’s the problem? Jesus is the solution.” -Tim Chester/Steve Timmis

To practice being be fluent in the Gospel you must take your life issues & speak Jesus (who He is & what He did for you) over it. You do this by identifying your sin & replacing it with the truth-the assurance you have in the Gospel. The night I taught Gospel Fluency to my friends, I did an exercise using several fictional characters with issues. We highlighted the character’s issues and spoke directly to each one with the truth of the Gospel. That night exposed how easy it is to know the Gospel but not know how to clearly apply it. That night was also hard for me because hours before I received bad news that made me feel like I wasn’t worthy to share the Gospel-lies of all lies.

I was at my desk trying to pay off my late fall semester fees and register for spring classes. I knew I had a hold on my account for my past dues, but what I didn’t know was that I was on academic suspension. My heart was crushed. My journey to finish undergrad has been trying to say the least. No point of discussing all the stress, foolishness, anxiety, etc. that has brought me to my 8th year. But this hurt more than other time I’ve failed in life because I was really trying to get it together. This was the year I finally got help and addressed the issues Ive been living in secret about. This was the year I was supposed to focus on school and love my family more than ever. I immediately broke down. I feared disappointing my family, mainly my parents. All they want for me is to make good grades, graduate, and have a successful job. I felt ashamed. I was ashamed of not only the amount of years I’ve been in school, but now the fact is that number is only getting higher. In my fear and embarrassment, I told myself I can’t teach that night. After about an hour of crying, I told myself I need to fix this. I stopped lying to my parents, so I knew I couldn’t hide this. I decided I was going to come up with this long detailed plan about how I was wrong and how I would work to be back in school and be better than ever. (religion) After another hour of crying and feeling shame, I realized that I had to surrender my thoughts & actually believe this message I was going to teach these ladies.

So I prayed, cried & asked God to make my heart believe. & because I’m more hands on, I took out some paper and decided to do the lesson I was going to do with the ladies on myself. On the left side I wrote out my issues (what I was believing instead of Jesus).

1. school/suspension - I believed that my joy and success was in graduating according to my time.

2. fear of my parents and embarrassment/shame from others - I believed in the approval of people-mainly my parents.

3. detailed plan to fix this - I believed in my own efforts in doing better and getting the approval

4. not wanting to teach the Gospel - I believed in my own righteousness that makes me worthy

Then on the right side of my issues I wrote down the truth in the Gospel.

1. My joy comes from Christ alone. Worldly success comes and goes and is relative. True success is what Jesus did on the cross. I am able to rejoice in that accomplishment because through faith His grace abounds in me. I can finish school in Jesus name, but I can not make it lord over my life.

  2. God saw me as enemy and through Christ He has called me a friend, a child, co-heirs, beloved, Holy, righteous, etc. I am approved by God. He loves me and He is never ashamed of me.

3. Salvation is a gift of God. I don’t need to work to earn God’s salvation or His approval. It is not my work or efforts that make me better. It is from God and through God, that I’m being made better. The grace in salvation leads me to do good works not the other way around. I don’t work for the approval or from my own strength. I depend on God’s strength and believe in Christ’s righteousness as my own approval.

4. The Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ not the good news of me. I could never earn salvation or be worthy of being a messenger of salvation off of my good works. I am worthy because Jesus was worthy and when God sees me He sees Christ. I don’t share a message that gives life b/c I am good, but because He is good. His righteousness makes me worthy.

God broke me down, just to pick me up in His Gospel love. & In His abundant grace upon grace, He allowed my parents to share in His unconditional love for me at a time I was ready for them to insult me. 

I can only walk in His Gospel freedom if I believe in this Gospel freedom. 

This is one of many issues I deal with everyday. Not including the issues friends, family, co-workers, strangers bring to me. Will we be messengers of freedom or messengers of false hope? I cringe at alllllll times I have spoke “religious repentance” to myself and others. Telling people the truth of the Bible, but with the fear and motivation not to fall short. 

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The Gospel sets us free from our shackles, yet we continue to put them back on ourselves. The Gospel has opened the doors of our prison cell, but we sit and try to figure out how we can escape. THE DOOR IS OPEN. We must believe the door is open and walk in our freedom.

It is hard. It’s hard when the world doesn't believe in Jesus. When they can’t trust Christianity because their eyes are blind, hearts are of stone, and “Christians” don’t show the love of Christ. It’s hard when you're in community with believers who believe in punishment and calling out your sins over bearing and loving one another. It’s hard when you go to sleep in tears because you don’t believe God is pleased with you. Gospel freedom is not only believing but changing this culture of fear and condemnation. We’re called to preach and show this Gospel of love, hope, and assurance to ourselves, other believers, and non-believers. It will be awkward, uncomfortable, different, scary, etc. but it is not in our own power. 

Paul reminds Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:7 that, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” He says this to encourage him in his faith in the Gospel through the Holy Spirit. He continues in verses 8-14, “therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.”

We have to know the Gospel like we know English. We have to believe in this Gospel like our lives depend on it. We simply surrender. And when we don’t believe we cry out, “Jesus is better, make my heart believe.” I can’t get over the verses, “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom!” I can say it and sing with the hope and assurance because He lives in me! I am free!

Believe. Share the Gospel. Change the culture. 

Tools to practice on yourself & with others---> Gospel Fluency resources: 

http://www.gcmcollective.org/article/gospel-fluency/

http://saturatetheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Excerpt-Gospel-Fluency.pdf