#having thoughts. might write about their potential but two major problem. no plot in mind. and i still am completely confused on the plot of

[amphibifish]

the heimdall u-loki duo would be fire because imagine being loki seeing the symbol of your past regrets and a previous incarnation of yourself become besties with the sole purpose of tormenting you because you have everything they want but can't have

[butevensomharewrite]

Character Talk

So, since I'll be posting the last of my major character design vibe things this WIP Wednesday, let's talk about the characters and the general arcs I'm cooking up. These aren't finalised but they are a general vibe as I'm plotting them right now. This got way longer than planned (and all this with the forewarning that it's in progress, so if you wanna give feedback feel free).

Midoriya Izuku: So, baby boy protagonist. I think in general, he's fine, and I don't mind where he ends up, but I do want to do more foreshadowing towards it earlier. Beyond that, his general arc is moving away from his idolisation of people like Bakugou and All Might (and also his weird possessiveness over Bakugou that canon calls out once in not even a joke and then never brings up again? ok), and taking ownership of himself and OFA.

OFA itself is going to be a little different, it still gives you the base power up to your body when it's passed on, but it also merges a quirk from the stockpile into your quirk, probably chosen by instinct based on the moment you first activate it. I think Float (probably), it's easy to hide as a mutation of Inko's quirk, it's got lots of angst potential in the whole Shimura feels side of things. I also want more interactions and time between him and Shigaraki. LoV has a delayed timeline, so I want to build the relationship between him and Shigaraki over a slower period. I'll be introducing Shigaraki probably as early as chapter 2 (the aftermath of the Sludge Villain) with Izuku still being quirkless when they meet and Shigaraki being a little interested in someone who actually does something rather than sitting around for the heroes.

I want Izuku and Bakugou's relationship to develop into something healthier earlier too. I think some of the issues with Izuku's character stem from this idea that him and Bakugou are rivals pushing each other, but they also sort of stagnate in that because Bakugou has no plot of his own, if that makes sense, and because Izuku gets so OP so quickly, the idea that Bakugou is actually rivalling him is laughable. So I want them to actually be able to push each other and let that rivalry actually develop properly. Bakugou is changing earlier, and also All Might (although only Izuku knows it's All Might not Yagi, All Might's assistant) is training them together like once a week, but it's a bit more like amateur therapy and he encourages them to be open and honest about their feelings even if he has to take them out to some forest clearing and let them yell and scream at each other (you know, like the should have done after the Final Exam arc where they both finally snapped and said enough, and then everyone just brushed it off and moved on. You know when Izuku finally got actually mad at Bakugou, and Bakugou actually said he'd rather lose, both totally ooc moments that should have had serious ramifications on both their character arcs? I really thought we were about to do something there Horikoshi, my bad).

Bakugou Katsuki: speaking of rivals. Every time I try to write about Bakugou it gets huge because he's such a mess, I'll try to keep this brief. OK! So! I think the biggest first point is the difference between making Bakugou suffer because he deserves it and that being his redemption, and Bakugou's suffering causing him to reflect. The two are different. If you've seen the rough design vibes, you know Bakugou has a prosthetic pre-UA, and it is that serious injury and the grief and realignment afterwards that helps spark Bakugou's redemption journey. And while he often frames it as a deserved punishment, as do various other people, I'm careful to make sure the narrative doesn't. Because if I have to explain to you why disability/trauma as a punishment is fucked up, I think there's a problem.

Bakugou is supposed to be a sorta monster society created and then abandoned when they realised what they'd done. Very Frankenstein. We need to show that. We need to see Bakugou in situ of people praising him to insane degrees, to society putting Izuku down because he's quirkless and it's for his own good. We need to see what built Bakugou to understand his position. We also need to see Mitsuki being a bad parent more (note bad, not Endeavor levels abusive, there's a difference). In trying to keep him grounded and disciplined she yells, she gives him the odd smack and she picks apart everything he does for even the smallest flaw or weakness and tears him down, and she inadvertently teaches him violence and yelling is the answer, perfection is everything and getting help is weakness that she will then tear into.

Bakugou's arc revolves around what is a hero and we'll use Stain to do that. His ideal of heroism is strength, a hero overcomes all odds no matter what, and he might suck at being a people person but he can make sure the bad guy is beaten even if it costs him himself. Stain, of course, takes offense at Bakugou, but at the same time doesn't see him as entirely without potential (self sacrifice, even framed in the way Bakugou does, is the kind of heroism Stain and All Might preach) and even canon Stain isn't thrilled to kill kids. They're going to explore heroism together, through their ridiculously high standard of All Might or nothing, to the true nature of Bakugou's glory chasing and morals, to frustration over public image heroes like Jeanist, culminating in moving up Bakugou's moment with All Might in the final war (although adjusted slightly) for a Bakugou and Stain team up against AFO.

I also want to expand on Bakugou relationships outside of Midoriya, another area where I think canon could have done more. I think one fo Bakugou (and Midoriya's) biggest problems is the pair of them just can't be separated and it sorta harms them both in and out of universe. He has Kirishima, obviously, but I think even that could use more. There's Kaminari too, who doesn't get enough credit as Bakugou's friend, he was next to him before even Kiri. I want him and Uraraka to interact more too, for both their sakes. I like the idea of the "Bakusquad" but I think it's a fanfic thing that mostly ends up being unhealthy either with Bakugou not caring for them and/or them just being Kirishima's friends, or them ignoring all of Bakugou's boundaries. Early on, I want more of an actual rivalry between Shouto and Bakugou, and I want to expand the Disaster Squad (because talented but awful at peopleing people thrown together is always a great dynamic). And, obviously, if we're keeping the ending, more from both Jeanist and Edgeshot. Edgeshot's sacrifice would have been so much more meaningful if we saw him and Bakugou interact, and/or saw how much Jeanist and Edgeshot liked each other before that one moment.

I also want to take more of a look at the creek scene because as someone with massive anxiety who's actually experience the whole thing where someone offering to help you makes you feel like they're looking down on you, that was fumbled to all hell. Also, for a while it felt like Horikoshi was laying the groundwork for Bakugou realising he was going to become Endeavor if he kept on as part of his arc, and then backed out the further we got into Endeavor's "redemption" so I think it'd like to work that in more.

Todoroki Shouto: family drama, yay! So, obviously Shouto's plot is his family and Dabi. It's another one that I think benefits more from minor changes than a total rewrite. I think the core idea of the Todoroki siblings manifesting varying forms of abuse responses (yes, Fuyumi's response to being in an abusive household is valid, stop acting like it's not, she is the conflict avoidant pacifier reaction) and their family drama spilling into country threatening levels is pretty ok.

So, minor changes, Fuyumi would be a hero, or at least a sidekick. The timelines sort of imply that the first three kids happened on better terms than Shouto, so maybe Fuyumi got training, she's a daddy's girl, she was going to prove herself, and as she grows she gets it into her head that if she can be a good hero maybe she can fix their family. Keep her as a teacher, maybe at UA, they do need more teachers. Dabi, gets ice powers to match Shouto. he's going to be a proper mirror. While Shouto rejects his fire to spite his dad, Dabi still wants Endeavor's attention so only uses his fire. Dabi is also a "vigilante" style villain more in line with Stain earlier on. He wants Endeavor's attention, after all.

Back to Shouto. So, I want to introduce Shouto early, he's in in chapter one, and involved with the Sludge Villain incident. Partly, because I want the main trio trioing early so there's less awkward character shuffling as Bakugou and Shouto seem to take Iida and Uraraka's places, a more even spread rather than ups and downs, I want clear synergy between the three of them in a tough spot so they can work together if they have to (for the record, Shouto is the leader of the main trio, for all Bakugou bitches even in canon he does follow Shouto's orders, Shouto takes control, Izuku is like omg information vomit and Bakugou translates for Shouto and ptoects current quirkless Izuku) (also note this is only allowed to go on as long as it does bc Endeavor is there doing his proud but douchey momager thing), but also I want to establish Shouto's "screw the rules, I'm a hero" attitude nice and early. Because I think we do forget the amount of time Shouto unapologetically is about to throw down with the law because "it's the right thing to do" to the point it makes Midoriya and Iida look law abiding. As mentioned, there's a bit more of an active rivalry between Bakugou and Shouto following the Sports Festival, and also some acknowledgement earlier on that Shouto can be very destructive and prone to overkill without thinking about the consequences.

Uraraka Ochako: my girl! So, I definitely want to give Uraraka some more plot time for a start. As I say, I want there to be a less drastic fall off from early parts to later parts. I want Uraraka involved and there.

So, for a start, we're going to actually deal with the sexism the Sports Festival brought up, Uraraka and Bakugou are going to interact more, be sparring partners, Bakugou is going to treat Uraraka as just another person rather than just a cute girl (the Sports Festival is the first big school event in this timeline, so it's the big turning point for a lot of these things). Since the internships aren't right after the Sports Festival, like in canon, Uraraka wants to work on her martial arts now, and turns to the one person she's sure will teach her properly.

I also think about maybe either swapping her away from Toga as her "main villain" or completely rewriting it. I think the fact that every scene Uraraka's in someone mentions her crush on Izuku, and the fact that her villainy with Toga is frame around crushes and love, doesn't help the idea that she's a shallow love interest, especially with how her money worries were just sorta shuffled away. They made a big deal of "girls can fight boys" in the Sports Festival, and then Uraraka basically only gets girl fights with Toga afterwards, and the whole yandere bisexual girl fight with sexual/romantic undertones isn't the greatest vibe. I'm thinking of perhaps keeping Mustard around, because A, gravity vs gases can be super badass (as anyone who read the original version of Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen can tell you, not the anime hand holding bullshit) and B, because he's their age, and kind brutally merciless, the guy brought a gun with him, and potentially if we extrapolate from his comments about UA being "pampered" maybe we can assign him a similar background.

Kirishima Eijirou: short and sweet here, because Kirishima's whole thing is actually pretty solid but just need expanding. If I swap Toga out with Mustard, or someone else, for Uraraka, Kirishima is where she goes. Now, that doesn't mean I want the same romance angle. I'm not erasing Toga's bisexuality for a straight ship, it wouldn't be a ship, it would be two people dealing with their admiration and finding themselves by becoming like other people.

More in general, I want to focus a little more on Kirishima and Bakugou's relationship, while Bakugou definitely inspires Kirishima, we don't see much of it going the other way, although I think this is partly because we just don't see inside Bakugou's head nearly as often as others. I enjoy his role in the Overhaul Arc, but I also want to bring Uraraka in there more, so I potential Red Riot and Uravity vs Rappa and Tengai (maybe with Fat Gum, maybe not).

Yaoyorozu Momo: oh Momo. I definitely want to expand on Momo. She should be badass but Horikoshi needed her to be nerfed a lot because she solves a lot of problems. So, we play into the fact that's a naïve sheltered rich girl. She's had private tutors and is book smart, she passes tests with flying colours because she knows the correct answer for a controlled environment. We sort of see this in the Battle Trials, where sure, in the context of text, Bakugou was acting out, but as a villain? Half the MHA villains are acting on personal grudges and don't care about environmental damage. A lot of villains aren't rational around heroes, and lbr a lot of minor villains would get out of there when heroes arrived. So there's an interesting potential here that being sheltered as she is, she almost expects that textbooks are completely accurate and villains would behave as she's been taught by her tutors. And come on being flustered when shit doesn't go how you were taught is a common thing, so it's not out of the question.

There's also the Sports Festival, where we see her struggling with her quirk because she got stuck on her preplanned ideas and didn't adapt, and relied on her quirk. And in her suit. The idea that she first wanted nothing, and then went with a suit that offered very little practical defense, she believes her quirk is enough to protect her from everything. So this goes hand in hand with her self confidence issues, in a very similar way to Bakugou. She had confidence, was smacked down hard and realised that real combat isn't the same as lessons, but where Bakugou gets angry and aggressive about getting better, Momo withdraws and doubts, actually in a very similar way to Kirishima. I think her plot will most be entwined with Iida and Shouto as the other two legacy rich types, but I would like to see her with Kirishima doing his good boi stuff and building everyone up too.

There's also Iida, Tsuyu and Kaminari, but this got very long and their arcs aren't quite as solidly formed in my mind, so maybe I'll talk about them another day or maybe drop an ask about specifics and watch me think things through in real time. So this WIP Wednesday is the last round of starting UA character vibes, and then next Wednesday I've got one of my oldest drafts from the Sports Festival queued up.

[heppyhenry]

My main thoughts on the execution of the “Rayllum subplot” in S4:

So from what we know so far, the only point of Rayla leaving for two years was to create dramatic tension between her and Callum, which is… not a good writing decision, in my opinion. It seemed very forced and out of character for Rayla to leave for that long only to ultimately give up, return to Katolis empty-handed, and pretend that nothing ever happened and things can just go back to the way they were (besides her waiting to talk to Callum about their relationship). I don’t understand why writers continue to think that there has to be constant drama between love interests in their shows; is it so unrealistic of a concept to simply portray a healthy, wholesome romance between the leads where they don’t all of a sudden act like completely different people than usual just for there to be an emotional rift? Not every relationship needs to have some major conflict in order to keep the audience engaged. I would have much preferred for them to deal with some minor conflicts here and there instead of this ordeal, because their relationship is already such a small subplot as is that this season barely spends any time at all focusing on it. Really hoping that changes in Season 5 or else we legitimately might not see them fully get back together until Season 6 or even 7.

Wonderstorm themselves said that the audience would not need to read TTM to understand S4’s plot. While that is technically true, not reading it certainly does make Rayla’s absence and abrupt return feel even more awkward, confusing, and out of place. I really thought the handling of TTM’s ending in the show itself was executed very poorly.

With both of those thoughts in mind, however, I actually do think their relationship was handled nicely this season (that is, when the show actually took some time to focus on it lol). Callum’s anger and resentment was completely justified and I’m very glad that he and Rayla didn’t make up immediately. I also appreciate that the writers took several moments to show that they still do love and care for one another, and that this isn’t a complete reset of their relationship, nor is it a “will they, won’t they” scenario. We all know they will eventually rekindle their love, it’s just going to take a little more time before Callum is ready to have a Big Feelings talk with Rayla.

Also wanted to share my thoughts on people’s criticisms of the overall writing quality of S4:

I think people should keep in mind that Season 4 is the “set-up season” for the rest of this new arc, similar to Season 1. I see a lot of the same flaws in Season 4 that I did in Season 1 and while I do think that most of them could have probably been avoided simply with better execution, I also think that it makes sense why they occurred when remembering that the writers have to get the proverbial ball rolling for an entire multi-season arc in just 9 half-hour episodes. Those kinds of constraints are not easy to work around, and I think the failure to use all of the available time given in the best way possible is really what has led to the majority of this show’s problems.

Furthermore, here’s something to put into perspective: Aaron Ehasz, one of the lead writers of The Dragon Prince, was also the head writer of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show that - according to Aaron - the team takes heavy inspiration from. That show had 3 seasons with 61 total episodes. TDP will end with 7 seasons, but only 63 episodes. There is a big difference in the amount of time that Ehasz has had to work with for each individual season’s story; because of this, I think that his approach is to simply put much more focus into the overarching story. In my opinion, I think it’s only fair that the audience does the same. I say this not to completely justify the growing pains of this show’s writing quality (particularly in its newest season), but rather to shed some light on potentially why it has probably been more difficult for Aaron this time around, and why it is important that we all stay patient and wait for the entire story to be finished before making any definitive claims about the show’s quality.

I do, however, 100% agree with the criticisms of TDP’s attempts at humor. It feels like there is less and less effort put into the comedy aspect of the show with every new season, which is really disappointing. Less fart jokes, please?

[gubler-me-up]

No Need to Rush

Request: can u pls do a spencer x bau fem! reader where she’s dyslexic but also a genius like spencer and like someone maybe another member of the team/unsub makes a comment abt her being stupid. and she gets really upset abt it. then later spencer comforts her and they have really romantic but rough sex. where he’s just like reassuring her of how smart and beautiful she is.

A/N: Thanks for the request, anon! Sorry this took a lil long to complete but I wanted to make sure I wrote this accurately and incorporate everything you wanted into it! Please let me know if you don’t feel as if this representation of dyslexia sits right with you and I will edit it no problem. This fic also concludes smut week (woo!) so I hope you enjoy 💓 

Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!reader

Category: Smut

Content warning: Learning disorder degradation, mentions of violence, rough sex, fingering, penetrative sex, creampie, choking

Word count: 3.2k

-------------

It was the dead of winter in Seattle, Washington and a sniper decided it was the best time to have some target practice. His target practice ended up taking three innocent people’s lives as they were living their day-to-day lives. To top off his killing spree, he wrote handwritten letters to the police department. His letters were rambles about him not stopping until he finds his final target.

Hotch had left Spencer and you to go over the letters to try and figure out any indications of who his final target could be. He had sent JJ and Morgan to interview the victim’s family members to try and see if there were any similar people in their circle. Having you four working diligently on piecing the entire story together could end up saving another person from meeting an early demise.

You loved working with Spencer because the two of you were always up to speed with your thinking process. Both of you analyzed each letter with care, making sure nothing was missed which could possibly be used as a clue in identifying who this person and who their real target is.

You felt as if you were taking too long to go through every letter. There were about 20 of them and his incoherent rambles were giving you a hard time efficiently reading them. You had 10 to go through and Spencer was already finished and writing on the whiteboard clues he found in the letters. You were still on your seventh letter, dissecting and writing down what you thought was important. You couldn’t help feeling bad you were taking a long time.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

Spencer looked back at you with a questionable expression. “For what?”

“For taking forever. I’m taking up time reading these letters when I should be brainstorming with you.”

“Y/N, you’re not slowing down the process. If anything you taking your time can identify some major evidence.”

“Yeah, but you could do it within two minutes.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. Valuable information is valuable information no matter how long it takes you to find it. Besides you’re the smartest person I know, so nothing will get past you.”

“Doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

“I’m here to remind you it’s all the time. I’ll be here to remind you every day if you ever doubt yourself.”

You smiled as you felt your worries drifting away. You were always self-conscious about having dyslexia. Growing up with it was the hardest part of your early years because people would see your extraordinary capabilities but questioned them whenever you had to read or spending longer than usual completing tasks. It was embarrassing for you. Even in adulthood you felt anxious about letting people know you were dyslexic because you were worried they wouldn’t see you as a genius.

When you let the members of the team know you were dyslexic, they accepted you as you were. It made you feel welcomed and understood for once in the longest while. It was especially nice hearing Spencer say you were a genius regardless of your dyslexia. You felt as if he understood you the most out of everyone because he had a rough time growing up as a child prodigy.

As you continued to read through the letter you were on, something caught your eye. You looked up at the whiteboard to see what Spencer had written. He had written about sunsets, trees and a park. He had concluded it was about Kerry Park in Seattle and speculated the unsub could possibly live near there. What you had read though made you think of a different possibility.

“Kelly Park,” you said aloud.

Spencer turned to you. “Kelly Park?”

Before you could explain your findings, Hotch and detective Royce entered the room. You were happy they did, so you could explain to everyone your theory as to who the unsays actual target is.

“Find any useful information we can put towards finding the unsub?” Hotch asked.

You nodded. “Yes. Kelly Park’s the end goal.”

“Kelly Park? You mean Kerry Park by West Highland,” detective Royce said.

“No, I mean, yes, but the unsub slipped up…uh no, they-uh- replaced Kelly with Kerry because there is a Kelly Park who lives nearby,” you explained.

“Wait, so is it Kerry or Kelly the name of the person who lives nearby Kerry’s Park?” Hotch asked.

“Sorry, sir. It’s Kelly Park who lives nearby Kerry’s Park.”

“How can you even speculate that?” Detective Royce asked.

“Because it’s in this letter. He says, ‘I spend my days looking at Kelly Park and wondering when I’d be brave enough to leave. I don’t think I am but one day I’ll be free,’” you said while holding it up.

Detective Royce took it from your hand to take a closer look. He furrowed his eyebrows as he read. He looked back up at you questionably.

“Maybe he’s dyslexic. Only an idiot would write Kelly instead of Kerry when referring to Kerry Park,” he said.

You clenched your jaw as he said his ignorant statement. You knew the unsub wasn’t dyslexic and you had a clue right infant of you. You snatched the letter away from his hands as you took a deep breath to calm yourself down.

“I’m actually dyslexic myself and I can tell you right now this unsub is not,” you said.

“I should have known from the time you mixed up Kerry and Kelly in your explanation. For a genius you sure don’t talk like one,” he said.

You felt your eyes stinging from the tears which were trying to breakthrough. What he said was familiar to everything you heard from your childhood. It was degrading to hear it when you knew you were on to something. Especially evidence which could potentially save someone.

“Don’t talk to one of my agents with such disrespect, Royce. My team and I would never slander your team, so we expect the same courtesy back,” Hotch said.

“Hotchner, you can’t seriously believe this is a connection,” detective Royce said.

“Who said it couldn’t be?” Spencer said.

“Common sense. He’s trying to mess up his words on purpose to take us off track from what really matters,” detective Royce said.

“Well, I’m not taking that risk. While you stand there with your arro…ignorance, I’ll actually go and do something about this piece of evidence,” you said as you walked by him to exit the room.

You could feel your heart drop with every step you took. Before you called Garcia you took a trip to the washroom. You went into a stall and made sure it was locked before you let your tears escape. You hadn’t felt humiliated for the longest time. The questionable look and harsh comments detective Royce spat at you made you feel sick. You knew you were smart and you knew you were onto evidence to save someone’s life. Yet you were doubted.

You wiped your tears away and took a few deep breaths before exiting the stall. You couldn’t let what he said distract you from finding Kelly Royce. You knew it would affect you for the rest of the day but you would sleep better at night knowing you saved a life. You didn’t want to be crying over two things tonight.

------

You sat on the edge of the hotel room bed. You had finished getting ready for the night and were ready to get into bed to forget about the day. You were happy you were right about Kelly Park and saved her hours before she was scheduled to go into the heart of Seattle for an appointment. Her ex-boyfriend, Michael Richards, had plotted for months on how to make her death look like an accident. Too bad his guilty conscience and ego didn’t mix well and he compulsively wrote down his thoughts.

It bothered you immensely detective Royce still didn’t give you your flowers at the end of everything. You understood not everyone would apologize for their ignorance and you should be used to it by now. However, you couldn’t help but think about it over and over.

You heard a few light knocks on your hotel room door. You looked at the clock. It was 11 p.m. You got up to go peek through the peephole to see who was trying to get your attention this time of night. You looked through the peephole and saw Spencer standing outside. You opened the door. As you opened it he looked at you with a smile but you could see the concern in his eyes.

“What brings you to this part of town so late?” You asked.

“I want to make sure you’re okay before you go to bed. I know how frustrating today was for you and I don’t want you going to bed with doubt on your mind,” he explained.

You stepped aside and gestured him to come inside your hotel room. You were happy he had stopped by. He was always the first one to give you words of encouragement and a reason to put your doubts aside. You closed the door and made your way over to the edge of the bed to sit. You patted the spot next to you for him to sit down. He took the seat next to you, sitting closer to you than expected. You two were shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh. It was comforting to you for him to be so close.

“You know, if it wasn’t for you pointing out Kelly Park in his letter, she might not be alive,” he said.

“I know and I’m glad it worked out in the end. I just…”

You trailed off as a wave of doubt overthrew your thought process. You started to think if you had been wrong, if it were just your dyslexia getting the best of you, an innocent life could have been taken. A tear slipped from your right eye. You quickly wiped it away before Spencer saw. He must have seen it escape because he placed his hand on your thigh and squeezed it.

“You have a beautiful mind, Y/N,” he assured you.

“It doesn’t translate properly when I say the wrong words, read slower than average, mix up-”

“And all that doesn’t make a difference to how you save lives every day. If detective Royce wasn’t so prideful he would have thanked you properly for bringing to light what they brushed off,” he said.

You chuckled. “Yeah, he is a prideful idiot.”

“Exactly, so don’t let him or other doubters get to you. I believe in you wholeheartedly and always will. The team does as well, so we’ll always back you up.”

You smiled brightly at him as you felt your deep sadness fade away. He had such a way with words you felt as if you could rule the world solely based on his encouragement. You opened up your arms and embraced him in a hug. He wrapped his arms around the small of your back. He rubbed your back gently as you placed your head comfortably in the crook of his neck.

“I love how you’re always here for me, Spence,” you whispered into his neck.

“I’ll always be here to remind you of your worth and beauty,” he said.

You leaned up from his neck and faced him straight on. Your faces were just an inch away from each other as you lost yourself in his eyes. You softly smiled and found yourself saying things before your brain could process them.

“I could just kiss you right now,” you blurted out.

“Why don’t you?” He asked.

You were now speechless as you weren’t expecting him to be open to the idea. Perhaps he did find more than just your mind to be beautiful. One of his hands moved from your back and found its way to the side of your face. He moved your face closer to his and your lips finally met each other. He gently eased his tongue into your mouth before he dived fully into your mouth.

You placed your hands on his chest. You pulled on his shirt to bring him forward even more to minimize the space between you two. He moved his hands and placed them both on your hip. He brought you onto his lap without breaking your kiss. You glued your hands to his face to prevent him from even considering moving away from you. His hands squeezed before slipping his hands down your pyjama pants.

You didn’t give it a second thought and raised yourself off his hips so he could pull your pants off along with your underwear. He leaned away from your lips as he stared at you with a deep yearning in his eyes. He caressed his hands up your thighs, to your hips and then under your shirt. He pulled your shirt off to reveal your bare breasts.

“I hope you like what you see,” you said.

He smiled. “Of course. You’re beautiful beyond words.”

He then placed your right nipple in his mouth and swirled his tongue around your nipple. You moaned loudly as his tongue made your nipple feel a stimulation you never thought they could feel. He freed your nipple from his mouth as he quietly hushed you.

“We can’t let anyone know where in the same room together,” he whispered.

“I don’t care,” you said as you desperately leaned into him to steal another kiss.

He kissed you back. You held his head in place so he wouldn’t dare move away from you again. You soon felt his thumb circling around your clit. It wasn’t enough to make you stop kissing him but it made you release endless moans into his mouth. You then felt him shove two fingers into you which made you stop kissing him and set your moans free into the atmosphere. He pumped his fingers in and out of you so quickly you couldn’t find the time to catch your breath.

“If you can’t handle my fingers, how do you expect to handle my dick, beautiful?” He asked.

“I…I can,” you stammered.

He smiled. “I haven’t doubted you yet, have I??”

He took his fingers out of you and went to work on undoing his pants. You stared down at his huge bulge as he slipped down his pants and then his underwear. Your eyes widened as you saw his dick. He looked at you to see the amazement in your eyes. He softly chuckled as he grabbed your ass and squeezed it tight as he brought you forward to position you.

“Sit down on it and try not to be too loud,” he demanded.

You did what he asked and lowered yourself onto his dick. The further you went beyond the tip the more your mouth went agape. You could barely even get to the base without feeling as if his dick was already completely inside of you. He did you the favour and forced you all the way down on his dick. You let out a shriek which was cut short by him sticking his two fingers coated in your juices inside your mouth.

“Bounce on it and don’t make a sound. Understand?” He asked.

He nodded your head ‘yes’ for you and you started bouncing on his dick. You could feel your legs quaking as you engulfed his dick in and out of your repeatedly. Once you established a rhythm, you rolled your eyes to the back of your head and enjoyed every inch of his dick stretching your walls.

“How about we pick up the pace?” He asked.

Your eyes shot open as he bucked his hips up and disrupted your rhythm with his new set motion. You moaned heavily around his fingers as his dick kept ramming into you with no mercy. He used his other hand and squeezed your left breast. He licked your breasts before gently biting your nipple.

“Fuck,” you moaned.

“I only ever treat extraordinary women like this,” he said.

“Really?” You moaned.

He lifted you off his dick and laid you on the bed. He gently wrapped his large hands around your throat as he positioned himself on top of you. You could feel your adrenaline pumping as he lowered his face down to yours and kissed you softly on your lips before he stared into your eyes.

“You’re the only extraordinary woman I know,” he said.

“Fuck me like an extraordinary woman,” you said.

He obliged and rammed his dick into you with urgency. You moaned repeatedly as you took in every inch of his dick inside of you. He kissed along your jawline before reaching your ear.

“Who gets fucked like this?” He asked.

“Extraordinary women,” you whimpered.

“And what are you?” He asked.

“An extraordinary woman,” you whimpered.

As he continued to fuck some sense into you, he whispered nothing but the sweetest things in your ear. He called you beautiful, brilliant, amazing and his favourite, extraordinary. It felt nice hearing those things being repeated over and over in your ear especially by him. His dick definitely enforced the message as with every word he said to you, his motion would intensify. You wrapped your legs around him as he continued to fuck you.

“Where do you want me to cum, beautiful?” He asked.

“Inside of me,” you moaned.

He tightened the grip around your neck. “Louder.”

“Inside of me,” you shrieked.

“Look at me while I cum inside of you,” he demanded.

He grabbed your face to keep you still so your eyes were focused on him the whole time. He bit his bottom lip as he stared at your worn-out expression as he fucked you. He slowly stopped going at his rapid pace and soon stopped. You felt his cum fill your insides and you let out a soft moan at the feeling.

He let go of your neck and eased up from on top of you. You felt him stick two fingers in you and he pulled them out quickly. He placed his cum covered fingers on your lips. You opened your mouth and licked the cum dripping off his fingers.

“I don’t ever want you to doubt yourself again. You’re fucking amazing,” he said.

You leaned up on your elbows and smiled. “You are too.”

“Since I can’t stay in your room for the night without raising suspicions in the morning, how about we do something when we get back home and you can stay the night at my place? You know, for extra reassurance,” he said with a smile.

You giggled. “I’d love that.”

He leaned into you and gave you another big kiss on the lips. As he parted from your lips he stared at you with softer eyes from before and brushed your hair back.

“Maybe I’ll stay for a few more minutes. You like cuddles?” He asked.

“I love them,” you said.

He chuckled. “Great because I have a deep desire to cuddle you and make you know you’re treasured.”

You could have cried when he said that. Instead you wrapped your arms around his neck and pecked him on the lips. It wasn’t the best time to cry. You wanted to cherish the moment as a positive part of the day.

“Thank you, Spence. You’re extraordinary.”

“I guess that makes us a perfect match.”

“It sure does.”

—–

Tagged: @shadyladyperfection​, @slutforthegubes​, @pinkdiamond1016​, @spencerreidsthings​, @itsmyblogandillreblogifiwantto​, @slutforsr​ @bxtchboy69​, @fallinallinmendes​

MASTERLIST

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hi! I don't really know if you're still doing httyd analyses, but I can't stop thinking about how httyd1 seemed to walk this thin, perfect line between logic and emotion that appealed to such a large audience, but when the sequels came out, we split into like/dislike fractions. Imo, Httyd2 + 3 have the same problems. But 2 was great for thinkers, while horrible for feelers, and 3 was that same thing turned upside down. And it's just so incredibly interesting to me. Care to comment, awesome dude?

Hey there! Good to hear from you! Interesting thoughts!

I’ve been sitting on this because, to me, those haven’t been the observations I’ve made about the latter two movies myself. And I’ve found that fascinating. You mmmmmay have something to it, you definitely may, but I’m not sure I’m ready to make that generalization of fandom reaction myself.

I’ve seen several of my closest friends, who are feelers, draw deeply into HTTYD 2, whether it was relating to Toothless like their pet dog, loving the angst of Stoick’s death, or something else. And several other of my closest friends, logical to the max, dug in deeply to THW. I’ve seen logical criticisms against HTTYD 2 (plot structure, amount of time spent with villain, etc.) and against THW (how THW might not effectively write a call-to-the-wild due to the embedded romance suggestions in there, whether or not the ending of the movie justified the size of the danger). I’ve seen emotional comments balking against HTTYD 2 (too dark for children, felt too different from original) and THW (didn’t like the dragons leaving, didn’t feel emotional connection between Hiccup and Toothless). I think I’ve seen more emotional rejections of THW than I have HTTYD 2.

Ultimately, from my angle, I don’t get the same delineation that you do. For me, any correlation I’d try to draw with your observation would be anecdotal and subject to my self-confirmation biases. I don’t think 2 was objectively great for thinkers and 3 great for feelers. Now, it’s true I am a “thinker” and HTTYD 2 was my jam when it came out, but that’s because it struck a deep emotional chord with me, something that gnawed at me for days because of how character death got handled in the film and how close it mirrored the pains I was going through in my own life at the time. But yeah, I mean, I analyzed the music themes “objectively” too. And it’s true that when THW came out, my lukewarm response to it was because of logical criticisms. But it was also because I didn’t feel much emotion out of it and I’d gone into the movie specifically to feel something. Anyway... my personal response hasn’t been anywhere close to universal with how I’ve seen fandom members react to the trilogy, either. I think that lots of what draw people to/away the latter films are things like whether you can relate to the themes, what sorts of tropes you like, what sorts of plot holes or contrivances you don’t mind versus get bothered by, what sorts of emotional messages resonate with you most, what’s going on in your life when the movie comes out, and the like. While emotion and logic play into it, I definitely agree with you there, I think those factors are more prevalent than the emotional/logical-driven sides of us.

Still, I really like what you’ve say about the first movie being the perfect line between logic and emotion. I think the first movie got everything right. From the theoretical side, HTTYD got all its structural properties concrete. It hits the nail on the head from the analytical “thinker” side. The music has endless analysis potential with its interweaving, information-nuanced leitmotifs. The narrative structure is perfectly paced. There’s balance between moments of silence versus dialogue. Dialogue is clever; themes are well-accounted for; what’s introduced in the beginning comes back later. Animation, art stylistic choices, how the dragons got animated, there’s tons to talk about. It’s a masterpiece from the angle thinkers like to go by. To this day, I think this is still one of the most solidly paced films like, freaking ever, and I marvel at it.

But HTTYD is also, at its heart, a story about a boy, his father, and his best friend. Its major plot points are the emotional beats of the story. What we’re invested in is how a boy’s relationship with his father will or won’t strengthen. What we’re invested in is whether the boy’s growing love for a dragon will destroy his sense of belonging in the world he once strove to be recognized in. What we’re invested in is if the boy can both receive the love of his dad and the love of this dragon. It’s a story of acceptance, belonging, being different, being loved, finding love, hiding who you are, being accepted for who you are, etc. It’s not an “action” movie. HTTYD is a story of relationships and heart.

I believe that the best stories marry the structural properties with the emotional beats. They interplay with each other. One informs the other. One elevates the other. One makes the other exist properly. Without animation technique, we couldn’t have good chilling scenes or heartwarming scenes because the visuals wouldn’t evoke it. Without characters struggling with love, no one in the audience would care about the plot. Without knowing how to write plot, we wouldn’t be able to demonstrate the characters loving each other. Without creators caring about the story, everything would feel emotionally dead. And so forth.

[st-just]

Semi-coherent Queen’s Gambit thoughts

Overall I really did enjoy the show, even if it might be a bit shallow, once you dig into it. Or, well,, having thought about it I could write a damning denunciation on request, anyway (but that’s true of basically everything I watch, so). Aesthetically gorgeous, of course. But honestly, what’s most interesting to me is how, like, deceptively upbeat and optimistic and generally joyful show it is?

Okay, so firstly – I really do mean it when I say it’s aesthetically beautiful. This show has singlehandidly convinced me that every change in fashion since the ‘60s has been a strict downgrade. The soundtrack’s absolutely sublime as well, both the licensed tracks and just the score – I’m almost certainly going to just be listening to the soundtrack as walking around music for quite a while. I’m no expert on cinematography, but there were a few scenes that were absolutely just showing off, and I sure as hell enjoyed the show (the American championship montage, obviously, and the pull-out in the Moscow hotel. And, well, pretty much every important chess game/tournament). Anna Taylor-Joy absolutely makes the show, and literally anyone whose watched more than two minutes of it probably agrees. Has one of those faces that is just amazing at getting across emotions and ideas without actually saying anything (and without looking like an idiot trying to do so). Really, the comparison that springs to mind is Mathew Rhys and Kerri Russel in The Americans, which is just about the highest praise I, personally, can give. So, yeah, give her and the people in costuming and set design Emmys, at a minimum.

And – getting critiques out of the way, in descending order of how much I care. Jolene is absolutely the most stereotypically Black Best Friend sort of character imaginable, and the conversation where she basically looks at the camera and says she doesn’t just exist to be Beth’s guardian angel doesn’t actually help that much. Beth finally summoning up the self belief and willpower to flush away her lifelong pill habit in the middle of a tournament and playing the next day without any sort of problems was a bit twee. Between the show’s utterly despair inducing vision of the life the women Beth went to school with have and Julie’s whole vitriolic anti-model spiel the show can come off a bit #notlikeothergirls (incidentally, whoever got the French a national stereotype of being sexy, well-dressed and sophisticated deserves a bigger statue in Paris). And, yeah, it’s not unjustifiable or even, like, unusually bad, but Beth hitting rock bottom does end up looking a lot like a playboy spread.

But, okay – when I say the series is remarkably upbeat what I mostly (magical addiction-curing character development aside) mean is that the world (or at last, the world of chess) is shown as fundamentally uplifting, kind, and pure. The conflict of the show is either the result of forced interactions with the rest of society, or Beth struggling with her own damage. Her birth mother and father, the orphanage, her utter piece-of-shit of an adoptive father, the other girls at school – these are all, broadly, terrible. But chess itself is an entirely positive part of her life, and while some of the people she meets through it are rude or condescending at first, they basically all very quickly grow to respect her and become extremely invested in her well-being and success (her relationship with her adoptive mother also becomes more positive and loving basically entirely in proportion to how supportive she is of Beth’s chess career). All of her rivals turn out to be gracious losers and perfect gentleman, and also usually fall in love with her (which, well, fair), and the closest things the series has to a defined, hateable villain (beyond Beth’s self-destructive tendencies) is her adoptive father,  not anyone in the chess world that consumes the vast majority of the plot.

The show’s take on gender roles and period-appropriate patriarchy. There is, to borrow and probably butcher (I believe) Kate Manne’s there is quite a lot of sexism in the show, but almost no misogyny. Which is to say, Beth has to deal with plenty of condescension, double-standards, suffocating expectations, and generally being being looked at askance, and the show is absolutely crystal clear that actually living up to those expectations is a miserable, soul-crushing, dream-killing husk of a life. But when she ignores them and demands to be accepted as a serious chess-player, once she shows that she’s as good as she acts like she is, everyone just, well, lets her. There’s no enforcement mechanism to the patriarchy, or if there is Beth is too exceptional to ever even see it. And no one ever becomes hateful or violently insecure when shown up by her – quite the opposite, really.

Semi-related, but for a show set during the Cold War it’s got an oddly positive view of the Soviet Union. Benny’s rant about how people actually care about chess and give it prestige, and how chess players there actually work together and cooperate instead of being obsessed with individual achievement (which the rest of the show goes on to make very clear is a virtue and something worth copying). There was a bit in the last episode along the same lines that actually made me smile – when the State Department/CIA goon asks Beth to tell the reporters how being in Moscow has made her proud to be an American, when she clearly (imo) is rather fond of the sudden adoring crowds and the reverence her sport is treated with.

Beyond jokes about the there being another universe 10 degrees off from this one where the whole thing is a VN where you beat each potential love interest in chess to unlock them, the comparison that comes to mind is honestly Among Others by Jo Walton. Not for, like, tone or subject matter or anything, but just for the general arc of ‘Weird Girl in mid 20th century deals with horrifying childhood trauma and alienation from the social life expected of her by diving headfirst into nerdy/esoteric subculture”.

But yeah, anyway, gorgeous, enjoyable show. Would watch again. Give Taylor-Joy an Emmy. Thank you again to @triviallytrue and @rox-and-prose for the recommendation. 

[loisinherlane]

Consider this my magnum opus of why I love Booster Gold and why you should read these comics, but also: how Michael Carter and his family are connected to time travel. It’s kind of a hot mess because I run through a bunch of comics, but hopefully this makes sense!

Michael Carter, alias Booster Gold, is the first new hero introduced after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Booster is from the 25th century, where he was a college football player who got caught betting on his games and expelled, eventually becoming a janitor in a museum.

(Booster Gold (2007) #1)

At this museum, he befriends a security robot called Skeets. Eventually, Booster decides that he wants the adoration superheroes had in the 20th/21st century, and with future technology, he would be able to join up in the past. So Booster steals a Time Sphere, a suit, and a Legion of Superheroes flight ring. (Wait, the legion is from the 30th century, right? Yes. There are reasons this ring is in the past, and that’s mostly because Booster was always meant to become a superhero.) In the past, Booster establishes himself as a superhero, with a manager and number of sponsors. He’s about making money. This doesn’t necessarily make him a lot of friends. But he joins the Justice League International, makes friends with some heroes (including Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle), and has a standard fare for a non-central character.

So flash forward to Countdown to Infinite Crisis. For those of you who haven’t read this one: This is a lead-in to the OMAC Project, and later, to Infinite Crisis, where Ted Kord notices a number of things that don’t add up. Unfortunately, Ted is not the most respected hero in the community, and no one quite takes him seriously. Wonder Woman says she’s busy but to keep her updated, and Oracle is trying to get him to pay more attention to other matters.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

So Ted seeks out his best friend Booster to help. Booster, after some initial reluctance, joins up. There’s some noticeable moments where Booster hints that he knows some things about the future (particularly, that Ted is going to die, and the Scarab means that the new Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, is about to take over): Booster keeps staring at the newly found Scarab. He asks Ted when he found it. Ted, in his narration, hints that Booster knew Doomsday would kill Superman, and he still took the first punch.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

All of this parallels what happens next: Booster shoos Ted away from the computer and takes over. Booster gets hit by an explosion meant for Ted.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

Consider: Later implications of time travel suggest that some small things can be changed, but the big things can’t. If Booster knew what was going to happen, did Booster only postpone Ted’s death?

With that, Ted does die at the end of this story, and a part of The OMAC Project is Wonder Woman and Booster investigating Ted’s death. But as much as I love Ted, we’re mostly talking about Booster and time travel today. So moving on!

In Infinite Crisis, Booster is the one who fetches Jaime Reyes. After returning to the 25th century to access historical records, he tracks down Jaime via the scarab. (Of course, this is another example of a potential change: Booster says he may be saving millions or billions of lives, but this is unsubstantiated.)

(Infinite Crisis #2)

(Infinite Crisis #5)

So this brings us to 52, the fallout of Infinite Crisis. Booster Gold’s plot, while not obviously central in its introduction, plays a major role in bringing back the multiverse to the Post-Crisis continuity. Booster Gold, in the wake of the loss of his best friend Ted Kord, has sold-out again.

(52 #1)

With the help of Skeets, he’s returned to his origins. He wants to be a hero and make bank. Superman’s not around, so who else could Metropolis turn to?

Booster is on the outs though. First, with the heroes: Ralph Dibny blames him for not realizing his wife Sue was going to be murdered. Beatriz de Costa (Fire) shames him for how he’s acting after Ted’s death.

(52 #7)

(52 #4)

Pay attention to that notepad. Booster writes the names of Rip Hunter and his fellow Time Masters, as well S.T.A.R. Labs Time Travel Division. Everyone but Rip Hunter is crossed out. Rip’s name is circled, but he’s noted as “unlisted?????”

Because he’s noticed a number of events that don’t line up with the history Booster and Skeets remember, Booster goes to visit Rip Hunter in his Time Lab in Arizona. Skeets has to hold the door open because of the lock, so Booster goes in by himself...

(52 #6)

...and sees this... (Feel free to read what’s on the chalkboard. A lot of it hints to happenings in both 52 and the One Year Later event, as well as other stories. It can be fun to make connections.)

(52 #6)

...and this. Yikes.

We soon find out that Booster hired an actor to fake an incident on a subway. Why? Well... that answer’s not so clear. But considering the rest of the story, it’s likely Booster wanted to discredit himself.

(52 #7)

Unfortunately for Booster, this ruins his reputation with the public, and he’s soon replaced by a new, more humble hero: Supernova.

(52 #10)

And the public adores Supernova. Meanwhile, Booster’s sponsors pull out as his reputation goes down the drain.

Booster gets one last moment in the limelight, when he pushes too hard trying to upstage Supernova, and he dies... though he’s recognized as a hero for his tragic sacrifice.

((Hold on if you haven’t read 52. You’re going to find this one funny.))

(52 #15)

So... Booster is dead. Ha. What next? Well, Skeets seeks out Booster’s ancestor, Daniel Carter, for help to get back into the Time Lab. After all, Booster didn’t give Skeets the details.

(52 #19)

Daniel lets Skeets see into the Time Lab, where Skeets finally sees the same things Booster saw.

(52 #19)

Whoops! The real problem is Skeets. A little more menacing now, isn’t it? So Skeets abandons Daniel in the Time Lab, where he’s sucked into a vortex that’s part of Rip’s security measures. Meanwhile, Skeets is free to handle his evil plan. Whatever that is.

Back to Metropolis: Supernova is still out there, doing good. He’s also grabbing items that seem a little... eclectic. 

(52 #20)

And everyone is theorizing about who’s really under the mask. Cassie Sandsmark thinks it’s Kon-El. Lex Luthor thinks it’s Superman. Ralph Dibny puts the pieces together...

(52 #31)

But Supernova asks him not to say it out loud.

Later, we see that Supernova is actually working for Rip Hunter. Everything he’s gathered has been for Rip, who, as you can see, is really going through it. (Sad they never followed up on why Rip Hunter was affected like this, but I have my own thoughts that I might say later.)

(52 #36)

Where are they working anyway? In the jarred city of Kandor! Of course, Skeets can’t find them here, can he?

(52 #36)

Whoops. Spoke too soon.

(52 #37)

But who is Supernova? That burning question we’ve had for all these issues?

It’s... Michael Carter! Booster Gold!

(52 #37)

So, as Rip asks, Booster tells him. Booster knew something was off with Skeets. At the Time Lab, he almost asked him. But Rip Hunter arrived and recruited him for the long con. Rip needed Booster to gather materials, but they couldn’t alert Skeets. However, using a suit Rip rigged, Booster could be in two places at once: through time travel. After faking his death (using his real corpse from the future), Booster was sent back in time twelve weeks to complete Supernova’s actions.

Now Rip, Booster, and Skeets are engaged in a battle that, uh... is not continued until Week 50 on panel. If you count this as continued. I just love this panel.

(52 #50)

Actually, Skeets follows Rip and Booster to a lab where T.O. Morrow has searched the Red Torado’s brain to find out the truth of the 52 that he’s been repeating throughout the series.

(52 #51)

Of course, it’s not actually Skeets. The real Skeets was used as a chrysalis for Mister Mind... who has become a horrifying moth hellbent on eating the new multiverse.

(52 #51)

Rip drags Booster out, back to the Time Sphere, where they travel back to the beginning.

(52 #52)

After the events of Infinite Crisis, the multiverse was recreated. 52 identical Earths came into existence, and the same struggle has been taking place on all of them. These Earths are slowly aligning, and for some reason, Rip can see this, but Booster can’t. (Hold tight: Let’s keep in mind, for some reason, Rip was totally non-linear earlier. We’ll come back to this.)

(52 #52)

Rip intends to save all of the Earths, as they slowly settle into the new multiverse, with help from Supernova! ...This time, Daniel Carter, the Carter family ancestor that Skeets/Mister Mind used earlier.

(52 #52)

Bad news is that Mister Mind is still bent on eating a universe. As he eats parts of the various Earths, he changes their history, which leads to each Earth being unique.

(52 #52)

Booster has doubts about their ability to face something this big, but Skeets, now broken from Mister Mind, cheers him on... Booster heads back to the one place he knows to get the right power source, and Rip hints about Booster’s “glory days” soon to come. So now we know there’s a connection between Booster and Rip.

(52 #52)

But where is Booster going to get that power source?

(52 #52)

The immediate aftermath of the first crisis, where he talks a little with very young Ted Kord. (Sad.) Now we have to wonder how Booster knows to go back here? How much about time travel does Booster know yet?

Anyway, together, Rip, Booster, and Daniel succeed in defeating Mister Mind, and the multiverse is restored. Rip is very optimistic!

(52 #52)

So... let’s cut to Booster Gold’s second solo. Notice the title of his first story is “52 Pick-Up.” Booster, after saving the multiverse, wants nothing more than to be a hero again. He wants to join the Justice League again! Unfortunately, he’s recruited by Rip Hunter once again, who makes it clear that Booster’s destiny lies in time travel instead. And the world needs to think Booster is an idiot.

(Booster Gold (2007) #1)

Notice how Rip mentions his father? We’re finally getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, the other weird Time Stuff, that’s going on. Back at Rip Hunter’s Lab, Rip has written a number of interesting things on his chalkboard again.

Notice how Rip notes 1939 (the year Detective Comics was first published), 1985 (Crisis on Infinite Earths), and 2006 (Infinite Crisis). This shows how the crises actually affect time in the DC universe. Rip is, of course, aware of it. Is Booster too? How else would he know about the first crisis?

What is the connection between Rip and Booster anyway? Why does Rip care so much about Booster? Well...

(Booster Gold (2007) #1000000)

That’s right! Booster is actually Rip Hunter’s dad! So a lot of stuff we’ve been over must make more sense now.

But seriously, the Carter family is heavily involved in time travel, and the way it interacts with them is interesting. We’ve already seen how Rip isn’t linear when the timestream is disrupted... but what about the other members? How does this all affect Booster?

Honestly, I’m not sure. And I just ran out of energy for this post. If you want to know more, send an ask! And read the comics. You will not regret it.

[seijch]

ANNOUNCEMENT: NOT A HELLO, BUT NOT A GOODBYE EITHER

omg hi ... im like . ashamed to come back after saying brief hiatus in october and then disappearing off the face of the earth til FEBRUARY but under the cut i will be explaining myself and the following, if youre interested (and a tl;dr at the very bottom if you don’t wanna scroll thru this obnoxiously long post):

the reason(s) i was gone for so long

what i was doing during that time (its just a personal account yall can scroll past this idrc)

the status of those um . halloween requests

the future of this account

i. so . Hiatus .

i know. i know . i probably mentioned it when i made the announcement post, but my mental health likes to go on one of those rides. yknow the ones where you go like up rlly fast then down maybe and then up then DOWN .... its like that. i needed a break and every time i wanted to come back or thought about it, something would happen and i would get stuck in my own head.

a big reason for getting stuck in my head was (and i hate to admit this ... i hate to admit that i have Insecurities On The Internet) my feelings of inadequacy regarding my writing. i love to plot fics, i love concepts and characters and making little headcanons but i dont ... know if i love writing rn. and i thought for the longest time that like . whatever ill just push thru it its fine ill be fine but it kinda wasnt lmao you can kinda see it in my halloween reqs and what become of them when i get to that but i began to feel like nothing i had put out or would put out would hold up prose wise (and normally i dont feel like this im much more “idc its my life im living it” but thats not a rant for tumblr LMAO). i still feel like that -- like im better as a reader than a writer. but . You Know :-)

tl;dr: mental state go brrrrr

ii. anywhere here’s wonderwall

when i left, i was in a steadily decreasing mental and emotional state, made worse by a situation at work that really was a case of petty jealousy on my end and rlly isnt very consequential now despite how much pain and resentment it gave me when it Was a problem so i wont get into it. the tl;dr of november and december was me using work as an crutch and distraction -- i know my job, i do it well, it helped me not think about my responsibilities and obligations and inadequacies. of course, as the holiday season grew busier n busier i was scheduled so often that i moved 88 or so miles (according to my apple watch, which i ONLY wear at work since im never anywhere else outside my house) and fell into a cycle of showering n sleeping at my house before going back the next day. (theres definitely something to be said abt capitalism and “grind culture” here but once again its not the time or place snsjkdfds)

at the turn of the new year, i happened to remember a birthday card i hadnt filed away for safekeeping from a friend of mine that id been horribly out of touch with til that point. i started crying because i realized how out of touch id been in general up until that point. the month of january was great for me: i was focused, happy, and in a much better place than i had been before. the end of it brought me down focus wise and im hoping that enough time away from my distractions will refocus me bc i ... need it LMAO and though ive burned out from that level of productivity and gotten distracted again im ... trying to stay positive which i think is the most i can do 😁👍🏼

media wise, i got real into stardew valley (but burned out bc i played it extensively as a way to wind down after work), the pokemon platinum romhack renegade platinum (still havent finished it bc of school n i played it w the intent to see if i could nuzlocke it ... bitch its so hard but its so fun bc of it), briefly assassins creed: odyssey (im one of those ppl who completes an entire region before i move to the next so you can tell i burned out of that one + wouldnt have the time to properly devote to it even if i didnt), got back into genshin impact after pulling for xiao (after not touching it for like . months), and danganronpa. yes . danganronpa 😐 i Know. i stopped playing it after the second trial of the first game bc i was so hurt by the outcome and picked it up in late january only to get sucked in (thank god i had the foresight to buy the second and third games during the steam winter sale). rn im at the start of chapter 4 if anyone wants to come in my asks and um . talk to me abt danganronpa

tl;dr: I’m Into Danganronpa Now

iii. you realize halloween was three months ago right

i mentioned this in the first section, but i love to plot things. every request is plotted or at least has a solid foundation. i had fun detailing what concept i wanted to go with considering what i was given, and there were some bangers i might touch up in the future. but heres whats going to happen to the requests themselves:

there are two finished requests. one will be posted tomorrow and the other will be touched up (just bc i finished it doesnt mean its good 🧍‍♂️) and scheduled for next saturday. as for the ones i never got around to ...

i will not be finishing those requests. i hate to be That Person, but i feel like we all expected this 🧍‍♂️ what i will do is post all of my notes for each request in batches -- requests that have an @ to go with them will be mentioned in the post proper, but anon asks will be pictured. (there are some asks that came from blogs who are now deactivated but i wrote down all the prompts and remember most of those askers so ill cross that bridge when i get there) there will most likely be an excerpt or two simply bc i think i mightve written a few plot points or interactions in the form of bullet points. i rlly am sorry about doing this but i remember looking at my notion doc with all the prompts and feeling ... like i wasnt measuring up n it wasnt just to myself or to some intangible concept of “other” id constructed but it was instead to those who requested n actually WANTED to see and hear and read my writing and i ...... im gonna admit thats another big reason i avoided this site.

regardless, youll definitely get what i have (and likely more than just my bullet points and illegible handwriting).

tl;dr: im sorry. what i have in terms of plot, concept, and interaction for every request will be posted, but i cant say ill ever complete them and mean it.

iv. so what now?

well i mean . im not entirely sure how sold i am on haikyuu in the content creation department (as a creator n to a lesser extent, as a consumer). as mentioned previously, its no longer my primary focus. it doesnt mean im not into haikyuu anymore; i have a lot of love for those boys but i cant rlly say im even caught up w recent fandom activity and also havent even finished s4 pt2 LMAO thats on my to do list

and despite all that, i still want to share my plots n concepts and snippets and maybe even fics. it wont happen anytime soon. it might not even happen. but i mean . its better than me saying i wont write ever again shjdkfs but either way ill probably use this blog as a personal blog w the occasional ask game for dialogue prompts (those are always so fun i love making up aus to fit like . the most mundane prompts)

as for my works (past and any potential future), ive opened an ao3 acc here n ill be editing n possibly expanding on my old works to post there. tumblr, to me, is The x reader hub, but i figure more x reader fics on ao3 is never a bad thing.

ill be deleting/posting drafted posts to the queue since they were all meant to be queued anyway as well as (sorry again 🧍‍♂️) deleting or answering asks in the inbox. (moots if you get a notif from me saying i rbed your post from months ago ... mind your business) im very hard to get ahold of and its ... a problem. expect an overhaul of the nav n shit to reflect my new direction n also because i feel like i cant tell if my passion for carrd is shared by the majority HSDKLFS maybe its better to read my info in a normal post ykwim .......

and of course . if youve read all this n decided im no longer worth the follow, i sure as hell cant stop you. thank you for wanting to, at some point, hear what i have to say -- it means more than you think.

tl;dr: writing will be edited and reposted to ao3, this blog will be a personal blog with a hint of writing (sometimes)

the tl;dr to end all tl;drs:

im back! i wont be as active as i used to due to a lessened interest in haikyuu in general, but i have an ao3 acc now where all my past work will be edited, possibly expanded, and reposted. any future work will also find itself there. my halloween requests will be posted in batches as incomplete concepts, plots, and snippets of scenes; i wont be promising to finish any of them.

there are still fic concepts im attached to and want to finish, but i cant promise any more writing on my end. this blog will be a personal blog with maybe writing, not a writing blog with my personal thoughts all over it.

regardless if you stick around or not, its been crazy sexy cool (equal emphasis) being on haikyuu tumblr even tho i wasnt around for long ... even tho its not my main focus anymore, im still excited to see what the future might hold 🤝

love, ari 💌

[nissakii]

Manga or Anime, which one is better?

How many of you did ask themselves or maybe discussed with others which one was better: the anime or manga?

And often there is a distinctive winner and at other times you just simply cannot decide.

Why is that?

Why can we sometimes not decide what is the better option?

While everyone has their preferences there are a section of three people: the ones who only watch the anime and therefore reject reading the manga (whatever the reason is), the ones reading the manga and prefer it over all costs, and last but not least the good middle who may prefer one side but also favor the other at times.

In this blogpost we will discuss the big question: Which one is better, Anime or Manga? as we delve into the topic of what makes both amazing in their own ways but also their shortcomings, seeing which one is better in the end, also considering the three types of people.

Anime

Probably most of you started their journey into the world of Anime and Manga through the former rather than the latter.

Usually it’s even the case that some people watch only anime while others who may have liked the anime so much would consider reading the Manga afterwards.

Yet what makes anime so distinctive and wonderful?

What aspects catch our eyes and would let you choose it over manga?

There are many things that you can only enjoy when you watch the visualization of a series you enjoy, whether you have been a Manga reader who waited for an animation of the so-desired series or a newcomer who never had something to do with the series yet get caught up in it.

In comparison to the Manga who may have visual aspects as well when speaking about panels, Anime gives us the ease of not having to put up together movements such as fights, escapes or other scenes by ourselves but we get to see them right in front of use without using much of our brain.

While in Manga one attack can stretch over several panels and even pages, we get to see that in one smooth movement on the screen and not only that is an aspect that stands out on top of that the same scene we can read silently is now connected to auditory feedback as well.

Characters having a voice, sound effects being represented with actual sound rather than writing a word to make the readers imagine the sound themselves and even background music known as OSTs do give the scene a whole atmosphere for itself.

Despite watching something absent-minded or subconsciously our brain intakes all the information we get on the screen and proceeds with voices especially the character becomes more real as he/she becomes more distinctive through voice and movement that most of the people use to distinguish between others next to facial features and appearance.

But there are always the negative aspects that come along, especially if you fall into the category of being a Manga reader that waited for the anime’s airing, usually our brain automatically fills in holes of information which means voices that didn’t exist for a reader may have been chosen differently than expected, which distorts the image of the character that was built up through reading and filling the hole.

In some cases the anime even derives from the original plot and doesn’t go along with the manga storyline anymore, for the better and in sadly most series for the worse. Also since the episode count is already determined many scenes get left out due to the lack of time that the episode has in store or some of the most relative scenes get shortened to an extent that if not for the Manga some watchers would be utterly confused about what is happening on the screen context-wise. One good example would be the latter seasons of Tokyo Ghoul.

But what if you are not necessarily someone who doesn’t know a thing about the manga and the series is completely new to you?

There are stories which take a while to unfold their full potential and become therefore much more interesting towards the middle, yet if you don’t know what motivates you to watch until that point?

If it wouldn’t be for recommendation or people who are a bit familiar with the plotline some might even drop some anime due to the frustration of a slow plot development which might be worth the wait, yet could stay unknown therefore being a Manga reader or at least knowing people who did could give you that safety net of not wasting your time on a bad plot under the condition the Anime sticks to the manga for the better.

Manga

Next to games, light novels and webtoons usually Mangas get adapted a lot, therefore they are valuable source which make it possible to derive amazing anime from it as we see that anime with no adaption source usually don’t get as much recognition or don’t have a thought-through plotline (or at least it seems like that).

Usually the Manga covers much more scenarios than the anime and is in some cases even completed while the anime is still airing or almost finished airing. Other ones are still on-going because they are much more extensive than the anime.

Now what are the perks of reading the manga?

Since the series from a reader’s perspective

starts much earlier prior the anime release it feels like you are bonding with the manga much more before the release comes out, it gives you the feeling of being early and already much familiar with the series.

Do you know the feeling of reading a manga for years and then suddenly seeing the anime adapting that very gem you are reading? The excitement and anxiety of how the studio will implement all of the details or what they might leave out?

It creates a kind of longing but also the feeling of nostalgia as you remember “ah yes that very scene, I have read it in the manga it was so good.”

With some manga even updating weekly or others with more pages but monthly, as a manga reader you have much more content you can look forward to over a certain period of time, not only that but you get a lot of details along with it.

Scenes which usually take a lot of time to understand and rewinding it many times on the screen can seem much more comprehensive in the manga when seeing the things step by step, usually we also get insight of other people’s thoughts through thought bubbles which were left out in the anime or even little details far in the background of the panel that are something like an easter egg provided by the author.

On top of that you get to see little extra comics of some of your favourite characters or a little talk from the author who might from time to time drop some old concepts or original plot ideas that were discarded for the later chapter releases.

Since the manga basically is only visuals with no voices or sounds, for people who might lack a bit of imagination it might be quite tiresome to fill the holes of not having that provided or is bland, yet for other people it gives them the advantage of imagining the characters having the voices how they want them to sound.

Unlike the anime the manga also needs a bit more attention and therefore usually we tend to be a bit more aware or focussed on other things in the manga then in the anime, of course only generally speaking since there are other anime where you are supposed to constantly think along such as Danganronpa or Steins Gate.

There also characters which are manga-only meaning that the character is either not introduced at all as if they never existed or they come in so late that many people won’t even know about them who only watched the anime, in Ouran Highschool Host Club for example we have another Love interest for one of the host boys who was never introduced in the anime but plays a role in the manga, since we are also talking about Ouran, the ending of the anime heavily derives from the manga plot as there was no such scene which means a major change occurred to get a got final episode.

On top of that many backstories and secrets let’s take the former example, we have Tamaki’s, Kyoya’s and even the twins’ story revealed. Yes, you might say, wait, the Hitachin story was revealed in the anime? but many details and a lot of scenes that are relevant as to why they have become what they are, are left out.

Usually story-wise the plot gets deeper and much more complicated, to a point that the reader just cannot stop reading but sadly the anime only covers the inception of a much bigger problem that awaits the characters, but watchers only would never know about that another two examples would be Toiletbound Hanako and Gakuen Alice.

As Gakuen Alice might even come off as a children series if you start watching the anime the manga surely refutes that impression, the anime with 25 Episodes is something like a character introduction compared to the manga where the major events happen and you later on might ask yourself if not for the title and characters: is this the same series I watched on screen? That’s crazy.

So which one is better?

Now the question we have been waiting for after establishing pros and cons on both sides: Okay, I got it but which one is better?

Plottwist:

There is no universal answer to it.

You might take it as a joke or not, but it’s a preference thing yet I encountered many people who actually favoured the Manga due to the reasons stated.

Usually when the anime ends many fans, regular readers or first timers, tend to read the manga at some point because when does the sequel come?

Or will there be a sequel?

Maybe there was a scene that seemed lacking and you heard the manga outdid it.

Whatever the reason is most people tend to have at least a look or two into the manga.

Fans of Attack on Titan, Haikyuu or Jujutsu Kaisen for example just simply couldn’t wait for a sequel and went straight to the manga even though they hate reading in general, since the tension built up just wouldn’t fade away and sometimes that results in people suddenly liking manga more and becoming a regular reader.

Yet there are people who would rather wait for the next episodes and refuse to read from the adapted source, even in the case where the anime obviously is badly adapted or even altered to a point where the story is becoming confusing due to the plot holes that come from the many changes.

It all depends which type of person you are: Watch anime only, Manga over everything or the good mix of both?

Because in the end if you hate reading then the manga surely wouldn’t give you the same experience when you are also a fanatic of amazing soundtracks, animations and so on.

Which one is your preferable source: Manga or Anime?

Which type of people did you already meet?

Meanwhile as I await your comments let me see what the tea brings.

-Makii

[jeanjauthor]

Hello I came from the ask on waoiaf. I’m a different anon but I thought your answer was pretty cool. Hope you do not mind me asking but I am in a similar boat with merging two cultures. I am making a female prevelant book with five female POV’s and most are in the merchant world which I took inspired from the late mediveal- Renaissance Italian era, I have two that are in the nobility which takes more after 16th century France and partakes in Salic law. Do you have any worldbuilding fem tips?

I don’t mind being asked, no worries!  My thoughts & ideas might work, or might not, but then that’s true for any answer I’d give, lol.  It all depends on the situation.

Okay...so if I understand correctly, it’s not real-world history, but you’ve got a created world culture with some late medieval Italian renaissance flair and some age of exploration French aristocracy with Salic law issues.  Had to look up Salic law, lol (for those curious, the wiki article is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salic_law ), but yeah...basically criminal laws that evolved to include inheritance laws & patriarchal/misogyny based issues as well, predominantly the “women cannot inherit titles /powers /duties /property” bs for royalty & nobility...

Mkay, first question, and this is a genuine one:  Is it necessary to have misogyny imposed by law for inheritances?  If so, is it part of the story, driving either the plot or the character’s struggles and growth?  If so for either of those, remembering that you’re writing for a modern audience (and that readers’ tastes have shifted quite a bit in the last 10 years alone!), are these issues going to be addressed in the story and overcome in a meaningful way?

These questions are predicated on the basis that you’re not writing real-world history, but rather a created world based upon, but not dependent on, these incorporated influences.

One of the reasons why patriarchy & misogyny are so heavily incorporated into European history is because of the patriarchal & misogynistic influences of the Christian Church after around 300 CE, iirc; my memory of the exact dates is fuzzy, but that’s about when it gets going--prior to this point, the Christian Church was a lot more egalitarian.  So egalitarian, in fact, that many major early Church leaders were women, to the point that it actually started to overshadow the standards of Roman custom, culture, & law of the day--Roman women could own property and run businesses, even if they couldn’t vote...but the Christians! *le gasp!* They were letting women vote on how their cultural government should be run??

Yeah, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, not in a widespread way...but at some point, male leaders in positions of power (secular and/or religious) decided to NOPE women out of positions of power, to make them second class citizens, and even nope them all the way down into being barefoot preggers in the kitchen, etc, chattel.  They used the Christian religion as their vehicle to gain power, influence, and dominance over society, warping the original Christian culture and its values away from egalitarianism.

But that is the real world.  So does your created world have that kind of religious /historical /cultural influence?  This is important because we know that in our world’s history, Salic law remained pretty firmly in place for well over a thousand years...and we’re still fighting to change it for the better today.  Your world is different.

If the inherent misogyny, etc, in a Salic law system is going to be an issue for your characters, can they overcome it in meaningful ways?  Are there going to be changes to the customs, whether local or regional?  Are there going to be changes to the laws, whether local, regional, or national?--This particular plot setup & payoff would be absolutely lovely to see in a fantasy / historical-esque world setting, to see actual changes happening, and not merely token-esque changes or an “exception made for this one (1) character.”  A meaningful change is one that affects not just the main characters, but secondary and tertiary characters’ lives as well.

You may have to bring some A-Game arguments into the story for these females arguing for their rights to inherit land, property, businesses, to run said businesses, to not have to be married or under the domination of their fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.  And it would be great if some of the males in these ladies’ lives showed some open support for them...and absolutely smashing for males in positions of power & authority who can change the laws to do so in a publicly acknowledging way. 

Literally, if the ladies campaign for the right to own property and run businesses and be inheritors for their fathers & mothers, then have the King or whoever show it by publicly decreeing or announcing,  “We have labored for far too long under the assumptions of misogyny, and have been held back by the weight of these pointless chains, which shall now be removed...”

or “I was wrong to assume that Lady Allania could only have brought her family’s merchant business to absolute ruin.  Instead, she has created alliances with former enemies and prospered our kingdom...and I must admit that she is not the only woman so gifted and capable.  When any female is given the same respect, training, education, and opportunity as a male, they, too, can do just as many wonderful things, and it is time this kingdom’s laws reflected this great, untapped potential, thus I am revoking or altering the following laws (blah blah blah)...”  or at least something along those lines.

It’d be some hard work, but if you go this route, a lot of readers will love your story all the more for it, since it genuinely will be something different.  If you don’t...a lot of readers will do the *eyeroll* thing and go “ho hum, another standard ‘fantasy world based on Europe’ and all its historical problems... Next?”  Not all by any means, but it is something to consider.

...Now with all that said, the next question is, which part of Italy in the Renaissance is being copied?  Because if it’s Venetian, you’ve got the Doge Era for hundreds of years, which was pretty much a mix of royalty, arosticracy, republic, and democracy ruling the city, all of which helped to spread the strength and wealth of the merchant class.  But if it’s based on Milan, that was a centralized monarchy.  And Rome, of course, was ruled by the papacy, which, hoo boy, was misogynistic AF as well as hypocritical in how it sent out a LOT of mixed messages, lots of bribery and usury, plenty of power-grabbing maneuverings, plus most high-ranking members kept mistresses, etc, while decrying sex out of marriage, blah blah blah...

From the way you mention merchant classes, I’m presuming it’s much more of a Venetian (or possibly Genoese) influence.  Running with that idea as the main cultural influence...how deeply involved are women in the merchanting and crafting businesses?  The fact that these women are engaged in business means that they could theoretically be interacting not only with men, but with a lot of women--the workers of these industries, even if the vast majority of them are not allowed to be owners or decision-makers.

Skipping up to England, in London in Tudor times, there was a whole guild of women who specifically made thread-of-gold for export.  They were pretty much the only ones doing this (because it’s expensive to make, for the first part), and doing it of such fine quality that they could command hefty prices for their skills.  They had influence on the textiles industry, demanding the best materials for thread, and influence on the goldsmithing industry, in their demands for the perfect type of gold foil, just the right thickness and plibility for wrapping around threads. 

It was a small corner of the textiles industry in England, but it was a commodity highly valued by nobles & royals across the length and breadth of Europe, including all the way down to Venice & beyond...because Venetian merchants would trade in this thread-of-gold and cloth-of-gold that these English women were making.

You can see the power and influence that the crafting trades and merchant classes could have.  One of the strengths of females throughout history has been our ability to bring together communities to work for the betterment of that community.  Are these women leading or otherwise involved in a revolution (peaceful or otherwise) that will pressure changes to these Salic style laws?  Who are they working with? And are they working with the noble-born women you mentioned to try to leverage the powers-that-be into granting women their rights in areas of inheritance, property, and commerce?

This will depend upon the overall plot, of course, but if you want to have a strong female presence in your story, then consider how daily life runs for females, how constrictive the culture and its laws are, how much these women can and will push at those constrictive boundaries (because we all do that; it’s just a fact of humanity), and how both the other females and the males around them will react.

Being only scandalized /outraged /reactionary to such things is definitely an overdone reaction, but you can get rid of that tired trope by having those who are scandalized or reactionary eventually getting over it, coming to accept it, or even be enthused by it.  Also, there will always a number of people who will be intrigued and even excited by these proposed or attempted changes.  You can build some of these struggles into a popular movement--and you don’t even have to show all of it “on screen” as it were. 

Maybe your characters in their struggle to maintain control over the family pottery business talked with other female potters about their problems, their demands, and asked for solidarity in the face of misogyny.  Maybe these others carried the news to other towns, and suddenly Altraltia, a city a few days’ travel away, center of the finest porcelains being produced in the known land, is experiencing a high revolution by the women who do most of the actual work with the ceramics, demanding that they be given rights and powers equal with the men, or they will not make any more porcelain.

Since the men of Altraltia were depending on their women to do all the fancy stuff (women tending to have modestly better fine motor skills), now that the women are on strike, these men can’t fulfill all these orders that the nobles have commissioned.  The city is in chaos, word has come back to your main characters that the strikers are demanding that the king change the laws--and maybe the next thing you know, women in other fields, basketmaking, weaving, etc, are also demanding the right to have their jobs and skills and capacities for running businesses and receiving inheritances respected... All while your main characters are shocked, and maybe even doing their equivalent of the Steve Urkel thing of *blinkblink* Did I do thaaaaat?  (And then celebrating, of course, when the king does change the laws for the better.)

Sweeping social movements and cultural changes don’t have to happen just during the era of social media.  People will travel, people will talk, people will write letters or communicate in various ways.  And those who know how to bring communities together, to instill senses of injustice, demands for change, expressions of how to change for the better...these communities united in these ways will cause those changes.

And because it’s not based on Earth’s history...you can get these types of Salic laws changed, presenting a pro-fem story in your own created world.

...Again, it’ll depend upon your plot, but for sure, women will lean in toward other women for advice, for help, for change.  Throw in some men who genuinely want to support these changes that will better their lives and their world, and you’ll have a powerful story that can inspire readers in this world to lean in, work together, and change our world for the better, too.

Hope at least some of that gives you some ideas!

(*The trope of women fighting each other, ruining each other’s chances of advancement, is also another tired old trope that can be flipped or tossed aside. Watch Legally Blonde to witness how the main female rival reacts to the main character, toward the end, to see how this is done believably.)

[davidmann95]

Superman & Lois Pilot Script Review

I’ve been reliably informed that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and indeed as my laptop and everything on it have been unusable for a couple months after a mishap, I went from ‘maybe I’ll write something on the pilot script for Superman & Lois’ to ‘as soon as I can get my hands back on that thing I’m writing something up’. I’m actually surprised none of you folks asked about it when I’ve mentioned several times that I read it; I was initially hesitant, but I’ve seen folks discussing plot details on Twitter and their reactions on here, so I guess WB isn’t making much of a thing out of it. Entire pilots have leaked before and they just rolled with it, so I suppose that isn’t surprising. Anyway, the show’s been pushed back to next year, and also the world is literally sick and metaphorically (and also a little literally) on fire, so I thought this might be fun if anyone needs a break from abject horror. 

(Speaking of the world being on fire: while trying to offer a diversion amidst said blaze, still gonna pause for the moment to add to the chorus that if opening your wallet is a thing you can do, now most especially is a time to do it. I chipped in myself to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and even a casual look around here or Twitter will show people listing plenty of other organizations that need support.)

What I saw floating around was, if not a first draft, certainly not the final one given Elizabeth Tulloch later shared a photo of the cover for the final script crediting Lee Toland Krieger as the director rather than a TBD, but the shape of things is clearly in place. I’m going for a relative minimum of spoilers, though I’ll discuss a bit of the basic status quo the show sets up and vaguely touch on a few plot points, but if you want a simple response without risk of any story details: it’s very, very good. Clunky in the way the CW DC shows typically are, and some aspects I’m not going to be able to judge until the story plays out further, but it’s engaging, satisfying, and moreover feels like it Gets It more broadly than any other mass-media Superman adaptation to date.

The Good

* The big one, the pillar on which all else rests: this understands Lois and it really understands Clark. Lois isn’t at the center of the pilot’s arc, but she’s everything you want to see that character be - incisive, caring, and refusing to operate at less than 110% intensity with whatever she’s dealing with at any given time, the objections of others be damned. Clark meanwhile is a good-natured, good-humored dude who you can see in both the cape and the glasses even as those identities remain distinct, who’s still wrestling with his feelings of alienation and duty and how those now reflect his relationships with his children. The title characters both feel fully-formed and true to what historically tends to work best with them from day one here in ways I can’t especially say for any other movie or show they’ve starred in.

* While the suit takes a back seat for this particular episode, when Superman does show up in the opening and climax it absolutely knows how to get us to cheer for him; there’s more than one ‘hell yeah, it’s SUPERMAN, that guy’s the best!’ moment, and they pop.

* While the superheroics aren’t the biggest focus here, when they do arrive, the plan seems to be that they’ll be operating on an entirely different scale than the rest of the Arrowverse lineup. Maybe they scripted the ideal and’ll be pared-down come time for actual filming and effects work, or maybe they’re going all-out for the pilot, but the initial vision involves a massive super-rescue and a widescreen brawl that goes way, way bigger in scope than any I’m aware of on the likes of Supergirl. I heard in passing on Twitter from someone claiming to be in the know that the plan for Superman & Lois is that it’ll be fewer episodes with a higher budget, more in line with the DC Universe stuff if not exactly HBO Max ‘prestige TV’, and whether it’s true or not (I think it’s plausible, the potential ratings here are exponentially higher than anything else on the network so they’d want to put their best foot forward) they seem to be writing it as if that’s the idea.

* This balances its tones and ambitions excellently: it’s a Kent-Lane family drama, it’s Lois digging in with some investigative reporting to set up a major subplot, it’s Superman saving Metropolis and battling a powerful high-concept villain, and none of it feels like it’s banging up at awkward angles with the rest. There are a pair of throwaway lines in here so grim I can’t believe they were put in a script for a Superman TV show even if they don’t make it to air, and they in no way undermine the exhilaration once he puts on the cape or the warmth that pervades much of it. This feels as if it’s laying the groundwork for a Superman show that can tackle just about any sort of story with the character rather than planing its feet in one corner and declaring a niche, and so far it looks like it has the juice to pull it off.

* While the pilot doesn’t focus on him in the same way as the new kid, Jonathan Kent fits well enough for my tastes with the broad strokes of his personality from the comics, albeit if he had made it to 14 rather than 10 without learning about his dad being Superman. A pleasant, kinda dopey, well-meaning Superman Jr. - the biggest deviation, one I approve of, is that he can also kinda be a gleeful little shit when dealing with his brother in ways that remind you that this is very much also Lois Lane’s boy.

* We don’t know much about the season villain as of yet, but it’s an incredibly cool idea that I’m shocked that they’re going for right away, and I absolutely want to see how they play out as a character and how they’ll bounce off all the other major players.

* The way this seems to be framing itself in relation to the Superman movies and shows before it feels inspired to me: there are homages and shout-outs to and bits of conceptual scaffolding from Lois & Clark, Smallville, Donner, and more, but they’re all shown in ways that make it clear that those stories are part of his past rather than indicators of the baseline he’s currently operating off of. We get a retrospective of his and Lois’s history right off the bat with most of what you’d expect, and combined with those references the message is clear: this is a Superman who’s been through all the vague memories that you, prospective casual viewer, have of the other stuff you saw him in once upon a time, but this series begins the next phase of his life after what that general cultural impression of him to date covers. It strikes me as a good way of carrying over the goodwill of that nostalgia and iconography, while building in that this is a show with room to grow him beyond that into something more nuanced (and for that matter true to the character as the comics at their best have depicted him) than they tended towards. Where Superman Returns attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle of an earlier vision of him in full, and Man of Steel tried to turn its back on anything that smelled of Old and Busted and Uncool entirely, perhaps this splitting of the difference - engaging with his pop culture history and visibly taking what appealed from some of those well-known takes, while also drawing a clear line in the sand between those as the past and this as the future - is what will finally engage audiences.

The Bad

* This is the sort of thing you have to roll with for a CW superhero show, and that lives and dies by the performances, but: the dialogue varies heavily. There are some really poignant moments, but elsewhere this is where it shows its early-draftiness; a decent amount is typical Whedon-poisoned quippiness or achingly blunt, and some of the ‘hey, we’re down with the kids!’ material for Jon, Jor, and Lana’s kid Sarah is outright agonizing. I suspect a lot of it will be fixed in minor edits, actor delivery, and hopefully the younger performers taking a brutal red pen to some of their material - this was written last January and the show’s now not debuting until next January, they’ve got plenty of time for cleanup - but if this sort of the thing has been a barrier to entry for you in the past with the likes of The Flash, this probably won’t be what changes your mind.

* There are a few charming shout-outs to other shows, but much moreso, Superman & Lois actually builds in a big way out of Crisis. Which is a-okay with me, except that what exactly that was is rather poorly conveyed given that lots of people will be giving this a spin with no familiarity with that. Fixable with a line or two, but important enough to be worth noting.

Have to wait and see how it plays out

* The series’ new kid, Jordan Kent, is so far promising with potential to veer badly off-course. He’s explicitly dealing with mental illness, and not on great terms with Clark at the beginning in spite of the latter’s best efforts, the notion of which I’m sure will immediately put some off. Ultimately the commonalities between father and son become clear, and he’s not written as a caricature in this opening but as a kid with some problems who’s still visibly his parents’ boy, but obviously the ball could be fumbled here in the long term.

* Lois’s dad is portrayed almost completely differently here than in the past in spite of technically still being her military dad who has some disagreements with her husband. There are some nice moments and interesting new angles but it seems possible that the groudwork is being laid for him to be Clark’s guy in the chair, and not only does he not need that he most DEFINITELY doesn’t need that to be a member of the U.S. Military, especially when one of the first and best decisions Supergirl made when introducing him was to make clear he had stopped working with the government any more than necessary years ago. Maybe it can be stretched if his dad-in-law occasionally calls him up to let him know about a new threat he’s learned about, and maybe they’ll even do something really interesting with that push-and-pull, but if Superman’s going to be even tacitly functioning as an extension of the military that’s going to be a foundational sin.

* As I was nervous about, Superman & Lois has some political flavor, but much to my delighted surprise, there’s no grossly out of touch hedge-betting in the way I understand Supergirl has gone for at times. As of the pilot, this is an explicitly leftie show, with the overarching threat of the season as established for Lois and Clark as reporters being how corporate America has stripmined towns like Smallville and manipulated blue collar workers into selling out their own best interests. Could that go wrong? Totally, there’s already an effort to establish a particular prominent right-wing asshole as capable of decency - without as of yet downplaying that he’s a genuinely shitty dude - and vague hints that some of the towns’ woes might be rooted more in Superman-type problems than Lois and Clark problems. But that they’re going for it this directly in the first place leaves me hopeful that the show won’t completely chicken out even if there’ll probably be a monster in the mix pulling a string or two; Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics may justify Superman punching a cop by having him turn out to be a shadow monster so as to get past editorial, but it’s still a story about how sometimes Superman’s gotta punch a cop, and hopefully this can carry on in that spirit of using what wiggle room it has to the best of its ability.

So, so far so good. Could it end up a show with severe problems carried on the backs of Hoechlin and Tulloch’s performances? Absolutely. But thus far, the ingredients are there for all its potential problems to be either fixed, subverted, or dodged alright, and even when it surely fumbles the ball at junctures, I earnestly believe this is setting itself up to be the most fleshed-out, nuanced, engaging live-action take on these characters to date. And god willing, if so, the first real stepping stone in decades to proper rehab on Superman’s image and place in pop culture.

[kingofthewilderwest]

One of the major flaws of HTTYD 3 in comparison to its predecessors is how childish the movie felt. The first two movies had the occasional joke but were still extremely mature in their storytelling. Have you read the article "Dreamworks execs have an incredible reason for why their films are unpopular" ? It came out a year after the second movie, and explains why they dumbed down the third.

It’s an interesting article and I’ve always thought there was some truth in the opinion: to their detriment, DreamWorks’ latest films haven’t focused on the creatively wild, often more mature spark that made things like How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, Rise of the Guardians, Megamind, or The Prince of Egypt quality films. As the article writer notes:

Animated films, if anything, attract a much broader audience of older children, teens, and adults than they ever did in the Eighties and Nineties. Ironically, DreamWorks’s own films in the 2000s played a significant role in expanding the public’s perception about animated features. Now, DreamWorks is betting against its own history as they try to get back on track.

That said. Many of the earliest DreamWorks productions have a somewhat mature appeal to them, but I feel like DreamWorks has long played the game of wide audience appeal commercialism. For a period of time, they balanced their “artistic” or “venturesome” films against their “safer cash” films. The fluffier Turbo was released just one year before HTTYD2; Kung Fu Panda 3 and The Boss Baby were released a year apart, too. There was a sense of balance, letting the fluffier, probably more kid-appealing films earn money, while allowing them to take risks on more unique ventures. I’m not sure if that was their actual strategy, but regardless: balance of maturity. (And for the record, calling some DreamWorks movies “fluffier” is not intended to be an insult; I myself love their Mr. Peabody & Sherman).

And I think the reason I was so hardcore on board the DreamWorks train is that, whether it was an ill-conceived mistake (Shark Tale) or a big “what the fuck” (Bee Movie) or feeling somewhat adult (Antz), DreamWorks was willing to take those risks. DreamWorks was willing to be quirky. And DreamWorks was willing to put heart into everything; Mr. Peabody & Sherman definitely has heart to it, as does Home, as does Turbo from what I remember (only saw that one once).

I feel like advertisements for Trolls and The Boss Baby is where my friendship circles started to feel less enthused about DreamWorks. At that point, I saw some trust failing for DreamWorks’ creative direction - that DreamWorks was dumbing down their movies for children rather than making fluff family films with heart. The key phrase is “dumbing down.” There’s a huge difference between writing children’s stories and dumbing down for children. And that’s what this article writer was calling out, too.

Ghibli movies are written for children. Disney 2D animated films bring awe to children. How to Train Your Dragon understood that lots of its audience members would be children. But you breathe life into a quality story that children and adults can enjoy! Making a bunch of crappy jokes dumbed down to children is stuff like... at its worst... Norm of the North. When you’re making something shoddier, with half-assed fart jokes, because of an implicit idea children’s media doesn’t have to be as quality... because children allegedly aren’t going to notice quality... that’s where we run into problems.

Now, I’m not going to say whether or not I think DreamWorks has actually begun dumbing down its films. I know that’s the impression in my peer group. I know that’s an impression I’ve felt inside my heart, too. But I haven’t seen Trolls or Trolls World Tour or The Boss Baby so I can’t judge. But I think it’s safe to say there has been a gradual shift over time. And that escalated post-2014, where we got this from DreamWorks execs:

…the company's slate changes are more realistic/in-tune with the evolution in changes in the box office market as the 2012-2014 film challenges were tied to films which skewed older right as the box office began to see changes whereby animation demand was increasingly skewing younger as kids began to age out of the genre earlier. While we view the ability to reduce P&A as more difficult given the need to advertise to two distinct groups (kids and moms), the combination of both cost reductions in production and a younger skewing slate, do position the slate better in our view.

And my impression is it’s escalated lately (but I only have a small sample size of films, so I take what I say with a grain of salt). I remember during the NBCUniversal acquisition in 2016, fans feared DreamWorks would lose its sometimes mature, sometimes quirky heart. That the company would be in a downfall state for quality.

I had hoped that HTTYD3 might be a bastion against efforts to commercialize with cash-easy, not-as-heart-ful “kid” appeals. THW grossing a lot of money could help leadership remember that diverse audiences, not tiny children, can and do watch animated films - 3D animation’s just not a guaranteed success because it’s a more saturated market. It could at least let the tradition of some DreamWorks gutsier creative films perpetuate.

And I do think that THW doesn’t have as many problems as, say, The Boss Baby probably does, when it comes to “kid-specific appeal”. I feel like the tone in THW has a middle ground. THW was never going to be as dark as HTTYD2; DeBlois made that clear since the release of HTTYD2; but I do think there might have been an effort to lighten tone in places (ergo the large number of gag jokes that cluttered the film). There’s absolutely mature ideas inside THW: the concept of parting ways with someone you love because it’s better for both of you... that’s meaty... that’s something that even adults grapple with. Hiccup’s flashbacks with Stoick have the simple but in-depth storytelling mood I know of the How to Train Your Dragon brand. So I would phrase it as it’s not a case of complete dumbing down so much as it is some imperfect tonal choices and plot focuses (too much spotlighting on the Light Fury romance, for instance, and not weeding out an excessive amount of jokes... that again... cluttered the film). The first two HTTYD movies feel like carefully honed storytelling, capturing the essence of what their story needed. The third needed tonal and content reorganization. The presentation of stakes and plot progression weren’t on par with the first two films. The Hiccup-Toothless separation didn’t pack a hard punch to me because the steps we took to get to the end weren’t the tonal footsteps we needed.

There’s a reason I charged to theatres the weekend Abominable released (mind, this was before the map controversy over the film came out). I was hoping Abominable could be a DreamWorks film with art and heart. And you know? I think that Abominable was one draft short of being *INCREDIBLE*. The problem is it was one draft short. It stayed superficial instead of diving into the meat. The plot pacing was slow because we didn’t get into the meat, the characterization felt awkwardly paced and whiplashy because it didn’t get into the meat, and the humor felt childish rather than taking full advantage of things like character relations. But the inside heart - the inside potential - of Abominable is monumental. It’s still not a bad film! If they’d gotten that next draft, Pearl and DreamWorks could have had a piece on par with Megamind and The Croods. I absolutely believe that. If I had time, I would rewrite Abominable in fanfiction and show how much potential this thing had.

DreamWorks is no longer a young studio exploring whatever the crap it wants because it’s the new guy finding his voice or rebelling against the other voice. DreamWorks is an established powerhouse. And with establishment comes a certain degree of safety-playing and standardization of content. I don’t expect we’ll get as many wild tone shifts as Bee Movie (11/2007) to Kung Fu Panda (6/2008) or How to Train Your Dragon 2 (6/2014) to freaking Penguins of Madagascar (11/2014).

That’s not to say DreamWorks does or doesn’t make quality films. I admit I don’t have high hopes on some things like The Boss Baby 2. I do have my fingers crossed for The Wizards of Once; I hoooope that DreamWorks can treat TWOO as they did HTTYD... something with simple, powerful, overflowing, artistic heart.

Who knows. Guess we’ll see.

[hamliet]

Hello! Have you seen TROS yet? [Spoiler alert] I was really devastated by the ending - coming out the theater feeling upset and disappointed. Do you have any thoughts on it? Or maybe any plan to write fix-it fic? Thank you!

I am seeing it tomorrow. That said, I’ve read the plot summary, and no good execution can save that. So I was planning on posting this after I watched it with amendments made as I hope to enjoy it, but I’ll just post it now and amend this as necessary based on the film as I see it. (I still believe I will enjoy the film, even if I don’t think it’s a good film. I do think that. I really do... I hope.)

BASED ON THE PLOT SUMMARIES ALONE (grains of salt everywhere!): 

I think it’s technically… messy writing at best and downright bad writing in other parts.* 10/10 it’s a blockuster-y, JJ Abrams-esque, (hopefully) fun, messy narrative movie that will be forgotten in 0.3 seconds.

Disclaimer before everyone comes after me: if you like it, AWESOME. If you think it’s good writing, great! Good writing and bad writing are inherently subjective; that said, there are general consensuses among literary studies about what constitutes bad and good writing. Hence, I’m relying on those consensuses when I call it messily written.

Before we get into specifics, I’ll compare it to two other major pop culture endings: Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame.

TROS is similar to the GoT final season in that it attempts to incorporate every aspect of fan speculation ever. However, it’s more like Endgame in that it is still somewhat true to the themes and characters—but unfortunately also like Endgame, it is not transformative or particularly interesting as a story on its own. In fact, it’s rather boring and honestly… bad storytelling. It tries to rehash Return of the Jedi but it doesn’t succeed in any way because the world and the overall story has grown since the early 1980s, and so the same story doesn’t work anymore.

Showing a cyclical story remaining cyclical with no sign of that breaking–instead, the cycles are even reinforced–does not give optimism nor does it give hope.

Redemption=death needs to die already. If we really want to reach people and tell them that the message is that you can always make a better choice (as Daisy Ridley and JJ Abrams have said about Kylo’s arc), maybe don’t send the message in each and every story that you have to die to redeem yourself. Look outside of cultural secular Calvinism, for the love of God and the betterment of the world and stories as a whole.

Now let’s talk Rey’s parentage.

We know Rey Palpatine wasn’t planned from the beginning (Trevorrow, the original write/director of IX, who was thankfully fired, said that he never planned for Palpatine to return), which means Rey’s parentage was most likely retconned from TLJ and there was no real plan for the sequel trilogy’s overall character arcs (save for Kylo’s, according to the actors and writers).

Listen to me. You don’t have to have everything planned when you start a three-film saga, but you gotta know the major beats.

This is like a sad game of movie telephone. 

Yes, I know the OT Star Wars didn’t have a plan either and it’s like one of the only examples I can think of where no plan worked out–albeit not without hiccups (Leia kissing Luke, anyone?) If you expect lightning to strike twice in the same place, I’m sorry, but you are hopelessly naive.

Having Rey decide she wants to carry on the name Skywalker at the end is lame as shit. It’s a way to appease fans while being like nah she still isn’t related. Trying to please every fan is a sure way to guarantee that you will please no one. It might make for a perfectly pleasant film experience (I really hope it does), but not good, lasting storytelling (though not like, horrific either). It’s meh. It’s like… giving someone who is starving oatmeal. It will get the job done but will it satisfy and enthrall people? Not quite.

And let’s switch gears for a minute to Finn and Rose, my first and third favorite characters in this trilogy (Kylo is second, Rey is fourth). The sidelining of Rose is nothing short of a terrible attempt to please the white-supremacist-aligned Fandom Menace. Let’s not pretend it’s anything else. JJ’s lipservice about how wonderful it was that Kelly was cast at SW Celebration is, in hindsight, absolutely nauseating.

Shame on JJ. Shame on Disney.

But the main problem I have with this film is this:

Why did it need to exist?

The answer is money. Obviously. I know, I know stories exist to make money. That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize the fact that the story was sacrificed on the unholy altar of capitalism and Disney’s desire to own our souls. (Disney–the reason I like your movies is that a lot of them are good stories. I’m not interested in pandering soooooo.)

The Rise of Skywalker does not enhance the Star Wars narrative. Nothing about this film satisfies the Skywalker Saga nor the sequel trilogy, and it kind of all comes down to Kylo Ren’s death being the nail that sunk the entire world of Star Wars.

Keep in mind Kylo is not my favorite character when I’m saying this. Finn is. But I never spoke about Finn as much because the story didn’t utilize him properly. I never had concerns about Finn getting a happy ending while I was worried for Rey and Kylo’s arcs. (Finn’s arc, however, did have a ton more potential than was capitalized on; in particular, he would have been better if he was more conflicted over say, shooting other stormtroopers. His whole character humanized the usual red shirts, which when paired with Rose’s everywoman character, had so much potential I could shriek about it all day. That he didn’t lead other brainwashed stormtroopers into rebellion and freedom saddens me. Also, his ending again seems to bring about a good victim/bad victim dichotomy when it is compared with Kylo’s. The reason these two are my faves is that they were brainwashed as kids which, well, I can kinda sorta heavily relate to.)

Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship doesn’t really get much better than it did in The Last Jedi. It actually rehashes that arc significantly. We already knew Kylo would fight for Rey and the galaxy, so… how was this different? Now, if he had lived, it would have been different, because it was the after the fight that proved that Kylo wasn’t ready to redeem himself in The Last Jedi. It was Kylo’s choice to stay at the expense of Rey and the Resistance that was literally the set up for conflict in the next film. This… turned it into nothing? Their conflict is rehashed and then whoo-hoo! Easy way out! Kill him so that they don’t have to deal with the “after” this time! They never have to deal with the conflict literally set up in The Last Jedi.

That’s bad writing, fam.

Life is infinitely more interesting. Leaving the story open with a living Skywalker instead of killing literally everyone involved with the Skywalkers except Rey who now adopts that name is… so unsatisfying I can’t even. Even if later material shows him showing up as a Force Ghost, like: cool saw that with Vader so this… adds nothing to the existing films. It doesn’t really reconcile anything.

It also… does not help the Rey=Mary Sue argument. She is NOT a Mary Sue, and that is a sexist term itself, but in no way is it a satisfying ending to her arc, because it isn’t a well-written ending which means it isn’t a well-written arc. The problem with Rey’s ending is a mirror of my problem with Kylo’s ending: it’s the very much a combination of her ending in The Last Jedi and her life before The Force Awakens.

She and Kylo are now separated (permanently this time).

She’s has her Resistance friends.

She’s alone on a desert planet.

But wait! Now she’s now happy!

Uh, why? The only reason I can think of is that the narrative demands it. Because honestly, what changes? The family she chose–the Skywalkers–are just as dead as her Palpatine birth family, soooooo. I suppose she reconciled with her heritage and come to peace with it and so that’s why she’s happy now, but… I can’t lie. It’s not hopeful. It’s not optimistic. It’s not Star Wars and it isn’t consistent for the message (especially if this is supposed to be the ending to the saga!) to be both:

life sucks for the Skywalkers and then they die–seriously, look at Shmi, Anakin, Padmé, Leia, Luke, Han, Kylo–it is LITERALLY ALL OF THEM; and

deciding to be a Skywalker means you’re at peace.

I can only assume Rey’s life will suck and then she’ll die, tbh, unless of course she is better off because of her blood… which negates the point of her being a Skywalker and is a really gross idea.

YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH IN YOUR ENDING. PICK ONE.

Rejecting the Skywalkers would be anti-Star Wars, for sure, but marrying into them as a way of bridging the unfinished pain between Anakin and Padmé and Leia and her father? Much better. Or just leave it open. Honestly, leave it open for Kylo and Rey to both be alive and see each other again.

But you’re just upset your ship didn’t get a happy ending!

No, I’m upset about the storytelling, of which shipping is a part. A canonical part just as much as the lightsaber fights are. Anakin and Padmé. Leia and Han. Finn and Rose. Poe and Zorii. Rey and Ben.

The Force created Anakin, remember? All films–even the spin-offs–encourage our heroes to trust the force. “May the force be with us.” But the Force created an ENTIRE FAMILY THAT LIVED LIVES THAT SUCKED AND MADE LIFE SUCK FOR EVERYONE AROUND THEM AND THEN THEY DIED.

May the Force stay far the f*ck away from me, amen.

But seriously I can’t trust the world of a galaxy far far away or its narrative anymore. It’s a contradiction that causes all nine films to unravel. Why?

Again, let’s return to my earlier GoT comparison, because there is one thing TROS does that is more similar to GoT than to Endgame: Endgame drew together a bunch of unique distinctly separate stories into a crossover. TROS, just like GoT, relied on cliffhanger, incomplete endings to its films and therefore the ending matters a hell of a lot more than a stand-alone story.

I’m not dying to rewatch it like I am with stories where I realize I might learn more the second time. And by “rewatch it” I mean the entire nine-film saga. Knowing that canonically Leia, Luke, Han–they all die and their last descendent dies, the last descendent of Padmé and Anakin–for me, it’s personally gonna be hard to watch again. It’s gonna be hard to watch TROS going into it the first time.

And so the saga of bad endings continues.

Game of Thrones remains the worst at a -100 out of 10. It’s followed by Tokyo Ghoul:re which is still 2/10, and Star Wars is, on paper (meaning after I see it I am hoping it rises a few notches) now… 4/10. Endgame is a solid 6.5/10.

Banana Fish, sweetie, I’m sorry you were ranked down there. Your ending is a 7/10 but the rest of your story is like, 10/10 so you are sprung from this list.

Help me, Shingeki no Kyojin. You’re my only hope.

[loisinherlane]

Consider this my magnum opus of why I love Booster Gold and why you should read these comics, but also: how Michael Carter and his family are connected to time travel. It’s kind of a hot mess because I run through a bunch of comics, but hopefully this makes sense!

Michael Carter, alias Booster Gold, is the first new hero introduced after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Booster is from the 25th century, where he was a college football player who got caught betting on his games and expelled, eventually becoming a janitor in a museum.

(Booster Gold (2007) #1)

At this museum, he befriends a security robot called Skeets. Eventually, Booster decides that he wants the adoration superheroes had in the 20th/21st century, and with future technology, he would be able to join up in the past. So Booster steals a Time Sphere, a suit, and a Legion of Superheroes flight ring. (Wait, the legion is from the 30th century, right? Yes. There are reasons this ring is in the past, and that’s mostly because Booster was always meant to become a superhero.) In the past, Booster establishes himself as a superhero, with a manager and number of sponsors. He’s about making money. This doesn’t necessarily make him a lot of friends. But he joins the Justice League International, makes friends with some heroes (including Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle), and has a standard fare for a non-central character.

So flash forward to Countdown to Infinite Crisis. For those of you who haven’t read this one: This is a lead-in to the OMAC Project, and later, to Infinite Crisis, where Ted Kord notices a number of things that don’t add up. Unfortunately, Ted is not the most respected hero in the community, and no one quite takes him seriously. Wonder Woman says she’s busy but to keep her updated, and Oracle is trying to get him to pay more attention to other matters.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

So Ted seeks out his best friend Booster to help. Booster, after some initial reluctance, joins up. There’s some noticeable moments where Booster hints that he knows some things about the future (particularly, that Ted is going to die, and the Scarab means that the new Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, is about to take over): Booster keeps staring at the newly found Scarab. He asks Ted when he found it. Ted, in his narration, hints that Booster knew Doomsday would kill Superman, and he still took the first punch.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

All of this parallels what happens next: Booster shoos Ted away from the computer and takes over. Booster gets hit by an explosion meant for Ted.

(Countdown to Infinite Crisis)

Consider: Later implications of time travel suggest that some small things can be changed, but the big things can’t. If Booster knew what was going to happen, did Booster only postpone Ted’s death?

With that, Ted does die at the end of this story, and a part of The OMAC Project is Wonder Woman and Booster investigating Ted’s death. But as much as I love Ted, we’re mostly talking about Booster and time travel today. So moving on!

In Infinite Crisis, Booster is the one who fetches Jaime Reyes. After returning to the 25th century to access historical records, he tracks down Jaime via the scarab. (Of course, this is another example of a potential change: Booster says he may be saving millions or billions of lives, but this is unsubstantiated.)

(Infinite Crisis #2)

(Infinite Crisis #5)

So this brings us to 52, the fallout of Infinite Crisis. Booster Gold’s plot, while not obviously central in its introduction, plays a major role in bringing back the multiverse to the Post-Crisis continuity. Booster Gold, in the wake of the loss of his best friend Ted Kord, has sold-out again.

(52 #1)

With the help of Skeets, he’s returned to his origins. He wants to be a hero and make bank. Superman’s not around, so who else could Metropolis turn to?

Booster is on the outs though. First, with the heroes: Ralph Dibny blames him for not realizing his wife Sue was going to be murdered. Beatriz de Costa (Fire) shames him for how he’s acting after Ted’s death.

(52 #7)

(52 #4)

Pay attention to that notepad. Booster writes the names of Rip Hunter and his fellow Time Masters, as well S.T.A.R. Labs Time Travel Division. Everyone but Rip Hunter is crossed out. Rip’s name is circled, but he’s noted as “unlisted?????”

Because he’s noticed a number of events that don’t line up with the history Booster and Skeets remember, Booster goes to visit Rip Hunter in his Time Lab in Arizona. Skeets has to hold the door open because of the lock, so Booster goes in by himself...

(52 #6)

...and sees this... (Feel free to read what’s on the chalkboard. A lot of it hints to happenings in both 52 and the One Year Later event, as well as other stories. It can be fun to make connections.)

(52 #6)

...and this. Yikes.

We soon find out that Booster hired an actor to fake an incident on a subway. Why? Well... that answer’s not so clear. But considering the rest of the story, it’s likely Booster wanted to discredit himself.

(52 #7)

Unfortunately for Booster, this ruins his reputation with the public, and he’s soon replaced by a new, more humble hero: Supernova.

(52 #10)

And the public adores Supernova. Meanwhile, Booster’s sponsors pull out as his reputation goes down the drain.

Booster gets one last moment in the limelight, when he pushes too hard trying to upstage Supernova, and he dies... though he’s recognized as a hero for his tragic sacrifice.

((Hold on if you haven’t read 52. You’re going to find this one funny.))

(52 #15)

So... Booster is dead. Ha. What next? Well, Skeets seeks out Booster’s ancestor, Daniel Carter, for help to get back into the Time Lab. After all, Booster didn’t give Skeets the details.

(52 #19)

Daniel lets Skeets see into the Time Lab, where Skeets finally sees the same things Booster saw.

(52 #19)

Whoops! The real problem is Skeets. A little more menacing now, isn’t it? So Skeets abandons Daniel in the Time Lab, where he’s sucked into a vortex that’s part of Rip’s security measures. Meanwhile, Skeets is free to handle his evil plan. Whatever that is.

Back to Metropolis: Supernova is still out there, doing good. He’s also grabbing items that seem a little... eclectic. 

(52 #20)

And everyone is theorizing about who’s really under the mask. Cassie Sandsmark thinks it’s Kon-El. Lex Luthor thinks it’s Superman. Ralph Dibny puts the pieces together...

(52 #31)

But Supernova asks him not to say it out loud.

Later, we see that Supernova is actually working for Rip Hunter. Everything he’s gathered has been for Rip, who, as you can see, is really going through it. (Sad they never followed up on why Rip Hunter was affected like this, but I have my own thoughts that I might say later.)

(52 #36)

Where are they working anyway? In the jarred city of Kandor! Of course, Skeets can’t find them here, can he?

(52 #36)

Whoops. Spoke too soon.

(52 #37)

But who is Supernova? That burning question we’ve had for all these issues?

It’s... Michael Carter! Booster Gold!

(52 #37)

So, as Rip asks, Booster tells him. Booster knew something was off with Skeets. At the Time Lab, he almost asked him. But Rip Hunter arrived and recruited him for the long con. Rip needed Booster to gather materials, but they couldn’t alert Skeets. However, using a suit Rip rigged, Booster could be in two places at once: through time travel. After faking his death (using his real corpse from the future), Booster was sent back in time twelve weeks to complete Supernova’s actions.

Now Rip, Booster, and Skeets are engaged in a battle that, uh... is not continued until Week 50 on panel. If you count this as continued. I just love this panel.

(52 #50)

Actually, Skeets follows Rip and Booster to a lab where T.O. Morrow has searched the Red Torado’s brain to find out the truth of the 52 that he’s been repeating throughout the series.

(52 #51)

Of course, it’s not actually Skeets. The real Skeets was used as a chrysalis for Mister Mind... who has become a horrifying moth hellbent on eating the new multiverse.

(52 #51)

Rip drags Booster out, back to the Time Sphere, where they travel back to the beginning.

(52 #52)

After the events of Infinite Crisis, the multiverse was recreated. 52 identical Earths came into existence, and the same struggle has been taking place on all of them. These Earths are slowly aligning, and for some reason, Rip can see this, but Booster can’t. (Hold tight: Let’s keep in mind, for some reason, Rip was totally non-linear earlier. We’ll come back to this.)

(52 #52)

Rip intends to save all of the Earths, as they slowly settle into the new multiverse, with help from Supernova! ...This time, Daniel Carter, the Carter family ancestor that Skeets/Mister Mind used earlier.

(52 #52)

Bad news is that Mister Mind is still bent on eating a universe. As he eats parts of the various Earths, he changes their history, which leads to each Earth being unique.

(52 #52)

Booster has doubts about their ability to face something this big, but Skeets, now broken from Mister Mind, cheers him on... Booster heads back to the one place he knows to get the right power source, and Rip hints about Booster’s “glory days” soon to come. So now we know there’s a connection between Booster and Rip.

(52 #52)

But where is Booster going to get that power source?

(52 #52)

The immediate aftermath of the first crisis, where he talks a little with very young Ted Kord. (Sad.) Now we have to wonder how Booster knows to go back here? How much about time travel does Booster know yet?

Anyway, together, Rip, Booster, and Daniel succeed in defeating Mister Mind, and the multiverse is restored. Rip is very optimistic!

(52 #52)

So... let’s cut to Booster Gold’s second solo. Notice the title of his first story is “52 Pick-Up.” Booster, after saving the multiverse, wants nothing more than to be a hero again. He wants to join the Justice League again! Unfortunately, he’s recruited by Rip Hunter once again, who makes it clear that Booster’s destiny lies in time travel instead. And the world needs to think Booster is an idiot.

(Booster Gold (2007) #1)

Notice how Rip mentions his father? We’re finally getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, the other weird Time Stuff, that’s going on. Back at Rip Hunter’s Lab, Rip has written a number of interesting things on his chalkboard again.

Notice how Rip notes 1939 (the year Detective Comics was first published), 1985 (Crisis on Infinite Earths), and 2006 (Infinite Crisis). This shows how the crises actually affect time in the DC universe. Rip is, of course, aware of it. Is Booster too? How else would he know about the first crisis?

What is the connection between Rip and Booster anyway? Why does Rip care so much about Booster? Well...

(Booster Gold (2007) #1000000)

That’s right! Booster is actually Rip Hunter’s dad! So a lot of stuff we’ve been over must make more sense now.

But seriously, the Carter family is heavily involved in time travel, and the way it interacts with them is interesting. We’ve already seen how Rip isn’t linear when the timestream is disrupted... but what about the other members? How does this all affect Booster?

Honestly, I’m not sure. And I just ran out of energy for this post. If you want to know more, send an ask! And read the comics. You will not regret it.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

Series Review Pt. 1/3

So, this isn’t even a YouTube video where you have the advantage of hearing a voice over a recording with snappy editing to lighten the mood or convey feeling; but believe me that there was a lot of earnest sincerity put into the review this time around.

But before I put the rest of it under the cut, there are some corrections/clarifications I want to put down about my last review that I believe we're significant shortcomings on my part. 

My first, and probably most MAJOR goof was my choice of words in trying to describe the scene with Hawks and Twice at the end of 263 - “ he clearly hasn’t killed Twice yet, and we don’t know why, but if he has to he’s prepared to do so without hesitation or remorse.”

BIG OOF. I hadn’t even been looking much at others’ opinions and the common-enough impression that Hawks doesn’t care about Twice at all/is incapable of empathy/ONLY concerned with his mission from the Commission. When I looked back at my own review, though I didn’t have any indication anyone believed I was one of those people (“without remorse” being the problematic phrase in question), I could easily see how others could get the impression and decided to wait until the next review to do a better job instead of just saying I would. My views on that particular scene will be clear later on, but at least that’s out of the way in case that was keeping people from reading this in the first place.

Second, I failed to arrange my observation points in a more ideal order. If anything, the fact that we were seeing that last page from Twice’s perspective should have been the first point. This mistake made it sound like a neutral assessment of the situation instead of an observation through the context of Jin's feelings. This ended up confusing even myself, as someone who usually writes these reviews solo, into forgetting to factor in that Twice's perspective may be warping the perception of Hawks guarding him into one of intent to kill while forgetting that the Hero Code forbids killing others unless it's truly a necessary last resort. For some reason, Sad Man's Parade and Twice's two-double limit also slipped my mind which brings me to the last point.

Third, I rushed things. When I rush, I make mistakes, sometimes pretty sloppy ones. It has been a ROUGH couple of weeks to be a Hawks or villain stan, even more so if you’re both, so for some reason I felt like I needed to get my thoughts out there quickly. I don’t have any kind of real incentive to do so other than a faster response - I don’t make any money off this, don’t have any relevance algorithm to feed as if I was on YouTube or Twitter, and I’m not the only half-decently known blog to hold these opinions so I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s my problem, but that doesn’t mean I have to make it anyone else’s.

For complete transparency, I’ve been reading and re-reading through the entire series canon again, starting with Hawks’ manga debut, and reviewing the entire series’ events and in-universe history, and have been taking literal whole pages of notes and drafts since Thursday the 12th. I’m glad I did because it brought to mind things that often get left out of pockets of fandom discussion who hyper-focus on their circles of interest while forgetting that each individual section is meant to work with the whole.

That’s what we’ll be working with today, and additional thanks goes to  @baezetsu and @dorito9708 for volunteering as proofreaders and editors to make this more focused and concise. If you’re interested please keep reading. A fair warning, this is what we in the professional field call a “long-ass post, no seriously guys grab a drink and a snack we’re gonna be here a while.” It's actually so long I have to split it up into parts because Tumblr Mobile is stupid and doesn't like making the "read more" function available to the mobile version.

So here we go, people, let’s try this again one last time…

Where we’re at in Chapter 264 (or at least, you know, ignoring literally everyone in the series that isn’t these two) is Twice and Hawks’ confrontation in the study room; but let’s put a pin in that for now and come back.

The biggest piece of information to keep in mind is that even though both these characters are currently front-and-center and have major plot and symbolic value in the series, they are still not the main characters. Their conflict is also not the central conflict. Let’s zoom out to the big picture and see what happens when we put everything together at the end.

The whole inciting incident of the series is when humanity began to display superhuman abilities in a few random individuals. These abilities are neither inherently good or bad - they are constantly intended as neutral with the potential being dependent on the user. Eventually these abilities began to be collectively termed as “quirks” - literally just a single facet of each person’s unique identity. From a social commentary standpoint, quirks have been used as a narrative stand-in for the unique situational circumstances or combinations of circumstances individuals may find themselves with that are either mostly or completely outside of their control like aptitude, physical ability, race/appearance, mental state, and inherited societal station. While more of these examples have been explicitly stated and inserted into the story later on, quirks still serve as the main catalyst and lens by which these topics are discussed.

Because of the initially new and unfamiliar nature of these abilities, people who possessed them faced descrimination and persecution despite having no say in whether or not they had them; and some who did possess these abilities began abusing their power. Taking advantage of this, a man calling himself One-for-All took unwanted quirks from people and redistributed them claiming to want to help others and bring about peace but merely wished to amass power and a following for his own gain. Morally upright individuals eventually rose to the occasion and placed themselves between innocent bystanders and evildoers, earning no official reward or compensation for their work, though eventually they became so effective that they became recognized and endorsed if they went through proper governmental training and channels. These endorsed specialty crime fighters came to be dubbed “heroes.”

All-For-One had risen to prominence by this point and his loyal following actively supported him in his now blatant criminal empire despite the morally reprehensible actions he committed which incessantly terrorized innocent bystanders - earning him the title Symbol of Evil or Symbol of Fear. Eventually a hero named All Might rose up to specifically deal with All-For-One’s reign of terror, having worked his way up from obscurity taking down criminals and saving civilians in unprecedented numbers, determined to create a world where everyone could feel safe in the face of danger. Though only succeeding in beating AFO into hiding All Might ushered in a new era of safety and prosperity earning him the title Symbol of Peace.

Therein lies the central message - “It’s not the situation you’re given that determines your worth or potential but what you choose to do with it” - and the main conflict is - “I want to use what I’ve been given for my own benefit" vs "I want to use what I’ve been given for others.” Deku and Shiguraki are merely the next generation iteration of this conflict distilled down to their simplest essence. Deku's desire is to save anyone who needs help the moment he realizes they need it. Shiguraki wants to remove people's sense of security regardless of their character or situation. 

This conflict is initially framed as simple - a clear black and white/good and bad dynamic that’s easy to see from a distance; but as characters and groups developed over time it’s become more and more difficult to tell the two sides apart. It was not a coincidence that immediately after introducing the clear-as-day bad guys to the series we were presented with the idea that who we perceived to be “good guys” could be bad people doing good things or that people could do good things for the wrong reasons when we were presented with the personal conflicts that Bakugo, Shinsou, and Todoroki all faced at the Sports Festival that were either their internal struggles with the way the were perceived by others or were their personal struggles with the way they perceived themselves. Immediately after that, we were introduced to Stain's criticism of modern heroes and shown who would come to be the core members of the League of Villains.

At the current events in the series we’ve waded through so many shades of grey we’re expected to determine who’s a “hero” and “villain” not by what they say but what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The individual members of the League of Villains touch on various ways a person might be driven to a life dedicated either to the pursuit of personal satisfaction with no concern to others or to the active pursuit of destroying others, and generally the villains are some of the most morally gray characters we have in the series, though not all of them - the two most notable morally gray “good guys” are Hawks and Endeavor.

There’s one last thing to note about how the series chooses to distinguish morally gray characters as “good” and “bad,” and that ultimately boils down to the choices they make with the hand they are dealt - that being to help or to harm others. This is not quite the same thing as a “hero” and a “villian” (I know, as if it wasn’t confusing enough), but the series has now gone to great lengths to make a clear distinction between the ideals of heroism and the institution of heroism.

Looking at the difference in institutions and ideals as the series presents them we get a better picture of the actual core issues the series seeks to address. The institution of heroism is a utilitarian approach to maintaining a sense of order and safety, and it does so by incentivising people to resolve as many public altercations as possible in exchange for wealth and fame. Criminals are those who break the law regardless of the motivation for the crime or its degree of impact. The institution does not take into account factors that may drive someone to commit a crime nor is it concerned with the core motivations of those enforcing the sense of order.

On the opposite hand, the ideal of heroism offers no reward, no recognition, may require some amount of suffering on the part of the hero, and never guarantees that the victim in question will be saved. Conversely, villainy/evil is any action taken for one's own gain with zero regard to the impact on others and/or is any action committed with malicious intent. These definitions are about moral obligation and human to human connection.

While having a strong correlation (helping others because it's right usually helps the majority in the long run, and doing harm is often ultimately bad for the majority) these two schools of thought are able to function independently of each other. In other words, a criminal can be a good person fallen on hard times (like stealing food to feed their family, but only as much as they need from someone who won’t notice it missing) while a “professional hero” can be an evil person doing good things for the wrong reasons (like obsessing over gaining wealth and popularity with no mind to collateral damage they may cause). Most characters are categorized and even described in-universe as morally aligning with the institution they associate with; but several have been explicitly noted as exceptions to the rule such as Gentle Criminal and La Brava, Endeavor, and Twice. 

Are we properly confused yet? Great, because there’s one more layer to consider! What do we make of someone who is trying to do a good thing (like saving as many people as possible from a known threat) but to do so has to make a choice that might leave a few people in the fire? Which outcome do we use to decide if this is a good person or a bad one? Do we judge based on intent or on the outcome?

Now we zoom back in to Hawks and Twice, but we’ll pick that up in Part Two.

Part Three

[overthinkingkdrama]

Jona’s 5 Worst Dramas of 2019

A couple words about this list. I’m making this for fun. If a drama you love ended up on this list, it doesn’t mean that I hate you or I think you’re stupid or have terrible taste. But these are dramas that inspired strong negative reactions in me for one reason or another, whether that be disappointment, rage or disgust.

I’ve only included dramas that finished airing in 2019 in my selection process. If you have some dramas that hated, feel free to share them in the replies or send me an ask. It’s fun to complain about things for some reason.

Also, I have included major SPOILERS in a couple of these. So read at your own peril.

Dishonorable Mention: Melting Me Softly

I sincerely tried to limit myself to only dramas that I--for whatever misguided reasons--finished in their entirety for this list. Mainly because I don’t think it’s fair to brand something as the “worst” of anything without actually giving the thing a fair shake. That’s the only reason Melting Me Softly isn’t higher on this list. But I felt that it wasn’t right to leave it off entirely, if for no other reason then out of respect for the fallen Ji Chang Wook stans out there who lost their lives trying to make it through this trash fire. Somebody needs to stand up for those brave soldiers, out their gifing trash dramas while people like me are safe and sound on our couches, watching the tag like it’s a train wreck.

I made it through only two episodes of this drama, and despite my goodwill toward the majority of the cast, they were two of the most bafflingly bad hours of television that I forced myself to sit through this year. From what I could tell while side-eyeing the drama on tumblr and twitter it didn’t improve much over the course of the run. There were a couple steamy kisses that I enjoyed in clip form, but I don’t think it would have been worth the brain cells lost to sit through any more than that.

Bottom Line: Painfully unfunny, overwhelmingly expositional with no character development, confusing pacing and sloppy editing. Two episodes was two too many.

5. When the Devil Calls Your Name

It pains me to put this on the list because it was just last year that a Jung Kyung Ho, Park Sung Woong collaboration (Life on Mars) ended up in my top 5. And giving credit where it’s due, the two male leads seem to have a great deal of fun working together and I believe that all the actors gave this drama everything they could and sincerely tried to make it work. That’s one of the things I like about Jung Kyung Ho, he picks unique, risky projects that either pay off in a big way or fall flat on their faces (like the amateurishly written and edited Missing 9) Unfortunately, this script just too messy and too bizarre to work. Ha Rip as has a deeply frustrating character arc. He’s such a self-centered jerk for the vast majority of the drama, which is fine for a Faust type story if it’s written with conviction, but every time you think he’s started to turn a corner or grown as a person he reverts back to his old ways. The writing and tone are whiplash inducing. Plus the vague “soul mates” relationship between Ha Rip and Kim Yi Kyung seemed to want to have it both ways, flipping between implied romantic potential and a father/daughter dynamic, which made me quite uncomfortable.

Bottom Line: This drama’s bizarre mythology and world building barely makes any sense at all, but at least they’re easier to follow than the character development. Attempted something unique, but couldn’t pull it off. The OST is super dope though.

4. Love in Sadness

When I watched the first teasers I got the distinct impression that this wasn’t going to be a good drama, or at best it was going to be a guilty pleasure, but at the time when I started it I was hungry for a melo and there wasn’t much airing to hold my attention so I started it on impulse. I think in this case I got what I deserved for continuing to watch something I didn’t think was very good.

The first few episodes were actually pretty gripping and intriguingly dark, but that petered of quickly and the drama became and infuriating wheel spinning exercise with barely any perceptible plot development from episode to episode. The protagonists in this are all so stupid that in the final few episodes the female lead gets kidnapped not once, but multiple times because she keeps meeting her unstable husband alone. Plus nobody in this drama seems to know how to call the police when a madman is waving around a gun. It probably wouldn’t have made me so very mad except that in the last few episodes the writer became unaccountably preoccupied with how sad the psychotic, wife-beating husband’s family life was and how lonely and pathetic his life was when he wasn’t allowed to stalk, assault, and psychologically terrorize his wife. Seriously, in the last leg of the drama the villain is the only character who gets any character development at all. The drama pulls out all the stops to try to make use feel sorry for him. It’s disgusting.

Bottom Line: When a drama about a woman trying to escape domestic violence becomes completely preoccupied with painting the abuser as tragically misunderstood, you’ve got some serious problems.

3. The Lies Within

If it wasn't for the last two episodes this drama would not be on this list, but that isn't because it was in any way an exceptional drama, or that it otherwise would have ended up on my best list. Without the last two episodes The Lies Within is a merely adequate thriller, somewhat heightened by the brutal nature of the premise. I picked this show up largely to fill the void that was left by WATCHER and it was more or less successful, plus it helped that I liked the cast. However even at the beginning this drama I felt like it had some pretty glaring tone problems. There were parts of the drama that were standard OCN dark and gritty thriller, and there were other parts that felt like a campy police sitcom. The humor, when it does crop up in this drama always feels super out of place. But then that last big twist happened and man...I can't remember the last time a drama made me that angry or cratered quite so hard with a twist.

[And this is where I spoil the HELL out of this drama...]

Before this drama decided to go all M. Night Shyamalan in it’s last two episodes, there seemed to be at least one, if not two really reasonable candidates for the kidnapper. Actually all the ground work they’d done up to that point would seem to have pointed to Young Min and if he had turned out to be the perpetrator, I would have completely bought it. Instead they decided to blow everyone’s mind by making the kidnapped husband complicit in his own kidnapping and dismemberment. Which might seem like a shocking twist until you think about it for even half a second.

What it winds up doing on a narrative level it makes everything the characters have done to investigate this series of crimes up to this point feel pointless, resulting in a huge anticlimax. It makes the ambiguous figure of Seo Hui’s husband not only hopelessly stupid, but also cruel and unsympathetic. Because he thought somehow simply sharing the information with her would put her in more danger than threatening and psychologically terrorizing her into investigating the very people he was theoretically trying to protect her from. The explanation that he was already terminally ill doesn’t to anything to mitigate the stupidity of his plan for me. Seriously, you couldn’t think of any solution aside from cutting bits off yourself and sending them to your wife in the mail? I could rant about this ending at length, but I’m going to try to stop here.

Bottom Line: As far as I’m concerned, if you choose to sacrifice the emotional and narrative coherence of your story for a cheap and dirty twist to surprise the audience, you deserve every ranty review you get.

2. Love Affairs in the Afternoon

I’m really not sure what possessed me to watch this drama to begin with. That I continued to watch it is on me. The fact that I watched it despite hating the shallow characters, the thin story and the abortive message at the core of the drama is simply a lapse of judgement for which I shouldn’t be forgiven. Why did I do it despite not having a single nice thing to say about this show? Well, there are two reasons. I was curious to see if they would do anything compelling with one or two of the characters, (specifically the serial adulteress housewife an the broody artist) and I was surreptitiously watching this drama at work and it was really easy to follow the plot while only actually keeping my eyes on the screen about half the time. I watched the last episode before the subs were available and had no trouble understanding what was going. Which could be a sign that my Korean is improving, but is more likely a sign that the writing was so predictable and simplistic that you could follow it if you didn’t speak the language at all.

[Spoilers beyond this point.]

It’s my understanding that in the Jdrama that this is based on all of the characters basically wreck their lives and end up miserable, pointing toward the emptiness of the lives of these people who try to find fulfillment through extra-marital affairs. If that’s how this drama had ended, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed the execution but I could have respected the intent. But in this watered down Kdrama-fied version all the couples’ issues are resolved in the whitewash of a last episode time skip that makes the suffering and bullshit that led up to it feel completely pointless.

Bottom Line: Maybe this level of trashy, uninspired tripe would be somewhat justified if the chemistry between the leads had been better, but somehow they even managed to screw that up. The leads are just bad, vacuous people, a fact which is rendered all the more unforgivable by them being utterly bland. Everybody needed to divorce, nobody deserved to end up happy. Please be wiser than me and avoid this one.

1. Memories of the Alhambra

Initially, I was on the fence about even producing a “Worst List” this year, because in the past few years I’ve tried to be better about dropping dramas the moment they start to disappoint me, rather than hanging on to them and winding up burning myself out. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough material to write this list, or at least not enough material to make it worth reading. Then I remembered that Memories of the Alhambra finished airing in January of this year (2019 was impossibly long, wasn’t it?) and I thought, “Aha, I can make this work.” I knew at once this drama was going to be the shitty tinfoil star atop my Christmas tree of suck.

I’ve already written a full review of this drama, where I got about as mean as I felt I could reasonably be. You can go read that if you like, I’m not going to retread all my many complaints here. What I will say is that Memories of the Alhambra took my mixed-to-favorable opinion of the writer, Song Jae Jung, and turned it to a negative one. She’s someone who clearly has a lot of interesting high concept ideas, but the execution is just not there. You can hook an audience with a concept, but you have to keep them with craft and structure. 

Maybe the industry can be blamed for that. Maybe she just has a hard time ending her stories, or maybe writing on a deadline doesn’t agree with her. Whatever the reason, I can no longer trust her to deliver a satisfying story. And that’s deeply saddening to me, because Queen In Hyun’s Man is in my top 10 favorite dramas.

To be front-to-back terrible is one thing. The joke’s at least half on me for bothering. But to have potential, to have an interesting hook, a budget, a cast, but then to be either unwilling or unable to live up to that potential feels like a con. That’s how I felt about his drama, like I had been willfully deceived by special effects and flashy editing, all orchestrated to disguise a narratively bankrupt, unsatisfying drama.

Bottom Line:  Is Memories of the Alhambra objectively the worst drama on this list? No, it’s not. Is it the most disappointing? Absolutely, it is. And that’s the more heinous crime, in my opinion.  And that’s why it’s my worst drama of 2019.