#even though like me if you don't want year old spoilers you might just avoid the tag like the plague

[my-dear-ceramic-frogs]

Just caught up on Doctor Who and I feel unwell

Regenerations are always so saaaad ahhh those lesbians are making me cry lol no

[ghost-proofbaby]

GHOOOOST as much as maroon has taken over every single brain cell of mine, i can’t seem to stop thinking about 24 hours!eddie and reader lately! they still got me on a chokehold!

i was just thinking, like in the long run, were they endgame? i know they’re head over heels for each other but like.....are they in it for the long haul? what would happen if like the topic of getting married or having kids was brought up, how are they both going to react? 👀

i’m not asking or forcing you to write a blurb out of this or anything so please don’t feel pressured, i’m genuinely just curious about their lore!!! 😭 and i also miss them so much lmao might end up re-reading the series again while waiting for the next maroon chapter ❤️❤️❤️

anyway i luv u and i hope you’re having a great day!

wanna know a secret? they definitely still live rent free in my mind as well.

they were definitely end game in the long haul of things. in my mind, it's actually funny, because i've thought about them watching their friends constantly getting into relationships and those relationships constantly ending, and yet they're still there and going strong as ever while everyone is just like "...what the fuck?"

nancy and johnathan would probably end up breaking up in the twenty four hours universe. that's actually canon based on a sequel idea i had. like, we're talking not very long after the events of the main fic. nancy would go to reader and probably rant in the midst of her heartbreak "i just don't get it. i thought me and johnathan - we were gonna make it, you know? i thought we had the perfect relationship. and, no offense, but compared to you and eddie, we did." (which she obviously doesn't mean, but she's just hurt and projecting. we all know nancy was a number one reader x eddie shipper). and reader could grow insecure about it and overthink, but when she ends the day getting to gossip all about it to eddie, he just scoffs and said "excuse me? what the hell does that mean? out of spite, we're definitely gonna end up growing old together. gonna mock them from across the retirement home as i kiss all your wrinkles. that'll show them." and she's just reminded that, oh, yeah. it doesn't matter what other people think. this is her idiot for the long haul. and spoiler: it isn't spite keeping them together. it's the way eddie looks at reader like she painted the night sky just for him. it's the way eddie is the first person reader wants to talk to in nearly every scenario, the way he's the first person her eyes draw to in every room no matter how crowded. they bicker endlessly, they aren't always acting the most lovesick and nauseatingly affectionate with each other in front of others, and there's certainly been plenty of fights where the gang holds their breath for the announcement of a breakup, but they always find a way to make it through. always. they're one of those couples, ya know?

and i could also ramble about the whole marriage/kid discussion, but i actually had a short one shot about it i wanted to write! i think i've avoided posting any of the excess content i had planned for them because i don't want to beat a dead horse, you know? it's been over a year now, and even though i love and adore them, i don't want to seem like i'm milking that universe haha. if that's something y'all would like to see now even though it's been so long, i am finally out of my funk with writing them and could probably post some of those one shots! especially because the way they go about conversations like kids/marriage is so fuckin funny to me.

i luv you even more, and hope you have the most wonderful of days, friend <3 thank you for not letting one, but TWO??? of my stories take up residency in your thoughts. it means the world to me and i'm giving you all the hugs and forehead kisses <3

[aangarchy]

Tbh it's just Tumblr tag culture to tag all sorts of spoilers? Because we can't just assume everyone had the previlege and luxury to have had access to the internet and to consume fiction media as it came out..... Like my case may be extreme but my family was literally too busy squatting and living as ~illegals~ so we could never have an internet or cable connection for like 8 years. So I've got A LOT of catching up to do on pop culture etc and maybe one of my followers was in the same or a similar situation? Anyway that's how Tumblr works, we just tag spoilers because it doesn't cost anything and it doesn't ruin the experience of people who were too living too unstably, people who lived in rehabilitation centers, people who weren't allowed to consume certain media because of their parents, people who've put off watching a show because of a particular trauma or squick but who still want to watch it eventually etc

Okay now you're just being fucking annoying. Why are you tying your personal sobstory/trauma to something as stupid as TAGGING A POST. It's not even a tw tag either (bc if it was then i would understand) it's literally just my POV on when spoiler tags should and shouldn't be used.

Let me simplify this One more time. Tagging for spoilers on tumblr only works if everyone collectively does it. That way people can block said spoiler tag for a set amount of time, so everything tagged with #(content) spoilers will not show up on their TL. Example: new season of sex education dropped. People are tagging their posts about S4 with #sex education s4 spoilers, or just #sex education s4 because most people who don't want to get spoiled will have those tags blocked. That's how the tag system works. Everyone needs to do it, otherwise spoilers will still show up. People especially did this when avengers infinity war and endgame dropped respectively, bc those fandoms are very serious abt spoilers.

For atla there is NO USE in tagging spoilers because NOBODY DOES IT ANYMORE. This show is older than a lot of you on this fucking app. If you decide to go through the atla tag on tumblr, or follow atla blogs, you WILL get spoiled even if you have the spoiler tag blocked because i can't think of a single atla blog i follow that tags their fucking spoilers nowadays.

I'm not saying you're not allowed to tag spoilers. In fact i have never once said the words "don't tag atla spoilers". What i am saying, is that it's redundant to do so and it kind of makes you look stupid because, again, fucking DUH!

Once again you people are pretending like the internet needs to follow YOUR rules. "Oh people might not watch now bc of a trauma and might still want to enjoy the show later" ok and? Don't go following or reblogging atla blogs before you've even watched then, bc you WILL GET SPOILED. You're responsible for creating your own internet experience. I haven't watched sex ed s4 yet so i blocked the spoiler tags and for good measure i'm not scrolling the main tag either, because i don't rely on other internet users to do the work for me (even though i don't rlly care that much abt spoilers for that show). When heartstopper s2 came out i couldn't watch for two days bc of work, so i avoided everything to do with that show until i watched. That way i didn't accidentally get spoiled by someone who forgot to tag or just doesn't tag.

(Like i said this is different for tw tags, like tw flashing or tw gore or tw sexual assault. Those are things everyone absolutely must tag for the safety of everyone online. I would not want to be responsible for someone having a seizure bc i didn't tag a gifset with tw flashing)

This is my opinion on spoiler tags. It leans into my opinion on spoiler culture as a whole tbh but i digress. Once again: you can tag whatever you want. I just personally find it redundant and i'm allowed to make fun of it. I'm not making fun of YOU, i'm making fun of the concept of tagging spoilers for something that's nearly 20 yrs old. Hence the star wars spoiler joke i made, or when someone in the tags said someone got mad for spoiling fucking titanic (which is hilarious bc that's a historical event lmao).

This is the last i'll say about it bc honestly you're just pissing me off now. I'm allowed to enjoy posting about my show without having to pay mind to people who haven't watched yet but might in the future.

[dirtytransmasc]

I'm both a sentimental creature and a creature of habit, and if I like a piece of media, I will keep going back to it for literal years.

which leads me to my current breakdown; rereading a book I read in 6/7th grade, Orbiting Jupiter. (I reread it at least once a year, key word at least, cause I can't even tell you how many times I've read it, purely to torture myself)

if you haven't read the book, do it, even if it has a really basic reading level, it's such a good read, if not soul shattering (I've seen people say it's not sad, and um, if your one of those people, die or something, cause it's heartbreaking). I would look up a tw list online though, cause even if the topics at hand are told from the innocent prospective of a 11/12 year old most of the time, there's still a lot of shit going on from teen pregnancy, extreme abuse, implied SA (I'm my interpretation, and not related to the teen pregnancy), to major character death. sometimes I question why I was given this book so young (it was one of the mandated reading options)

so spoilers, cause I need to rant.

there's so many parts of this book I can't get over, like the whole thing destroyed me, but I just let the realization sink in, that Joseph never got to hold his daughter, never got to touch her, to even see her in person. the best he got were some photos and a few letters from her foster mother, but he never got to actually hold his baby.

he spent months trying to get to Maddie, months trying to get to Jupiter, all for him to never see either of them ever again. the actions he took to get to them only cause him pain and suffering; he got sent to group homes were he was abused/neglected, he got cut on the fence, he got sent to stone mountain (where he was practically tortured). he ran away during a blizzard, just to find his baby, and it was for nothing.

then once he accepted that, that he wouldn't meet his daughter, when he he decided the photos and the letters were enough, when he let himself be embraced by his new family, when he started to find his place in school, when he was starting to actually live again: his dad came back and killed him.

he traded his life for his brothers, got in that truck, most likely with the gut feeling he would never see jack again (worst part is, is that he thought his dad would shoot him and then himself if they got caught by police rather then go to jail/Joseph going back to the Hurds) only to have his dad drive them onto an out bridge. like I imagine him already terrified, having to watch as his dad drove into the bridge (after hitting another car off the road) knowing they would go through. he couldn't get out, he was stuck with the man who ruined his life in his last moments, as he drowned slowly in the ice cold water, knowing he would never see any of his family, his teachers, the cows, his daughter, ever again. he wouldn't be with Jackie anymore. his only respite would be that he would be with Maddie again. but even then, he was 14/15, he was jusb a baby, he had to be scared. Joseph might have had a lot go wrong in his life, but he didn't want to die, not anymore at least, and his life was taken from him by his scum father just when he got it back together.

the there's Mr. Hurd, I feel so bad for that man. he loved Joseph, even if they don't talk a lot about the parents, they talk about him enough for me to know Joseph was his son the second he saw him. even when Joseph tried to avoid his love, to distance himself from the family, to deny himself connection, Mr. Hurd still saw him as his son. he had to watch as his son was taken away from him, with the hope that he would get him back, that they would catch his father and all would be well again, and could finally have the peace of knowing that man was behind bars. instead he had to carry his son's dead, freezing cold, soaking wet body from the pickup truck his dad bought with the money he got from practically selling Jupiter (Joseph's daughter) to the adoption agency. he had to come to terms with the fact he failed to protect his son, that he let him be taken away in hopes it would protect both of his sons (he let Joseph lead his father away so he would leave jack, the younger son, behind) and it got one of them killed.

and don't even get me started on jack. this poor kid, he loved Joseph, like he said, they weren't just friends, they were brothers. despite being younger, he was protective of Joseph, getting into fights for him, going into frozen rivers for him, walking to school everyday instead of taking the bus so he didn't walk alone, damn near giving up his friends for Joseph, insisting that he was his brother and not a freak or a nut job or any other cruel name the world threw at him. he loved Joseph, in the pure, whole hearted, sincere way a little kid loves their big brother. he looked up to him, he had his back and knew Joseph had his, they were best friends all the while. and Jack now lives with the fact that Joseph died to save him, that he gets to watch Jupiter grow, to do all the things Joseph should have, to just see her, while he never will. he literally helped lower his brothers casket "into our family, by the high white pines", like please, have mercy on me.

this book breaks me every time, but I'm still it's bitch, crawling back against and again go go through that heart break.

[abqbox]

Fuck espn!

I can't watch live nhl playoff games unless I pay for a cable or satellite package that includes espn. Even though I paid them money directly to have espn+ streaming and have been very happy without any cable package for over a decade.

Then I have to deal with an insane 48 hour delay for location based blackouts. Again, even though I'm paying money to have a streaming service to watch the games.

And it only keeps old games available to be selected to watch for less than a week, sometimes if there are a lot of games it's more like three or four days is all before an older game is gone. Which means I have a game I want to stream available for sometimes only one or two days. In a world of streaming, two months would seem ridiculously short, and under the previous nhl streaming package, I could watch any game from the current season at any time.

Also gone are the extended highlights packages that were a part of the nhl streaming package in past years. These were the highlights of the game condensed down to about 10 to 15 minutes and were absolutely great to catch up with things going on around the entire league. Much better than the espn highlight show which seems to have been received so poorly that I don't think they're even making them anymore, they are certainly not in the streaming menu like they used to be.

But the absolute most horrible and annoying total piece of shit is spoilers. I understand if I watch a game the concept that I might possibly not want to know the results and scores of other games that happened at the same time is so far beyond the ability of espn to comprehend that I just accept they will give spoilers for other games and I'm forced to decide which game each day I don't want to have spoiled to watch that one first.

But here is the streaming menu on espn+ that I have to use to select and watch any game. You'll notice I covered up descriptions and part of the screenshots of the "related videos". I did that because those highlight descriptions give away the game results.

I have the app/channel on my roku set to not show game results, though I have no idea what that does because they absolutely insist on displaying game results that there is no way for me to avoid having displayed on my screen while selecting a game to watch!

And all of this is before even addressing the quality of the coverage and especially the announcers. It's a noticeable step down from most local broadcasts and even worse compared to Canadian coverage or even the old nbc coverage.

NHL and especially espn, this is badly not working for me and as the world continues to move more and more to streaming and away from traditional cable services the amount of your TV audience having these same exact frustrations and issues will only increase until you fix them or people give up on watching the league, at least through legal routes.

[bootlickerhawks]

I don't know if it is a bit too late but could you do AFO for the character ask game? I just want to hear your thoughts about him.

/!\ 900 words of Pure Salt under the cut /!\

Hoo boy where to even begin...

AFO is a character that worked really well at the start of BNHA but now, the more time he spends on screen the more he drags the story down :/

AFO falls under the very hard to execute character archetype "all according to my keikaku" (i know there's an official name for it but shh) . These types of characters only work well when the plan is comprehensible and "simple". Allow me to elaborate with one of the best executed, imo, example: Sousuke Aizen. 

(spoilers for Bleach and more specifically the Soul Society arc, skip the orange text to avoid spoilers)   

Aizen completed 2 key steps that allowed the rest of his plan to run smoothly: he managed to hypnotize all the captains and lieutenants with his "shikai presentation" and he assassinated central 46 who serve as the judicial authority in Soul Society. So while the rest of his plan is complex it's believable for the readers because of the 2 key steps I mentioned.   

To the reader’s knowledge, AFO’s plan for the longest time was to troll All Might, recover and gather more quirks, and most importantly, to raise Tomura to be the Symbol of Fear. Now we know that raising Tomura was a facade in order to body snatch him because he needs “hatred” to obtain OFA. Also he wants to become the Übermensch Capitalist Demon Lord… cuz of Reasons. 

The problem with AFO isn’t his plan, that’s fine it’s boring but serviceable, the problem is that he makes decisions that work against his own interests. Let’s list some:

He refuses to take BJ’s quirk because it “wouldn’t suit Tomura” even though he planned on taking over Tomura’s body anyway. (I will concede that this one is nitpicky because it’s likely Hori hadn’t fully committed to the bodysnatch plotline and wanted to keep his doors open.) 

For some inconceivable reason he doesn’t take Overhaul (the quirk). This becomes especially bizarre if you take into account the theory that Chisaki was one of the kids in Ujiko’s orphanages. AFO wouldn’t have lost against All Might in the fight 5 years ago if he had had Overhaul! He would have been able to heal himself! And even if you disregard that theory, why take a risky gamble with Rewind now when he could have just taken Overhaul during the prison break?!!!!   

Hori is good at writing perceptive and observant characters (Izuku and Bakugou being good examples of this), but, and what I’m abt to say isn’t meant to disparage Horikoshi but uh… he’s not the best at writing smart characters. 

A good example of this is Hawks’ coded message to Endeavor. Full offense to Skeptic but if I was in charge of surveilling Hawks I would have known right away that something was up when Hawks kept insisting that Endeavor read the “highlighted parts” of the manifesto in chapter 245. Plus Hawks’ code was basic af but that could be explained away by Hawks’ thinking that Endeavor’s an idiot.  

Other examples include Deku’s revelation to start kicking instead of punching, and Endeavor’s advice to *checks notes* “learn to multitask”. 

Hori frames these instances as being a lot more clever than they really are. And honestly that’s fine, at the end of the day they’re just small plot points. But it does show Hori’s difficulty writing intelligent characters, which becomes a problem when writing a character like AFO. He's supposed to be smarter than the rest of the cast, he's supposed to have planned for every contingency and yet, as I’ve pointed above, he makes stupid mistakes which makes that hard to swallow.

But of course this isn’t where our problems end! AFO biggest crime isn’t murder, or kidnapping or grooming a traumatized child to be his sockpuppet. No no no no… his biggest crime is that he’s BORING AS HELL 😩

What do we know about AFO? 

He’s over 100 years old

He had a little brother and he still has hang ups about him 

He’s a petty manipulative egomaniac 

He won’t shut up abt a comic book he read with his brother as a kid 

This would be fine if he weren’t the Final Fucking Villain! 

And to add salt to the wound AFO’s continued existence has deprived us of the best character in bnha, Shigaraki, for over 50 chapters. 

This is the part where I feel conflicted. Because it does make sense for AFO’s character to refuse to relinquish his empire to Shigaraki. It makes sense for AFO, an egomaniac from a bygone era, to refuse to move on.  

I’ve seen people argue that it ruins the parallels between All Might/Deku and AFO/Shigaraki. And I can definitely understand that argument but it makes more sense than if AFO just gave everything away to an immature, at the time, kid that he groomed. 

So on a textual level I’m fine with the plot development of AFO Norting Shigaraki but as a reader it’s frustrating to watch because AFO sucks on all levels :/ 

AFO used to be entertaining at least, throwing All Might’s catchphrase to his face during the Kamino fight was funny as hell. But recently he’s just been throwing quips around like an MCU character 🤮 “iN tHe oLd CoMic I uSeD tO rEaD tHeRe WeRe JoBbEr ChArAcTeRs WhO oNLy ExIsTeD So ThE dEmOn LoRd CoULd ShOw WhAt He WaS mADE Of” Someone pls rip his tongue out I’m begging 😭

It's a shame cuz there are conceptual aspects of AFO's character that I enjoy: his opportunistic nature, his pettiness, "oopsie daisy" as cringe as it is could have been better if Hori leaned more into AFO's old-timiness, even his stupid comic book references could have been a nice subversion of the typical "villain monologues and quotes classic literature" trope if executed better.

[lovelypurplefox]

Updates.

Sorry guys if I have been quiet.

I'm not on social media much like I used to. College is important to me and I've made some nice friends irl. I'm actually getting close to graduating which is exciting! I might graduate next year. I have an Anthropology midterm coming up and I'm so not ready for it. I recently typed up a 3-page paper early before the due date in February. Anthropology has a lot of reading... jeez... but I'm taking it for my Natural Science credit.

Besides college, I'm so behind on the games I've been playing. Like, I am way behind on part 2 of the Pokémon Scarlet DLC (I'm at the part where I have to battle the Elite four and when I saw that they were all double battle I couldn't do it; I'm currently making my team stronger and changing Pokémon in my team). And also, Detective Pikachu Returns. I think I'm on Chapter 5 (?) and haven't played since October, I believe. I just don't want to see spoilers on those games because I want to be surprised. I rarely play video games now; It feels like I'm tired of modern Pokémon games now. It's hard for me to get into stuff like that.

Even getting into newer anime is hard too. I've been watching old anime, some which are currently getting fansubs including Magical Taruruuto-kun and Dr. Slump. I don't hate modern anime, I still watch them such as Demon Slayer & the recently released Shaman King Flowers (it's good so far).

I'm super excited (and worried?) about Dragon Ball Daima. I really hope this time, Launch returns. I wonder if they will make her into a kid like the others. It would be so funny seeing kid Blonde Launch with a gun and using it so well. I think we're supposed to get new info this week. Fingers crossed for my girl returning! She already made a cameo in Super Dragon Ball Heroes last year. And I hope she appears as a playable character in the new fighting game. She's playable... in 2 mobile games: Dokkan and Legends but she needs to be in a REAL fighting game.

I know I haven't been interacting and checking my timeline because I'm just busy now and I want to avoid spoilers on stuff I love. I just post my art on my sideblog and reblog it here and leave. But if I ever get the chance, I will come back to checking my timeline and reblogging other's posts. I miss you guys though.

My ask box is currently closed, but check back again if I ever open it; I love reading your asks!

Take care! :)

[ollieoliver910]

September Nintendo Direct Predictions

I'll go ahead and say it. I'm not expecting too much with this direct. Not to say there won't be any surprises, but remember. The Switch is on it's way out. So I expect that they won't announce, let's say, a new Animal Crossing game before the next console drops (Though to be perfectly honest with you. ACNH was such a massive failure when it came to its life span that I wouldn't be surprised if they created a new one for the next consoles launch. Even if it's a few years down the line.)

With that being said. Any games I predict for this direct (despite the leaks. Nintendo, how does this keep happening) are just guesses and speculation, but if there is one game that NEEDS to come out if it's true that this "switch 2" might have backwards compatibility...

It's Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door Remastered.

This is a game I can see Nintendo announcing towards the end of the switches life since so many people, myself included, want it so unbelievably badly. I'm in a state right now where just having them remaster it into HD and tweaking a few things here and there is enough. It would be cool if they added new modes somehow to the game, but I wonder if these modes would make TTYD better or worse by comparison. That being said, as long as they keep everything intact and don't pull a Brilliant Dimond and Shinning Pearl on us when it comes to redesigning everything (seriously, if they do that I will fucking cry), then we should be all set to go.

That's the only game I really, really want right now, but there are other things I hope for that I am unsure right now will be released on The Switch or the next gen console.

Fire Emblem Genealogy of The Holy War

As long as they don't purposely add an avatar to this game, it's already a 10/10 for me. I'm not sure if GOTHW will be announced on the switch. They might wait until the next system, but take it from me. Engage was such a disappointment in many ways. It would be good for intelligent systems to go back to there old roots for a game or two as they try to figure out what fans want from the franchise next...even if they clearly don't listen to feedback very well...and it shows.

I won't speak much about how amazing the plot of GOTHW is (though, regrettably, intelligent systems made the STUPID decision to spoil a huge plot point of that game during the first few chapters of Engage. Possibly knowing that this remake might be coming out. Why. Why would you do that. What a stupid thing to do.) However, if this game exists, avoid spoilers like the plague! I promise you, you won't regret it. It deserves to be remade and remastered for all audiences. Again, rumors say it does exist, so I guess we will have to wait and see.

As far as other games that I feel would fit well here during the end of the switches life. Pretty much anything from the gamecube area that can be remastered would work well here. I will, regrettably say, that I don't agree with the hype revolving around Wind Waker and Twilight Princess when it comes to paying for the games again...for $60. I get it if your a mega Zelda fan, but recharging two games that came out so long ago for a higher price just feels scummy to me. I'm sorry, that's just how I feel, but if your excited for it and are willing to pay for the games again (maybe even for the third time) I'm happy for you.

At the moment, I can't think of any new games that I would want personally since any new installments I feel are being saved for the switch 2. Animal crossing, fire emblem, and of course Metroid Prime 4 are all francises that just had their games come out, or a long period of time has passed and the games are more than likely being planned for the next system. I don't blame them, I would wait too, but again. I guess we have to wait and see.

I'll be working during the direct because of course I am, so I might not be able to see what's happening in real time, but as far as Nintendo announcing the next system here...

Maybe?...Idk, we will find out tomorrow.

(Want to reiterate before anyone gets confused.)

I have no problems at all with games like TTYD or F-Zero being remastered with fast improvements as long as there is some substantial changes to them in some way. Especially is it's a game that hasn't seen the light of day for many, many years.

Rereleasing Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on almost every system since their release and charging more for them is scummy to me. Honestly, unless they add new modes, new areas, or anything in general to these titles. All they're really doing is upgrading the graphics every console, maybe add some tweaks to the game...and that's it.

Remastering a game that you can't find anymore vs a game that has been re-released and remastered every new console is very different. Again, some people might be happy to buy Twilight Princess again for a third time, maybe (I think) forth time. Again, I am not one of them. I'm sorry, there has to be another way around this.

[stormy333]

Day Four!

Welcome to Day Four!

Best childhood memory? This is the question of today. Oh dear this is going to be interesting! Let's get into it. 

Honestly I can't choose between these two specific memories so I am going to tell you both of them because both of them are hilarious and made such an impact on me, well one of them made more of an impact on my poor brother. Anyways we'll start with that one since I just gave a tiny spoiler.

Memory #1

Let's go back in time. It was a christmas morning I think I was like 3 or 4, you'll have to bear with me here it was over a decade ago. We always went to my grandma and grandpa's house on christmas after opening our gifts at the house. This particular memory is actually on video somewhere I just have to find it again but anyway. This year Our grandparents got me and my brother power wheels. I got a princess car with Ariel, Cinderella and Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty decaled on it and my brother got a dirt bike. Totally amazing but oh my gosh I was honestly a really evil sister okay? My brother is four years older than me and ya know I'm glad that now we're older the past is the past but honestly this story will probably be a warning from him to his kids about me and my kids. 

So anyway we were all excited about these and grandma and grandpa had this nice big yard with one of those old well pumps in the middle of it. Gosh, this place was the dream and the best part was that my Grandparents, mom and aunts, and uncles rebuilt it when they first moved in? I think if I remember correctly. So anyways I loved the house and the yard it was dreamy. But thats not the memory we're going for here. Back to the story. 

After we got our power wheels we took them for a spin. Do you guys see where this might be going? Well if not then trust me um this gets... interesting? 

So we're both driving along having fun and everyone's watching us. Somewhere along there I got an evil idea. And this is on film! My brother and I were about to cross paths, I could have swerved to avoid him. He was coming from one side of the well and I was coming from the other. When I saw him coming I floored that little princess car and t-boned my poor brother! and then that's not even the worst part I kept going! My mom, grandma, and aunt all trying to get me to stop and all the guys my dad, my grandpa, and uncles all laughing because what kind of little girl does a hit and run and laughs about it? 

All I have to say is thank God I'm a better driver now than I was as a kid.

Memory #2

This memory takes place when I was a bit older than the christmas one, I don't actually remember a lot of details from this one but I remember enough of it to share it.

Okay so heres the deal before we took over the church that my dad pastored there was another pastor and family (Obviously) but I grew up in that specific church so I was best friends with the pastors youngest daughter because she was closest to my age. This happened at their lake house when I was having a sleepover with my friend. So onto the memory. 

I'm low key scared of small boats. What does that have to do with anything? Well heres the deal my friends brother, she was the youngest of three, the brother was the oldest. Well the brother took me and my friend out on the lake. Now I don't remember what inspired this little adventure onto the lake but I do very clearly remember us getting stuck in the middle of the lake with no paddles because of something happening to the motor? And I don't remember exactly but he was either telling us horror stories or shaking the boat or honestly maybe both? But I know by the time we got back home I was terrified, I don't know how we got back or if my friend was as scared as me but to this day I still can't get on a small boat. One thing's for sure though this story will be passed down to my kids just because looking back on it it's truly a great a memory.

I hope you all enjoyed the post, comment below your favorite memory if you want :)

Until next time Loves💙

[dark-ink-drinker]

Starting 2023 With...

I'm getting a slow start on my reading goals of 2023, already 2 weeks in and just finishing my first book. I think this might be a year of sequels and series-- because after this one I've got a couple others (The First to Die at the End by Adam Silvera, the sequel to They Both Die In the End; and The God of Lost Words and The Archive of th Forgotten by AJ Hackwith, the series started by The Library of the Unwritten.)

I think I mentioned last year that I'd been avoiding Colleen Hoover, assuming her popularity meant she was overhyped. Plus romance isn't really my thing... In theory at least, though subplot of a love story seems to be my very literal jam when reading. Anyway, maybe it was my mood or mental state the last half of last year, but I did actually enjoy the 3 books of hers I read, especially Reminders of Him and It Ends with Us. So, I was interested to see this sequel and more of Atlas and Lily's story. I won't like, I thought it was going to be a prequal based off the title so color me surprised to find out it takes place where It Ends with Us Left off.

I think the problem with sequels sometimes is that you're not getting anything new. The characters are who they are, who you already know. You may get new scenes, new perspectives, the other side of a story you already hard-- but the characters, the reactions, the results are exactly what you'd expect from them.

You get to see Lily as a mother, yes that's new. But she approaches motherhood with the same fear and care that you would expect from someone trying to break the cycle of abuse, who remembers what it was like to grow up witnessing her father's abuse of her mother and never wants her own daughter to experience the same.

And yes, while it is surprising that Atlas is as well rounded and levelheaded as he is given his own abusive childhood, he is the same well rounded and levelheaded man in this as he was in It Ends with Us. He's still as loyal and dedicated to his first taste of love, still the white knight who seems to be unfairly and unrealistically flawless.

My next statement has spoilers so stop reading here if you don't want anything, you know... spoiled.

The only big surprise was the reappearance of Atlas's absentee mother and, more importantly, the surprise that he has a 12-year-old brother, Josh.

But if you're hoping for a big surprise in what happens with that-- I'm sorry, Atlas handles it exactly how you'd expect someone as wonderful as Atlas to handle that, white knight savior complex and all.

Now I know all of this makes it sound like I didn't like it, or that I don't like Atlas. But I did like it... and I DO like Atlas. I rooted for him through the first book, desperate for Lily to choose her first love even when Ryle wasn't being a horrible excuse of a person.

Since I mentioned Ryle, let me take a moment to go off on a tangent that I probably should have on my first review but there was more of it in this book and it irked me more. Why Why Why did he get so much leeway for his horrible abusive behavior?! From Lily, from Alyssa, from Marshall-- everyone. In the first book, I thought maybe it was to show the layers of life, situations, relationships... that sometimes things aren't black and white. But to know his sister and brother-in-law/best friend don't step in and make him accountable for his own behavior. Ryle spends all his time after every tantrum blaming Lily, or her relationship with Atlas instead of his own issues. Instead of taking action to fix his own shit. And in It Starts with Us, when Lily wants to set some ground rules with Ryle at their family dinner, Alyssa and Marshall do BARE MINIMUM to support Lily and she cries over their support... WTF.

Anyway, back to the main point-- I did like this book despite my criticisms. It's a good book for people who always want a little more, who wonder what comes after the last page, or who like to have a crisp clean ending leaving nothing to imagination.

It was soft and warm and tied everything up in a nice, neat bow. It gave the readers everything they could want-- the love story, the moving in, the wedding, the ready-made family, the dream come true...

and they lived happily ever after.

I did love that Atlas wrote Lily letters, the way she wrote to her diary 'Ellen' in the first book.

My favorite part was towards the end when Atlas and Josh are talking about Josh's father, on whether he deserved a second chance and his responsibilities as a father:

"It blows my mind that this man has you for a son, and you want to be in his life, yet he still hasn't made and effort. You're a privilege, Josh. Believe me, if I'd known you existed, I would have knocked over buildings to find you."

It was the only section that came close to drawing tears to my yes.

Sweet, delicate; a good, easy read-- but more than likely my last foray into Colleen Hoover's world

I gave it a generous 4 stars on Good Reads, but 3 1/2 is more accurate.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

[vynseducationalflagpole]

Deep affection

"Tears of Themis boys realizing they have a crush on you"

~

SPOILERS FOR VYN'S BACKSTORY(very subtle tho just his dad being boring)

Fluff (kind of angsty with Luke but only subtle~)

Gender neutral

There might be typos so-

A/N: This idea has been sitting in my notes app for a month theres mold surrounding it

--------

Vyn —

Vyn isn't the type to just fall inlove with someone. Especially since he swore not to have the same fate as his father. His father prioritizing his role as a duke to leave the one he loves—Vyn wishes to not be as pathetic as him. For as long as he remembers, Vyn had been avoiding every woman that had any romantic feelings for him. Despite all of his efforts, he's now sat on a couch a few spaces beside you just gently gazing at you as you have a talk with Kiki. Moments after, even as you've turned around to face him because Kiki told you that he was staring at you, Vyn still doesn't realize this. You stare into his eyes with shock with how gentle his expression looked. His shoulders relaxed and his eyes fixated on you. When you call his name however, he gets surprised but he quickly regains his composure and makes up an excuse to leave the premises. As he stands up to walk out the door, his steps seem a bit faster and you catch a glimpse of his red ears. 'Maybe it wouldn't hurt to reciprocate these feelings' Vyn thinks to himself as he sits on a chair in his study room.

—————

Artem —

For this one, you've recently been accepted in this lawfirm that was said to have one of the most outstanding attorneys, Artem Wing. As you and Celestine talked in the distance, he can't help but stare at you. The way your eyes light up as you look at Celestine with admiration was extremely adorable. But as he does so, Kiki also steals a look at Artem. 'Don't tell me the new recruit's gonna get fired on the first day?!' She thinks to herself but she then looks at you and quietly agrees that what she thought wasn't the case. For this first time, Artem goes to the cafeteria to get coffee despite him having a coffee maker in his own office. He goes there in hopes of bumping into you. 'Fortunately' for him though, you were also on your way to get some water. You first stood up from your seat to head to the cafeteria until you feel a sudden presence beside you. You immediately look at whoever is beside you only to see him. You were shocked for a bit but quickly got yourself together as you greet him with a slight bow. Artem asks you where you're headed and you calmly tell him. He smiles gently as he assures you that there's no need to be nervous. After he's gotten his coffee, he spots Celestine sitting on one of the chairs in his office. Until the end of his shift, he was relentlessly teased by Celestine after he saw Artem smile and manage to have small talk with you.

—————

Marius —

It normal for Marius to have many women tailing after him. I mean—who can ever ignore his good looks? The wealth he possess also helps become a factor of why women want him but you on the other hand, only acted as if he was a close friend of yours. It was an extremely refreshing feeling for him. In every moment that he's with you, he felt like he can let his walls down and just act like the 21 year old, Art aspiring Marius von Hagen. He knows that he sometimes goes overboard with his teasing with you but you still stayed with him. He started having doubts until you invite him out for dinner. Marius could've easily gotten the most appetizing dishes in the world but it's the thought that counts. Even before he has the chance to ask about the sudden invite, you ask him "Is there anything bothering you?" You ask with a tone with such worry buried in them. Marius puts on a bright smile and says that his assignments were just a bit weighing him down. Of course at the end of his sentence, he adds "Missy~ I didn't know you worried for me! I'm extremely touched." Despite his tone sounding like a tease, you just rub it off and continue to be in his company. Marius then smiles at you a bit more gentler now and just skips everything else as he asks you to be with him for eternity.

—————

Luke —

Ever since childhood, Luke had been talking about "Marrying you" or "Living beside you for eternity". Of course, he also promises to protect you forever. He'd be your knight in shining armor, your sunshine, you name it. Luke had been with you for the longest of time but he was just as far from you. From 16 years of being together you being without each other for 8 years. He fears that if he comes back to you, he'd receive sharp words from you but he also believes that you'd never do so. Now having finished the Restaurant case together, he now tries to fulfill every promise he's made with you. From baking cakes with you to buying you stuff that you wished you had as a child. Luke tries his absolute best to pay back all of the time he's spent far from your warm embrace. He's had countless dreams where you leave him for good but everytime he seems even the least bit upset around you, he's always faced with that worrisome face of yours. The way your hands cup his face with such precision and gentleness was just overwhelmingly good for him. The way that you always reassure him was just everything he needed to be content in life but he swears that he'll spend every second of it with you. Maybe if he's lucky, he can one day slip a precious metal ring on your finger as he now sets upon you his new vows that he promises to keep `till death do you apart.

~End~

A/n: HOLY SHIT I DID IT. ALL 4 OF EM WITH LONG PARTS I FEEL SO POWERFUL LMAODIAOODF

[olderthannetfic]

I recently started a new fandom with a canon mlm couple, beautifully executed, with really lovely chemistry and a heartbreaking arc so far. I was so excited. Now, people from an old fandom have started comparing them to the favourite fandom ship when they're completely different; in story, in relationship dynamic, in setting, in chemistry, in the way they talk. In every way. But fandom is shoe-horning this new pairing into the same tired old tropes. And they're making the black man into a huge, dominant character in some art/fic, and the white dude into a small, frail, twink. They're canonically the same size. If anything, the white dude is more thickly built.

Why do fandoms do this? Why is it so difficult to enjoy the chemistry and dynamics of what is actually there? Is this a common thing you have seen across lots of fandoms as someone with experience? It probably makes me a bad person, but as a gay guy, I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable in fandom as time passes. I block, I press the back button, but it seems to be so prevalent I might as well not bother.

--

Heh. Nice attempt to avoid spoilers, though I'm pretty sure I already know what this is. (And if I'm right, yes, I see why you don't want to spoil.)

Long story short, yes, this is extremely common.

--

There's a lot to unpack here, both about what's going on and about how you're perceiving it. Here are some thoughts:

Fandom constantly shoehorns new ships into the mold of a previous favorite. It's extremely annoying to fans who don't share a love of that prior dynamic and invisible to ones who do. Beware of thinking that your interpretation of this new dynamic is objective truth even if you're closer to canon than those other people are.

Big seme/small uke is a very common taste. So is dom who also literally tops in the sex position sense/sub bottom. People who aren't into this ultra common taste are often alienated by the fic/art output of a fandom.

"As a gay guy" meaning you think it's women doing this? Outsiders projecting onto people like you? I hate to tell you, but gay dudes' art for other gay dudes is constantly guilty of making the big one top and of being horny for racist stereotypes. It's fine to find the pattern uncomfortable and want to avoid it, but I would not assume the taste gap is just because you're a gay man or that none of these other people are.

That said, there does tend to be a genre difference between BL and geikomi, between slash fanfiction and gay lit from a gay press. Depending on your prior media diet, the particular way fandom is writing about this might feel especially new and jarring.

--

The "willowy, ethereal twink" nonsense is endemic to slash/BL fandoms.

The old Man from UNCLE tv series has two guys who are about the same age and height, but the very slightly smaller one is the sardonic Russian scientist panty-dropper in a black turtleneck and the slightly bigger one is the American agent in a suit. In fic, Illya is like 10 years younger, a thousand times willowier, and frequently badtouched by the villains. Napoleon is a rapist or a bland, supportive prop.

It's not because Illya is othered as a Soviet agent or because people hate Napoleon. It's because Illya has all the qualities that guaranteed he'd be fandom's favorite.

The Fave™ is the one who gets this treatment in any fandom.

Now, in terms of racism, choice of fave is absolutely not neutral. Some of that is fans. A lot of that is that casting is wildly racist.

Fave-ness tends to go along with being the Single Perfect Tear one in canon. It tends to go along with being a Beautiful Mess instead of a supportive friend. You're not going to get a canonical single perfect tear black woobie with an endlessly supportive white bestie very often. At best, you might get a beautiful mess next to beautiful messes of the same ethnicity or a canon where they're both a bit of a mess. It's the same kind of process where any crime show with a Genius and a babysitter always makes the woman or the POC the babysitter and the Genius a white man.

Seme/uke dynamics (let's call them that for the moment since this is something more than just who sticks it in or who's a dom) tend to pick the more emotional character for the uke. It might be the one who's more of an audience entry point POV character. It might be the more emotionally accessible one due to them talking more about feelings. Even in cases where the seme is a mess emotionally, they're often a "clam" whose secret insides we don't know that well at first.

Look at The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty and how one dude is the manic pixie dream guy and the other is the PTSD-ridden clam. Look at The Untamed with its compelling hot mess and stoic but secretly pining love interest. When it's a more BL-y canon, they tend to go ahead and cast for the body dimorphism this audience likes in the first place.

--

No, I don't love it either when fandom's choice of seme grows 2 feet for fan art and the uke is a waif, but it has always been a strong pattern. It comes from a lot of people having a taste for a certain kind of shorthand about dynamics.

I would bet, even without knowing what canon this is for sure, that the white one is more of an audience entry point or more of a manic pixie dream guy helping a more stoic guy open up.

That virtually guarantees some of this twisting of their dynamic in fanworks. This would still be true even if it were two white guys.

That doesn't mean you have to like it.

[starglow-xx]

(About the brother!atsushi) aRE YOU READING MY MIND MISS?! Because that has been on my mind for MONTHS. TYSM For writing it was amazing!! If you don't mind, may I request (if requests are open) atsushi, still an older brother, but with a sister that's 10-13 yrs old? It's totally fine if you don't wanna do it. Keep up the good stories, ily mwuah!

*sobs* you’re so kind thank youu 🤧🤧

i wrote this a bit differently i hope that’s okay anon! at first i planned for this to be mainly abt atsushi and the reader, but i decided to add in relationship hcs with the agency bc i ran out of ideas

if you guys liked this don’t worry! im planning a special part two for this one so be the look out for it hehe

atsushi with a tween! sister

ft. the armed detective agency

like in my baby sister hcs, you’re still the most important thing to him period

the two of you got picked up by dazai and kunikida when he was 18 (obviously) and when you were 12

for a 12 year old, you were a bit small bc of malnourishment (which makes atsushi feel so bad) so both dazai and kunikida thought you were a bit younger than you actually were

they assumed you were about 9-10ish

you and atsushi both share a favorite food !! chazuke :)

so when kunikida treated the two of you, he made sure you got more bowls bc like i mentioned above, he feels really bad that you were malnourished and under weight

(don’t bring this up but kunikida felt bad too hehe)

when dazai went with your brother to the warehouse, you were with kunikida

imagine the surprise of the other ada members when kunikida came in with a little girl dressed in rags that popped out from behind him

kenji was the one who vocalized his thoughts 

“kunikida-san you have a daughter?! wow! i didn’t know that! :D”

when you found out your brother was a tiger, you were a bit concerned but you were actually kind of excited

you were even more excited when you found out the two of you were going to be taken in by the agency

anything was better than the stupid orphanage

and besides!

you got a tiger for an older brother and a bunch of other super powered agents to take care of you! who could want anything else?

at your age, you’re very impressionable and can be influenced easily so atsushi makes sure to teach you more in depth of good morals and the importance of kindness

his heart swells with pride and relief when he catches you being kind to others

pride bc he’s proud that even after all the two of you have gone through, you still ended up being a good kid and having a bright view of the world

and relief bc he hasn’t failed as a big brother

pfftt like he could ever fail

but please, from time to time reassure him that he’s perfect and the only big brother that you’d ever want bc he rlly needs that kind of validation

with his salary and savings, he tries to buy nice things for you

what a sweetheart 🥺

he saw you eyeing that one dress at a store window? fast forward abt a week and half and it’s inside a pretty gift bag for you

you wanted to try that dessert from the nice bakery? that’s dessert after dinner at one point

but other than buying you things, he sets money aside for you

like all the time

(y/n), here have this, you might need it”

“but nii-san you just gave me—”

“take it”

#1 spoiler

also your #1 confidant and source of physical affection

you tell him anything and everything (except crushies and those kinds of things)

atsushi loves it when you talk abt your day and he can see the big smile on your face and the sparkle in your eyes

it gives him the strength to keep going 😖😖

the two of you aren’t as touch starved as you’d probably think, but that’s only bc the two of you had each other

in your opinion, no one can match the hugs of your big brother

and it got even better bc YAYY he has tiger arms now ٩(◕‿◕)۶

if you ask, he’d carry you around too hehe

you also get nightmares quite often so he’ll always be there ready to calm you down, talk if you need to, and rock you back to sleep

god i love him 🤧🤧

atsushi will do everything in his power to protect you and make sure you get to grow up happy, supported, and loved

port mafia attack? oop he’s already taking you to the nearest escape route

someone is starting to harass you? they just got suckered punched into the next week

you want to go out to have some fun? he’ll go ask the president for a day off

you’re not feeling well? he’ll take another day off and take care of you

whatever you want to do, he’ll do it with you! (as long as it’s within reason)

will always be your #1 supporter! and he’s the president of your fan club hehe

he loves you so so much and will do anything for you; your life and happiness will always be more important to him

you are his reason to keep going

agency head canons !!

atsushi is your big brother, but kunikida is most definitely some sort of father figure

everyone can see it

except kunikida of course

kunikida scolds you lightly if he thinks your manners need work or if you make a mess in the agency

you listen to him of course and in turn as some sort of a reward, he’ll give you pieces of stationary

he always gives you the nice, good quality kind and you’re over the moon

atsushi adores it when you come running to him showing your new notebook or fountain pen and blabbering what you’re going to do with it

sometimes it isn’t even as a reward for being a good child; he’ll just give it to you and he’ll say smth like “i noticed you’ve used up your last notebook quite quickly, so here’s another one” or “did you run out of ink? here have this then”

he usually has a soft spot for children in general, but he most definitely has a soft spot (or a thousand) for you

yosano is kind of like a motherly figure to you

she gives you the guidance a mother should and goes on shopping trips with you!

atsushi always gets dragged along by you, but he thinks it’s worth it seeing you look so happy

yosano being a doctor also tries to teach the things you should know, or things that would be helpful to you

she’ll teach you the basics of cooking, sewing, how to treat a cold/fever, etc

also gives you excellent advice 1000% of the time

“remember (y/n)-chan if someone hurts you come tell me and then i’ll chop them into—”

“yOSANO-SENSEI DONT TELL HER THAT—”

fukuzawa is like a father to most in the agency but you see him more as a grandfather figure

bi weekly tea and gossip sessions hehe

along with cat talk!

most of the time though, it’s just you talking and him listening to you, but the two of you enjoy it nonetheless

“and then kunikida-san ended up crashing into a pole and dazai-san started to laugh at him and i did too because it was really funny but we ended up getting scolded—”

“hmm i see...”

he’ll let you stay in his office as he fills out paperwork; you’re usually doodling or drawing in your notebooks

sometimes he’ll meditate and you’ll join him, but 4/7 times you’d fall asleep

you always wake up with a blanket over you

dazai is like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

frequently takes you out with him when he ditches work

walks in the park, eating at uzumaki so he has the excuse of treating you so he doesn’t have to pay his tab avoiding kunikida and sometimes chuuya and akutagawa, all that fun stuff

also tries to not talk abt suicide in front of you especially if it’s just the two of you alone

he knows that you mean the world to his pupil and that said pupil would probably hate him for putting suicide inside your brain

he teaches you random but useful things like how to pick a lock, how to steal kunikida’s notebook if you’re looking for some information, how to sweet talk your way out of things, etc.

is also the one to tell you that if you ever get a significant other to introduce them to the agency first

he always wants all of your gossip; some of them work pretty well for blackmail

“dazai-san! dazai-san! did you know that kunikida-san lost his glasses and he was looking for them for nearly an hour when he was just holding them the entire time??”

“woah really (y/n)-chan?! hey hey can you say it again into this recording device so kunikida-kun would believe me when i tell him—”

always ends up giving kunikida a heart attack when he says that you’ve been with him all day

ranpo is also like a cool but a highly concerning and kind of high maintenance uncle

will share some of his snacks, but don’t push it or you might not get anything at all

loves it when you compliment him

if you tagged along with him and your brother on a case, he will show off to impress you

“...and that’s how the crime happened”

“UWAHH RANPO-SAN YOU’RE SO COOL”

atsushi is lowkey and kunikida is highkey stressed that ranpo’s eating habits will rub off on you

“ne (y/n)-chan do you wanna try this highly caffeinated drink and this concerning amount of sugar filled snack?”

“can i really?!”

“rANPO-SAN NO—”

ranpo definitely does stuff like that on purpose 

the tanizakis are like siblings to you!

a weird set of siblings but siblings nonetheless

the two of them adore you and think you’re precious

atsushi definitely knows how to do your hair whether it’s long or short but he got even better at it when he asked the two

hehe braid trains are definitely a thing + kyouka and kenji (and maybe even dazai)

sometimes you have sibling swap days

you’re with junichiro for most of the day and atsushi is with naomi

strange i know

each of the tanizaki siblings try to make it fun bc they know that the two of you did not at all have a happy upbringing

junichiro likes spending time with you by taking you out to different places that naomi likes to frequent

like the mall, different stores and restaurants, the park, places like those

naomi does the same thing with atsushi so if you ever bump into them, you go out and eat together :)

besides atsushi, the next one in line who spoils you the most would be junichiro (and yosano & kunikida both coming in at a close third)

he honestly can’t help it; you remind him of how naomi was when she was younger

and besides

he’s always been a sucker when it came to the happiness of a little sister

“would you really buy this for me junichiro-san?!”

“of course! don’t worry about it” :)

wanna talk abt boys/girls/celebrity crushes things like that? naomi is your girl

you feel a bit embarrassed to go talking to yosano or your brother abt that and kyouka does not know a thing abt them either

“uwahh naomi-san look at all these people in this magazine! they look so good!”

“right?! but of course onii-sama is still the best—”

you get along with kenji and kyouka quite nicely being roughly the same age as them; they’re also like siblings!

just pure, wholesome vibes from the three of you

you’re over the moon when she finds out that kyouka is staying with you and your brother

atsushi is twice as happy seeing you talk your mouth off and finally having a girl around your age to talk to

“do you think demon snow can change how she looks?”

“hmm... im not sure...”

you and kenji talk abt anything and everything

he even teaches you how to take care of plants!

sometimes the two of you are kind of in the same boat bc you don’t know much abt yokohoma being stuck in the orphanage and kenji doesn’t know much abt cities in general

“wait where are we again kenji-san?”

“ah we’re close to the ports! but im not really sure how close because i don’t know what the symbols on this sign mean”

“don’t worry! neither do i!”

bonus things!

yosano was kind of too late teaching you abt you know what

“NII-SAN IM BLEEDING IN BETWEEN MY LEGS”

you’re sobbing in the agency’s bathroom and atsushi is panicking trying to get you to open the door

“Y/N?! H-HOLD ON LET ME GET YOSANO SENSEI”

ranpo overhears and cackles making everyone around him confused

suddenly atsushi bursts in the agency basically on the verge of tears rambling incoherent sentences abt the bathroom, you, and blood

it just clicked for everybody in the room

(im going to pretend that kenji has sisters back home so that atsushi is the only one who remain oblivious here hehe)

atsushi is genuinely confused and sort of concerned that no one is freaking out with him

yosano waves her hand saying smth like that she’d take care of it and junichiro pulls atsushi to the side to talk to him

fast forward like half and hour and dazai and ranpo are cackling on the looks of both of your faces

honestly not sure who’s more traumatized, you or your brother

“why does this have to happen” :(

“ne ne (y/n)-chan!~ you’re too young but at some point you’re not going to have it!”

“uwahh really dazai-san?” :D

“yeah! but first you have to have ANFK—”

next thing you know your ears are being covered by your brother and dazai is thrown across the room by kunikida

you know

the normal

you’re twelve and have never gone to school, but the agency takes care of that

it’s too dangerous to go to school so they teach you what’s necessary and whatever else they can

kunikida takes care of math (obviously)

yosano takes care of science/biology/anatomy/health (whatever you wanna call it)

ranpo even dragged poe to help you with english

atsushi even got lucy to help you out with english too!

as tanizaki and naomi used to be students, they give you their old work books and they try to teach you all the other subjects

sometimes kyouka and kenji are there learing with you too!

sorry if there’s some errors! i’ll read through it again later :)

and as always, reblogs and shares are appreciated! i hope you all stay safe! and just in case nobody told you they loved you today, i love you! you are enough! <3

writing belongs to me! please do not plagiarize! the reblog button is there for a reason

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

[darling-i-read-it]

Back from the Blip

Sam Wilson x reader

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: some worry, slight spoilers for episode one of tfatws

Author’s Note: people! Appreciate sam wilson! And if you don’t, I will! Enjoy lol 

Requested: by anon, For the Sam fic I've got a idea but they have two different options I can't decide on. So the idea is that you survived the snap and when you see Sam again he just finds its weird/funny how different you look because 5 years can change you a lot. The options I I can't decide over though is:1. Not being a romantic fic and before the snap you're like late teens so 18/19 and then you're mid 20s and Sam just being like last time I saw you you were a this annoying teen  (like peter.) 2. Or it being romantic and you reunite and he's just amazed he's missed all this time with you. Totally fine if you don't want to do it. It's just been stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out 😂 And I saw your tag and people really do need to stop tagging Sam in Bucky fics it's so annoying.

Summary: the request 

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director 

(not my gif)

When everyone from the Blip returned, you were as surprised as the rest of the world. It was just another day, it was just another wake up. You had the day off. You slept in and were very surprised to find that there was someone in your apartment that wasn’t meant to be there. 

They explained, through some tears and a couple of screams that this was their apartment. You had to explain back that it was not there you had bought it. 

It was then you realized that they had been blipped and they were back. They were back, which meant, hopefully, that everyone else was back too. 

When Sam came back he was confused. Just like everyone else in the world in the moment that people who had been long dead were just reappearing. It was explained to him what had happened and after the initial thought he needed to go find you. He needed to find his sister. He needed to see the people he loved, he needed to know what was going on. 

The government managed to find your address and Sarah’s and he found her and her kids. He wanted to call you just to talk but he wasn’t sure if that was appropriate. You had sent him a text and tried to call the second you thought he might have come back but Sarah got to him first. 

Standing in her home, he looked almost frightened. This wasn’t something that he had ever thought he would deal with. Obviously. 

“And...and Y/N? I have to see her. I saw most of the Avengers but they haven’t told me where she is,” Sam said. Sarah looked at him, arms crossed.

“I see her for lunch every Wednesday,” she explained. “She’s got a new job, she’s got a new apartment.” Sarah took a deep breath, leaning against the kitchen counter. Her kids ran around but left the room just as quickly as they had entered it. “She’s finally dating again. It took her four years but…” Sam didn’t look at Sarah. For him, not a day had passed since he last saw you or Sarah. But his sister had grown so much, her kids even more so. He almost didn’t want to see you. What if you had changed so much he didn’t recognize you? The person he loved? 

“Do you have her address?” he finally asked. Sarah nodded solemnly. 

“I don't’ know if she’ll be there-”

“She’s been calling me. I can find her.” Sarah nodded, running her hand on her forehead exasperatedly. 

Sam did find you. He went to the apartment that Sarah had given him but you were there. Instead he found you waiting at a park fountain across the street from your apartment. You were reading a book but as he watched he could tell that you weren't’ actually reading.

You did look different. Matured, refined. Your hair was different. Your style was changed. Not that much but you looked good. He found it was hard to approach you, scared that you might not want to see him. He knew that was irrational but regardless, his worry was there. 

He didn’t mean for you to see him. In fact, he should have made sure you wouldn’t. He was kind of a spy afterall. But your eyes found him as you looked around when you were avoiding whatever book you were reading. You stood up quickly, closing the book quickly. 

For a moment there was an undefined amount of worry in the air and then your face rose and you were walking over to him. He met you in the middle and wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate to hug you so he stood there, a small smile on his face.

“You look good,” he said when he wasn’t sure what else to say. There were tears brimming at your eyes. You looked down at your outfit. 

“This old thing?” you asked, a small laugh escaping your lips. You looked back up at him and pursed your lips to hold back the emotion. You shook your head. “I...this must be so weird for you, I’m so sorry. Are you alright? How are you feeling?” you asked.

“Ay now, don’t go asking about me. How are you?” You gave him a look. You were in the middle of all these people, this crowd, and you felt like it was just you and Sam. The feeling was welcome. 

“Surprised.” You thought about it. “Thankful. Really thankful.” You were silent a moment and shook your head again. “I’m sorry, can I hug you?” you asked a little awkwardly and he let out a sigh of relief.

“I thought you’d never ask.” You closed the space by hugging him tightly to you. He felt the same. He smelled the same. 

You felt the same too. He was worried that you wouldn’t but you did. 

After a moment you moved away but not far. 

“What’s happened? In the last five years?” he asked and you let out a sigh that he knew all too well.

“So much Sam, you have no idea.”

“Well then you better start talking.” You smiled and felt safe again. He felt like something was right. Something was going right.

[ronsenburg]

Hi! I wanted to ask you something about Klapollo. What topic/argument do you think could possibly cause them to break up or take a break from the relationship? I live for the drama and was thinking about maybe writing a fic but like I dont want to make either of them assholes, like Apollo bringing Kristoph up to hurt Klavier, for example. I don't think he would do that but I struggle to come up with something else.

Oh boy, I hope you’re not upset about this, but I wrote you an essay. I’m sorry.

Overall, I really like the klapollo relationship timeline because, compared to, say, narumi/su they have a much more normal, organic story. They meet, flirt, share a mutual trauma, get together! Totally normal! But I also think that they would have a much harder time than narumi/su finding the balance you need in a serious relationship and I can see them calling it quits for perfectly practical reasons that aren’t really anything to do with one being a jerk, you know? Here are my top things that I think they would have to navigate and maybe struggle with before a real happily ever after:

1. Money. You’ve probably seen my post where I talk about Apollo feeling uncomfortable with displays of affluence. I don’t think that this is an easy one to get past. AA6 Spoilers, but Dhurke and Datz literally raised them in hiding on the run in the mountainous jungles of Khura’in. They sent Apollo to the states as a nine year old. We don’t know what he did when he got here, but my money’s always been on the foster system. That doesn’t typically breed a sense of stability, financial or otherwise. 

From my experience (so take it with a grain of salt), children who grow up with very little tend to behave in one of two ways when they reach financial stability and/or achieve wealth: first option, they’re really bad with it. They spend it nearly as fast as they make it on things they didn’t get to have or experience when they were growing up. Second option, they never spend it. They know what it’s like to be without, so they save as much of it as they can so they have the security of knowing, if something happens, they won’t have to go back to the way it was before. I will always put Apollo in the latter category. He works hard for what he has and what he gets and, I think, things that signify extravagance make him uncomfortable. On the other hand, I think that the Gavin’s have always had some sort of wealth. Klavier and Kristoph have very different aesthetics to their spaces that we get to experience (Klavier’s office and Kristoph’s cell) but they’re both pretty lavish. Now, we can assume they each made their money individually in their respective careers but, honestly, Kristoph’s cell is so gaudy. To me, it screams “this is what I’m used to and I refuse to accept any less” which is an attitude that I feel comes more from a lifetime of that treatment. 

So if we accept everything that I’ve said above as true, trying to put a person who saves every penny they get and feels bad treating themselves with a person who spends money freely because it’s been a constant throughout their life? It can go poorly. Casually dating, maybe it’s not such an issue once Apollo says “please no more presents and can we just get takeout for once?” but if you’re talking about something more serious, where you have to live in the same space and pay joint bills and be confronted with the other person’s spending habits constantly, it’s a whole other thing. Please take it from me as a person in a long term relationship who loves their partner tremendously—everyone fights about money. Everyone. It would be very difficult for Apollo to feel comfortable, even if he knew that finances were in good shape and there was savings, etc. Things happen, people leave. Nothing gold can stay. Changing that line of thinking takes work. It would also be easier said than done for Klavier to just do an about face on his own habits for Apollo’s comfort. Being a celebrity makes money, but it costs money, too. There is a certain amount of lushness that people expect. That can’t just go away. These are things that become bigger problems overtime, no matter how much you love each other. 

Anyway, I would be really surprised if—even if you’re writing them as really happily married—Apollo doesn’t have a ‘emergency fund’ that even Klavier doesn’t know about. It’s a ‘just in case’. Just in case Klavier leaves him. Just in case he needs to get away fast. Just in case the world ends. It’s not a logical thing, something that he sat down and rationalized doing, it’s just there because it feels better to have it than to not. But that can be kind of hurtful if the other person finds out about it, so. There you go, a whole minefield of money related drama.

2. Apollo’s Abandonment Issues. He’s got them! What do you call and orphan twice over who also lost his very best friend? I don’t know, but if capcom doesn’t stop picking on my boy I’m going to kick them in the teeth. I will still never get over AA6 for telling us that Dhurke took Apollo in when he was orphaned as a baby, then abandoned him in the USA, then came back for him and got his hopes up, and then was actually dead the whole time! Hahahaha! What a trip! 

Anyway, you don’t come back from that super easy. People who suffer this kind of trauma usually have a really hard time trusting others, which is understandable. They also can have unrealistic needs from their partners, become codependent, or even just self-sabotage their relationships, pulling away first to try and avoid the pain because they think the other person will leave them. I think that last one is most likely for Apollo, especially given the disparity in circumstances I mentioned above. If Apollo can’t trust that Klavier actually loves him, can’t trust that he won’t leave him like EVERYONE ELSE HAS, then they can’t have a healthy relationship. Drama.

3. Klavier’s Emotional Trauma. Kristoph is a pretty big jerk to Klavier in the last case of AA4. He criticizes and undermines Klavier, threatens and admits to manipulating him. In the anthology, Klavier shares an “lol so funny!” story about Kristoph accidentally breaking a window while he and Klavier are playing ball. In it, he convinces Klavier that it was his fault and that he should take the blame and apologize for breaking the window! And Klavier does! That’s gaslighting, baby, and since the Anthology is supposed to be canon, we can take that to mean it’s been happening since Klavier was a kid. Think about that. An entire life of gaslighting and manipulative behavior! You don’t come back from that easily, either. 

People who experience emotional abuse can, among other things, suffer from depression and low-self esteem. They need affirmation from their partners and can have a hard time with letting people in or being honest (though not from a malicious mindset—more a “I’m going to say what I think you want to hear because if you’re happy, bad things won’t happen!”). They can also always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Sure things are good, but when will that end and the bad time start? It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: if all you can do is worry about things going wrong, then you aren’t actually enjoying when things are going right and you will cause the issues you’re so worried about. Drama.

4. Fame. Klavier has been in the spotlight since he was a literal child. If the Gavinners were already hits when Klavier was 17, they likely formed and starred their rise some time before then. A year, maybe two? Klavier spent his formative years in the spotlight. He quite literally doesn’t know any other way. Apollo, on the other hand, has never experienced the kind of scrutiny he’d be subject to when dating someone like Klavier. It can be really stressful and hurtful and just overall not a good time. And I’m not saying that Klavier wouldn’t be sympathetic, but I don’t think he would really understand how difficult it could be to have been thrust into that position out of nowhere, because he’s had years of dealing with it and was in a completely different place in life when it began for him. It’s not unreasonable to think that Apollo might not be able to take it. You can love someone and want to be with them but if you can’t adapt to their lifestyle, it’s not going to work. They could walk away rather than risk what might happen to Apollo if they kept it up. Drama.

5. Careers. They both have very demanding jobs. While sharing a similar profession can mean there’s a mutual understanding, it can also cause issues if you... never get to see each other? Schedules can be out of alignment (which could easily happen; their cases can’t always line up and they seem to require a lot of time investment outside of just normal hours). If Klavier goes back into music, that’s an additional time constraint. Why be in a relationship when you can only see the other person for moments here and there? What about the stress that comes with those jobs? That can cause drama.

6. Klavier looks like Kristoph. They are very different people, yes, but similar enough in some ways that it could cause tension. Maybe Klavier is tired and stressed and snaps at Apollo, and suddenly, all Apollo can see is Kristoph and all he can feel is the uncomfortable churning in his stomach that goes along with the memories of him. Someone he trusted, someone who let him down. That’s a difficult subject to broach, and it can fester like an infected wound if left intended. 

But Apollo sounds like Kristoph sometimes. We saw it in AA5, which is, of course, an extreme circumstance. But it can come out from time to time in other ways. A phrase that slips out, the way he intones certain words, the way he signs off in his emails—little things that are harmless, but can still act as triggers. 

Sometimes you need to get away from things that can remind you of your past in order to work on getting over them. If you are in love with someone who shares a similar trauma, who brings those issues from the past to light frequently just by being themselves, it might not be a healthy situation. I don’t think they would need to throw it in each other’s faces for it to become an issue. Drama.

There are more, but I probably took this more seriously than you intended. Whoops! Anyway, I hope that helps??? Maybe???? I hope you get them back together in the end because they deserve to be happy though!!!!!!!