#how is this 55 pages this was meant to be one scene

[cillyscribbles]

electing to disappear into the woods forever instead of editing any more high noon over camelot fic

[cyberspacebear]

some behind the scenes from my yard animatic 🎞

so i've wanted to animate the yard's swatting story ever since they told it, which meant that i already had a bunch of ideas in the cranium when i began this project. after my initial storyboard, i wrote a couple pages planning each shot and how many frames every action should take (the first photo is one of those pages).

the panels are all drawn on printer paper and lined in ballpoint pen, because there are over EIGHTY of them across ~11 pages and hell if i was going to use up a good pen on this project.

here's an example of one full page. this was probably the most animated part of the whole video, since there are very few other pages that are occupied by a single shot (haha "shot").

the note across 53-55 reading "devolve" was a reminder to make the lining and coloring get messier/ more jittery as he falls.

and now, here's me repeatedly being out of pocket in my planning document & youtube description draft:

i really am not beating these allegations

but am i wrong for loving the headshot scene? it was the best part of the whole project.

and fun fact, the gore textures are almost entirely photos of butchered cows.

[fauzhee10069]

Stone Ocean: the two versions of universe reset & jolysui/irekiss

Just this month, Stone Ocean anime has ended. Suddenly I want to discuss how universe reset actually works and a little bit about jolysui & irekiss.

First, about Pucci’s version of universe reset. The first time Emporio woke up in GDst prison, he saw a new version of Jotaro and Jolyne.

SO chapter 156: Made In Heaven – part 8

This version of ‘Jotaro’ and ‘Jolyne’ have similar fashion style, with minor alteration. But it could be seen that their face (and possibly their voice too) was different. So, Emporio saw them as different people, but let's say that they were roughly like people cosplaying as Jotaro and Jolyne.

Not only about the costumes, but also their role. Let's refer to them as Kunō Nōtaro and Jocelyn (for fun LOL), and that this Jocelyn also being incarcerated and has daddy issue like Jolyne.

So we are like back to the beginning of Stone Ocean (chapter 11 onwards), but since Jotaro, Jolyne and the likes did not survive the acceleration, they were gone and got replaced with Notaro and Jocelyn. It is also said that their soul and personality have been erased, in this case we don’t really see the personality of Notaro and Jocelyn, so this explanation is a bit ambiguous. However, Notaro and Jocelyn are clearly different people from Jotaro and Jolyne (based on appearance alone), but living their life.

Also, why we went back to chapter 11 and not chapter 1 in first reset? Because Jolyne’s first enemy under Pucci was Johngalli A., and the arc started on chapter 11. Gwess is the only enemy in Stone Ocean who had nothing to do with Pucci.

SO chapter 158: What A Wonderful World

Next, in second version of universe reset when Pucci got erased instead, Emporio met the new version of Jolyne’s gang. Based on face alone, they are all the same persons. But here they live a different life than in previous world (a world where they have bizarre adventured with Emporio). In this case, we can see that they were all never incarcerated in GDst.

And besides that they also have different identities, like Anakiss instead of Anasui and Irene instead of Jolyne. Is it possible that the actual names of Notaro and Jocelyn were previously Jotaro and Jolyne? Idk. But through the name change of Anasui and Jolyne, it shows that they have a completely different life than before.

Another interesting thing is their different style of dress. Particularly between Anasui and Anakiss, while the former dressed like a stripper, the latter is being modest. Wiki page said that the dead is still being replaced, but replacement in this second reset is clearly different from the first.

And in one of my old posts (!part 8 spoilers), I have mentioned how Irene’s personality feels different from Jolyne, as Jolyne is more tomboyish like her father whereas Irene is more gentle and affectionate like her grandma. -> skip to “Regarding Jolyne and Irene” and stop at “they might show them differently”.

So the breakdown is roughly like this:

Now, I’d like to talk about jolysui and irekiss.

In original universe, mostly it was treated like a gag and one-sided. But surprisingly, in second reset, they are dating and about to get married as irekiss.

However, near the end of Stone Ocean, during the climactic battle against 「Made in Heaven」, some time after Anasui proposed to Jolyne through her father Jotaro, Jolyne accepted it (much to her father’s shock lol).

You can watch the scene here (skip at minute 7:55):

Because just after Anasui said 「徐倫に結婚でも申し込むとするかな！」” Jōrin ni kekkon demo moushikomu to suru kana!” which roughly means “then maybe I’ll ask Jolyne to marry me”...

Jolyne said “yes” and indeed what she meant was about 「申し込む」”moushikomu” and it means:

To be honest, initially I did not believe this scene, because I did not recall having this in the manga. I thought this was an extra/improvisation scene in the anime. But after I checked again, it was the English translation of the manga version that made it sound more ambiguous.

SO chapter 153: Made In Heaven – part 5

Sometimes, there are few translation errors in English version, however I don’t think this one is the case.

Just “ask me” is not wrong, it directly translated to the “moushikomu” one, as marriage in Japanese is “kekkon”. However, it is Jolyne's dialogue afterwards that makes the nuances in this scene difficult to comprehend.

Even though she accepted Anasui's proposal, Jolyne hardly looked like someone being in love with Anasui.

“I’m not saying this because I’m not despairing over this situation” later she was talking about “hope” and “path”, that’s how I misinterpreted it that she was talking about Anasui's plan in defeating Pucci and their probability to win, akin to another gag that she was being oblivious with his courting. Especially prior to that, something like this happened:

SO chapter 151: Made In Heaven – part 3

Just after Anasui's asking about marriage to Jotaro, Jolyne kind of reacted to it, only for her to talk about how to fight Pucci, made me as a reader thought: “OMG, she assured him that she is into it!” -> “oh, it is about the fight”.

And back on how I think that she did not look like someone being in love, I expected that she said something like “because whenever I'm with you, I feel comfort in my heart”, it’s cheesy yeah… but it will spare me from misunderstanding (lmao).

At least, if I was more attentive, Jotaro's reacting to her words is totally made sense now (lol).Tbh, seeing his reaction, I'm not sure he would approve it. After all, Anasui is still a criminal & murderer. However, things can be different with Anakiss, because like I said before, he got different life.

So now I can understand why irekiss happened, because jolysui was about to happen if only they survived. But personally, I’m still not a fan of jolysui, they really lack chemistry (in contrast to josuyasu/yasugap, my OTP). Jolysui has been treated as a gag until suddenly it became possible. It’s like a reversal role in old Shōnen trope when the girl constantly being in love with MC but MC being oblivious, yet the ending have them tied the knot (famous example is Goku-Chichi in Dragon Ball). But yeah, irekiss is canon and I simply accept it.

Then what do you think about jolysui and irekiss? Do you have OTP in JoJo?

[sayruq]

So, I just finished watching episode 10 of HoTD and I swear I was so bored for like 55 minutes of the whole ride, the only moment I was actually paying attention was when Aemond was on screen and the only emotion I had was me cackling at Aemond's tectonic "OH SHIT" face when Grandma Vhagar did her war crime.

I cannot believe that this is meant to be a challenger to the brilliance that is RoP, which had me at the edge of my seat from start to finish at every episode. Like, miss me with this failed Targ shit, the writers are so clearly not getting it.

Rings of Power writers care so much about their characters and they committ to the story they're telling, nothing is half assed. They want us to be attached to the characters and they work hard to make sure that we do and that hard work paid off. Look at how well received their finale is compared to this one. Ep 6 brought several characters together and not only did it feel like a big deal, the episode itself was tense, heartbreaking, dark and filled with more morally grey characters than HOTD. Adar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daemon. RoP was not scared to have Galadriel promise genocide nor did it ignore what that says about her. HOTD won't even let Rhaenyra express murderous intent after she was usurped and her son killed. She just stares into the camera.

I read the leaks so I knew what was coming and that usually doesn't detract from my enjoyment of a show because I love spoilers but even I was counting down the minutes to Aemond. It felt like an ordinary filler episode. Things happen without urgency or tension and not once did I feel like I couldn't wait to see how other characters will react to the new plot developments except Aemond's scene (he really is the MVP of the show). It didn't feel like the beginning of a new catastrophic war.

This show doesn't understand how to pick it's scenes. Instead of a very long miscarriage and body preparation scene, we could have spent more time on Rhaenyra's anger at being usurped, her fear of what it means for her children and her grief at her father's death because she barely reacted to that. There should have been only one Black Council scene after her coronation where we get

Team Black talking about their allies and Team Green's allies and you know strategizing

Rhaenys and Corlys slowly changing their minds about Rhaenyra (the show given reason why they chose her is very stupid because even the Greens want peace but whatever) as they watch her handle herself

Daemon trying to wrest control from Rhaenyra. You can even have him start the Council without her to show his eagerness for war. Instead of him standing around the table talking about the island's defenses, we should see him attending to that, ignoring her while she's in pain

Rhaenyra resisting it because of the prophecy which she doesn't talks about just yet. We should see people constantly pushing her to declare war and attack King's Landing and Rhaenyra standing her ground

Plans are made to send Jace and Luke to act as messengers

Instead of war, Rhaenyra plans on gaining enough allies to back the Greens into a corner without a single person dying

Then Otto Hightower comes. Instead of the dumb dragon scene, show Rhaenyra struggling to walk there but being determined because she's now queen and this is her duty but also because of the prophecy. She listens to the terms offered, trades insults with Otto, Daemon is Daemon. The page is offered, Rhaenyra cries and she decides to give her answer the following day.

Daemon thinks her attachment to Alicent is problem but she tells him about the prophecy. He strangles her. Rhaenyra spends the night thinking about how unpopular her decision is, she doesn't want to waver despite all the pressure she's facing.

Luke dies and Rhaenyra finds out right before she tells Otto her terms for peace. Instead of Emma staring at the camera, we can have the iconic line

Tell my half brother that I will have my throne, or I will have his head,” she said, sending the envoys on their way.

Now we see how Rhaenyra has been transformed by her son's death and we don't have to spend the entire last episode spinning the wheel until Aemond enters the picture.

[sleepymccoy]

72 and 55 if you are still going!

I def am! Hi Ked 😊

55. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings ect?

I'm sure there's more than I notice, but I definitely repeat the tropes! I go in for miscommunication and pining basically every time. Even if I'm writing established relationship I manage to make them pine.

Regarding expressions, I do try not to Americanise myself unless the character is particularly American. Cos, like, McCoy is southern. So he gets Southern phrases from me. But Kirk and Spock are also American really but not in a particular way, it's more that universal type of American where it's treated as default. When I write those kinds of default American characters I let myself be Australian about it because that's my default and I don't want to lose that for fanfiction.

That has led to some amusing miscommunications with American readers who are (appropriately!) reading with an American sort of voice but I'm not writing with that. My fave was when I used yonks which means a lot (in a measurement type of way) and got tonnes of confused comments 😂 I hadnt even clocked it as slang, it's just a word for me.

I think the sentence was something like "but that was yonks ago" and people were DMing me to say "hey, funny typo on that page, I think you meant years?" But I didn't! Yonks can be used for distance too, something can be fucking yonks away. I never bothered to change it, it's okay for my voice to be Aussie

But yeah, I'm sure there are many expression particular to me that I don't notice cos it's just cultural

72. What's your favourite writing compliment that you've gotten?

I don't know! I can give you two very impactful ones tho.

Someone left a comment once that discussed how natural my dialogue is, and that's really stayed with me. It caused me to reflect on my process (which starts with dialogue only) and I realised I agree with them! I have quite a strong capacity to make the beats of time in a conversation be reflected in punctuation and description. I'm glad someone pointed it out cos I feel quite a bit of pride over that now, but I hadn't noticed on my own!

The other is all the comments my first ever fic got. I reread it not long ago (maybe a year) and it's appropriately amateur in vice. If I had less find memories of it I'd be embarrassed by it. But the comments are all just so fucking kind. It's unbelievable and it made me commit to being a writer. Everyone pointed out some strength they saw and I can see a direct line from those comments to my style now in what I doubled down on being good at. Someone complimented the humour, and I now do not shy from putting jokes in my stories. Someone talking about it being in character (by my standards now it so isn't, but it was such a shaping comment for me anyway) and I take care to go proof scenes constantly to make sure it's still true to character rather than just being useful to the plot.

It as such a wonderful early experience to have and I cannot express my gratitude enough to those few people who read my weak-ass first post! I love them and I love that fic because of them, no matter how far below my standards it now is. What a marvellous way to interact with new writers

[judetesta]

The Making of 'The Surrey Job'

First Thoughts

As a follow-on from our previous screenwriting module, our first major film brief at UCA bared one challenge in particular - no dialogue. This, for pretty much every other role of production, seemed limiting: a writer might wonder how to fill the gaps in their page that lines might've once taken up, a director on how to motivate their actors without speech, and so on...

…But as I'd bagged my first role in sound (as the rather non-specific 'HOD Sound' which we later resolved as me doing post-production whilst my peer Chloe handled the on-set stuff) I instead felt liberated by how creative I could be. It helps that I'm one of, well, one for those actually interested in the audio side of filmmaking so far - which meant I could pick any film I wanted out of the eight laid out.

One stood out, though - 'The Surrey Job' (TSJ henceforth) was a heist film about a group of middle aged/classed women, and their exclusion of one in their midday binge drinking that escalates into an escapade of slapstick thievery, Mission Impossible style, to heist a bottle of expensive wine. Paying homage to an existing kind of film meant I could dip my feet into a new workflow safely by following in other's footsteps, allowing me to experiment with the details instead. I signed on, and we got to talking out a plan:

Pre-Production

Quickly - and this is pretty normal at a student level - we realised our ambitions dwarfed our budget. Multiple locations and enlisting actual adults with jobs wouldn't be as easy as, say, rebranding the film to be more youth-centric. And that was what Jack, our writer, did. Instead, we'd follow a young girl's not-so-warm welcome to her student digs as a fresher, excluded from her more popular flatmates and their pompous wine-drinking - which she'd then, of course, go on to rob. I got a party scene out of this, which sounded really exciting to dub over - but also a line in the script describing a couple snogging, which I wasn't so excited to dub.

Still, it was time to sit down with Director Luke Sage and figure out how to approach the sound. As the mute nature of the film removed most of the hassle, we settled on most of the sound-work being an extension of some PDR we'd grab on-set, as the more comedic feel wouldn't (always) suit pure realism anyway.

I laid out my plans for an 'arc of realities' wherein our lead's awkward entry to the flat would be met with a realistic soundscape, and then into the more heightened during the heist planning and execution - before she's thrown right back into the realistic kind when her plan spills over. I annotated a script with highlights of every type of recording approach I'd need for every sound, with comments on the more specific thing to look at, and after hashing out the details, prepared ourselves for a week of shooting.

On-Set

After an early rise and a packed lunch, I met with the crew to head over to our shooting location - a nice suburban home that had been kindly lent to us by a colleague of the producer, Lucy - who was also named Lucy. Immediately though, there was an issue: the sound equipment I had requested as part of the booking list, for whatever reason, hadn't been booked out, leaving Chloe and I in a pretty difficult position. Not one to give up, we returned to UCA and went over our options with EHD, who kindly let us book out an ATR-55 and a Zoom H5 which whilst not what I personally would've chosen, seemed to get the job done well enough.

After tinkering with the Zoom and figuring out on the fly how to get up and running, we got to work. Truthfully there wasn't a great deal of expertise on display over those three days of shooting; we didn't have to record any dialogue - the silver lining to not having a boom pole for our boom op! - which meant the meat of our work was capturing those more intricate sounds like the rummaging of boxes or ambiences. As I didn't have much to do and didn't want to step on Chloe's toes either, for the second and third days of shooting I instead went ahead and recorded BTS footage using my personal rig, which was great experience for me in terms of recording subjects that don't necessarily have the time to accommodate for you. I found a groove in weaving through people's limbs and gaps in the equipment to discover intricately framed looks at my subjects, which I'll definitely be incorporating into my future work. I had underestimated the value of depth in my cinematography skillset and won't be doing that again! Between that and weighing in on how to record each sequence with post-production in mind - as well as the odd job such as holding up cardboard to keep light out of the interior of the house, my role on-set was quite straightforward. I'll dub it the calm before the storm, as I imagine the work after would be quite intense. Here's how that went...

Post-Production

Post-shoot and post-Easter (I went home to visit family and tie up loose ends in my coursework, plus a rather unconventional Sunday Bolognese) I was back in Farnham and with Rowan - our editor - handing me a rough draft, it was time to get back to work.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I'd interlace foley sessions - which would go through a list of sounds I'd highlighted into groups from the script and then categorised using Trello - with Pro Tools editing. I figured this out by sitting in on some sessions from Luke and Albert from the higher years in W107, which also helped me learn to operate the various inputs and outputs of the room and how to set up the microphones. I invited some of the crew to come and help me record footsteps using foley pits, props from on-set, as well as some from the huge shelves of miscellaneous stuff in the room itself. A typical take would involve us practising the sound whilst I set the gain to create a nice ceiling and prevent peaking, before running through it a few times (the person in the booth would be able to see a meter as well as the video track to mimic the actions). I initially recorded in mono, before realising my mistake and switching to a stereo layout with two mics 'overlapping' each other. This gave a greater sense of depth - although I understand this isn't a catch-all method and in cases like ADR you'd want mono. I also had the pleasure of creating a fake Sci-Fi radio-drama type scene with Luke and Beau to go in the background for one of the scenes, which involved squeezing tomatoes and snapping celery whilst waving around shakers and typing on keyboards to create the sounds of aliens and tech.

This was admist the difficult, but rewarding process of learning how to edit for sound with Avid Pro Tools. Post a series of online tutorials and trial-and-error practise, I began to lay out the .OMF file as sent to me by Rowan and crack on with the edit. A key moment for me was learning to automate plugins to dynamically alter things like reverb and EQ on the fly - this helped to make the environments feel more reactive to things like doors opening or closing or rising tensions. There was a back and forth between numerous cuts, which involved tweaking things slightly or reorganising the edit to accomodate for the score as it came through, but eventually, I was blessed with a finished edit that I then mastered and limited the master track to prevent additional peaking from the sounds as all overlapped - and then I was finished!

Reflection

This was definitely a challenging brief, but also one I found really rewarding, and I've come so far in my understanding of my role that I finally feel ready to take on some higher year projects and really get myself out there. I hope this is just the start of my Sound Design career, and I hope to look back at some of the mistakes I made with organisation and formatting and laugh in the future.

[fernlessbastard]

So I'm opening up commissions

Contact: preferably email me at fernlessbastard@gmail.com (but my DMS here and on Instagram are open)

Please mention comissions in the subject of the email.

Sketches:

Doodle - $5

Small piece - $7

Medium piece - $10

Big piece - >$15 (negotiable size)

Watercolours:

Doodle: - $35 (~ half of A5)

Small piece - $45 ( ~ half of A5)

Medium piece - $65 (~A5-A4)

Big piece - >$90 (negotiable size)

Gouache:

Doodle: - $45 (~ half of A5)

Small piece - $55 ( ~ half of A5)

Medium piece - $75 (~A5-A4)

Big piece - >$100 (negotiable size)

What I won't draw:

Nsfw of real people (unless the people involved give explicit permission)

Ships including real people (unless the people involved give explicit permission)

Noncon (depends on the context)

Animal abuse/harm, meat imagery

Anything suggestive/explicit regarding minor(s)

Ships with big age differences where one person is very young (see 9yo and 15yo, or 18yo and 30yo)

Incest

Terms of service:

General terms of service:

The prices listed above are all in the context of pictures of art. In case you want the physical piece, I need to be notified before starting the commission. The price of shipping will also be added to the final price, after all the add-ons (such as 25% for another character), so it doesn't affect the price of the piece, and only covers the shipping cost.

All drawings may or will include a subtle signature that you may not remove or change.

Prices are subject to change based on factors such as demand.

I have the right to reject any order that I do not feel comfortable drawing for any reason.

“Extra Detail” will be evaluated based on the amount of additional, complext objects, and doesn’t inherently concern the character’s design (unless the design is overtly complex)

“Detailed bg” referrs to a background that portrays a full scene, and/or includes complex patterns.

Unless the piece is of a private person, I am free to post the final drawing to my social media. (I'll still ask you if you mind, but just as a disclaimer)

After the exchange is fully realised, which means I've received the previously agreed upon amount of money and you receive the piece, you are free to use it for whatever purpose you may want (such as putting it up in your home, getting it tattooed, using it in some kind of video, etc) excluding selling the piece (unless the commission is meant for that purpose from the start, in which case there will be appropriate paperwork filed that concerns the specific situation, and how the piece/design may be used), but if you share it, be it privately, or on a public forum, I must still be credited as the original artist. That means being explicitly mentioned by name, and (on platforms that enable it) providing a link to my pages, both in a way that's visible and clear to an outside person.

Payment:

The full amount is to be paid through PayPal.

Commissions can be paid either 100% upfront or split 50% upfront and 50% after sketch approval, depending on what's been privately agreed upon. Pencil-only pieces are to be paid upfront fully.

Don't send me any payment before I have agreed to give you a slot and requested you to send me the payment. I am not responsible for any issues such as loss of money due to currency exchange in a case of a refund, where I am not to blame for the refund.

If for some reason I'm forced to cancel the commission after not fully finishing it, I'm entitled to receive payment for the work I've already done (for example if the piece was meant to be in watercolours, but I've already finished the sketch, I'm entitled to receive the payment for a full sketch)

Upfront payment is non-refundable (once I start the commission) unless I myself cancel the commission.

I am not responsible for your, or PayPal's mistakes in the process of payment. If the mistake is on your side (such as sending the money to the wrong person, despite being provided the correct link), that unfortunately will not count as payment, and I will still need the money to be sent to me. Cases of issues with PayPal will be handled individually.

If after being informed of the price you voluntarily pay a greater amount, that will be seen as a tip (which is greatly appreciated), and will be nonrefundable. That is due to payments having to go through currency exchange, which takes a cut of the money, but any sincere, immediately noticed mistakes will be handled individually.

I always make sure that I know exactly what you want out of the commission, before any payment occurs, just in case we find out that I cannot provide the service you want after all. If you send me money before I explicitly tell you to, it will be seen as a nonrefundable donation by default. Such donation will not equate to me having to do the commission. This disclaimer is of course only meant to protect me just in case, and in most situations I will treat premature payment as normal payment, and proceed with the commission, or try to refund you.

Process:

I will notify you when I have started on your commission and you, therefore, lose the rights to a refund

At any point of the process you can contact me to have a civil discussion about details of the order - I'm human too! Just be nice and understanding and I'm sure we can find a compromise, whatever it is.

While I'm working on your commission I will make reviews with you to make sure I make it just right for you!

The amount of reviews depends on the complexity of the work.

During the reviews, you will see work-in-progress and these images will be of lower quality than the final piece.

The time it takes to finish your commission can vary, from 1 week to 3 months or even more (particularly in bigger pieces) depending on factors such as the complexity of the commissioned piece and the workload in my personal life.

If anything comes up that will slow the progress of the initially estimated delivery time I will let you know asap.

Once the piece is finished you will receive a picture or several of the final piece in the best possible quality I can provide (at the very least not worse than what I post on my social media).

If you want to receive the physical piece I will notify you when I send it and provide pictures. You will also receive good quality images before I ship the piece.

My part of the exchange ends once I send the piece, and I am not responsible for what happens to the piece when in shipment.

[stxleslyds]

I didn't realize how often I thought about this fandom until I started churning out asks on a daily basis.

Knowing DC's creative trends/talent in 1988/89, what do you think would have happened if fans voted for Jason's survival? From released alternative comic pages, Jason still gets blown up but survives.

Do you think they had a plan for him to become Hush (like the Death in the Family interactive "movie" implies)? Would he get a personality change through amnesia? Or would the comics have retired him to fade into obscurity?

WHAT IF…? BUT JASON TODD SURVIVES.

Hi friend! Thank you for the ask! This should be interesting.

But before I give my answer, let’s take a look at those pages where Jason had actually survived Joker’s attack.

From the second page we only can see one panel but some who have seen the entire, unreleased, page have said this about it:

“The full page reveals more, including the arrival of Dick Grayson to Jason’s hospital room, although a pencilled note in the margins says to strike him, and redraw the panels in favour of having Alfred in the scene instead. Dick rushed over as soon as he heard, and offered Bruce his help in tracking down the Joker.

In the published version of Batman #428, the same page depicts Jason’s funeral, where Alfred asks Bruce if he should get in touch with Dick Grayson. In both pages, Batman says roughly the same thing: “I’ll handle this by myself. No help from now on... that’s the way I want it.””

This makes me feel like Jason having survived or not the Joker’s attack would have resulted in the same outcome within Bruce. Dick shows up at the hospital to check on Jason and offers his help in tracking Joker to Bruce but Bruce doesn’t want his help because from that moment on “he works alone”.

That would lead to the same exact actions that happened with Jason dead. Bruce goes after Joker on his own and leaves up to fate if he dies or not (although he said that his issues with Joker never truly end, Batman (1940) #429),

And if Bruce pushes Dick away then we could also be having a scene like the one from The New Titans (1988) #55, where Bruce implies that Jason getting hurt was Dick’s fault for having moved on from Robin himself. If that happens then Dick would blame Bruce for putting Jason in danger way too soon and their fight will end up with Bruce kicking Dick out of the manor.

-

So, to answer your question, what would have happened if fans voted for Jason’s survival?

I think that DC would have turned Jason into another reason why Bruce thinks that all he could ever be is Batman. It would have made Bruce dark, moody and sad just like DC wanted, all darkness and no light.

Jason wouldn’t be dead but he wouldn’t be truly alive and they would use that to fuel the angst that surrounds Batman.

It is a very sad thing, but I actually think that Jason surviving the attack wouldn’t have had any impact on his own story, Jason’s suffering/death were set up to make Batman want to work alone again. I just don’t see DC back in the day working on Jason’s recovery (physical and mental), I see them leaving Jason comatose and as a reminder of one of Batman’s “failures”. Maybe in a distant future Jason could have woken up with amnesia and they could have done something with him then but I really don’t know how they could make that story work or if Jason would end up working as an ally or enemy of Batman.

Much like you said in the ask, I think that DC would have let the character of Jason Todd fade away,

-

Because that is a really sad answer, I decided to come up with other scenarios where I would give ideas of what I would have liked to see DC do, and what I would have done if I had existed back in the day!

What I would have liked to see DC do:

After setting the fact that Jason was left in a coma at the hospital after Joker’s attack, I think DC should have had Bruce making some extreme decisions. With Jason alive but not really there I think that DC could have made work a plot point that they tried to pull off with Jason dead.

In a comic event called ‘Underworld Unleashed’ the demon Neron offered bringing Jason back to life if Bruce gave him his soul in exchange. But with Jason alive I think that Bruce would have actually been even more tempted to take the offer if it meant that by giving his soul away, he could wake Jason up from the coma he was in. Then there could have been an event with magic users that made it possible so Bruce got his soul back or something. DC could have also had Jason have amnesia after Neron wakes him up so we would have a soulless Batman and amnesiac Jason trying to make their father/son relationship work (or not).

Another idea is Bruce making a different extreme decision where he asks Talia to help him find a Lazarus Pit to try his luck with Jason. Because Jason was in a coma and not dead the Pit would have actually worked (the Lazarus Pit cannot bring people back from the dead!). I imagine that if it worked then Bruce would owe Talia or Ra’s a favour, and that could make an interesting story, mostly if Jason Todd ends up mad at Bruce because he didn’t kill the Joker after he tried to kill him. (I do love chaos).

Maybe Jason could even join the LoA to make Bruce’s life difficult. He wouldn’t become the Red Hood but Jason becoming an assassin after all that could have been the perfect recipe for complete chaos and I love that. I think DC could make it work, this last part of the idea is kinda inspired by Young Justice's Jason Todd.

What I would have done if I wrote for DC at the time:

I would have taken Jason away from Bruce! I would have Dick appear out of nowhere and I would have him take Jason with him back to the Titans Tower so they can both be far away from Bruce (at least for a little while).

If this idea sounds familiar it might be because you read another “What if…?” post that I made about what I thought would happen if Jason hadn’t been found by Batman that night when Jason was stealing the Batmobile’s tires. I will link that post here!

This time Dick would obviously be taking Jason with him at a different time and he would actually try to train Jason a little bit more but Dick would also have Jason work on his trauma and then Jason would decide to leave the vigilante/hero life behind. But not completely because I still believe that Jason would still want to save people. He would also be very protective of his brother/best friend Dick Grayson, also known as Nightwing.

I just think that Dick could have handled the situation a lot better than Bruce, he would have made sure that Jason felt like him not being Robin anymore wasn’t because he was a failure but because he can help people in other ways. He would have made him go to therapy and would have been more willing to share his own experiences with him.

I would have Jason studying to become a paramedic again (a different kind of hero) and this time he could also practice on the Titans when they got hurt in battle, if he did that then he could end up being an excellent medic for all superheroes!

I mean, in the Titans there are humans, aliens, metas, amazons and atlanteans. Jason could actually become DC’s very own version of Marvel’s ‘Night Nurse’. I don’t know, I love that idea and I think @hood-ex would like it too!

I just love the idea of Jason and Dick becoming each other's family. The Titans would also become Jason's family but he would be very protective of Dick. I just feel like Jason would have seen the whole thing (of Dick taking him to live together) as a fresh start after such a horrible experience.

I love Red Hood but I also love the idea of Jason becoming something completely different from that and this is one of my favourite ideas!

-

Oh! Before I forget, I think that the idea of Jason becoming Hush in the ‘Death in the Family’ movie comes directly from the fact that Jason “was” Hush for a second in the Batman: Hush comic. That was revealed to us in UtRH, Jason gave the real Hush all the information that he needed to get under Batman’s skin. And then when “Hush” captured Tim and he showed his face that was actually Jason who then changed places with Clayface to confuse Bruce more.

So, yeah, I don’t think DC had planned on making Jason become Hush.

Thank you so much for the ask! I hope the answer was good and that you have a fantastic week!

[unhealthyfanobsession]

Master Post of things I wanted to post while reading ACOSF- mostly humour/ crack lol (Spoilers... Duh...)

First, general opinion: I liked the book generally. I knew it would be very Feysand friendly and I was prepared for that. Not my first choice but I get it. I really had to take a few hours off with the whole hiking scene. That really fucked with me to see Cassian so pissed and militant despite already knowing where Nesta was coming from and how betrayed she felt (ESPECIALLY once I learned that he had guessed they were mates already). I know that self loathing was a major theme but I do think it was laid on a little too thick for too long. I also think there was so much Nessian interaction when things were angsty and then when they were happy I was just WAITING for that full chapter of soft happiness and I feel like a lot of that got lost to Nesta’s relationship with her sister. Above everything though I gotta say that it BREAKS MY HEART that Cassian never actUlly says I love you to Nesta at any point in the book. I know it’s meant to be that he’s always loved her and it’s his actions that show it etc etc but it’s still kind of a blow for him to never say it... never even outright think it in his own perspective (go back and look the closest he gets is saying he’s acting like a lovesick puppy. We only get to see Cassian loving Nesta from her perspective as she realizes it which I get and is beautiful but maybe ONE DECLERATION THANKS). Anyway, I am hoping that opportunity arises in future books. Although.... I don’t think I will read the future books. Maybe I will, but honestly this was just SO MUCH. Like... I think there was too much in the book. Each of these quests could have been its own book and I was happy to keep going because I’m obsessed with Nesta, but I just don’t think I’d be interested enough in the other characters to read something so convoluted again (like I’m sorry the blood rite started with basically 100 pages left that is WILD). It was also so clear that so much of this book was setup for future books and that’s fine but it was kinda messy just being honest. ANYWAY onto more specific thoughts/ jokes:

Chapter 2:

Cassian: I just hope that Nesta knows we are doing this for her benefit, because we care.

Feyre: I don’t care this shit ends now. I’m burning your apartment to the ground.

Also Cassian: *Let’s Nesta fall down a flight of stairs*; *calls Nesta pathetic every day*; *tells Nesta everyone hates her*; *walks around slamming doors all pissy as if he’s the one being held captive*

Chapter 11:

Nesta:Rhysand is an asshole

Me:

Cassian: well everyone fucking hates you

Me:

The way that Cassian thinks about Russet Potato is just straight up not healthy. Like I get looking up to a sibling or whatever but I’m starting to think that Rhys is Cassian’s one true love. Cassian being THAT blind to every one of Rhysand’s flaws is a character flaw of his own. Even Feyre isn’t THAT blind.

Chapter 11 Pt 2:

Nesta from day one: I’m not training in that camp. I hate that camp. I’m not training there. Fuck that camp

Cassian: this is because you hate me, isn’t it?

Me:

Like I’m sorry did we really need Feyre to show up to help him crack that code???

Chapter 10 (and beyond):

My OTP? Nesta and the House of Wind.

It’s a solid enemies to lovers story (chapter 6 she says even the house hates her then later it’s her only friend and ally. Great love story.)

It reveals its heart to her before Cassian does

It knows what she needs

Gave her water on the steps instead of watching her fall down them

Pushes Nesta gently by keeping the fire so Cassian can see that she is afraid and haunted instead of empty and broken. Encourages her to go to dinner with people by barring the library but doesn’t FORCE her to go. The house does not judge her.

Spoils her and is silly with her while she has her sleepover.

Takes an active interest in something important to her and shares one of her hobbies

Side note- this book even has me pissed at the IC about how they treated a damn house!! Like how dare they say no one likes going there! How dare they be so rude to my new #1 favorite book character??? The house just wants to give you cake and books and run you a bath. Perfect partner IMO.

Chapter 17:

Me when Cassian does the bare fucking minimum and tells Rhys to calm the fuck down and stop threatening to kill Nesta:

Chapter 21:

When Rhys said that Nesta always has a choice here I said, out loud, “that’s fucking rich rice ball”. My dog looked up. That’s all.

Chapter 21 (and beyond) pt 2:

Prythian: mating bonds are very rare

Archeron sisters: survey says that was a lie

Prythian: fae fertility is very difficult. Conceiving can take decades

Archeron sisters: survey says that too was a lie

Prythian: No High Fae can survive the birth of an Illyrian winged baby

Archeron sisters: once again, the survey is not on your side here

Chapter 42:

Rhys: this is a bad idea

Cassian: that should be written on the Night Court’s crest

Me, wine glass raised to mouth, scoff more bitter than necessary: yeah it Fucken should”

Chapter 42 pt 2:

Yknow I was genuinely shocked by one thing in ACOSF. I was shocked that Rhysand and I agree on something.

He absolutely fucking shouldn’t be High King.

The mere SUGGESTION that Nesta’s power and fight and trauma and depression and war and entire FUCKING STORY has all been so that Rice cake and French fry can be a high king and queen literally set my blood BOILING at exactly the point in the book that I was starting to VIBE

Side note- Can we please just Fucken stop with the stars blinking in and out of existence in Rhys’ eyes. Like calm down. Rice pilaf has purple night eyes we get it. Just like... simmer please.

Chapter 46:

I GET that it shouldn’t have come out like that and that Nesta’s reasons weren’t right, but get ABSOLUTELY FUCKED RHYSAND for thinking that it is your right to HIDE THE DANGERS OF LABOUR FROM A WOMAN WHO DOES NOT KNOW YOUR SPECIES!!! This had me truly wildin and I think it was a disservice to Feyre’s character too that she didnt lose it more.

Chapter 55 (and earlier):

Cassian: *bows to death as Nesta emerges from the black depths on a throne to rule her undead armies*

Cassian: *watches bleeding as Nesta plucks the harp and wields her Made sword of death to murder Lanthys and claim the ability to stop time itself*

Nesta: So, now I go after the crown

Cassian:

Chapter 57 (and earlier):

Kelpie: You shall be my bride before you are my meal

Helion: *rides enchanted horse up to shoot his second shot with Nesta*

Lanthys: Tries to seduce Nesta into being his Queen even as he attempts to kill her

Eris: I’ll give you anything in exchange for Nesta as my bride

Cassian watching every male being in the universe trying to get with his mate:

Chapter 60:

Emerie: we’re not entering the blood rite, are we?

Cassian: Only if you want to

Brialynn:

Chapter 80:

Nesta: *Saves Cassian’s life in the war*

Rhys: I still hate you and will never forgive you for what you did in not hunting as a child.

Nesta: saves Feyre and Nyx

Rhys: I bow before no one and nothing but my crown and now I shall fall to my knees before you oh mighty saviour queen of all

Side note- can someone please compile a list of all the things that Nesta Archeron had done/retrieved/gone through for the Nigh Court because that shit is astronomical at this point and I really need everyone to start sipping their Respect Nesta Archeron Juice RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!

Anyway I’m emotionally wrecked but shoutout to anyone who made it this far into my ramblings!

[what-plant-metaphor-am-i]

I posted 578 times in 2021

63 posts created (11%)

515 posts reblogged (89%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.2 posts.

I added 1,258 tags in 2021

#obi - 302 posts

#shirayuki - 268 posts

#obiyuki - 153 posts

#the manga - 152 posts

#zen - 104 posts

#akagami no shirayukihime - 65 posts

#snow white with the red hair - 61 posts

#ans - 59 posts

#kiki - 50 posts

#!!! - 44 posts

Longest Tag: 131 characters

#what if i flirted with you 😘 under the starry night sky ✨🌕✨ and we were duelling with swords? ⚔️🤺 just kidding! 😂 unless…😳👀👀

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

In this bit of chapter 111 after Shirayuki's gone off with Eisetsu in the garden, I wonder if Obi is thinking about the situation with Eisetsu or the 10 second stare that just occurred.

92 notes • Posted 2021-07-16 06:55:22 GMT

#4

See the full post

95 notes • Posted 2021-07-20 21:58:28 GMT

#3

I don’t know if this has been picked up on before, but I am losing my mind over it so I want to share my journey with you. May I present my descent into: Zen’s Algae Report.

It all started when I paused the beginning of episode 14 to see what Zen was writing about and was amazed and highly entertained to find that it seemed to be a report on, of all things, aquatic algae.

This naturally piqued my interest, so, being a loveable-yet-rather-obsessive-scamp with a passion for words and too much time on my hands, I set to work attempting to transcribe what he wrote in that brief scene.

In the transcription I put hyphens (---) wherever the next part was not visible and put asterisks around words I believed to have figured out, though they were partially obscured (Zen’s hand moves in the scene so more words were revealed). Multiple asterisks just mean I have a note about it at the end. 👍

"--- erie could experience one --- severe harmful** algal bloom --- a potential measure of 8.7 on --- the severity index, according --- oceanographic institution.

--- which have different colors *and textures*. Blooms can appear in a variety of colors that depend on the algal species. The aquatic ecosystem and organism --- cyanobacterial blooms, the formal name for the blue-green algae, are the problem here. Their presence means cities and local governments must *spend more* to --- water, puts swimmers in *high concentration*”.***

**this was written as one word - 'severeharmful' - and had me stumped for a while :') I like the thought of this word existing in the ans-verse and the characters using it :D

***after spending too much time rewinding and pausing to see parts of words as zen's hand moves to reveal them, I could make out 'hi --- oncentrat'. I believe it's meant to say 'high concentration' but WHO KNOWS

It was only AFTER typing all this that I found out The Truth.

The first half-word that was at the top of the page was bugging me because I couldn’t figure out the letters. So, being the loveable-yet-slightly-perfectionistic-scamp that I am, I racked my brains over it until I realised it could read as “-ake”. The following word, “erie,” hadn’t made sense at all, so I couldn’t see how I could use it to try to figure out what this “-ake” word before it could be. I decided to google the word “erie” in case it did mean something that I was unaware of. And guess what I found?

“Lake Erie” is apparently the fourth-largest lake (by surface area) of the five Great Lakes in North America. This may be common knowledge to Americans(?) but as a loveable-yet-entirely-European-scamp this was news to me. I was obviously thrilled as this worked for both words and made sense, but I was also surprised that Zen appeared to be writing about a very real, and not ans-verse, American lake. 🤔

I wanted to see just how much of His Algae-Loving Highness Zen’s report was true, so I searched for “lake erie cyanobacterial algae”

See the full post

108 notes • Posted 2021-09-09 23:14:05 GMT

#2

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109 notes • Posted 2021-05-02 14:39:14 GMT

#1

Something I love in ANS is that Shirayuki wears the things gifted to her, and not just as a one-time thing; ever since being given earrings by Yuzuri she regularly wears them, and the hair ornament that Obi gave her she wore for the majority of her Tanbarun stay, and then she mentions how she wears it as a good luck charm and was distressed when she left it behind after going travelling. (I think she also wore it at another fancy occasion but I don’t remember which). When Ryuu and Obi get her a new hair ornament she wears it almost immediately.

I like how these gifts are not just used as something to move a scene along, they are significant to Shirayuki and mark progression in her relationships.

Also! You can see how much she treasures them just by the fact that she continually wears them, no comment needed, no close-up necessary. (Apart from the first time Obi noticed she was wearing his gift, then we had a zoom and an OMG moment from him, understandable, Obi)

121 notes • Posted 2021-02-15 00:11:07 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[creatingdocumentaryperformance]

Syllabus: Creating Documentary Performance

Course Title: Performance Composition: Creating Documentary Performance PERF-UT 201 (4 points)

Course Description The term documentary theatre is often used interchangeably with verbatim theatre. Theatre scholar Carol Martin would advise us to beware and keep tabs on Documentary Theatre, a slippery little devil which claims to present the truth. Yet, in truth, the world of Documentary Theatre (and Art) seems to be expanding. New works of live Documentary Art challenge the documentary form by loosening the grip of journalistic objectivity and responsibility. Documentary performance now takes on a variety of forms which we will examine in this course.

This course will begin with ways of observing a range of performances (live, filmed, quotidian, and archival). We will then integrate this heightened awareness into an hybridized archival call-and-response. We will have daily in-class creation workshops designed to respond to research and performance materials. Through this process students will learn to integrate research questions and aesthetic performance elements. Participants will engage in documentary writing techniques, performance techniques such as vocal duplication and movement vocabularies, creation of composition scores, and docu-fantasia (a methodology pioneered by Guy Maddin in his film “My Winnipeg” combining personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing), among others. The result of these searches will be cumulative. At the end of this course, students will have created several short-form documentaries.

Participants in this course will come from various performance backgrounds: some (like me) will be based in theatre practice, others will be more comfortable writing, composing music or movement, directing, acting, or filmmaking. This course is designed for much of the creation of our projects to take place in the classroom itself with students sharing their skills with one another as they learn new skills together. 

Course Objectives

to become familiar with the field of documentary performance

to develop and deepen investigative research skills

to learn to create performances from disparate elements (learn processes of meaning-making)

to generate “speculative” material from “factual” remains

to move archival materials from the page to the stage (or lens/screen as the case may be) 

Requirements

You need a notebook or loose paper. We will do writing exercises that will be edited and presented during class. It will not be possible to participate fully in movement/writing work on a laptop.

You will need scissors and a glue stick.

Please see the class schedule below. Please come to class having completed the listed requirements (read, watched, and prepared performance elements) and come prepared to share your findings and contribute to discussions, workshops, and rehearsals.

There will be four assignments due during the course: a) construction paper photo journalism Using lessons on image composition from Molly Bang’s “Picture This,” recreate one image from one of the documentaries or images we viewed during weeks 1-4 (or an image of your choice). Write a brief but vivid description of the scene you hope to capture. Upload both the original and your version of the image as well as the description. This image is due on February 21, 2021. b) 360 degree video (maximum 5-minutes long) Create a three-minute long 360 degree video of your own living space (use Ackerman’s video for inspiration). Research the history of your living space (What is the history of that land? When was the building constructed? Who owned it? Who lived there?) and then write a two-minute monologue from the point of view of someone you image to be a previous tenant. This is the basis of the performance. You may choose to incorporate other performance elements created in the course thus far (movement vocabularies, musical elements, etc.). The video should be submitted via email on week 5, a 500 word summary of building history including sources is due on week 6, and the final performance is due on March 21, 2021. c) Documentary Étude (maximum 10-minutes long) Seek out your own musical archive (this might be something personal, something you amassed yourself or something you discover out in the world) and using strategies developed in class (ex. haikus, nightstand writings, movement vocabularies) and other techniques learned from docs we’ve seen (vocal re-enactments, karaoke, performance re-creation, etc.) create a live documentary étude to the song or recording of your choice. This étude should include research into the song and, based on that research, some theories we have discussed in class that help analyze your findings. The way you structure this presentation is entirely up to you. Due April 26-May 3, 2021 (exact date to be decided upon by in consultation between students and instructor). d) performance review The final assignment for this class is a 1000-1200 word review of another classmate’s documentary performance. The point of this assignment is to constructively critique a colleague’s work while integrating the texts and theories we have discussed during the course. This is to be submitted to the instructor via email on or before the final day of class (May 10, 2020).

Attendance in this class is critical. Much work takes place in-class and this cannot necessarily be made-up through subsequent assignments. More than three unexcused absences will result in a failing grade. Absences must be excused in advance, please make your request via email. Likewise three unexcused latenesses will count as one absence. Assignments are due on the date specified unless a change is discussed in advance with the instructor. 

Class Schedule

Week One: February 1, 2021

Introduction to Documentary Theatre

A short documentary performance: Devotional Space

Course Introduction, Expectations, and Agreements

Week Two: February 8, 2021 Truth, Objectivity, and the Truth of Fiction

Read, Carol Martin, “Bodies of Evidence” and Walter Benjamin “The Task of the Translator” 

Watch, Lynn Sachs, “Your Day Is My Night” https://vimeo.com/58024122  and “Your Day Is My Night” (live performance) https://vimeo.com/191185422

Week Three: Thursday February 18, 2021 Objects That Talk

Read, Roland Barthes “Studium” pg. 23-28, “Punctum” pg. 38-47 in Camera Lucida, Ariella Azoulay “The Spectator Is Called to Take Part,” and Molly Bang “Picture This: How Pictures Work”

Watch, Yuval Hamieri “I Think This is the Closest to How The Footage Looked” https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004383825/i-think-this-is-the-closest-to-how-the-footage-looked.html and Vaginal Davis “This Is Not A Dream” https://youtu.be/A03i57f53E4

Week Four: February 22, 2021 Interpellation and Composition

Read, Joshua Whitehead “On Ekphrasis and Emphasis” and Louis Althusser “Ideology and State Apparatuses” pg. 162-177

Watch, Kirsten Johnson “Cameraperson” https://stream.nyu.edu/media/Cameraperson+-+DML+Film+DC04692/1_6j3rpjc7

DUE February 21, 2021: Construction Paper Photo Journalism Assignment

Week Five: March 1, 2021 Memory and Repetition

Read, Diana Taylor “The Archive and The Repertoire” pg. 16-30 and Richard Schechner “Restoration of Behavior” pg. 35-55

Watch, Caveh Zahedi “The Show About The Show"

PREPARE AND UPLOAD before class: 360 video

Week Six: March 8, 2021 Docufantasia: Speculation, Narrative, and History

Guest Speaker: Farihah Zaiman

No readings this week.

Watch, Farihah Zaiman “Nobody Loves Me”, Guy Maddin “My Winnipeg” https://stream.nyu.edu/media/t/1_3fuaywbk/157165221, and Chantal Ackerman “La Chambre” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AGakyb3eBU

BRING TO CLASS: Write, a few notes on building/land history

Week Seven: March 15, 2021 No Class

Feedback sessions on Building History text/monologue available during class and office hours

Week Eight: March 22, 2021 Presentation Day

Guest Speaker: Alison S.M. Kobayashi

Watch, Alison S.M. Kobayashi Showcase, please be sure to watch “From Alex to Alex” and “Music Is Magic” 

DUE March 21st: 360 videos & monologues assignment (uploaded to shared site)

Week Nine: March 29, 2021 Psychodrama and the Politics of Space

Suggested Read: Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance Space”

Watch: William Greaves, “In The Company of Men” https://stream.nyu.edu/media/In%20the%20Company%20of%20Men%20(William%20Greaves%2C%201969)./1_13usuirk

Week Ten: April 5, 2021 Creating a Performance Plan

Read: Barbara Browning “The Gift” (read Part One available in NYU e-books) and Doris Humphrey “Check List” pg. 159-166

Watch (we will watch segments of this in class): Okwui Okpokwasili “Bronx Gothic” available on NYU Kanopy

Week Eleven: April 12, 2021 Listening as Research

Read, Martin Daughtry “Acoustic Palimpsests”; (suggested but not assigned Alexandra T. Vazquez “Listening in Detail”)

Listen, Reply All (podcast) “The Case of the Missing Hit” https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx

Week Twelve: April 19, 2021 No Class

Week 13: April 26, 2021 Documentary Étude

Read, Jacob Wren “The DJ Who Knew Too Much” and “Every Song I’ve Ever Written”

Re-watch, Alison S.M. Kobayashi “Music Is Magic”

Students workshop elements of their final performance

Create final performance schedule

Week 14: May 3, 2021 Final Presentations

Week 15: May 10, 2021 To Be Announced

Additional Performance Links

Choosing performances to share with you was both a joy and an agony. There were many great works that didn’t make it onto the syllabus proper. I wanted to share some of those with you here in case you wanted see more work. You are more than welcome to come to office hours to discuss any works you may have seen (on this list or in your own searchings). Additional performance viewing is not a requirement of this class and is meant solely for your enjoyment.

The Wooster Group, “Rumstick Road”: https://vimeo.com/88116889 

Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, “The Life and Times of Kristin Worrall, Episode 8”: https://vimeo.com/145414310 

Caveh Zahedi, “The Show About The Show": https://www.bricartsmedia.org/tv-shows-videos/show-about-show

Walis Johnson, “Jessy’s House of Styles”: https://vimeo.com/193445572

Nadia Ross “What Happened To The Seeker?”, Part one: https://vimeo.com/147670008 , Part two: https://vimeo.com/148387633 

Wellness 

Your health and safety are a priority at NYU. If you experience any health or mental health issues during this course, we encourage you to utilize the support services of the 24/7 NYU Wellness Exchange 212-443-9999. Also, all students who may require an academic accommodation due to a qualified disability, physical or mental, please register with the Moses Center 212-998-4980. Please let your instructor know if you need help connecting to these resources.

[onceuponabookcase]

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

I loved this book. I could read Scarlett and Julian all day long without getting bored. This is a book club read for my friends and. I’m actually still at the beginning of Legendary. J has finished the series. S hasn’t started Finale yet, and I finished the series literally two hours ago. 

Blurb: Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic.

I’d like to point out that these are just my annotations, and I’ll never have ‘hot-takes’ on books. Most of them are really just me flailing, and keeping track of my thoughts while reading because hello, short term memory. Also, these are obviously spoilers. 

Page 55: J U L I AN! Scarlett can’t swim because of her dress, and he sinks under the water to cut the dress off of her. The tension here is so fucking delicious. At this point, I wasn’t sure if Julian really was Scar’s love interest, and I had been worried to become too invested in case Julian was meant to be Tella’s. I didn’t want to see a love triangle like that, but I was gone at ‘Then, the tip of his knife pressed against her breasts. Scarlett’s breath caught as the sailor cut her corset…’ 

Page 143: Julian is so cheeky. He spots Scarlett when she sees a tent selling kisses, and offers to help her practice before her wedding. Speaking of looming nuptials, he also calls Scarlett’s fiancé a liar as well because she’s never met him. I giggled a little at this part. 

Page 151: “I think he’s the most attractive person I’ve ever seen.” GIRL, SAME. 

Page 170: JULIAN FOUND AND RETURNED HER EARRINGS. They meant so much to her. 

Page 208-211: Scarlett loses two days of her life. My heart was in my throat. I didn’t know what to expect because no matter what I tried to expect, Garber continued to surprise me. Julian takes one of the days she lost, leaving them to both only lose one. Now, I love this entire scene, but it’s not actually what my note was for. It’s for this quote: ‘Not quite sure how far she’d already fallen, she imagined loving him would feel like falling in love with darkness, frightening and consuming, yet utterly beautiful when the stars came out.’

Page 217: SHE THINKS JULIAN IS LEGEND. OH MY FUCKS. ← a direct annotation. It’s worth pointing out that one of my friends in our little book club of three actually called who Legend was from book one. 

Page 242: They’re trapped in a room together, in extremely close proximity. *wiggles eyebrows* Scarlett says the room must be connected to their emotions, that they need to calm down. ‘Julian made a strangled sound. “That’s not easy at the moment.”’ 

Page 275: ‘“I’m so stupid.”’ ‘“None of this means anything to you. You saw my fiancé, got jealous, acted rashly, and now you regret it.”’ 

‘“Is that what you think?”’

Man, I hurt with Scarlett here. And then - AND THEN, Julian steps closer. ‘“Is this close enough for you?”’

screams

Page 286: HER FATHER IS A FUCKING MONSTER. FUCK THAT GUY. I sucked in a breath when he slashed Julian’s face, and my boss was sitting beside me at work. 

Page 287: ‘“Do you really want a bride who will only sleep with you because another man will be tortured if she doesn’t?’” Fuck, Scarlett really came out swinging with that one. 

Page 297: ‘“Crimson, don’t fall apart on me now.” The kiss, the way he calls her Crimson, and the way he’s holding her together in the moment. 

Page 315-316: ‘“I lied about how I got bashed in the head,” he mumbled. “I want you to have your earrings back. But the man was tougher than he looked…” I had pieced together already that he’d gone after them for Scarlett, but to hear him admit it as he was dying, it goddamn ripped me apart. 

Page 348: Tella just jumped to HER DEATH WHAT?? I knew from the moment Scarlett thought leap of faith, we were in trouble. 

Page 393: Legend is Julian’s brother. 

Epilogue: The shift to Tella’s perspective was kind of wild. I was not expecting the note that followed, and I hadn’t been expecting the plot twist of how Tella planned everything, down to the smallest detail in order to rescue Scarlett and herself from their father. 

For every plot point I thought I saw coming, Stephanie Garber 100% had another three lined up that I didn’t. Through book one, I really didn’t like Tella very much. Probably because I didn’t get to know her much, and I didn’t recognize what was going on behind the scenes. That’s what made it so great. I’m looking forward to reading the series again after finishing it for the first time, knowing everything I know now. 

Rating for me: 5/5 stars. I thought the world-building was excellent, the twists well-crafted, the romance scorching, and the intrigue masterful. My favorite characters in this book were Julian and Scarlett (I think that may be a common thought though) and my least favorites were Dante and Tella. Now, in Legendary, that dramatically changes, but that’s a post for next time. 

I don’t know how to blog really. I used to really just write fanfiction, but if this is interesting at all...let me know, I guess? 

[nicheskitch]

REVIEW/D4DJ: First Mix | 2020

RATING: EDITOR'S CHOICE*/Good/3.5 out of 5

ABOUT**

"So basically, you heard the song on the loudspeaker, got all hype, and barged into the room?" --Maho Akashi, ep.101_8:55

Having moved back to Japan from abroad, she transfers to Yoba Academy where DJing is popular. She is deeply moved by a DJ concert she sees there, and decides to form a unit of her own with Maho Akashi, Muni Ohnaruto, and Rei Togetsu. While interacting with the other DJ units like Peaky P-key and Photon Maiden, Rinku and her friends aim for the high stage!

Availability***

ANIME: Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, VRV, YouTube (ENG), YouTube (JAP)

GAME: Google Play (Japan), English version of the game coming 2021

OTHER: Official site (ENG), YouTube (global), YouTube (Japan)

Read More

Ratings page here

Long written review (2115 words) here

Short written review (687 words) (this page) here

Video review (3:41) here

RECOMMENDATION

"It's like... You know, the way the song moves through your body is the same!" --Rinku Aimoto, ep.101_19:52

D4DJ: First Mix is adequately good with good music and at least gives you fun characters to look at.  It doesn't try to do anything new because it doesn't really need to.  It's fine for what it is.  It's fair to say D4DJ exist to promote itself outside of the show.  In that sense, it's good, as it makes me want the soundtrack.  Otherwise, if you have watched any similar style show, like a Love Live, you've already seen it.

CHARACTER

"That's not true! Me and Maho-chan and Muni-chan and Rei-chan! We're Happy Ara together! So a Rei-chan song can't not be like Happy Ara!" --Rinku Aimoto, ep.110_5:05

It starts with the mixer, adds a singer, finds an artist, then finally brings in a composer: Maho, Rinku, Muni, and Rei respectively.  They each handle what they are good at.  Maho and Muni didn't exactly get off on the right foot.  There wasn't any animosity. It was simply because a mixer was taking up the job of an artist. They will poke fun and tease the each other while another will come to their defense.

PRESENTATION

"It's not just mine. It's mine and hers. It's our performance." --Maho Akashi, ep.102_6:56

As for its portrayal of the community, there isn't much I can say. I have friends who are DJ's, but this isn't really meant to reflect that community as it serves to give the story a setting to take place. There are a few details here and there to give it authenticity, but it's more of a generalization of the music scene rather than the DJ genre specifically.

WRITING

"...the four of us don't perform Photon Maiden's music. Photon maiden's music is what the four of us perform." --Ibuki Niijima, ep.111_18:58

Most, if not, all the characters are on the same level.  At least, when it comes to how they are perceived.  Happy Around are kind of like a garage band who is self produced going up against people who have years of experience.  They are charming because they can hold their own by using what they already have.  While still pushing themselves further to better themselves.  They play off each other well.  It's comedy has good timing and is witty.  Most importantly, it's consistent.

FINAL THOUGHTS

"You created a new, different color and moved forward. So I want a new color for us to move forward too." --Saki Izumo, ep.111_11:48

Some titles are adequately good or just simply bad. D4Dj: First Mix is just good.  I encountered it casually, and watched it as such.  I wasn't blow away or anything like that.  It's a formula that works. The problem is, it's a formula that works.  Well, it's a problem if you think of it as one.  I enjoyed it, but nothing sticks out to make it a must watch.  Even so, I wanted to the next episode because it's a fun watch.  Ultimately, isn't that what's important?

-----

*A personal favorite of the writer regardless of it's given rating. **Source: Crunchyroll

***Links provided are NOT part of an incentive program and lead to websites I use & trust myself or their own official page.

[bigskydreaming]

A big part of the reason I harp on NTT #55 and that time Bruce hit Dick after Jason’s death is to me, its just such a perfect example of the downsides of letting something like that go unaddressed. For fans of the whole family, because the ripple effects of letting it go unaddressed either in canon or largely in fandom as a whole....like, those affect every member of the family, even if you’re not particular a fan of Dick or Bruce specifically.

First off, I want to be perfectly clear.....I do believe that a large part of the problem in the writing itself is that the writers and various editors at DC didn’t view it as a father abusing his son. To them, I think it was simply an extreme example of Bruce’s grief getting the better of him....it was meant to be big, dramatic, dark, it was meant to hurt Dick and cause an even bigger division between them, but it wasn’t meant to be abuse, in their eyes, I don’t think. At the end of the day, as far as they were all concerned IMO, it was simply a punch, and Dick’s certainly taken worse in his years as a vigilante.

None of that changes the fact that what was depicted on the page was unequivocally abuse. And I particularly want to break down the mental components of the scene, because I do feel like even when this is mentioned in fandom or fics, the weight of it is rarely felt, because its so often implicitly compared with the lifetime of abuse Jason had before coming to live with Bruce, or the times Dick’s been hurt far worse, or any of a dozen different things. Bottom line is, even when its nominally held out as being abusive, it tends to be in a perfunctory kind of way like “okay, yes, you’re not supposed to hit your kids, that’s abuse, but ultimately it was still just a punch.”

If you’ve been fortunate to never have been abused by a parent, please understand and internalize this:

A punch is never just a punch. 

Or any form of physical abuse for that matter...the delivery isn’t the point. Its what it represents.

Even if its just one hit, and the abuse victim has been hit far more or far worse in fights or sparring or whatever.....the damage doesn’t come from the physical blow alone.

The far greater damage is to every single thing that person had until that point built up in their mind to be true about their parent and their relationship with that parent. 

Society teaches us that parents aren’t supposed to hurt their kids. More than that, its a parent’s job to protect their kids from harm, we’re told from a very young age....with none of this coming from just one single source, but everywhere around us. We’re immersed in this perception, via entertainment, via our teachers, via everything we’re taught about how to protect ourselves. 

What’s the first thing you learn as a kid, that you’re told you should do if someone or something makes you uncomfortable or afraid? ‘Tell your parents’....even if we never hear that advice from our parents themselves, to come to them, its the first thing teachers advise, etc....with there rarely being a caveat about what to do if your parent is the one making you uncomfortable and afraid. Society’s default message to kids doesn’t really factor that in....because those are the outliers, as far as society’s perception goes.

Even as we get older and we start to consume media where older kids and parents have tense relationships, fight a lot....the vast majority of them still end with some form of reconciliation, whether deserved or not, because the implicit understanding is even when families fight, when parents yell, at the end of the day its all okay, because the parents love them and only want whats best for them....because of course they do. That’s how it works. The exceptions, again, are outliers.

The problem is, those of us with abusive parents are just as immersed in these outside narratives as any child with non-abusive parents....even if we don’t get this same reassurance from our parents themselves. Not only does this make it particularly hard for abused children to recognize or acknowledge when they’ve been abused (my parent can’t have meant to hurt me, because they’re my parent, they love me, so its not like they abused me)....

But in addition to that, up until that first moment of actual abuse, up until that first true piece of evidence that our relationship with our parent is not the same as the message we’re immersed in about what it should and should not be....

Before that, in the absence of that, we hear the same narratives and messages everyone else does, about how parents are supposed to protect us, nurture us, be our last line of defense against those who would see to harm us. That they love us, that we should never have to be afraid of them, etc. We absorb these implicit beliefs, the same as any other child. We internalize them. We accept them. We believe them to be true. We believe this to be fact.

‘No matter how much we fight with a parent, they would never truly hurt us. Not on purpose. That’s the last thing they’d ever want, because at the end of the day no matter our disagreements, they love us and want what’s best for us, not for us to be afraid of them.’

A punch is never just a punch, when its from a parent.

Its also the end of that belief. That trust. That unspoken faith we had in the message we’d been taught over and over throughout our lives....

Because its hard to argue that a parent would never really want to hurt you, when you’ve been on the receiving end of a willful and deliberate attempt to hurt you.

Bruce may have been lashing out in his grief, but he didn’t try and take it back. He didn’t show remorse or look horrified by what he’d done. Instead he doubled down, loomed over Dick, glared at him, yelled things about Jason’s death being Dick’s fault, that Dick was jealous that Bruce had adopted Jason but not him, specifically calling up things that he knew were sore points for Dick, things he knew would hurt him....making it unequivocally clear that in this moment, yes, Bruce’s intent was to hurt Dick. For him to be cowed, intimidated, even afraid of him. And then Bruce told him to leave, and to leave his key behind.

And in Dick’s case, all of this is compounded by the fact that Bruce isn’t his biological father, had yet to even be named his adoptive father. Meaning, the unspoken and spoken messages and lessons we’re taught about a parent’s role, and what children can or should trust or expect of a parent...these were only ever things Dick believed (and I don’t think anyone would truly argue that Dick didn’t believe these things about Bruce, that he loved him, wanted to protect him, etc)....

The point being....these things were never taken for granted in this case, because Bruce wasn’t technically or even nominally Dick’s father by that point. They were only ever believed by Dick...because Bruce worked to convince Dick they were all true. Dick was a traumatized orphan when he first came to live with Bruce. No matter how quickly you yourself see or headcanon him as having ‘bounced back’ from that, so to speak....that was only possible in the first place by virtue of Bruce making him feel safe enough to do so. Feel loved enough to well, act like a kid who has love and support in his life. The Manor was only ever Dick’s home because Bruce made it his home. Made him believe it was home. That it was a safe place for him, a place to feel comfortable and secure in, a refuge from the trauma that had made it necessary for him to even need another home.

One punch shattered all of that.

Because there’s no way for it not to. Dick spent years by Bruce’s side as Batman. He knows better than anyone what Bruce looks like when he wants to intimidate, when he wants someone to be afraid of him. He just never expected to be on the receiving end of that, because up until that point, even at their worst or most contentious, Dick still carried that unspoken faith that Bruce loved him even if he was bad at showing it, and as such, he’d never hurt him, not deliberately, not on purpose.....because the very idea of that, we’re taught, is incompatible with love. They can’t coexist. Someone can’t love us, and be capable of even a moment of that.

Life, unfortunately, is rarely that simple.

Make no mistake, someone can love someone and still abuse them. Our tendency in society is also to try and label people as certain things, as though they embody the description we give to them, even when that description originally is just meant to be of an action. So we call people abusive in general, even if at the start, its a specific action that’s abusive. Because abuse is ultimately an action. An abusive action that only turns into an abusive behavior when its repeated. An abusive behavior that only belongs to an abusive person, when that behavior becomes characteristic of that person.

And so whatever it was that Dick had specifically internalized about his and Bruce’s relationship by that point, whether it was that Bruce would never hurt him because Bruce was still his father for all intents and purposes, and loved him, and had made this his home, wanted it to be Dick’s home, for him to feel like it was his too...

One punch didn’t just split his lip and knock him to the floor while Bruce towered over him and yelled blame at him. It also made a lie of everything Bruce had previously worked to impart to Dick about his place here, his home, his relationship with Dick and what Dick could expect of him: to always be safe here, with him, to be wanted.

The reason I said at the start I believed that letting all of this go unaddressed was detrimental to the whole franchise and fandom, even if you’re not a fan of Dick or Bruce’s specifically - that goes back to what I said about how abuse initially is just a description of an action, before it becomes a behavior, and through enough instances of behavior, becomes characteristic enough of someone that they themselves are just described as abusive.

Because at this stage in the comics, this point in time.....Bruce’s abuse of his children is still limited to one singular scene, enacted in a time of extreme grief and emotional turmoil.

Make no mistake, I’m not for a second saying that excuses what Bruce did....because no matter his headspace, that doesn’t change the effect his actions still had on Dick’s headspace. An “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I was grieving” alone can’t singlehandedly repair the kind of damage that was done to a child’s belief in his father’s inability to truly do him harm, or even want to.

But its a place to start from, and the problem is.....by never actually starting from that place, by never working from THERE, specifically, to stem the behavior that ultimately is seen repeating at various points in the comics....a precedent is made. That he can do this and just have it papered over with a mere refusal to ever really acknowledge or address it, and life will superficially go on the same, as though something fundamental hasn’t changed, shifted....with nothing nearly as impactful put in motion in counterpoint to it, to push back against everything this scene did and implied about their relationship to either of them.

I admit to being somewhat triggerhappy on this subject, lol, but see, the bottom line is ultimately, fandom’s general refusal to give this particular scene real acknowledgment or weight has nothing to do with being a Dick stan, its purely about how abuse narratives are interacted with in any medium, as a whole.

Like, hopefully it makes a little more sense now why it might be downright maddening to see a fandom so frequently write fics tackling Bruce’s behavior.....while largely skipping around and outright avoiding or ignoring:

the initial instance of abuse that without which, and if not for there never having been any consequences resulting from it, Bruce’s actions in this direction would never have kept repeating enough to become a behavior.

Its about for every action there’s an equal an opposite reaction. By one instance of abuse not being deemed worthy of an opposing reaction to address it, attempt to correct it, push back against it and try and return things to where they’d been before an unapologized-for abusive scene skewed things heavily in another direction....

The groundwork is laid for more of the same to happen again, either with the same character, or literally any other.

Because the thing that goes hand in hand with this, without ever really getting acknowledged either, as it would require referencing that time Bruce abused Dick which tends to be counter to this line of thinking entirely: 

Instead of trying to ignore that this scene happened because it clashes with the idea that Dick is the favored son who can do no wrong in Bruce’s eyes.....IMO stans of Jason and the others might be better served by looking at this moment in the characters’ lives as “if we vehemently believe that Bruce favors Dick more than the others, and he can still do this to him, what does that say he’s capable of with the others?”

Hopefully I’m making a case for how after a long enough time has past where scenes like this one just exist and yet there’s not a sizable enough pushback or attempt to acknowledge, address or ‘fix’ it....it was literally inevitable that there would reach a point where shitty writers intent on just making a spectacle rather than because they care about the implications of what they’re writing....

Would eventually come up with something like RHATO #25.

How could they not? When the takeaway was that all this prior abusive stuff Bruce did never even got the kind of outcry, dramatic reception that writers like Lobdell live for.....what were writers like him ever going to do but double down? Up the stakes? Do worse?

Bottom line is you can’t keep a pattern from recurring so long as you refuse to acknowledge various of the points that make up the pattern. Especially the initial point, without which there very well might be no pattern.

And going back to that scene from NTT #55....

No, I don’t believe a simple apology was ever going to make it right. But as I said, its a start, and you have to start somewhere. If anyone ever truly wants to address Bruce’s worse tendencies with his children, IMO, you start here....where its still largely limited to a specific moment in time, and can be addressed as such. Forced out into the open and condemned before it can grow due to a lack of consequences. With Bruce expected to make amends. He can’t and shouldn’t expect Dick just to forgive him, but not even asking for forgiveness literally only lays out the inevitable conclusion that he doesn’t need to, in order to have things back the way they were. 

Whereas owning up to what he did and its effects on Dick, recognizing that Dick only had this initial security of feeling he’d never harm him because he’d once upon a time worked to give him that feeling of security in the first place......that could be a reminder to Bruce that he did it once, and if he wants to badly enough and works at it hard enough, he can do it again.

But again, that requires focus on what this did to Dick, and what he needs in order to make things better from that point on...as well as effort.

An action caused this. Nothing but action in the other direction can actually have any kind of effect equivalent to the one the abusive action had.

I firmly believe that focusing on this as the starting point of any ‘fix-it’ fics meant to address or even curb Bruce’s abusive behavior in canon, is to the benefit of fans of every Batkid.

Cut it off at the source. Before it ever even gets to the point of RHATO #25, or NW #30.

Because there reaches a point where it becomes too little, too late. Where acknowledging it only once it gets to instances of that magnitude is akin to trying to put a bandaid on a gaping hole going straight through the body.

There are some instances of abuse that are so extreme, so damaging, that....they shouldn’t be forgiven, IMO. Where when if you’re focusing on what’s best for the victim, rather than trying to make things better for the whole family overall, including the abuser, under the belief that the family truly needs and would be worse off without them...

Like, sometimes the best thing for an abuse victim is to just walk away, if that’s at all possible. Cut ties and start fresh elsewhere. Some things are too big to ever truly come back from, to make things so everyone truly feels comfortable and safe and secure in another’s presence.

So I mean, its never not going to be baffling, and a little frustrating, to see fix-it fics for Bruce’s abusive behavior or actions that only act like something like RHATO #25 is a call for an intervention.

Because the thing that never ever gets mentioned in those fics, even when they bring it up and toss it out there like a throwaway line, like its still not that big a deal...

Is if your premise acknowledges that this initial scene after Jason’s death still happened in your fic....that it was the starting point for a pattern of abusive behavior that unchecked grew until it reached the point of RHATO #25....

Then your own fic is acknowledging but not addressing the fact that Dick has been living as an unacknowledged abuse survivor this whole time, without anyone in the fic’s continuity ever having addressed or even attempted anything to repair that initial damage to his faith in Bruce’s desire to protect and shelter and never harm him.

And that has nothing to do with feelings about individual characters, but again....how we interact with abuse narratives as a whole.

Just, please. If you are not a survivor yourself, if you take nothing else away from this, just please remember, reflect upon, and internalize this:

There is a difference between abuse and assault for a reason.

And that reason boils down to the fact that unlike in instances of assault, with abuse?

A punch is never just a punch.

[jaehyun-eclipsed]

Before I Met You | Five

Updates: Sundays, 8 PM EST

Pairing: NCT (Jaehyun, Lucas…) X Reader/OC

Genre: Romance, Angst, Coming of Age

Summary: Four. There were four people before I fell in love with you… Here are their stories.

Before I Met You Masterlist

Prev | Next

Seulgi, Soo Young, Lucas, Yang Yang, and I are all crowded around Seulgi’s open trunk after school. I lean against the side of the car, listening to them discuss a music artist I had never heard of. I wasn’t sure how to participate in the conversation and remained quiet, eyes wandering to each person as they spoke. My gaze stops on Lucas when I realize his body is pointed in my direction. He’s wearing his reflective sunglasses; they prevent me from seeing where he’s actually looking. I shamelessly stare at him for several more moments, trying to determine what he is paying attention to before he suddenly starts speaking to me.

“So did you get any scholarships from UCLA?” he asks.

“Hm? Oh, I’m not going there.”

“You’re not?”

I shake my head and don’t say anything further. The rest of the group ceases their previous conversation and the surroundings became eerily quiet. After a moment, he raises his eyebrows, realization hitting him.

“You got into Berkeley?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow!” Seulgi interjects. “I really admire you, Y/N.”

I give her a small smile, internally questioning the authenticity of her statement. Though, I quickly push the thoughts to the side, opting to take them at surface level and nothing more.

“That’s great, Y/N!” Lucas says with a warm smile.

I was happy; Stanford is where I was aiming to go, but if not Stanford (which was extremely unlikely any way you put it), then Berkeley would have been fantastic. In essence, Berkeley was my first choice.

The Friday night before Spring Break, Taeyeon and I were communicating via text, incessantly refreshing the page for application decisions, only to be met with loading errors. We had both been accepted to UCLA and considered the idea of being roommates in college. My first choice was Berkeley because it was closer to home and if Taeyeon got in, at least I would know one person who went there. I liked her and since we didn’t know each other that well, this would be a good time to become better friends.

I was browsing various social media platforms, looking for any sign that other people had received their admission decisions. To my amusement, I was met with a wall of comments saying essentially the same thing: I know I’m not going to get in so can you just give me my rejection letter now?

Since refreshing the page only increased my anxiety, I decided to take a shower, figuring that the decisions would be released while I occupied my time with something else. Upon finishing, my phone had exploded with messages.

Hana [6:18 PM] I didn’t get into Berkeley

Taeyeon [6:22 PM] I GOT IN!!!!

Hana [6:45 PM] Y/N, are you okay??

Me to Hana [6:54 PM] Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be okay?

Me to Taeyeon [6:55 PM] CONGRATULATIONS! OMG I NEED TO CHECK!

Hana [6:56 PM] You didn’t reply so I thought you didn’t get in and were really sad

Me to Hana [6:58 PM] Oh I actually haven’t checked! Let me check right now!

I ran out of the bathroom and logged onto the admissions page. Within five seconds, I let out a yelp of triumph.

Congratulations! I am delighted to offer you admission to the University of California, Berkeley for the fall 2015 semester!

Every time I looked at Lucas, I was incredibly confused and, quite frankly, somewhat disappointed. He was spending all of this time with me, but wouldn’t do or say anything. Each moment we were together felt like there was something unspoken between the two of us. There technically was, as the night of Winter Ball remained an untouched topic – like a secret we both tucked away that was only meant for us. We both knew it happened, but didn’t explicitly know how the other felt about it; it was the purgatory of knowing you liked each other, but both being too afraid to openly say anything.

Truthfully, it was a hopeless endeavor that would likely turn out to be fruitless. We only had another month together before graduation. Yes, we had the summer too. But then what? What’s the likelihood that anything would have lasted past that? I was moving to another state for the next four years. I suppose I could have a summer fling before then – that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Why did I even like him so much? He was attractive and… well, that’s basically it. He was nice to me, but nice only gets you so far. Obviously, he had demonstrated himself to be irresponsible. Yeah, we had similar music tastes and he would share his fries with me whenever I asked. But what did I even know about him? His name is Lucas and he’s half Chinese, half Thai. He likes video games, going to the gym, and eating food. He hopes to become a doctor, but doesn’t currently have the work ethic to get there. All of the things I can list are generic – things you can slap on an ‘About Me’ page and no one would question them because they can easily apply to anyone. While that was a good start and I could definitely ask questions about those things, would I be able to talk to him? Really, really talk to him. Ask him about his dreams, his hopes, his insecurities and secrets he hasn’t told anyone, including Seulgi. Do we have the same amount of ambition? If I thought about it, I wasn’t so sure.

“Do you think we want to go the little pond to take pictures before going to prom?” Hana asks me after school.

Prom is two days; it’s the last moment of celebration before we start three straight weeks of testing for senior year exams.

“Yeah, we can do that. I –”

“Come here, Y/N.”

I turn my head suddenly, my feet instinctively taking me to the boy who called over to me from his car, my thoughts with Hana left unfinished. I lean down to rest my arms on Lucas’s open window and Hana follows, standing just next to me. Sicheng is sitting in the passenger’s seat of Lucas’s car; both of them smile at me.

He presses a button on his stereo. “Listen!”

Loser 외톨이 센 척하는 겁쟁이

I smile, immediately recognizing the lyrics to the latest BIGBANG release I had texted to Lucas.

“Taeyang is so good in this song, but G-Dragon is my bias,” he says.

Since when is G-Dragon your bias? I told you he was my bias last week right after you told me Taeyang was yours.

I raise an eyebrow for a split second before slowly nodding in agreement, murmuring a quick, “Mine too!”

We remain silent for a moment, enjoying the song until he asks me a question that pulls me back into the state of confusion that I’m always in whenever I’m around him.

“Who are you going with to prom?”

Why the hell do you even care who I go with?

“Um, just with some friends.”

“Who?”

Why do we have to be so specific? I’m sure you can guess who. You know who I’m friends with.

“Uh, Hana, Doyoung, Taeyeon, and Seungwan.”

Sicheng nods slightly, but Lucas doesn’t say a thing. He keeps his gaze focused on his steering wheel, moving his lips ever so slightly as if he’s contemplating something.

“So, yeah…” I say, breaking the unbearable silence.

“Sounds fun, Y/N,” says Sicheng.

“All right, well, I gotta take Sicheng to get his haircut. So I’ll see you later,” Lucas says suddenly.

“See ya.”

Hana and I step away from his car and watch them drive off.

“Why does he act like that around you?” asks Hana.

I furrow my brow. “Like what?”

“Like… he wants to say something, but doesn’t. There’s a weird tension between the two of you.”

“So you noticed it too.” I sigh. “I wish I knew.”

I remember reading something once. It was along the lines of, “If someone likes you, you’ll know. And if you’re left confused all the time, then you’ll know what that means too.” I didn’t want to believe it. But as time went on, the rational part of me told me that what I read may have been right. Get out. He’s an idiot. You deserve so much more. You deserve someone who isn’t going to continue falling for this dumb girl clinging onto him, manipulating him, pulling him back in every time he wants to stray away.

But what’s the harm in this? It’s not like I saw myself marrying him. I just wanted to go out with him for a while, go on dates for the first time, experience my first kiss – all rites of passage that I would remember many years later, but would remain just that. As memories.

Prom. The moment of your high school career. We go to school for four years for it to culminate with this dance that’s depicted in the movies as “the night of all nights.” I remember when I was twelve and watched these movies that created my perfect ideal for what high school would look like. I thought I’d get a boyfriend and have my first kiss at sixteen, fall in love for the first time, go to prom and take those nice photos that couples do with some picturesque water scene in the background. And guess what? None of that happened! Still haven’t dated anybody, still haven’t kissed anybody, still haven’t fallen in love, and definitely did not have a date to take photos with in front of the picturesque water scene.

Now that I think about it, that’s a bit unrealistic. But I was twelve. I can dream.     

Tonight’s goal, I had decided, was to have fun. And maybe have another dance with Lucas. Dinner was at an American restaurant that was kind enough to give us free ice cream to “help us celebrate whatever we were celebrating.” This was followed by pictures in front of small pond near our school.

I guess I take that back; I at least get to have pictures taken with a picturesque water scene in the background.

As expected, Doyoung and Taeyeon agreed to go together as a “couple.” The rest of the girls in our group were going stag. Seungwan brought along her friend, Jieun. So in our photos, it was Doyoung surrounded by five girls. He joked that he looked like a pimp.

“Hey, Y/N?” Seungwan walks up to me while the other four are trying to take pictures with some of the geese near the pond. She creases her forehead and purses her lips. “Does Doyoung like Taeyeon?”

I look up from my phone and raise an eyebrow, feigning curiosity. “Um, I don’t know. I know they’re good friends… but I don’t know about anything else.”

“Oh… He doesn’t tell you who he likes?”

“No,” I say. “Other than he has unusual taste in women.”

Considering they’re not women at all.

“You want to take a picture together?” I ask, attempting to take her mind off of something that, unfortunately, could never be. She just didn’t know.

“Hey! Y/N! Seungwan! Let’s get going! The doors open in ten minutes!” Doyoung calls.

Okay, why the hell do you keep following us?

Goeun, another student in our class, ran into us at the entrance. She was quiet and rarely spoke in class. Unfortunately, when she did speak, she had a habit of being arrogant – making a point to talk about how far she was on our lengthier assignments. To her disappointment, everyone would stop paying attention before she could finish her sentence. I felt bad for her sometimes, so I tried to listen and at least make a comment. But if I had to be honest, it’s difficult to carry on a conversation with her. After she realized that everyone else had stopped paying attention, she would turn around and remain silent. Perhaps the blow from the lack of attention from everyone else couldn’t be overridden by one person giving a half-assed attempt. I wouldn’t blame her.

However, since we’ve arrived, she hasn’t stopped following us and she keeps trying to stand next to me. I’m not particularly fond of being followed without my permission, as a general rule, but she’s also wearing nearly the same dress as I am. The upper bodice has a different cut, but the rest of it is the same – same color, same style. This is really shallow, but I don’t know why you would intentionally try to stand next to someone who was wearing the same thing. No one likes having the same dress as anybody else – that’s why there’s a dress registry at the store. Wasn’t that part of the song in High School Musical 3?

“Why does Goeun keep following us?” Hana whispers to me.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t think she actually greeted us either. She just latched on and I didn’t realize she was following us until we walked into the foyer outside the gym to get drinks.”

“Oh, I thought she was friends with you…”

“No, she’s in my Korean class and I’ve said a handful of things to her, but that’s it.”

“It’s kind of annoying.”

“I know…”

“Hey, who’s that?”

I follow her line of sight to see Lucas walking in with his group, a girl in purple latched onto his arm. Yuna.

“Is that his date?” she asks.

“I guess so.”

“I’m still mad that he didn’t ask you.”

“Hey!” Doyoung calls, walking back to us from the drink stand. “Let’s go back inside!”

Hana and I follow Doyoung into the gym. I look over to the back table where Lucas and his friends are and internally chastise myself for the thought.

“Want to go say ‘hi’?” I ask Hana.

“Sure.”

What are you thinking?

Oh that’s right. You’re not.

“Hey, Y/N,” says Kibum.

I smile. “Hey.”

“Uh, you look nice.”

“Thanks! You too!”

We stand there, an awkward silence between us as we exchange uncomfortable smiles. I flip around to end the anguish and am met with Lucas’s back.

Should I tap him on the shoulder…?

Fortunately, my thoughts are interrupted when Lucas turns around.

“Y/N!” He extends his arms out and I walk over and wrap my arms around him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Hey! Good to see you,” I say, taking a step back to look at him.

He smiles and I see his eyes looking up and down my figure. “You look really nice.”

My face grows warm. “Thank you!”

Ugh! You still react this way around him!

“Y/N!!” Seulgi calls, throwing her arms around me. I stumble backwards.

“Oh!” I return her hug, feeling dazed. “Seulgi!”

She puts her hands on my shoulders, pulling back to look at me. “You look amazing, Y/N!”

Kind of her to say, but I wonder if she did that on purpose.

“Thanks! I like your dress!”

“Aww!” she coos. “Thanks!”

She pulls away from me and walks over to someone else. Hana comes over to me and we’re left standing by ourselves.

“He looked really happy to see you.”

I sigh. “This is confusing.”

For the next hour, Doyoung, Taeyeon, Hana, Seungwan, Jieun, and I try dancing to the awful playlist the Prom Committee had procured. One of us would lament every other song just how terrible all the songs were. But even with this distraction, my stupid eyes would wander, watching Lucas and Yuna dance together. They look like they they’re having fun. I can’t help but feel a bit envious.

She’s so lucky. She gets to hold his hand. She gets to dance with him.

But then, when our principal stops the dance to crown the King and Queen, it’s complete déjà vu. Only this time, I’m not alone in my observation. Hana and I stand at the back of the dance floor, watching as all of the nominees walk down the aisle towards the stage.

Don’t look at him.

“We are now going to have our Prom King and Queen start off our first slow dance of the night!”

I look at Lucas, waiting for him to grab Yuna’s hand to dance with her.

Only, he doesn’t.

He doesn’t do that at all.

Lucas runs off, pausing at the edge of the dance floor, frantically looking left and right, but mostly in the direction of the table I had placed my belongings.

What is he doing? Who is he looking for? Seulgi?

Me?

“What is he looking for?” Hana asks.

He’s looking over at my table… Maybe he is looking for me.

My brow furrows. “I don’t know…” I look back over to where Yuna is standing.

Why did he just leave his date there?

Turning back to Lucas, his shoulders raise and fall with a heavy sigh. He turns around, apparently unable to find whoever he was looking for. He gets up on his toes, looking over the crowd of people before making a gesture with his hand, signaling for someone to come over to him. Yuna walks out of the crowd, grabbing onto his arm as soon as she reaches him. As he heads back to his table, he turns his head and our eyes lock. Déjà vu settles in again for a brief moment before he looks away and continues walking to his table.

“He totally just looked at you,” Hana says.

He’s not going to dance with her?

When they arrive at their table, he sits down first, and then motions for her to sit down in the chair next to his. Only, it appears that she misunderstood because she takes a seat on his lap instead. A sudden pang a jealousy courses through my chest, causing me to look away.

“Why didn’t he dance with her?” Hana asks. “He surely couldn’t have been looking for Seulgi – she’s back over there, where Lucas’s date was.” She looks at me. “Do you think he was looking for you?”

“I’m slightly biased in this situation so part of me hopes that is the case, so if he wasn’t, why was he looking at our table?”

Boys are confusing. This whole thing is confusing. If Lucas was so adamant on dancing with Seulgi during Winter Ball, why did he seem so careless about slow dancing with his date at prom? It’s a courtesy – and really, an expectation – to dance with your date. Normally, the implication of asking someone to be your date is that you like them. The movies always show the girl wanting to go with the popular douche-bag who ends up asking them to go to the dance, but then humiliates them by ditching them and dancing with someone else. Maybe I should stop basing my logic on movies, but anyway, even ignoring all of the movies, why wouldn’t you want to dance with the person you asked? Yeah, dancing together during all of the upbeat and party songs is one thing, but not wanting to do the slow dance? There are so few slow songs at school dances – that’s why people always anticipate them because they want that chance of intimacy with their partner.

As the night ends, our group decides to stand off to the side to get some air. We ended up sitting out on most of the dance after the King and Queen were crowned because of the even poorer choices of music. Doyoung and Taeyeon expressed that they had grown bored – a sentiment we were all feeling, and collectively, we were thinking we would leave early.

“Hang on,” I say as I start walking to the back table. “I want to go say goodbye to a couple people.”

You idiot. You wouldn’t be saying ‘goodbye’ to anyone if it wasn’t for Lucas. He’s the only person you even want to say ‘goodbye’ to! You stupid, desperate –

“Y/N?”

I turn my head and Kibum is standing by their table. He looks down at my side, seeing my purse held in hand and asks, “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah.” I smile. “It was nice seeing you.”

“Y/N, you’re leaving?”

Lucas suddenly appears next to me and my smile fades as I nod. There’s a sinking feeling in my chest – one of disappointment at the relatively uneventful evening, realizing that I would be graduating in a month and that this was one of the last moments I would have with him.

“Uh, yeah.”

It takes him a moment to process what I said, but when he does, he extends his arm out and looks at me, silently asking for a hug goodbye. I run into his embrace, burying my head into his chest as I feel his arm tighten around my waist, like he doesn’t want to let me go. And suddenly I’m brought back to Winter Ball yet again. I can smell his cologne and feel his warmth, forgetting about any possible onlookers who would care to judge. But within seconds, I feel like I’m being slapped in the face. The deejay calls for the last dance of the night and “Wanted” starts playing over the speakers.

“Lucas?” Yuna grabs onto his arm and when I pull back to see who has called for his attention, I am met with her facial expression that feigns innocence. She pouts. “Aren’t you going to dance with me?”

Our arms are still around each other when I look up at him. He keeps his gaze on me and I swear I can sense a feeling of longing; it’s in his eyes. I drop both of my arms to my side and try to step away, but he only grips me tighter.

“Lucas?” she calls again.

I look up at him and smile, taking my hand and lightly pushing his waist to tell him he can let go. “It’s all right.”

It’s really not all right, but it’s rude if you don’t dance with her at least once. She is your date. I wouldn’t like it very much if I were her. If you wanted to dance with me, you should’ve asked me.

His expression is serious and he holds me for a moment more before letting me go. Yuna tugs on his sleeve, attempting to pull him away. He keeps his gaze on me for few seconds before sighing and turning to lead Yuna onto the dance floor.

I chuckle to myself. Y/N, you have the worst taste in boys.

The following Monday, end-of-year exams were starting. As I drive into the school’s parking lot, I see Lucas’s car. We had a three-hour delay due to testing, but because I had an exam, I had to be here early. I didn’t know why Lucas was even at school so early because he didn’t have any exams today. I figured that he had driven here early to meet up with some friends for breakfast. But as soon as I park my car, I realize that that is definitely not the case. He’s staring at me when I look out my window. I quickly turn away, my heart racing as I remember the incident from over the weekend.

I had been scrolling through Facebook and Instagram, browsing through everyone’s prom photos. Lucas had posted a collage containing three photos of his entire group and a larger photo of him and Yuna.

“Hey, Dad, you wanna see Lucas’s photos?”

I handed him my phone and he looked at the photo. “Why did he choose a gray suit?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s all right, nothing special. He looks nice though.”

He handed me back my phone and upon looking at the screen, my eyes shot out of my head. My dad had accidentally hit the ‘Like’ button.

“Oh shit!” I exclaimed, quickly un-liking the photo and silently praying that Lucas wasn’t quick to check his notifications.

Maybe he didn’t see it! That’s totally possible! Snap out of it! You have a physics exam in an hour! Who cares about some stupid photo?

I grab my things to head inside to do some last minute cramming before my physics exam. As I open the door, I see Lucas get out of his car. Unfortunately, a sudden gust of wind blows one of my sheets of paper towards the back of my car. I quickly run over to pick it up and when I stand back up again, Lucas is walking in my direction. He’s staring at me and his eyes narrow, like he’s studying me. I gape at him.

He knows, he knows. Kill me. Just kill me now.

He looks away and says, “Hey.”

“Hi.”

Yeah, he definitely knows.

“You know what I like?”

I turn around and look at Juhyun. “What?”

“You,” she says.  

Our history exam was in a couple hours and Doyoung and I had decided to skip our English class and sit in our history class while we crammed so that we could ask our teacher any last minute questions. Coincidentally, this was Lucas’s history class.

The desks in the classroom were arranged in groups of two. Doyoung sat at the pair of desks in front of me and Juhyun sat in the ones behind me. I sit sideways in my chair and lean against the wall while reading about the Cold War.

I chuckle. “Oh, thanks. How sweet of you.”

Occasionally, I glance up to where Lucas is sitting diagonally from me. After responding to Juhyun, I catch Lucas looking at me from my periphery. When I turn to look at him, I realize that he looks frustrated.

Maybe he’ll come over here. I kind of wish he would come over here, but he’ll probably sit with Juhyun since they are friends. Actually, now that I think about it, I think they used to like each other.

He continues to sit there for a moment, staring ahead before he decides to get up and throw something away. I try to focus again on my reading when an earbud is shoved into my face. When I look up, Lucas is standing in front of me, his face expressionless. I raise a brow and hesitantly take the earbud from his hand.

“I’m going to sit here…” he murmurs as he sits down at the desk next to me.

I really need to stop wishing on things that I hope will happen because I don’t actually know how to react when they do happen.

“I found this really cool song by Jonghyun,” he says. “It’s called ‘Symptoms.’”

My face breaks out into a wide smile. “Oh! I love ‘Symptoms’!”

It’s disappointing really that the only things we can talk about are K-Pop and college. When I try to think about other things to discuss, I can’t think of anything.

“Are you thinking about going to the K-pop convention in LA?” I ask.

“I’m not really sure. It’s kind of expensive.”

This is obviously a shot in the dark, but going together would be nice. We’d have to get down to Southern California and since it’s a multi-day thing, we would have to get a hotel room. And I suppose to be cost-effective, we would get one hotel room. Maybe we could have a fling for a few days…

Lucas and I continue listening to music. He tells me to pick all of the songs from his music library until he recommends ‘Inspiring’ by Taeil.

“It’s such a pretty song, Y/N. It reminds me of y–”

My forehead creases, waiting for him to finish his sentence. “Reminds you of what?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

After our history teacher finishes her lesson with Lucas’s class, she starts playing YouTube videos.

“What the f –”

I turn to look at Lucas just as he stops himself from swearing. “What the heck? That’s stupid.”

Lucas is known for having a loose mouth, swear words being a normal part of his everyday vocabulary. I swear a lot mentally, but I don’t use it in regular conversation. It seems that he has picked up on that and has adjusted his behavior accordingly.

The remainder of the school year was filled with moments like this. Lucas would come up to me at random times and we would spend time alone while being surrounded by others. What was interesting was that they would never interrupt us. We could enjoy each other’s presence, listening to music, with him occasionally making strange comments like he was trying to confess but wasn’t confident enough to fully commit. Graduation was literally right around the corner – do you want to continue playing this game where ultimately, we both lose because both of us can no longer play?

You act differently around me. Yet, you won’t say anything. Why?

I’m quite confident that you like me, but we’re running out of time.

So what’s stopping you?

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Before I Met You Masterlist Masterlist

[saltyslack-toast]

#Knock The Book 2: The Devil All the Time

WELL, I MADE IT TO THE 2nd BOOK REVIEW OF MINE, MEANS THAT I’M A PASSIONATE AND PERSISTENT BITCH, PERIODT. No actually I’m just bored and got really nothing to do, so here I am making judgmental, invalid and uncritical book review just to ease my guilt for doing nothing at home (just so my mom see me working through my laptop).

Okay The Devil All the Time is actually my first English book. The story of how I got this book as a matter of fact is quite irritating and funny at the same time. My uni friend, she saw this book in a modest book bazaar near her hometown. She was reading the title and the word ‘devil’ just remind her of me, she bought it and just gave it straight to me…... I’m sad but like thankful???

It’s a secondhand and hardcover book but I don’t really mind, considering the fact that the quality is still very nice though, except the worn spots stained all over the cover that make the book looks very old. My friend bought this only for RP 25.000, yes dude you’re not misread this shit, it was THAT CHEAP (whoever sell and own this book before me, I really appreciate it). Although if you want to buy the new one, you can get this book for USD 26.95 which converted in rupiah would be RP 407.500, yeah its cost pretty fancy for broke students like us and I don’t know if the book’s supposed to be available in your local bookstore but I think you can find it in worldwide shipping online store like amazon or any other shop perhaps. The book’s cover illustrate a dying white mutt hanging on the ‘log’ and bunch of cross everywhere, the cover is actually make sense when you read the book. It published in 2011 by doubleday in United States of America. The Author is Donald Ray Pollock, and you can find the sum information about his background written on the cover, but based form the book’s cover you can also check his website in donaldraypollock.com but when I checked, I’m not sure if it’s really his website since it just like pest control website (LMAOO I HAD NO IDEA FR). Anyway,

Let’s go breaking down the book!

“… Too much religion could be as bad as too little, maybe even worse, but moderation was just not in her husband’s nature”

The whole story in this book, basically give you portraits regarding the life of lunatics in the time after WWII. Nope, there is no sums up about the events happened in that moment so chill y’all non-historical enthusiast bitches. This book gonna give you a bizarre experience reading it, the first 10 pages of this book was already psychedelic, I assure that shit. Have you watched Games of Thrones series on HBO? It’s chilling right how Ned Stark, the protagonist of the main series died in the first season???? EXACTLY that was the vibes u got after reading the first chapter and get crazier every time u read forward. By the way, this book embodied 7 chapters and 55 sub-chapters, the chapter in odd and even numbers has 2 different main focuses on each characteristic exist, here I sum it up for you:

On the odd numbers chapters (1, 3, and so on), the central story of these chapters is circling among the family of Willard Russel, his Mom Emma and Uncle Earskell and also those 2 insane peeps Roy Laferty and Theodore. Willard Russel used to be a navy army and a bit skeptical dealing with religion issues just like his uncle, but his mom has always been a devoted worshiper. Willard married to the beautiful and kind-hearted women named Charlotte and they was given a son named Arvin Eugene Russel, everything was normal until Charlotte got sick and Willard gone crazy praying to god for his wife’s recovery and poor little Arvin has to suffer the predicament by his own self. Their stories always give me religious-fanaticism-gloomy vibes (is that even make sense??). Don’t even get me started with the life stories of the two brutes-ass man, Roy Laferty and Theodore they were used to be ‘preacher’ in Emma and young Willard’s Church. Nothing I could say further because it’s gonna be a major spoiler for you, but their stories really giving you insights of how frustration and fanaticism allow people to do something beyond their common sense.

“You remember what I told you the other day?” He asked Arvin

“About the boys on the bus?,”

“Well, that’s what I meant, you just got to pick the right time”

On the even numbers chapters (2, 4, and so on), the main tales is pertaining on the journey of Handerson couple, Carl and Sandy. They were like the Bonnie and Clyde but sad and exploitative version in this book. Carl is a ‘photographer’ and sandy working as a waitress in a café called Wooden Spoon (Which the place where Charlotte used to work as a waitress and the place she met Willard for the first time as well). During summertime they got this ‘ritual’ ((but not in a religious way)) where they drive to different states and give a ride to the hitchhikers found on the way, then Carl forcefully offer them to fuck Sandy for free (HIS OWN WIFE) while he took pictures of them fucking and after that Carl kill them and take all the money those hitchhikers got in their pocket (dude I can’t even judge anything). But to be honest, I’m not a fan of these two characters because they were all so ANNOYING to death. And then there is Bodecker Lee who’s a police and also Sandy’s brother, ok that’s it, I’m not gonna give you any spoilers.

“… He went down the street and sat on a bench in a park the rest of the day thinking about killing himself instead. Something broke in him that day. For the first time he could see that his whole life added up to absolutely nothing…”

You might be confused since there are quite a lot of keen characters in this book but there’s a point where all these bitches are relating to each other, so chill y’all impatient gripe-ass. Overall, the flow of the story is undoubtedly interesting for you to keep going throughout the whole story, because every phase gonna make you wondering about next things happened to them. But, the transitions among every chapters is quite uncomfortable for me, because sometimes when the story has reached its climax there is no resolutions coming to solve the problem immediately, and you’re faced to read the new chapter with a whole different setting and characters so it’s kind of ruining the vibes and emotions the book has made me, but again this just my personal preference so please don’t judge (while everything I did right now is judging inaccurately).

“He realized that he would never preach again, but that was all right. He’d never been much good at it anyway. Most people just wanted to hear the cripple play”

However, what I like the most from this book is the deepening of every character exists is so fascinating, even for just the side or supporting character (for god sake I’m sorry idk what to called a character that isn’t the main one), for example a bus driver in Meade, Ohio which Willard talked to when he was on the way home after the war ended, the narration wrapped and portraits the driver’s life perfectly without make us bored, and there’s still a bunch of interesting narration about the life of the side characters in this book that also as odds and intriguing as the main character’s background (jesus, everything happened and everyone in this book is just so strange and peculiar I swear to god). The story finished in a most tragic-beautiful but still gloomy way, even though it’s quite predictable but still a very good closing for me personally. To be noted, on the way to the end of the story, there will be emerge another asshole priest character named Preston Teagardin, ready to shake you up until you finish the book. But still, let’s said this particular ‘last minute character’ has proving that the author is paying so much attention of how the story ended isn’t leaving any 'rush-made' impression (this shit might confused you I’m sorry my English hasn’t got any better *sorry hand sign* *sorry hand sign* *sorry hand sign*). # hashtag attention to the detail bro.

Holy crap, that’s the first time I’m almost able to cut all the bullshit I intend to bring it up here.

This book is one of my top 5 books that you have to read once in a life time (although I haven’t discover the other four, omg im sorry y’all). Little information for you that the first time I read this book (yeah I read it for quite few times) is when the campaign of presidential election era, which in Indonesia the religious are pretty sentimental issues, some of the people in my country suddenly became those annoying fanatical preachers, man I can’t stand it. And this book is just precisely relating to that condition and I get to know at least a glance of what the heck odds things happened in their minds, since you know fanaticism and stupidity doesn’t hit only on particular group of religions, race, gender or anything, we can all be stupid and brainless (especially me because I basically have no brain). There probably quite many scenes that is pretty disturbing to read (I don’t know if people could be triggered by it???? But I guess so) so yeah a bit warning. Overall, I genuinely recommend this book for you guys because every element in this book is almost perfect, the storylines, bold characters, and the RARE AND STRANGE AND SENSITIVE topic promote by the author in this novel is totally a BOOM. Don’t worry reading this book not going to give you those agnostic and atheist vibes HAHA chill I still consider myself a devoted Muslim tho (hashtag masyaallah ukthi).

By the way before I wrapped it up, I hear that this book will be made into a netflix film. WELL, of course I’m excited because the casts are so amazing, and I love Netflix adaptation and I enjoy watch movies as much as I read books (again, unnecessary information of mine *sorry hand sign*). I found that the release date is postponed from the origin plan in 15th May (which is three days ago from I posted this on my page) due to I don’t know perhaps corona because that bitch has ruined everyone in the world’s schedule, but for real I can’t find the exact information regarding to the updated release date, so while you wait the film to launch, why don’t you just go read the book first? I assure you this one not gonna give you any disappointment.

I think that would be it for this 2nd rubbish book review of mine. Although, I think I made a little progressive from the first one (OR MAYBE NOT???? I’M SORRY Y’ALL) but of course there’s still much deficiency I served. Still, I hope my writing get better in the process of making this whole novel of reviewing book inaccurately. To be honest, I wrote this shit not for getting any engagements or audience but for my own satisfied HAHA. So yeah I’m literally comfortable writing for nothing. But bitch guess what I’m just gonna keep going, until I could professionally writing and make it for a living? Well, amen for that.

Xiao, See you in Advance!