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morganaspendragonss · 4 years

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Bad Things Happen Bingo Masterpost!

And that's a wrap on my @badthingshappenbingo card! Thanks to anybody and everybody who requested a square - this has been so, so fun! I've had this card for years and have been actively working on it for a year and a half, so it's incredible to have finally finished it 🥰

Prompts and Fills listed below the cut:

Used in Sacrifice/Ritual - Filled

you would be the one to rescue me | BBC Atlantis | Jason x Pythagoras

When Jason wakes, Pythagoras is gone.

This in itself is not so strange. What is strange, however, is that his cloak has been left behind despite there being a significant chill in the air. And when Hercules begins to wake, and there is still no sign, Jason knows.

Something's wrong.

Rage Against the Reflection - Filled

out, damned spot | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

TK wakes up gasping, choking on air. The sheets are suffocating him and, when he tries to free himself, they only seem to get tighter. The hands reaching out for him, trying to calm him, are the final straw; TK throws himself from bed and sprints to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind him as he collapses against the sink.

On some level, he is aware that the hands were Carlos’s, that the sheets were theirs, that his hands are clean, and that the dream was just a dream.

But they weren't always that way.

Falling Through the Ice - Filled

ice in my veins | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos only turns away for a second, he swears. Unfortunately, a second is clearly ample time for his boyfriend to get into trouble because when Carlos turns back around, TK is no longer standing where he left him.

Instead, there’s a sizable hole in the ice.

Flashbacks - Filled

start again from the beginning | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & Owen

Owen trusts his son. He’s watched TK fight his addiction and stay sober for the last six years, and he has faith that he can handle himself.

But when TK doesn’t show up for work the night after proposing to Alex, Owen knows that something is wrong. After all, they've been here before.

Branding - Filled

setting fire to our insides for fun | Supernatural | Meg x Cas

Cas had been prepared to find demons. Frankly, he would have been concerned if he didn’t find demons, given that that was his mission here. What he hadn’t been prepared for, however, was to find two demons torturing another, pressing the hot end of a branding iron into her forearm.

He killed the two torturers with practised ease, barely wasting a moment before they were both on the dirty, wooden floor, eyes burned out their sockets. Only then did he allow his surprise to catch up to him, breathing heavily as his gaze settled on someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Meg.

Memory Loss - Filled

focal point | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Waking up in the hospital is becoming all too familiar. Being the one in the bed is less so, but Carlos has had his fair share of hospital trips. He knows the drill.

As soon as he sees him awake, TK breaks out in harsh sobs. "Carlos," he breathes. "I... I thought I'd lost you."

Caught in an Explosion - Filled

can we skip past near death cliches? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

It’s the kind of call every first responder dreads. A bomb threat in an apartment block, civilian’s lives on the line, the whole situation a hair’s breadth away from disaster. And Carlos is right in the middle of it.

tw: explosions, bombs

Forced to Kneel/Bow - Filled

in case you don’t live forever (let me tell you now) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

His teammates were still sitting in the communal area when TK entered, eyes glued to the tv screen. Paul was the first to notice him, and TK’s concern only grew as he got everyone else’s attention, their worried gazes falling on him one by one.

“There’s a hostage situation at that big, fancy hotel across town," Marjan explained. "Apparently it’s pretty serious, they’ve had to send police in, and, um, well…”

Marjan paused, and TK felt dread wash through him, knowing what her next words would be.

“Carlos is there, TK. He’s gone in.”

tw: references to gun violence

Be Careful What You Wish For - Filled

can you beat back the night? | The Witcher | Geralt x Jaskier

He misses the bard. Geralt won’t admit it, not even to Roach, but he misses him. After months—years—of Jaskier’s constant chatter and the sound of his lute, the silence, once valued above all else, is too much.

It’s been months since the dragon, since Geralt lost both Yennefer and Jaskier in one fell swoop. He’s cursed himself many times over for the words he said—to both of them—and cursed himself more for the mistakes he made to get in this position in the first place.

this is the lot of witchers, to be alone.

Blood From the Mouth - Filled

I Got You | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & 126 Crew

“I’m just sayin’,” Judd says, waving his arms around. “Somebody’s gonna get themselves killed in there one of these days. I had to come out here three times last year because of some idiots who think they know better than the ‘Keep Out’ signs.”

The team are called to an abandoned house where some kids are trapped. Everything is going smoothly, which, naturally, means that it won't be that way for much longer.

Trapped in a Burning Building - Filled

a little unsteady | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

9-1-1, What's your emergency?

'Please, help! My house is on fire and my husband’s inside!'

t.k. sometimes wonders if the universe is out to get him

Worked Themselves to Exhaustion - Filled

In Your Arms | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, Michelle & TK

T.K. and Carlos agreed when they started dating to check-in on each other that they were both okay. Reassurance that nothing bad had happened. So, when Carlos hasn't replied hours after his shift is supposed to have finished, T.K.'s definitely beginning to panic.

Locked in a Cage - Filled

running out of time | Shadowhunter Chronicles | Kit x Ty

When (if) they got out of here, Kit wanted the record to unequivocally state that this wasn’t his fault. Not that it was Ty's either, but it certainly wasn't Kit's.

kit and ty's first hunt together after three years goes wrong and they wind up trapped in a cage with no way out. naturally, this leads to a heartfelt conversation.

Demonic/Ghostly Possession - Filled

Haunting | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen

T.K. is five when he first sees a ghost, though, of course, he doesn’t know that it’s a ghost. His name is Joey, and he lives in the playground, which T.K. thought was a little strange, but he doesn’t want to ask. Dad says it’s rude to ask questions like that to someone he’s just met.

Fingore - Filled

ease my mind | 911: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Briefly, Carlos considers calling TK and telling him about the accident. But… He only broke two of his fingers and it barely even classifies as a minor injury in his book, so there’s really no reason to bother his fiancé while he’s still on shift himself. He pockets his phone then looks around to figure out where the exit is.

Only, an all-too familiar laugh distracts him from his task, drawing his attention to the nurses station.

Where TK is standing, smiling as a nurse swats at him for stealing one of their lollipops.

Carlos is, beyond doubt, fucked.

Verbal Abuse - Filled

this is a song about somebody else | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Marjan

TK doesn't notice the 126's latest visitor until it's too late. He freezes as Alex smiles at him, knocked off balance by this sudden intrusion of his old life into his new one.

alex vists tk at the 126. luckily, tk has his family to help him through it.

tw: abusive language

Dying in Their Arms - Filled

can you hear me screaming (please don’t leave me) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

As a cop, Carlos has to deal with all kinds of cases, and not all of them end well. But never in his life did he imagine that he'd have to respond to an incident involving his own boyfriend.

tw: major character death

Blindfolded - Filled

find you here inside the dark | Doctor Who | Thirteen x Yaz

Yaz has walked this room too many times to count now; she’s traced her fingertips over the walls, searching for any cracks or crevices to indicate where there might be a door.

If the Doctor were here, she’d have her sonic out by now, spitting out words, only half of which Yaz could understand. She’d find a way out in no time. Or, if not, at least she’d be here. Talking a mile a minute, probably annoying the hell out of their captors. Yaz can almost hear her now—

Wait.

She can hear her now.

Water Torture - Filled

soggy clothes and breezeblocks | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos wakes up slowly. He cracks his eyes open, wincing at the pounding in his head. He lifts his hand to massage the pain away, only to discover that his hand won't move, the cool metal of handcuffs biting viciously into his wrist.

After an undercover mission goes wrong, Carlos is forced to fight for his life. And to make matters worse, his kidnappers are making sure that T.K. is watching the entire thing.

tw: torture

Fighting from the Inside - Filled

and curse the gods | BBC Atlantis | Jason & Medusa

Jason knows what it is to be cursed.

Slammed into a Wall - Filled

mind over matter (matter over mind) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen

After a night out goes wrong, TK and Carlos are left to deal with the consequences.

tw: homophobia, hate crimes, hiding an injury

Suicide Attempt - Filled

be done with this now | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Once upon a time, Carlos had thought that watching as his almost-boyfriend was whisked off in an ambulance, bullet wound in his chest, would be the worst moment of his life. Then TK had been kidnapped, and Carlos had spent hours not knowing where he was, if he was alive or dead, and he thought - this is it. Nothing can top this.

But, having to perform CPR on his husband, having to hold him as he slipped away in his arms?

That was worse than even his nightmares.

tw: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, depression, drug abuse, overdosing

Bleeding Through the Bandages - Filled

pull you in to feel your heartbeat | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

The call comes at the tail end of Carlos’s shift, and he instantly hates whichever idiot decided to ruin his night by mugging someone.

What he's not expecting is to find his boyfriend on the ground, bleeding out from a stab wound.

Arm in a Sling - Filled

have you been involved in an accident at work? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & 126 Crew, TK x Carlos

T.K. was on his way to the hospital. Again.

At least this time he could say with absolute certainty that it 100% wasn't his fault.

Self-Harm - Filled

but god i wanna feel again | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos blames himself for not noticing. It's not like he had much choice in the matter; he hasn't seen T.K. all week, and his texts have been going unanswered, but he can't help but feel like it's partly his fault.

If only T.K. would actually talk about himself, instead of keeping it all in.

tw: self-harm

#bad things happen bingo #fanfiction #my fanfiction #writing #my writing #send me prompts!#masterlist

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davidtennan-t · 4 years

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‘Saviour in the Snow’

Chapter 2

The Doctor doesn't return from a mission on an alien world. Donna has to take matters into her own hands. Some Whump and general Ten/Donna foolery.

Chapter 3 will be following soon!

AO3 Link - Chapter 2

Gelta’Divians were known for their ignorant, selfish behaviour. Their attitude to life wasn’t exactly rainbows and sunshine, nor was their hospitality. It would be the last time he ever offered his help to species this side of the Adrota Galaxy.

“N-noted for n-next time…”

The Doctor never liked to admit when he was cold. A Time Lord’s body temperature was easily adjustable and controlled – better central heating, is what he said to Donna once and she had laughed and commented on his ignorant cockiness over his superior biology.

But even Time Lord’s had their limits and the temperature wasn't going to stop falling.

He was shivering and that, in his mind, was a bad sign. A terrible sign. A dangerous sign, even.

He'd tried countless times to pull himself out but being unable to turn to reach the rocks, or use his sonic screwdriver in any sense or fashion, it all proved useless. The throbbing of his ankle caused the occasional wince and groan, only furthering the problem of his situation. It even crossed his mind to use the sonic to try and shift the rock using setting 82, but even then, the chances of causing another collapse in the cave would be high. It was better to be a trapped Time Lord than a squashed Time Lord.

So, after 1 hour, 3 minutes and 19 seconds, he was still firmly trapped.

“S-should have brought the coat…” the Doctor stated through lightly chattering teeth to nobody but himself. The dimming light through the very few cracks along with his very good sense of time told him the night was drawing close, and there was still no solid plan on how he was going to free himself. The Time Lord was used to making plans up as he went along but he couldn’t move – how could he move along? There was no way of contacting Donna to tell her where he was, nor what he could do to fix the situation. He wanted her there... he missed her.

“In here – the collapse must be further in.”

“With two of our buildings gone it has to be an extensive collapse. The northern forces will pay for the damage caused!”

Deep, booming voices suddenly echoed through the cave and the Doctor steadily glanced up from where he lay. He considered shouting in reply but the unfriendly tone made him second guess his thought. The blue light from the sonic screwdriver was illuminating his position so he reached over with his cold fingers and fiddled with the device, trying to dim the light. However, it was inevitable they would come across him if they were heading this way. There seemed no point in attempting to dim the only light.

"If anyone is in here, present yourself!"

As the Time Lord tried to shift his cold arms into a more comfortable position, the sudden tremor from the loud voice caused one of the rocks in the large pile to slip. It shifted the entire bulk of stone, increasing the pressure on his trapped foot. The Doctor was unable to keep a yell of pain restrained.

That was one way to present himself.

"Who's in here?!" one voice called in response to the pained yell, now much closer. "This is the chief from the southern camp, make yourself known!"

No point in keeping quiet now. The Doctor, now aware it was another group of Gelta'Divians, decided asking for help wasn't the worst thing he could do. Perhaps this was his chance for aid. He would more than likely have to work some charm on the group - at least he knew not to use any of his Judoon jokes.

"Any of you fella's ever s-shifted heavy rocks before?"

Even to him, his own voice sounded weak and feeble and he waited anxiously for a reply, trying to control his quivering jaw and the shivering from his skinny frame.

This was a different group of the native species, not the ones he had helped, so they would owe him nothing. He needed to be on his guard.

"I'm n-not a threat, I'm actually in a rather crushed-s-spot," he added, the footsteps growing ever closer until the large, bulky aliens finally appeared in the blue light of the sonic screwdriver. All five had sleek, golden spears drawn and were kitted in full armor. They must have been expecting a fight, but with what, the Doctor didn't know. They all looked similar to the group he had aided but the colouring of their armour was different - dark brown leather pads instead of overpowering grey.

"Hello, gents - am I g-glad to see some friendly faces around here! Just between us, these cave walls aren't much for conversa-"

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" The leader of the group bellowed, stepping forwards with the sharp end of his weapon only inches away from the Time Lord's face. The Doctor, unable to protect himself, tried to keep his brown eyes locked onto the blue orbs that were staring down at him. His friendly approach usually always calmed tensions but it couldn't work all the time, he thought.

"Well, if I told you that the northern camp asked for my h-help to track down an alien ball of energy that, upon exploding, caused a cave-in which now has me trapped since all the strapping big fellas I came with ran off without helping me... would you b-believe me?"

The alien cheif and the rest of the threatening group looked between one another, almost debating whether they should believe the thin man lying on the ground.

"Honestly, it's the truth... I was just here t-to help. Now, if you wouldn't mind helping moving these rocks I need to get back to my frie-"

"Silence!" the leader bellowed. To the Doctor's utter dismay, another creak from the rock pile echoed through the chasm and a boulder slipped from the very top. It crashed down near the leader, causing the group to jump back while also narrowly missing the Doctor's side. The Time Lord sighed in relief - or was he relieved? A simple cry for help seemed to be getting him nowhere and, at this rate, he would be crushed if he tried to reason with them any longer.

"P-please," he pleaded, now in a much softer tone, "I just need one of you to move a few rocks and I-I'll leave immediately. If this is your turf then take it up with the leader of the northern camp."

"This cave-in caused a tremor," the leader growled, restraining himself from interrupting the chatty, shivering man again, "it destroyed two of our buildings and nearly killed several of our warriors. We came in search of any culprits and we found you, an outsider. If you're partly responsible for this, then the punishment of our people is death.Your crime is certain and we will not take into account your off-world plea."

Right. Of course it would be death. No rainbows and sunshine present. Straight to the point.

"What?" the Doctor stated, "N-now hold on a second, I never intended for the cave to collapse, I w-was only trying to h-"

A firm kick to the face stopped his plea. The large, armour-clad foot smacked violently into what felt like the entirety of his face, throwing it back and causing horrible vibrations from the impact. Within seconds, droplets of blood escaped from the Doctor's nose and, with no strength to keep his posture defensive, let his whole upper body collapse from the impact of the kick, his face buried in rubble and his breathing raw.

Selfish, ignorant - now he could add violent to his ever-growing negative list.

"You have no say in this!" the leader declared. None of them took pity on the trapped man, nor had they listened to any of his pleas. The Doctor managed to keep one eye feebly looking up, the figures now blurred in the blue light as he tried to retain some of his dwindling focus.

"You... you c-cant do this," the Time Lord wheezed, unable to keep his jaw tremors at bay from the cold and pain, "I h-have r-rights, under the juri... jurisdiction of the Shadow Procla-AH!"

Another kick. This time, his ear caught the brunt force.

"What should we do with him? A quick death would perhaps be more efficient... it would shut him up quicker," one of the group suggested while another shook his head, ignoring the Time Lords wheezes and groans of discomfort.

"Maybe we should leave him to starve... he already appears to be near it."

"Silence - you all know the law. We came here to find the one guilty of the collapse and we found him. I carried out the sentence, it is I who follows through with it," the leader confided, "if the northern clan finds him, they will heed our warning. If what he says is even true."

For the second time that day, the Doctor had no plan. He couldn't run or even move. He couldn't plea for his life. He couldn't even use his most entrusted tool.

He couldn't save himself. And his hearts were now pumping with fear. Not just for himself.

But for Donna.

Read the rest over on AO3!

#yaaaas chapter 2 #i forgot how much i bloody love whumping ten #i want that twink obliterated #tenth doctor #donna noble #doctor who #ten x donna #my fic

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redqueenmiku · 4 years

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A DECADE’S RETROSPECTIVE, REDQUEENMIKU STYLE

Here we are, facing down the start of a brand new decade. This decade has had its ups and downs for everyone. For me, this has been an extremely eventful decade. So much has happened that it’s actually ridiculous.

So, I got to thinking: as we enter 2020, I want to take a look back at my past ten years of existence and really give you guys a peek into my mind. You’re going to learn where I came from and how I got to where I am now. This decade contained my first experiences with the great wide world of posting to the internet and everything that came with it.

Are you ready? Let’s travel back in time to the start of this decade…

2010

2010 started with the final half of my eighth-grade year. I was an awkward child with a million original characters and no friends.

It was pretty sad.

Eighth grade came and went and summer came around. Wow! Look! What’s that?! Toward the end of the summer that year, a certain character named Jake Speed was born and Diametrics, then known as Lightning Speed, officially commenced. If you don’t know about my precious brainchild, Diametrics, don’t worry. I have something big planned for this summer to coincide with the series’ tenth anniversary that’ll answer everyone’s burning questions.

Then, toward the end of the year, after entering ninth grade, something amazing happened. I officially began my long and storied internet posting career.

Where did I start, you ask?...if you have to ask at all, I mean I’ve mentioned this probably a million times by this point but YES. I got my start as Shinymew76 on Nickelodeon’s official Invader Zim message boards. I was just getting my bearings at this time, so I didn’t do all that much of note, but I was getting ready to make my very first power move…

2011

Now, if you don’t know anything about what the Invader Zim message boards were like, we were kind of a hot mess. We were a tight-knit hot mess, though, and dang if we weren’t proud of it. The main activities of the message boards were making OCs and writing fanfiction. You know how sometimes on fanfiction.net you’ll find those really weird stories that are written entirely in script format? That was our bread and butter on the IZ boards. Just about everyone wrote that way. We had to be pretty kid-friendly too. I mean, what you could get away with depended on what our mod, NickZa, was feeling like that day, we were generally pretty restricted.

It’s important to remember that we were also little baby teenagers in a community revolving around Invader Zim.

In 2011, I began to really try to make a name for myself on the message boards. I started a short-lived gameshow series where people could submit their OCs to compete. It was a Total Drama kind of deal but it never really took off all that well. Then, though, I started a fanfiction titled “200 Years From Now”, which told the story of Dib accidentally transporting himself and Gaz to the future, where Zim has been exiled and a new Irken has been assigned to conquer the earth: Miki. Then, Zim returns to earth and something something rebellion to take down the Tallests. I don’t remember most of the story considering a good chunk of it was lost to time, but it definitely existed. The story also featured Zaz and Zelena, other people’s OCs that they submitted to be part of the story.

I don’t know how big that story made it. I really don’t know the scope, so I couldn’t say with certainty how many people read or enjoyed that story. Younger me, however, thought it was THE BEST. Immediately after it ended, I was already planning for a sequel with the same characters, adding villains from the still-thriving Lightning Speed. The story never actually got written and there was no real plan for anything about it aside from what I just told you, but there you go.

I also branched out further, spreading myself to other Nick.com boards with a variety of usernames because I was a coward. One account was 2darcara2, which was meant for the Danny Phantom and TUFF Puppy boards. I never did anything on the latter, the only remnant being an OC for the series known as Agent Darcara Fox. The former, though, came with two OCs, Annette and Aria Spectrelle, and a fanfiction: Eternal Darkness. The story revolved around Danny Phantom meeting Annette, who was being bullied by her older sister, Aria, and something about Aria being ultra-powerful and wanting Danny dead. Again, much of the story is lost to the ages. 2darcara2 also had an Invader Zim OC to coincide with it: Invader Erin, who had dark powers a la Raven from Teen Titans.

In case you couldn’t tell, 2darcara2 was the edgy one.

Then there was the other account: xxpetalxx. This account was meant for the iCarly and Victorious boards and also had her own Invader Zim OC, a human named Miriam. xxpetalxx published two stories, actually. The first was a crossover for Victorious and Invader Zim, where Zim and Dib end up at Hollywood Arts and Dib tries to get Tori to team up with him against Zim. It never finished, but it was something. More importantly, though, there was iMeet a Hero in Hollywood. I can’t even remember which board this went up on, but it was a three-way crossover between iCarly, Victorious, and Lightning Speed. Yeah. I was getting rather crazy here. I’ll talk more about the unfortunates of iMeet a Hero in Hollywood during that big surprise project I teased earlier, but it was a huge mess. Besides the fact that no one cared and I was way out of my element, it just sort of...dropped off the face of the earth.

Back to the main account, though. I lost the Shinymew76 account somewhere along the way, so I had to take up a new handle for my main account, JS712, named after Jake Speed. After getting bored of trying to maintain two secondary accounts, I cut the whole thing off save for iMeet a Hero in Hollywood and decided to just do things with my main account. That was when I decided to check out the miscellaneous boards. One was a board dedicated to original writing. Of course, I dabbled with posting the first story of Lightning Speed there only to have it rejected the first time around, likely because one of the characters was holding a gun. Yeah. This is how strict things were around there. I got it up the second time, but only by getting rid of the gun. The story never garnered any attention either, so that was a waste of time.

Then there was the video game board. This was a place for discussion about anything and everything video games. I remember everyone there making a big fuss about Chuggaconroy and how he was the best lets-player out there. Simpler times, those were.

On those boards, I attempted to launch a Sonic-themed series known as “Adventures in the Z-7 Station”. The series starred a character named Krystal the Hedgehog, who owned a boarding house called the Z-7 Station, where Sonic, Tails, Amy, Cream, Rouge, Shadow, Omega, Vector, Espio, Charmy, and Eggman lived. I also invited people to submit their own OCs to be included in the story.

No one gave a crap.

Even so, I endured, writing a good number of stories for the series. None of them actually went up, though. Sad, isn’t it?

Finally, I extended myself to the Penguins of Madagascar boards, writing a story known as “Penguins of Madagascar Humanized: Unleashed”. The story revolved around the adventures of the penguins, the lemurs, and Marlene, but as humans. There were also humanized versions of Dr. Blowhole and the android version of Skipper that showed up in, like, one episode of the show. They were the villains of the series alongside an OC named Violet. The story actually garnered a fair bit of recognition...until the whole thing randomly disappeared one day. Considering I didn’t archive it at all, that meant the whole thing was completely lost to time.

Of course, the message boards weren’t the only thing I was doing at this time. I was writing other fanfiction on the side too. One of these things was Shadow’s Story, a mega-crossover where Shadow the Hedgehog journeys across a crud-ton of different worlds to find the Chaos Emeralds to defeat an evil force that has made Sonic into its slave. It was one of the dumbest things in the history of ever, but I wouldn’t be mentioning it if it didn’t become important later.

Then, there came the end of the year, namely the date of November 4th. This was the day that I created a DeviantArt account under the handle KristoonzArtist76, and my life changed forever.

Immediately in the next two months I posted artwork for Lightning Speed, Penguins of Madagascar Humanized, 200 Years From Now, Shadow’s Story, and Adventures in the Z-7 Station. There was also the version of Lightning Speed’s first story that went up on the message boards as well as an attempt to recreate Penguins of Madagascar Humanized in comic form...and it was complete garbage.

I also met back up with people from the message boards during this time, seeing as they also had DeviantArt accounts. The most notable of these were Heidi and Mollie, both of which had been a constant presence on the Invader Zim boards and had actually made pretty significant names for themselves there. Mollie, though, had also been significant on the Penguins boards. I believe she even read the Humanized story before it was deleted.

Anyway, that brings us to the end of 2011. Now we move right into…

2012

2012 was when I started to get really frustrated with the boards...and I pretty much just left. You’re not really going to hear anything about the boards from here on out.

The first significant thing about 2012 happened in February: I bought a thirty-five dollar digital drawing tablet off Amazon. It was a cheap, floppy, plastic thing, but, to a younger me, it was the greatest thing ever. It was with that that I started my grand excursion into the world of digital art, starting with Microsoft Paint.

At the end of February, I decided that I was going to do something special to commemorate the leap year. This took the form of a new original story called The ExPERiMENT, which was about two experimental humans with the absolute worst names in existence, Haretaieto and Aidamizumi, nicknamed Hareta and Mizu for short. The two of them were labelled as defective and scheduled for execution, but are saved and brought to a secret compound for...well...undecided reasons. The story was meant to be told in the form of diary entries dated to the actual days each of them were to be released, but this quickly fell apart and ended up spelling the story’s doom. It stopped after the rescue on April 2nd and was never updated again, despite one or two unreleased efforts on my end to revive it.

In another turn of events, I published what I had for Adventures in the Z-7 Station on DeviantArt. The series went on to introduce Sonia and Manic from Sonic Underground, as well as several new OCs: Spright the Raccoon, Leigh the Hedgehog, and Raven the Echidna. A friend’s OC, Silverdust the Husky, was also included.

Then there was the day I logged on to find children staring me in the face. Heidi, one of the friends I had mentioned earlier, had written a story about her Invader Zim OCs that had also involved characters from Lightning Speed. In particular, the main character, also named Heidi, was involved in a romantic relationship with Dnias Speed, as agreed upon and supported by both of us. Then, one day, Heidi posted drawings of a theoretical set of children for the couple.

Those two children were Dante and Jupiter Speed. They will become extremely important later.

Lightning Speed continued to flourish in this time and I was still keeping up with trying to start getting good at digital art. At the end of May, I opened up five request slots, which ended up getting decent reception...from a bunch of bronies.

Did I forget to mention I was in the My Little Pony fandom at this time?

Things continued on from there. I went to prom, I made more Invader Zim OCs, I reached 100 posts on DeviantArt, I quit the message boards, I started learning how to drive, I pared down my ridiculous number of OCs, I read the Warriors series and actually started writing Warriors fanfiction with a whole four clans full of OCs, I made a group on DeviantArt for Lightning Speed, and many things continued as they already had.

Then, September rolled around and everything changed again.

It began with a class trip and the friend I sat next to on the bus. That friend introduced me to many things that day. One of those things was Law of Talos. Law of Talos is a phase in my life that I referenced for two seconds and then continued to haunt me for the rest of eternity.

The more important thing, though, is my first introduction to Vocaloid. On that day in September of 2012, I became a Vocaloid fanatic for the rest of my natural-born life. This would quickly become both a blessing and a curse.

Then, October rolled around and blessed me with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. I immediately ditched MS Paint and embraced the new art program whole-heartedly. It was a whole new world. Suddenly I had layers and a color wheel and drawings that didn’t look pixellated.

Then, when Christmas came along, it also gave me a shot at a brand new tablet: a real Wacom Bamboo tablet.

I got fed up trying to get used to it and went back to my old tablet, handing the Bamboo off to my sister. I can’t tell if that was a terrible mistake or not, but here we are.

2013

In January of 2013, I discovered MikuMikuDance. MikuMikuDance is a free program that lets one pose and animate 3D models, primarily for use with Vocaloid models but with models for just about everything under the sun existing in one place or another.

This program was the worst thing that ever happened to me period.

Slowly but surely my art started to get completely drowned out by constant MMD images. I had MMD OCs, being crappy recolors of Miku and Rin. I had bizarre lore for different models. I put together those stupid Jewel Hearts that people keep downloading to this very day and I get messages of people favoriting them on DeviantArt constantly and it makes me want to scream because all I did was take a half of a heart someone else had made and just slap the two sides together and recolor it a few times yet it’s literally the most popular thing I’ve ever made someone please end meeeeee.

*ahem*

The MMD stuff wasn’t so bad in 2013, but this is where it started, so I’m obligated to mention it.

As for things that weren’t MMD that happened in 2013, we first have Lightning Speed. In 2013, the final material for the first run of the series was posted on DeviantArt. It wasn’t planned to be the last, but that’s how things worked out. The series still continued outside of DeviantArt, but there’s nothing on the internet to show for it.

There was also the X-Factor OC tournament, a tournament run by Heidi where various Invader Zim characters would be put up against each other in a literary battle of the ages. The character I entered was one I had adopted off the message boards before my departure: Quinn. Three of the tournament’s four rounds took place this year, all of which were wins for Quinn and my admittedly lackluster writing.

2013 also happened to be the time of a monumental shift in fandom for me. I voluntarily left behind the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. To fill the void, though, I turned to...Koopalings. This, again, was both a blessing and a curse.

And, on top of that, 2013 was the year I attended my very first convention and wore my very first cosplay. I was a hastily-put-together Kagamine Rin. The costume was crap and the convention was just a tiny local event, but I still had fun nonetheless.

Then, at the end of 2013, something incredible happened. Heidi had created a shipping meme some months prior. As her friend, I filled out the meme and, in the process, I jokingly decided to pair Miku up with a cloud. Eventually, the joke devolved, said cloud eventually turning into one certain character of mine that had once had a cloud-like form. Then, that Christmas, I produced my very first annual Christmas shipping picture with said couple: Miku and the character known as Red King.

Yes, dear friends. This is where Red Queen Miku was born.

Oh, I also got a laptop for Christmas. That happened too.

2014

The first thing I did in 2014 was start up a challenge that would quickly become the bane of my existence: the MMD 100 Themes Challenge. This absolutely massive undertaking was the death blow for anything non-MMD related on my DeviantArt account. By that point, I was rarely posting actual art. 80 of 100 themes were posted this year alongside many more MMD images, dwarfing all other posts from this year.

Even through the MMD, though, I found the time and energy to start up my very own OC tournament: the Nightmare Manor OCT. Character submissions for the tournament began in February and, after the final audition phase from April to August, 14 characters had been entered and matched up for round one. After that, round 2 began in December, now down to only 6 participants after eliminations.

2014 was also the year that the first run of Lightning Speed finally came to an official close after over fifty quote-unquote “seasons”, ending officially on September 13th. In its wake, though, emerged Cannonfire, the story of Dante and Jupiter and their quest to escape nonexistence after being removed from their world. At the end of the story, Dante and Jupiter return from the city of those that don’t exist, Cannonfire, now existing in a parallel reality to the Lightning Speed series. The story was written early in 2014 and posted that summer.

Besides that, there were also my first full-fledged fanfictions for the Mario fandom. There was The Show Must Go On, a story about Lemmy Koopa getting kidnapped by a gang of thugs and Iggy and Larry venturing out to try to save him, and Cold Wind, a series of short stories about the Koopalings living in a normal neighborhood, going to a normal school, and doing normal things, based off of events from my own past. A few tertiary stories left over from the original run of Lightning Speed were also posted

Also this year, the final round of the X-Factor OCT began. Quinn ended up winning once again, securing victory over the entire OCT with a piece of writing that, honestly, was rushed and kind of lazy. I’m convinced I only got by because my opponent did literally nothing.

August 2014 would also mark the last time I’d open up requests on DeviantArt, this time only being single-character sketch commissions. I believe it was sometime after this that I abandoned the My Little Pony fandom for good, although not necessarily because of it.

And then tragedy struck. 2014 marked the release of my first Youtube videos featuring terrible voice acting that I tried to pass off as being good. People still watch these things to this day. I hate these videos and everything they stand for.

Most importantly, however, 2014 was the year I graduated from high school and the year I started attending college, going for an Associate’s in Simulation and Game Development at the local community college. I spent my first semester learning the basics and getting adjusted, eventually making my first college friend.

2015

2015 is the year that absolutely everything started changing for the better.

...well, almost everything. First, let’s get the bad news out of the way.

Checking back in on the Nightmare Manor OCT, the tournament’s second round of six contestants garnered a grand total of half an entry. After two separate calls to action, the tournament was abandoned in May without an official statement; a mistake on my part, but I was pretty depressed about the whole thing, so can you really blame me?

The MMD 100 Theme Challenge was also abandoned this year, stopping at theme 97 out of 100. Fun fact: the last three images actually exist. I just never posted them.

Then there was Curtain Call, the sequel to The Show Must Go On. Curtain Call was a disaster and it’s probably the worst fanfiction I’ve ever written besides, well, Shadow’s Story. Please don’t ever read it.

Now for the good news.

Firstly, 2015 was the year that I finally stopped using MMD. Even in the beginning part of the year, I was already posting far less of it. This meant I was focusing more on my art and, when I say that, that’s no exaggeration. 2015 was a huge year of improvement for me, from learning new techniques to adopting a vastly different art style that was more fun for me to use to ditching Autodesk in favor of Krita, allowing me to finally move past my inhibitions and actually use things like pen pressure, which I was too afraid to do in Autodesk, where I’d kept my settings the exact same since 2012. I also obtained a new drawing tablet: a Wacom Intuos 3 given to me by my uncle as a hand-me-down.

The things I wrote this year weren’t anything particularly special, for the most part. Cold Wind continued and Surveyor’s Wings, a crossover involving Larry, Wendy, and Roy Koopa getting transported to the world of Attack on Titan, started up, going into indefinite hiatus a short time later. There was also This is Me, a short one about Larry Koopa accidentally switching bodies with Luigi. Above all of them, though, was In Memoriam Vos, a twisted story where the Koopalings are suddenly thrust into a world that wants Lemmy Koopa dead. This was also the year I created an account on Fanfiction.net, named RedQueenMiku, where I posted “This is Me” and “In Memoriam Vos”.

This year was also the year of the Mushroom Timeline, my first attempt at a Mario timeline that also came with its own map. With that also came my first time arguing a Game Theory video, being that I couldn’t just ignore the fact that their timeline came out the day before I posted my own.

This year was also the year I entered another OC tournament: Origins OCT. I entered Dnias from the Lightning Speed series, partnered with his mental companion of cynical disposition, Yang. The tournament was a blast and I had a lot of fun with it, even with all the mistakes I made in the process. The first three rounds took place this year, all of which I won.

Lightning Speed also received a hard reboot this year, transitioning into the short-lived “Lightning Speed 2”. The first story of this run released this year.

This was also the year that I discovered and subsequently adopted a group of bootleg Koopalings I began affectionately referring to as the Bootleglings. Nonexist was created to coexist beside them later that year. The Sesonia AU was also launched, being an AU that shuffles around Koopalings from both the games and the cartoons and Bootleglings, placing them in a fantasy world heavily themed around the four seasons where magic is a prominent feature. Also, there was KoopaDoopa4321, a joke account I made on DeviantArt. I never did all that much with it, but it existed and I posted some art produced in MS Paint there.

This was also the year I created my Tumblr account, RedQueenMiku, this being the second account of mine to bear this name after the Youtube account the year before (because the Fanfiction account came afterward). Because of this, 2015 was my first year participating in the yearly Tumblr event known as Koopalings Week (as well as the year I created my human designs for the Koopalings). Later in the year, I created a second blog, justkristoonzartist76things, for posting small blurbs and generally ranting out of the way of the main blog. It took me a while to find my footing on Tumblr and get comfortable enough to start posting art, but, eventually, my main blog transitioned from reblog city to a mainly art-focused blog. Two more blogs also popped up toward the end of the year: little-red-dolls, which was dedicated to a dress-up game kick I’d had at the time as a big guilty pleasure that didn’t last that long, and frame-by-frame-mario, a blog devoted to weird inbetweens and animations errors in the Mario cartoons.

Finally, this year had one more significant occurrence: I witnessed my future anime husband, Sakaki Yuya, for the first time over my friend’s shoulder in class. Due to this, I asked my friend to teach me how to play Yugioh. Now you know why I started playing Yugioh. It was all Yuya’s fault for being so handsome.

2016

2016 built a lot upon what 2015 started. In fact, in a lot of ways, I regard it as a continuation of 2015.

2016 was also the year I snagged myself a Core Membership on DeviantArt and finally renamed my account from KristoonzArtist76 to the iconic RedQueenMiku you see today. I also changed the name of my second blog to correspond with this, it becoming justredqueenmiku things. From here on, RedQueenMiku would become a constant handle for me on absolutely everything.

The biggest thing that happened at the start of 2016, though, was me finally playing a certain indie game that had come out the previous year: Undertale. I immediately became obsessed. I drew art for the series, I made a blog specifically for it, rqmundertaleparty, to keep spoilers away from those that didn’t want it, and I undertook the challenge of drawing every single major character from the game, which I ultimately succeeded with, coming out with sixty-two drawings for the challenge.

Then, there were the AUs. Many of my AUs for Undertale at that time were simple derivatives of things I already had, like Sesoniatale, Yangtale (which was planned to have a story, but was scrapped), and Nostritale (based off of the Memoriam series, which had recently gained a new entry in the form of a very basic version of In Memoriam Nostri, which would be expanded upon later). There was also Underfire, an Undertale derivative of Cannonfire that had its own short series of comic strips, and Mariotale, which was my attempt to cast Mario characters in the roles of Undertale characters.

Lastly but most importantly, for April Fools that year, I decided to, as a joke, revive Adventures in the Z-7 Station as an Undertale AU titled Krystaltale. The revival, though, ended up having twisted meta elements that eventually warranted its continuation from the three parts posted on DeviantArt for April Fools. In the AU, Krystal was changed to a skeleton named Lucida, but still retained her memories from her previous incarnation and wished to recreate what she had in this new world she suddenly finds herself in using the powers of resetting and scripting to make events exactly the way she wants them. Sans catches on to them and starts to oppose Lucida, creating the back and forth that would persist for the rest of the series.

Also for April Fools that year, I attempted to start an ask blog on Tumblr for the Bootleglings, titled ask-the-real-koopalings. The blog never took off, however, mostly due to my own lack of motivation.

Also in 2016, Cannonfire received a sequel, Cannonfire 2, in which Dante and Jupiter are brought back to Cannonfire, where this time they would remain alongside another Lightning Speed child, Thicket, and a character that had been scrapped during the transition from Lightning Speed to Lightning Speed 2: Nightmare.

In January of 2016, the final round of the Origins OCT came and went, with myself taking the runner-up spot. Later that year, a second season of Origins would begin, this time with myself entering Dante. After the first round, however, the tournament abruptly ended.

2016 was also the year I finally started watching Yugioh Arc V. I made it through nearly forty episodes this year. I also updated my human Koopaling designs and started doing DeviantArt memes for fun, notably posting the very first version of the first crack lovechild meme I did. My first palette challenge was this year as well and, slowly but surely, I was moving myself away from DeviantArt and toward Tumblr as my primary platform. There was also the first death of KoopaDoopa4321, meant to be on April Fools, but accidentally delayed to April 2nd. This was also the year I changed the anniversary of Lightning Speed from July 12th to July 29th and posted the second and final story of Lightning Speed 2.

Speaking of, there wasn’t a lot of writing that came out from me this year. Besides Krystaltale and Lightning Speed 2, there was a one-shot based on my old headcanons about Bowser’s past titled “Her Name Was Annabel” and a story revolving around Ludwig von Koopa after the birth of Bowser Jr and the subsequent revoking of Ludwig’s birthright that also included elements of Superstar Saga, this one titled “Decomposure”. These went up exclusively on Fanfiction.net along with a cross-post of The Show Must Go On. There was also one more part of Cold Wind that went up on DeviantArt before the series went into indefinite hiatus. Behind the scenes, though, I was already starting up stories for the Sesonia AU, the Bootleglings, the Memoriam series, and multiple things for Undertale including two crossovers and two one-shots. I also received a dare from a friend this year to finally write a sequel to Shadow’s Story in the worst possible way as a great big joke, so that happened too, resulting in Shadow’s Sequel.

On top of all this, I finished the Simulation and Game Development program I was in, our capstone project being producing an RPG titled “Life’s Memory”. It was an extreme prototype of a game, but I believe we accomplished what we set out to do.

Then, at the end of the year, I posted the final awful voice acting video I ever made. It was meant to make fun of the previous ones, but it ended up being cringy in its own right, so I still regret it immensely.

2017

2017 for me started with news of an upcoming move that summer, which immediately sent me into a depression over having to leave behind the place I’d been living for nearly ten years by that point. As a result, I feel into a rather extreme slump. I took on an expression challenge to try to cure my art block, not posting a single finished piece outside of that until the end of February. I started several sketches for images that I never completed and subsequently threw out. I abandoned the frame-by-frame Mario blog after trying to hand it off to someone else with no reception. I didn’t return to DeviantArt until April due to anxiety about the amount of messages piling up from a posting flood at the end of the previous year. Generally, I was just feeling like a piece of garbage.

There wasn’t much that happened in the first part of the year. I was certainly writing more than I was drawing, though. I started two more Cannonfires and a project named “I Can Fix You” that was supposed to go up at the end of that year, but ended up being shoved back. There was also the next story in the Krystaltale saga, “The Mispersonification Ray” which actually did go up on DeviantArt. I did also create the Barian Koopalings AU at the start of this year as well.

Over the course of the year and especially during the move, I started watching more Yugioh Arc V, eventually finishing the series by September. I also watched Yuri on Ice this year. I also got back into the crack love-child meme and, after finishing my second one shortly after the move, I came up with the premise for “The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine” and created worlds for all the children to live their lives, quickly revamping the first meme shortly after.

Then, on July 29th, I officially revealed Lightning Speed’s final reboot to Diametrics. I’ll talk more about Diametrics in that thing I keep teasing, though, so keep an eye out for that later this year.

Then Koopalings Week 2017 came around, I set unrealistic standards for myself, and it crushed my soul again.

This year also just so happened to be the year that I looked back on my rant on the Game Theory Mario Timeline and said “Yeah, I could have done better”. This led me to start writing theory rebuttals that would eventually turn into full-fledged videos. I created the first version of a video on Game Theory’s Rosalina Unmasked video this year, as well as wrote the first draft of a script on Game Theory’s Mario Timeline and a couple other theories.

Things proceeded as normal into the end of the year. I drew more Arc V art, I started writing my first Arc V fanfictions, I posted the somewhat-sequel to In Memoriam Vos, In Memoriam Eius, I made a Wattpad account that I posted Cannonfire 1 and 2 on and then swiftly abandoned, I drew a piece for Hatsune Miku’s tenth anniversary, I posted a Christmas special for Krystaltale, I made an account for the Yuri on Ice Amino, and…

...oh...right...

that drama started this year…

So, in December of this year, I was approached by a user I’ll keep anonymous for her own sake. This user, who I’ll call “T”, directed my eye toward her DeviantArt account, which contained uncredited drawings of her characters wearing some of the outfits of my Bootlegling designs and Nonexist. I asked for these to be credited and they weren’t. This doesn’t escalate, though, until…

2018

In 2018, the T drama escalated from an argument to an all-out war. I did some things I’m not proud of, but I tried to come at the situation with as much grace and dignity as I could muster. I’m not going into detail because, in the end, it doesn’t matter to the present day—the whole thing is over and no one needs to bring it back up like that—but the only thing worth knowing is that I unintentionally stoked a fire I was ill-prepared to deal with and, somehow, I gained a crud-ton of followers on DeviantArt because of it.

Finally, in April, after T had been ignoring large majorities of my messages and the situation moved far beyond needing my input, I dropped out of the whole thing, making my final statement and leaving it be.

Now I can talk about everything else that happened in 2018. Gracious.

The beginning of 2018 was slow because of the drama debacle, but I started a palette challenge on Tumblr and I drew pieces for Yuri Plisetsky’s fictional birthday and Mar10 Day, along with a third crack love-child meme for The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine, finally revealing the whole thing on DeviantArt toward the end of the year and even starting on a fourth entry, and I entered a contest on the Yuri on Ice Amino with a picture of Otabek that didn’t end up placing.

April Fools then rolled around and, for 2018, I decided to re-release Shadow’s Story alongside the sequel I’d written two years prior on my newly-acquired AO3 account. The whole thing was massively ridiculous and even included pictures every few paragraphs, just like the original had so many years ago. I don’t know if anyone even caught chapter 19, though...

Summer came, I moved Diametrics’ anniversary to July 31st, I started up a challenge called the RedQueenMiku Redraw Bonanza where I redraw, like, a bajillion old pieces from my past, and I drew pieces and wrote a whole slew of bios for Koopalings Week 2018. Fall came, I went off on Nintendo’s announcement of New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe and the existence of Peachette, I started on a brand-new Mario timeline, I finally posted Roy, I started and subsequently failed my first attempt at a Goretober after only three days, I played Deltarune, I posted a redraw of an image involving Karl from Castle of Nations and Law of Talos that was actually a huge mistake to post, I started a Twitter account, and I created and started taking requests for a brand new challenge called the Yuri Expression Challenge, where I draw characters with expressions from various screencaps of Yuri from Arc V. Brilliant, I know. Praise me for my intelligent brain.

2019

And we finally come to the year we’re leaving behind us tonight: 2019. 2019 has been a heck of a year on its own.

2019, in itself, was a lot like 2017. I started off massively depressed, then, in the summer, we moved again.

In January, we lost our dog and I spiraled into depression again. Between that and computer issues, I didn’t actually do a lot in January. I did, however, join an art group on the Yuri on Ice amino in this time: Artevivo. I posted one more piece for the Yuri Challenge before my desktop failed on me and I was forced to either do art on my quickly-dying laptop or go traditional. The latter is what I did for the first Artevivo prompt post, though I took the former route to make a doodle post announcing my sort-of official return to the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom.

Next up was February. I did a few more traditional doodles, one set of them revealing an Arc V AU known as the Dragonia AU, before I finally got my desktop back online. I drew a couple more pieces after that, including an Artevivo prompt for Valentine’s Day involving Otabek and Mila.

March came with Mar10 day once again and an Artevivo prompt about boy bands in which I made a stupid joke by drawing Yuuri, Victor, and Yurio as Dreamboat Express a la Sonic Boom. I also entered a contest on the Amino for St. Patrick’s Day and, while I ended up just shy of winning the whole shebang, I did place first in my category, earning the title of Emerald Princess. Most importantly, though, I dropped a bunch of titles for future writing projects. Some of them, like “I Can Fix You”, “Yu-Gi-Oh: Arc INFINITE”, “Sesonia: The Dark of Spring”, “In Memoriam Nostri”, and Cannonfires 3 and 4 had already been previously announced, but others like “Tales from a Dark and Stormy Night”, “49”, “Jump Up, Superstar!”, “Memory to Hunt her Down”, and, most notably, “In Memoriam ihr Zerbrechliches Ego”, were brand new announcements.

April came around with a half-hearted failed attempt at an April Fools event that we don’t need to talk about and not much else. There was an Artevivo prompt about Cherry Blossoms, another entry in the Redraw Challenge, and I drew some bears. That was really about it.

In May, I traveled for Animazement 2019, which ended up being a heck of a lot of fun. There was also an Artevivo prompt about sea creatures AND the release of the first real story in “The Great S.T.O.R.K. Machine”’s series on AO3. At the end of the month, though, I had a real scare. I backed up everything on my laptop onto an external hard drive then, about a week after that, my laptop sang its final hurrah, dying to a critical hard drive failure.

June was a much slower month. I drew a few pieces at the beginning of the month, but, by the end, we had already begun our next big move. I managed to squeeze in a Sonic birthday sketch dump before we left and I even got the Artevivo prompt for that month done ahead of time. The rest of the month, though, was pretty much completely dead, as I had to pack up my only remaining computer for the move. At the very end of the month, though, I bought a brand-new laptop, meaning I was officially back in business and better than ever, at that.

July started with me taking on a style challenge on the Amino and just generally drawing a whole heck of a lot. This continued all the way through July.

Then, August came. I kept up with Koopalings Week like I never had before, ending it out with the least fatigue I’d ever felt coming out of a Koopalings week. I also finally finished an enormous piece for Diametrics that I had planned to finish for the anniversary, but that took much longer than expected due to the sheer scale of the piece. There was also an Artevivo prompt about fruit somewhere in there too.

September was a month that I vowed to be productive for considering the previous year’s September I did absolute bupkis. What a productive September it was too. I drew some Sonic characters in Vocaloid outfits, released an Undertale two-shot called “Vodka en Rouge”, added another three entries to the Redraw Bonanza, completed an Artevivo prompt for Fall, and started preparing for another crack at the Goretober I’d failed the previous year by drawing six different practice pictures. We also finally got into our new house this month, so that was great too.

Then, Goretober finally came. Did I succeed this time? Well, no. I managed to get most all of them done, but 27, 28, 29, and 30 were never completed. Even so, I produced a grand total of 25 images this month, which is still absolutely insane. I also made a rule for myself that I couldn’t draw for the same fandom twice, meaning the variety of pieces was vast and I even drew characters that I had never previously drawn like Twelve from Zankyou no Terror, Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender, Sakura from Zombieland Saga, Luluco from Space Patrol Luluco, and Kaoru from Ouran High School Host Club.

When November rolled around, I swore to myself I wouldn’t let myself slump into inactivity like I had after previous challenges like Koopalings Week 2018. With that resolve, I kept drawing. I drew a piece celebrating the new Sonic movie trailer drop. I did a short livestream only one person came to. I drew a piece of steampunk art for the Artevivo prompt. Finally, though, I started the Youtube channel I’d been preparing for for two entire years, RedQueenMiku2, and I started with newly-revamped videos on Rosalina Unmasked and the Game Theory Mario Timeline, just like I’d planned to do years ago.

Finally, we come to the present. December came with three more videos, a Silvaze Christmas piece, a Christmas Aretevivo prompt, and the retrospective you’re reading right now. Really, looking at 2019 as a whole, it’s like what 2017 could have been if I’d done things right. In 2017, I let depression get the best of me and let my work suffer because of it. In 2019, though, I pushed through and vowed not to quit, bettering myself because of it.

That’s the big thing here, really. 2010-2014 was all about me trying to find myself as a young, impressionable teenager, 2015 and 2016 were me discovering where I wanted to be and how I wanted to present myself, and 2017-2019 were me coming to terms with myself and pushing through my own mental roadblocks. Looking at where I started and where I’ve ended up, the difference is staggering. Of course, it has been ten years, after all. Now, as we look ahead to 2020 and the start of a brand new decade, I can only hope things will just keep getting better from here.

Happy 2020, everyone. Cheers.

#sorry for the long #this is just something i wanted to do for posterity's sake #it's fun to look back and see where you came from #also i'm highly sentimental #to a ridiculous degree #so yeah #that's where all this nonsense came from #*jazz hands*#happy new year everyone!!!

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leakinghate · 6 years

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The Depths to which We Sink

Disclaimer: This theory and analysis contradicts some points made in my previous metas, but what’s the fun of speculation if we limit ourselves to having it all gel together?

Nothing in animation is wasted: every action and expression seen on screen is something someone had to draw and something someone had to pay for. Everything is deliberate, from changes in expression to major plot events, and things which do not contribute to the overarching vision of the show will rarely, if ever, be included. Voltron Legendary Defender in particular moves so fast that they don’t have the space to include anything extraneous even when they want to. The showrunners have said in interviews that they’ve had to cut several of their comedy ideas for lack of space.

The exception to this that has always stood out to me as not fitting into the meta narrative is s2e2 'The Depths'. It's mostly plot irrelevant on the whole, with it being notable only for introducing the Blue Lion’s sonic canon. Sure it has some nice character moments for Lance, and the animation is beautiful, but it’s basically filler. It’s almost completely forgotten by the story, only brought up again once, when Lance references the mermaids in s3e2, ‘Red Paladin’.

In preparation for the fast approaching season 7 on August 10th I was attempting to re-watch the entire show up to the end of s6. Most re-watches I do I skip less plot relevant episodes like ‘The Depths’, but I wanted to go through the whole show this time.

But as I was watching this particular episode, post season six. I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu. So what do you do when you think you’ve stumbled upon some heretofore unnoticed foreshadowing? Why, bring it to the Lotura Discord of course! We put our heads together and came up with some fascinating observations, as well as some intriguing possibilities for where the plot might be headed in the future.

On re-watching it again, post season six, 'The Depths’ contains an uncanny amount of foreshadowing to the entire colony plot.

Two of our protagonists unexpectedly stumble upon a completely isolated and hidden settlement after traveling through a strange space anomaly. They are initially greeted by a single member of a race they previously believed did not exist (anymore).

The mermaid civilization is beneath a thick layer of ice, and the Altean colony is inside a dome.

Information received from an erstwhile ally reveals an apparently sinister truth about the actions and motivations of someone in power who had previously acted as a friend. To wit: the authority figure has deceived their loyal subjects for the purpose of killing them.

The ally that provides this information readily admits that they do not know all the facts and that their conclusion is only a theory based on the facts that they do have.

Dialogue from The Depths:

Lance: But what’s the point? Why mind-control the mermaids? Blumfump: To kill them! Lance: Really? Blumfump: Well, we don’t know that for sure, but hundreds of mermaids have disappeared and never come back.

Dialogue from The Colony:

Romelle: My brother was dead. I knew the truth, or at least part of it, but I also knew that no one would believe me without proof. When Keith and Krolia arrived they were my last chance at finding it. I told them what had happened to my brother, and as it turned out, so many Alteans that had been taken before him. As they explained their mission to me, we knew there must have been a connection between the missing Alteans and the pure strain of quintessence.

One of our protagonists is compromised by an antagonist’s mind control and is used to attack and subdue his fellows. The shadows on Hunk’s face when he is under mind control even look like Shiro’s scar.

The physical appearances of several characters are also intriguing. The one character we see fall victim to the Baku, Florona, is the only red-headed mermaid in the episode. A shade of red very similar to Bandor’s hair color.

Plaxum, the most prominent of the ‘cave dwellers’ and the one who eventually directly confronts the queen, has two ponytail-like projections on her head very reminiscent of Romelle’s hairstyle. They also share very similar body language. And Plaxum’s eyes while wearing her jellyfish are the same color as Romelle’s.

In fact, both of these pairs of characters share very similar color schemes; Plaxum and Romelle are teal, pink, and yellow, while Florona and Bandor are red, golden-yellow, and green.

These are all things which have already happened; there is no speculation here, only observation.

Hilariously, this means Bandor has been metaphorically represented by a red fish.

In other words, a Red Herring.

From Wikipedia:

"A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion."

This is exactly what we've been saying since season 6 aired. Specifically referring to Bandor’s line after his ship crashed through the dome. The one thing he manages to tell Romelle is: “Lotor... the other colony... It’s all a lie.” Which tells us exactly nothing, but is the evidence that convinces Romelle she is correct to distrust Lotor, and what sets off the chain of events that ultimately led to the s6 finale. It’s also the strongest evidence we as the audience have that Lotor has done something truly monstrous. The scene with Bandor irrefutably connects Lotor to the emaciated Alteans, even if we don’t know precisely what that connection is. It’s easy to assume the worst both in and out of universe.

In cinema characters with red hair are often made to be the red herrings. A red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. Bandor led Romelle to a false conclusion.

Both in and out of the show. Romelle concluded wrong. The paladins concluded wrong. The AUDIENCE concluded wrong.

What’s next? Well, the plot of ‘The Depths’ isn’t a 1-to-1 relation to the Altean Colony storyline, so it’s difficult to say exactly what aspects of the episode’s climactic fight and conclusion will turn out to be relevant. But, we can be fairly certain that the overall narrative is the same.

The apparent villain was actually being manipulated into taking the actions they took by a greater, silent threat. The few rebels our protagonists met were wrong about who was the real enemy. They were right about the issue, but wrong about the ‘why.’ The leader was not at fault because the leader had fallen prey to the creature first and was subsequently rendered powerless to stop it.

Perhaps even, and here we get into more speculation...

The real threat was something that loomed large in the background the whole time, assumed to be providing safety. Fallen from space.

The Baku is referred to as ‘the giver of life’.

That phrase is disconcertingly ominous, considering the only other time we've heard a similar phrase was in reference to Oriande. The Sages, or ‘Life Givers’, specifically.

And what is quintessence, but ‘life itself’.

JDS has previously compared Lotor to Magus from Chrono Trigger, a game I have no personal experience with, but @blackmoonbabe provides the relevant info here.

What if there's some kind of cosmic horror that Lotor's been fending off with Altean quintessence? Possibly, the only kind strong enough - apart from the rift sourced variety. Extracting it and storing the people in the hopes of eventually restoring them. Only, now that he's gone. There's nothing stopping whatever this thing is. Who knows. It might even be related to the rift creatures.

We still don't know what the Baku was or where it came from, just that it 'fell from space.' The new trailer for season 7 features a similar looking and very toothy one-eyed beastie.

When Lotor is pleading with Allura he says:

"Allura, you must understand I’ve given everything I have to plumb the depth of King Alfor’s knowledge, to unlock the mysteries of Oriande."

It might be that he found something bad while trying to unlock those mysteries.

All of this really makes you wonder why exactly Alfor kept Oriande's existence a secret.

Post season 1, there was an interview where the showrunners said that they had to kill off Alfor's AI because he knew spoilers. Which, okay, that’s fair.

Except... what exactly have we come to know now that only Alfor’s AI could have told us ahead of time?

Everything we eventually learn about Zarkon we find out through Allura and Coran. And everything surrounding Lotor and Haggar are things that Alfor’s AI wouldn’t have known about because they happened after Alfor’s death. The only outstanding piece of information that Alfor could have know was the location of and the information about Oriande. But, Allura doesn't even think to look for Oriande until mere moments before she and Lotor unlock the map to it. Certainly, the AI could have provided information of the proper way to get past the trials, but that was resolved easily enough in-episode and it was never truly portrayed as a risk that Allura and Lotor wouldn’t return before the castle ran out of oxygen.

If it was true that Alfor knew spoilers... there is something BIG concerning Altean Alchemy that we don't yet know. Not something little. Something potentially game changing.

Even knowing there was a good chance he was going to his death, and Coran and Allura would be on their own, Alfor never told Coran about Oriande. Coran and Alfor have been shown to have a particularly close, lifelong friendship - strong enough that Coran keeps at least two portraits of Alfor in his room above his bed. Alfor trusted Coran to the extent that he entrusted his beloved daughter, the Black Lion, and the future of the universe into Coran’s hands.

And yet.

Alfor didn’t tell Coran about Oriande. The one place Allura might go to strengthen her alchemic abilities and reach her potential. Alfor was faced with the possibility of letting the knowledge of Oriande and Altean Alchemy die, and he chose to risk it.

There had to be a damn good reason he didn't tell Coran about it. He might have known about something bad. It seems like he wanted Oriande forgotten; for Allura to never go there. Or at least, not until she was ready to make some tough decisions. Decisions he would rather spare her.

I’ve been feeling since around season 3 that VLD’s ultimate conclusion will be to show us that there is no true good and evil, that neither violence or pacifism is always the answer, that the world - the universe - is all shades of grey. Allura is our vehicle for that. It’s through her assumed prejudices that the show is shifting our viewpoints. She began the series believing that the Galra were all evil, the Alteans good. As time has gone on she’s improved impressively on her initial bias against the Galra, but has steadfastly refused to acknowledge her own people as capable of similar actions - her response to the alternate reality Alteans was to declare them not true Alteans instead of accepting that they’d become akin to the Galra Empire from her own reality.

It’s clear that Allura will have to face Honerva eventually, and will be forced to confront what the former greatest Altean Alchemist has become. But it’s too easy to dismiss Honerva’s corruption into Haggar as a side effect of the rift - not the willing actions of someone more concerned with knowledge than morality.

For six seasons we’ve seen Alfor as a paragon of good. His one fatal flaw being perhaps too good, too trusting, that he believed his friend’s words over his own judgement. Ultimately damning the universe to ten thousand years of being ground under the heel of a brutal dictator.

Alfor paid for that mistake with his life, with the destruction of his planet and the near extinction of his people. And so, he remains what all good in VLD is measured against, both in our - the audience’s - minds, and in Allura’s.

But just as our ultimate evil, Zarkon, was revealed to be more than just a monster, so too will our ultimate good be made more complex. In season 3 we were introduced to the younger Zarkon. A loyal friend and comrade. Awkward around an attractive woman, afraid of cats, and a dedicated and concerned ruler of his people. He was humanized, for lack of a better word, but we still see in him the man who he’d eventually become.

What better way to finally break through Allura’s idealized view of Alteans than by tainting Alfor’s image in some way? To finally see our Big Good do something morally grey? We’ve already seen it foreshadowed by the corruption of the AI, and the Alteans in the alternate reality.

The first time we’ve heard someone level legitimate criticisms against Alfor was at the end of season 6. Just after Lotor begins his breakdown he says:

"What about your father? He may have been a master engineer, but Alfor was too weak to defend his home world. I’m the one who had to step up and save our entire race. Who are you to question my tactics in bringing peace and prosperity to the universe?"

No one else criticizes Alfor for his choices. Even when they acknowledge he failed, he's always portrayed as having taken the best choice. But, what if Lotor's right? It certainly looks like he is.

If Lotor hadn’t stepped in and saved those few survivors of Altea’s destruction they would eventually have been discovered by the empire and executed. Zarkon had made it his personal mission to drive the Alteans to extinction. Alfor was weak. He surrendered to his fear of what would happen if Voltron fell into Zarkon’s hands and failed to utilize all his resources to defend Altea, his people, and his allies.

This won’t be the only fault we find out he had, mark my words.

There is something dark and unsavory lurking in the truth of Altean Alchemy.

Considering Lotor readily admits that Alteans perished in the process of his quintessence experiments, it may very well be that whatever required such vast amounts of concentrated quintessence is also something Alfor had to contend with in the past. Canonically, as stated in s3e7 ‘The Legend Begins’, quintessence was only first discovered in the course of studying the rift on Daibazaal. Alfor could not have been utilizing quintessence directly, because he didn't know it existed.

So if, whatever Lotor has been having to do with the colony, Alfor may have been having to do something similar...

He was simply sacrificing people.

It’s a lot easier to hide a handful of people going missing when you have an entire planet’s population to work with.

What if this is a thing that had always been happening, and that's why Alfor never told Coran about Oriande?

The thing is, Lotor can't know that now. Or he would have told Allura. To justify his actions, if it was something that Alfor would have dealt with as well.

Lotor didn't have Voltron. If there is some kind of Cosmic Horror beastie out there he might not have been able to fight it, let alone kill it. So he was building Sincline. Hence the urgency to get it completed even after Zarkon was gone. We know he was out of concentrated quintessence as of s4e5 ‘Begin the Blitz’. He was either going to have to access the rift imminently or harvest more people.

The powers that be keep talking about things not being black and white in this show.

Alteans can do bad things. Honerva became Haggar. Allura herself has made some morally questionable choices. Like what she did to Lotor for example.

Allura will need to realize that. The truth will rise from the depths and confront her in a way she can no longer ignore.

Alfor failed. It was up to Lotor to save the Altean people. He did what he felt he had to do, and in many respects, it will turn out he was right.

Lotura Discord™ Meta! The only brand of Voltron Meta you can trust to cover all the bases. No reach is too far! We’ll make it. *

Proudly serving your local fandom, since May 2018.

*satisfaction NOT guaranteed. No refunds or exchanges. Theories only applicable until explicitly disproved by canon. Available everywhere Lotura Discord™ members post.

#vld #The Depths #Allura #Lotor #Alfor #Romelle #Bandor #Plaxum #Florona #voltron legendary defender #s2e2 #Hate tries to Meta #Lotura Discord Meta #red herring #vld season 7 predictions #vld conspiracy theory #altean alchemy

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deepestuniversallove · 5 years

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Selfship Positivity Day

So I heard that today is a day for some selfship positivity! I want to also thank a few people for tagging me in their posts!

I have joined the self-ship community on tumblr in early 2018. I have really started self-shipping when I was around 7 years old and fell in love with Bonkers D Bobcat, who was my first crush, but I promptly gave up on him when I saw that he had a crush on Fawn Deer in canon (as a kid I thought that canon was what was real, so....). I had a few minor crushes on a few other characters as well (like Johnny from S.O.S. Croco), but never actively self-shipped with them, I just found them really cool.

Then at 11 years old, I went to see the First Pokemon Movie and fell in love with Mewtwo at first sight. After Bonkers, he was the first character I actively started to self ship with, and he has been a great inspiration and help for me; I was raised in an emotionally abusive household, emotionally neglected, starved for affection that I never got. Plus my mother has narcissistic personality disorder and only sees me as a living plaything and extension of her - which this is no fun way to grow up. Add to this that I was pretty much the social outcast at school, and you would probably understand why I always had suicidal ideations, depression and eventually developed avoidant personality disorder. So yeah, seeing Mewtwo, neglected by the scientists who refused him warmth and him going against Giovanni... I wanted to be like Mewtwo, just as strong as him. Daydreaming of him in the evening was what kept me sane and gave me the feeling that at least someone loved me, even if he was fictional. Plus, through him, I learned about genetics and science and decided I wanna go into science (which led me to being a Biology PhD student today) - which led me into choosing Biology, Chemistry and English as my majors in our german school system.

I have always drawn the occasional self ship picture or sketch with Mewtwo, but back then, I mostly focused on shipping other pairings from other franchises. I came to the internet for the first time in 2005, when I joined Deviantart through other self shippers who had their sights on various Sonic characters and shipped their own OCs with them. In fact, I have made my own OC named Jamai Dark to ship her with Shadow the hedgehog.

The first picture with Mewtwo was one that I tried to trace from “Mewtwo Returns”. Though I still focused more on shipping other pairings and on the Sonic franchise. In any case, the Mewtwo artists back then were a huge inspiration for me.

My first fanchild with Mewtwo, Kunai, was posted online before I ever posted any of my selfship pictures, and even then, I avoided outright saying that she was supposed to be the daughter of me and Mewtwo because of the backlash I feared. I simply enjoyed watching the more daring artists who outright were able to profess their love for Mewtwo, which I didn’t have the courage for at first. My first other self shipper that I found was @desert-fairy-vixen, who had remained a loyal friend ever since I started out on Deviantart.

At 16, I became involved with a boy around my age and entered a relationship with him. He forbid me Mewtwo, stating that he wasn’t necessary any more, so I tearfully bid Mewtwo goodbye, writing him a poem as well as drawing one goodbye picture.

However, my relationship with my boyfriend was not that good, and without Mewtwo, I simply felt lost. My frist boyfriend belonged to a religious cult and was homeschooled; he was also heavily brainwashed that religion trumps over all, so I tried for years to reconcile his religion with my science, only finding that it was impossible. I have still stayed with this guy for 6 years, when he had started to control me even more with his abusive grip. I ended it with him then, and was heartbroken, feeling that I didn’t deserve Mewtwo after having left him to be with my boyfriend. So I couldn’t jump back into self shipping. Instead, I shipped certain pairings from the YuGiOh series, as well as Digimon, in the meantime. It was actually when I hit the Digimon stage that I started to self ship with Arukenimon. I also had a crush on Eridan Ampora.

In 2013, I had a dream in which Mewtwo fought and protected me from zombies. That was the point at which I decided that I want to be with Mewtwo again. Why deny myself this? Why hide? And so I drew my first comic in which I tried to remember my past with Mewtwo, and this is how I met my first self shippers on Deviantart who also self shipped with Mewtwo. In fact, @sweetwhitechoco was one of the first I openly talked with when it came to Mewtwo. I have watched Lullaby-of-the-Lost and Kokoro-Tokoro from afar and didn’t dare to talk to them because they were out of my league, but seeing other people post self ship Mewtwo art made me want to do the same.

I only found out about the self shipping community on tumblr in 2017, after having had haters who told me that my self ship is vile and bestiality. Finding an entire community of self shippers was a blessing after having gone through such shit. I think I am still not over the fact that I have tried to give up Mewtwo when I came together with my abusive ex-boyfriend for the first time. Sometimes I wonder if Mewtwo would really want to be back together with me, or I feel unworthy of him. I can only hope that I may overcome this one day. Or it’s just a symptom of my AvPD, because I tend to push away those I love to not taint them with my imperfections.

In any case, onwards to the shippers I met on here!

@star-platinums-wife was one of the first self shippers, and through her and her followers, I got to know more self shippers. Though the concept of having a self shipping blog is what I have seen from @gamzeeismyboyfriend for the first time, and this was actually when I decided to post my selfship art on my blog too.

@asa-de-ouro is one of the best friends I could have hoped to find, and she is the mom friend for sure!

I also got to know @husband-of-lucoa, who is also a great friend and really loved by both Lucoa and Palutena! They both told me so!

@lightningsconsort Your love and devotion to your queen Lightning is such an inspiration, I wish you both many happy years together for the future!

@slyvivi has such a cute self ship with Necrozma, it is always a delight to see someone who also self ships with a Pokemon! You and Necrozma are so cute together, and I am sure that he sees you as the Light of his life. And @come-along-here-and-spin-with-me, you and Oracion are also such cuties together!

@lildreamysoul, you are an absolute Queen, and I kind of count you in as “above my league”; I love the ideas you have for self shipping! Making your own self ship mugs? A book with collected artworks? Acrylic charms? Like dang, you make me want to try this out as well!

@mrs-rock-light You reminded of the time when I found Zero so cool! :D I am glad that he found someone to be happy with in you! God knows after all his fights, he certainly deserves some happiness for a change!

@charles-self-inserts I am so honored that you wanted my self ship to be included with yours in a comission! ;__; thank you so so much for that!

@only-mewtwo Highfives! You and Mewtwo are so cute together!

@malt-tango :D I love all the discussions about details for fanfics that I can have with you, and I love your idea for my fanfics. It is thanks to you that I am now even attempting to write my self-insert more true to myself which I didn’t have the courage for before.

@plucky-belmondo AHH, you and Richter are so cute, and I love all the awesome designs that you made for your self-insert for Smash Bros! Amazing!!!

@goldenworldsabound :D You, Spock, me and Mewtwo need to go out on a date together. :D

@rulersofthekoopakingdom You and Bowser are so cute! *_* <3 <3

I hope all of you had a great self ship positivity day! :D If I haven’t mentioned you in here, I am still probably watching you from afar and being too shy to say anything. ^^;; whoops.

#self ship #self shipping #self shipping community #self ship positivity

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brendancorris · 6 years

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Thundercats Roar thoughts...

So a friend of mine showed me this trailer a few weeks ago, and for a second I didn’t believe it was real. But, before I get further into my thoughts on this thing everybody else on the internet has already covered, let me go into my history with Thundercats.

Despite never drawing much fan art for the series, Thundercats is a property I love, and one of the biggest parts of my life in my earliest years. Born in ‘86 with three older siblings, I was just in time for the original Thundercats. My family already consisted of die-hard fans, so it was naturally one of the first franchises I got into. From the time I was born to when I was about 4, Masters of the Universe and Thundercats were what it was all about. It wasn’t until ‘89 that I got my first TMNT toy, and about a year later that was literally all I cared about.

But before my TMNT obsession, there was Thundercats. While I do have many fond memories of watching the show, my most beloved memories of it are simply being a fan. Collecting the action figures, listening to my siblings talk about the show, and playing Thundercats. Not a video game, though. On nights when my Mom was out, my Dad would host He-Man or Thundercats games where he’d be either Skeletor or Mumm-ra, my oldest sister and brother would be She-Ra and He-Man or Lion O and Cheetarah (while my other sister would be... somebody) and I, being the baby, would always get stuck being Orko or Snarf. All us kids would wrestle our dad and beat up on him as he’d try to defeat us. Epic stuff. Some how the younger of my two sisters would usually end up horribly injured after each game, though...

Simply put, Thundercats was the real deal with my family when I was little. The action was great, the evil beasts were awesome, the toys were a blast, and Cheetarah, along with the He-Man girls, made me feel things my tiny self wasn’t yet ready to feel.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I revisited the show, and, honestly, I was surprised how much it held up. Especially considering in high school I was “too cool for everything” yet I still acknowledged its quality. Yes, it was corny in the way all old children's’ shows were at the time (I have nothing but love for that tone, but I can see how it would be hard to digest for later generations), but it still had great, smart, sophisticated writing for its time, amazing animation and artwork, good characters, and one of the most hype intros ever.

In 2011 a reboot was made. This reboot was far darker and more built on political commentary. It was an understandable progression. The fans had grown up, so the franchise did too. While I wasn’t a huge fan, I can respect the quality of the writing, art, and over all work that went into it. It was a sophisticated piece of art. I felt it went a bit too extreme with the tone it was pushing, and as a long time fan of the original, found lots of the changes and design choices hard to digest. But again, it was a good show, and I respect what it attempted to accomplish.

However, the show was canceled before season 2 could air. This left a lot of fans mad, confused as to whether it was low ratings, low ratings as a result of its switched time slot that was far from ideal, or just a business decision to sacrifice a popular show just to make way for a potentially more popular future show. While I can understand the upset from fans 100%, I didn’t feel it as I wasn’t a regular viewer.

So, fast-forward to earlier this month when my friend shows me this trailer. As I said, at first I thought it was a joke, like College Humor or something. Then when the realization sunk in that it was real, I hated it. But, quickly I told myself that I don’t know enough about it yet to fully judge. I haven’t seen an episode. Sure, it looks awful from what I’ve seen, and I can clearly see the “monkey see monkey do” going on here with the copying of other successful modern cartoons. But, again, I haven’t seen it. Before I get into my final thoughts thus far, I need to address the elephant in the room...

...the similarities everybody has seen in this and Teen Titans GO!

While I wasn’t a die hard or anything, I did watch the entire first two seasons of the original Cartoon Network Teen Titans series when it was new, and I did like it. I thought it was very well-written, well-acted, had great characters, great character development, great stories, and great action. The characters worked off of each other beautifully. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I had some issues with it.

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS AHEAD - PREPARE TO HATE ME

Since its release I have always found the art style to look very under-developed and unappealing. It looked like an awkward imbalance of the (already bland in my mind) Justice League cartoon style and a newbie anime style. The best way I can describe it was it resembled the artwork of a junior-high kid who just started drawing anime. Also, I found a lot of the anime-inspired elements to feel forced. When characters would mutate into chibi disasters or tropes like sweat drops scrolling down their faces would happen, it was always a bit cringy and out of place. It felt like it was shoehorned in rather than rightfully fitting in.

But the most notable thing about the show was it was a pretty huge departure from the original DC comics. Gone was the realistic art style of the comics. Now the characters all had big, round heads, twig-like limbs, huge hands and feet, and big anime-eyes. Everything was very simplistic, sharp, and jagged. There was far more comedy, some great, and some that cringy chibi stuff I mentioned. The integration of anime tropes and far more kid humor was a huge departure from the comics. So, basically, despite being a good show, Teen Titans, the show, was a huge departure from its source material.

Then comes Teen Titans GO! and overnight it becomes one of the most hated (and most popular) cartoons of this age. I didn’t quite hate it, but wrote it off as crap without seeing it. It is a shame that the original show was canceled before it got to be finished, but putting fans’ anger towards that aside, the creation of TTG makes perfect sense. The characters proved extremely popular and marketable, largely because how comedic they could be when bouncing off each other (and the original show had been canceled. Continuing a canceled show years later is a difficult task, regrouping the team, dancing through the legal BS, and finding enough staff and people to fund it to be on board, as well as a network to accept it). More simplistic art styles were becoming more popular, and after the post-Adult Swim days, hyper, wacky, odd comedies have become the norm.

To be honest, any time I have seen Teen Titans GO!, which has only been about three episodes or so, I laughed. I don’t care what people say, the show is legitimately funny. Is it the greatest show ever? Not by a long shot. Is it better than the last TT show? Probably not. Is it a shame it exists while the original never finished? Kinda. But is it a bad show? Honestly, no.

TTG knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers. It may not be the sequel show old fans wanted, but if you put aside the hatred, you’ll see it’s not only a funny cartoon bursting with energy and very well-defined and appealing character designs reminiscent of shows like Dexter’s Lab, but also a huge love letter to the Titans, the last show, and all things DC. It is clearly made by DC fans. I may be biased because I love Weird Al and The Golden Girls, but, man, this is funny right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ICmOMLX3rQ

Admittedly, even the movie trailer looks funny, and I’ll likely see it, despite not really being a fan of the show. Just like the 2011 Thundercats, I see what the TTG team is intending to do, and I appreciate how well they do it, despite not being a regular supporter of it.

And, well, that brings us back to ‘Roar’. Will I like it? Based on what I’ve seen so far, likely not, but who knows. It could end up being the next Sonic Boom. I do strongly dislike the art direction for Thundercats Roar, and the footage shown thus far did not make me laugh (except Mumm-ra learning about the cats being on Third Earth by reading it in the newspaper. That actually got a chuckle from me). But, as much as my gut is telling me to hate this show, I won’t pass judgment until I’ve at least seen a couple episodes. It’s definitely not the Thundercats I love, but to be honest, I didn’t want a TC reboot. I was fine with it just being as it is. So if somebody’s going to reboot it for a new generation, I’ll be glad to see my favorite franchises get passed down, so long as it is done lovingly. If the show truly is a love letter to the history of the franchise as it claims to be, and if it’s a decently quality product that obvious care went into, I’ll be fine with it.

It would be so easy to tear it apart and hate it, but as I get older I find myself growing more accepting of such change. I’m not EXPECTING to like it, but who knows, I also wasn’t expecting to like Sonic Boom. Basically, so far I’m not digging what I’ve seen, but I’ll keep an open mind and stay hopeful. Here’s hoping they can change my mind with the final product.

The End

#thundercats #thundercats roar #reboot #Brendan Corris #BrendanCorris

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stacysmash · 6 years

Note

Hello! I hope you dont mind me spewing a bunch of prompts at you but im in some serious need for daichi rarepairs. So first is apocalyptic+MatsuDai

I didn’t even mean to start with this one, but I was so excited about doing a post-apocalyptic I just went crazy, ha ha ha. Hope you enjoy it!

To Kill or Bang

There was no real reason to run, but that didn’t stop Daichi from tearing across the gravel plain, leaping over ruins of skyscrapers and mangled chicken wire fencing. His shoes kicked up clouds of dust in the already hazy air, but there was no one for hundreds of miles to notice it. By the time he reached the building, his chest was burning from forcing his breaths through his oxygen filtration mask. It wasn’t meant for such strenuous work, but that was the last thing on his mind as he stared up at the nondescript structure.

It seemed to be intact and not in any danger of crumbling. The hard part was finding his way to the top. He could try to enter, but considering the building wasn’t in pieces there may be people residing within. That thought didn’t sit well with him, considering what he was about to attempt, but the world was no longer a place where anyone could afford to worry about anyone else. It was truly survival of the fittest, and Daichi had his own family to protect.

He circled around the building and found a mound of trash and rubble mashed against the side of the building. He rubbed his gloves together and began climbing, picking his way carefully knowing that even the smallest slip could be fatal. The afternoon sun was merciless, beating down on him and soaking his clothes in sweat. He fought through his exhaustion and continued to pick his way up the garbage, pausing twice as everything below him began to shift.

Once he reached the top, however, he was still only two thirds up the side of the building. He balanced on an old shopping cart and carefully slid his pack around to his front. He pulled two discs out, each with an adjustable handle, and shut his pack, maneuvering it gingerly to his back. Once each disc was strapped to his hands, he clacked them together and they sprang to life. Lights flickered around them and reverberated with a high-pitched sonic buzz.

Daichi closed his eyes, taking as deep a breath as his mask would allow to gather his strength and focus. When he opened them, he pulled back his right arm and slammed his palm against the side of the building. The disc grasped firmly to the wall, and after testing its hold Daichi reached up and forced the disc in his left hand against it as well. Certain it was gripped tight, he rotated the disc in his other hand a quarter to the right and it released easily from the wall.

The trek up the side of the building was grueling, using mostly his upper body strength as his shoes had very little grip to assist. Even before he reached the top, he wished he hadn’t wasted so much energy running across the plain. He just hoped that he found what he thought he saw in his binoculars earlier, and if so every ounce of pain and effort would be worth it.

When he finally reached the top, he used some of the last bit of his strength to hoist his legs up onto the ledge. It was easier with his right foot hooked onto it to release his right hand and reach it over as well, gripping the disc onto the horizontal surface. One more jerk of his body and he rolled over the ledge and crashed onto the roof floor in a heap. He didn’t move for several minutes, allowing the small intake of oxygen from the mask to seep into his bloodstream. His vision soon cleared, and he rolled onto his back to try sitting up. A groan escaped through his parched throat as he did so, his entire body feeling like it weighed a million pounds. His head turned to glance around the area when he caught sight of it looming in the center of the roof.

Disregarding his screaming muscles and exhaustion, Daichi scrambled to his feet and lumbered toward it, hardly believing his own eyes. It was a water tank, built with a state-of-the-art filtration system to glean out all the impurities as it drew any moisture it could from the air. His eyes scoured over it, figuring out how it works and how to draw water from it. He scratched his head as he also wondered how they could transport water from there to their base.

Daichi never credited himself as one of the most intelligent people in their family group, but as the leader, he still needed to figure things out and provide. He did wish some of the others were there to help him come up with some solutions, however. If he hadn’t been alone, perhaps one of his companions would have noticed that Daichi was being watched.

Kerchak

The mechanical sound that echoed across the roof sent the hairs on the back of Daichi’s neck standing straight up. He knew it was a crossbow being loaded and cocked, ready to shoot and to kill. There wasn’t a doubt that the arrow pulled tight was meant for him.

“You know, it’s not polite to take something without asking,” A cool voice said behind him, but Daichi noticed immediately that the man sounded more amused than offended. “Turn around slowly, Stranger. Hands up where I can see them.”

Daichi’s eyes flickered around, observing the area in case he needed to make a run for it, but he lifted his hands obediently and turned toward the man. He always believed that if you can work something out without a fight, it was always best. But if that went south, he was prepared to do what he had to.

He frowned when he gazed at the tall figure leaning on a pile of garbage fashioned into a lounge chair. He mentally berated himself for missing him in the first place, but he had been too concerned with the water tank to see anything but it. The crossbow looked like it was laying casually on the man’s lap, but Daichi saw the man’s finger on the trigger with the arrow pointing straight at him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it belonged to anyone. The place looked deserted.”

The man’s face was completely covered in a gas mask, dark with black eyes staring out at him and a tube that snaked from the mouth to a place on his hip. But there was something in the way he cocked his head at Daichi that told him the man was smirking.

“Bullshit. Listen, this is really awkward, but I only have one job and that’s protecting our water tank. How I do it is entirely up to me, but basically, I need to keep people from finding it, and if someone does I need to keep them from finding it again… which means I need to kill you. It’s nothing personal, you understand.”

“Of course! We need to do what we have to nowadays,” Daichi responded cordially, and the man let out a snort, which sounded odd in the gas mask.

“See, I knew you were a fine individual when I first spotted you. I could have killed you when your feet were still on the ground, but something about you piqued my curiosity. I wanted to see if you could make it up here and how, and I have to say I’m very impressed. Shame,” He said with a heavy sigh as he drew the crossbow higher.

Daichi stood his ground, mentally calculating where various objects around the roof were and how easily they could block the arrow. He wasn’t sure he could reach them in time and decided the best option could be letting the arrow hit his pack, but if he was off by an inch the arrow could go through his neck.

Suddenly his wrist sensor went haywire, flickering lights and buzzing alerting him to danger as if Crossbow Man wasn’t enough.

“What is that?” The other man asked, gesturing with his bow.

“It means a storm’s coming in fast. We need to get to shelter,” Daichi answered, lowering his hands to glance at it and then gazed off toward the horizon.

“No way, there’s nothing out there. Are you just trying to get out of dying? Rude.”

“No, I’m serious. There it is,” Daichi said as he pointed. The man looked and flinched when he saw a wall of dark clouds sweeping across the plain. Beneath their feet, the ground began to rumble, and the man’s hand jerked a walkie out of his pocket in a flash.

“Storm’s coming! Everyone find shelter, now ! Find shelter now!”

Daichi jerked his head around, looking for some way to brace himself. It wasn’t ideal being stuck outside in a storm, but he’d survived it before. Suddenly a hand gripped his arm and jerked him toward a door that led inside the building.

“Come on!”

“Like I trust you, you were about to kill me!”

“What do you trust more, me or Stormy?” The man retorted, gesturing to the fast-approaching wall of death.

“After you.”

The fierce wind nearly shoved them off their feet as they scrambled to the door. Crossbow Man swung the door open and let Daichi slip in first before slamming it shut behind him. Daichi found himself plunged in darkness teetering on unseen stairs as a loud clang echoed around him, the sound of the other man locking the door and barring his only escape. There was a click and the stairwell lit up with dim, ambient lighting, enough to at least see their way down.

The man said nothing but gestured for Daichi to descend as the pressure of the stairwell changed; the storm had arrived. With a nod, Daichi turned and followed the stairs down into the main building. He wasn’t sure what he had gotten himself into, but he’ll handle it as best he could.

The stairs led to a large open floor that seemed to be a communal space. The man tapped Daichi on the shoulder and gestured for him to follow toward what seemed to be a makeshift kitchen. Glancing around Daichi figured the building used to be an office, and the group here was using the cubicle partitions to block off individual sleeping areas.

There was a clatter, and Daichi jerked his head to see the man had dropped his crossbow on a table and was rummaging around in a cabinet. When he straightened and turned, he held out a bottle filled with what looked like the cleanest water Daichi had ever seen.

“Go on, it’s clean. Think of it as repayment for warning me and my group about the storm.”

Tentatively Daichi reached his hand out and took it. For a moment he stared at it, and the man snickered as he began to remove his mask. He bent over and shook his head, giving Daichi a view of his wavy black hair. When he straightened, Daichi’s mouth dropped open slightly at seeing the man was remarkably handsome with his heavy-lidded eyes giving him a cool and amused gaze.

“I showed you mine, let’s see yours,” He said, a smirk curling on his lips.

Well, it’s only fair, Daichi thought as he slid his mask over his head and shook his hair own out. Unlike the other man, he kept his short, so he didn’t have to worry about having mask hair. The man’s bushy eyebrows raised as he let out a low whistle.

“Daaaaaamn, am I glad I didn’t shoot you. What a waste that would have been,” He said as his eyes drank him in. Daichi felt his face grow hot and focused instead on taking a drink of water. He closed his eyes and let out a moan as the refreshing liquid poured down his throat. He didn’t take much, just enough so he no longer felt like he was going to die of dehydration, but the man’s smirk faded into a more serious expression.

“Go on, drink the whole thing. It’s probably been a while, right?”

Daichi answered with a nod and gratefully continued to drink. The moment was quickly becoming one of the best of his life, drinking a whole bottle of clean water, but the guilt soon began to creep into his stomach.

“What’s wrong? Not enough flavor for you?” The man teased because of Daichi’s dark frown.

“Oh, no! It’s not that, it’s just I feel bad drinking all this while my family has nothing at this moment.”

“Hmm,” The man answered with a nod. Daichi knew he couldn’t trust him, but he could plainly see the man had the same worries he did. The only exception to the current Survival of the Fittest rule was within one’s own family group; lone wolves didn’t last long in their world.

“I’m Sawamura, by the way. Sawamura Daichi.”

“Matsukawa Issei,” He answered without hesitation, accepting Daichi’s outstretched hand and giving it a shake.

“Where’s the rest of your group? This place is empty.”

“Out scouting, of course. I’m the only one here right now… well, except for my pleasant company.”

Daichi focused on looking around the room, ignoring the heated gaze he felt on him.

“They’re all out scouting? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“It’s less dangerous than staying here, wasting resources when we can be out looking for them.”

“I guess I can understand that.”

“You don’t send everyone out to scout?”

“No, just a handful at a time, and usually our most physically capable.”

“How do the others pull their own weight?”

“Ha, they pull more weight than us scouts. They’re fixing our shelter and creating devices for survival, like my storm sensor.”

Matsukawa leaned forward off the cabinet, his eyes looking hungrily at Daichi’s wrist.

“Yeah, that is a pretty handy tool. How many of those do you have?”

“One for each scout right now, but they’re making more just in case something goes wrong with the others. We have quite an intelligent crew,” Daichi said as his chest naturally puffed out. Matsukawa chuckled and ran a hand through his hair.

“Did they make something to help you climb buildings? I have to admit you’re the first to make it to the top.”

“Yeah, they did,” Daichi said, more cautiously this time. He was getting a prickly feeling about Matsukawa suddenly. The man could still kill him and take his devices as well. Matsukawa picked up on his apprehension and immediately relaxed his body, shooting a sheepish smile back at him.

“I’m not gonna steal your toys if that’s what you’re worried about. But I have been thinking, perhaps we could form some sort of compromise?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not the leader of our group, so I couldn’t make the decision alone, but I doubt he’d let this opportunity pass us by. What if we give your group access to the water tank in exchange for storm sensors and building climbers for our guys?”

Daichi was stunned at the suggestion, but it made complete sense. He leaned against the table as he contemplated the possibilities. There were several other gadgets that Tsukishima and Ennoshita had developed, but he wasn’t about to spill all their secrets to the man he just met. They could be good bargaining chips later if Matsukawa’s group had something else of value or limited how much water they could take.

“We’ve got a pretty good food supply as well,” Matsukawa said nonchalantly as he scratched the side of his face. Daichi frowned at him, wondering if he could read his mind.

“Oh?”

“Yup, I might be willing to put in a good word with the Boss, if…”

Daichi straightened up and crossed his arms in front of his chest. It was his usual position when he bartered, trying to appear more intimidating than he actually was. Unfortunately, it only seemed to amuse Matsukawa more as he grinned widely at him, and Daichi sighed.

“Go on, if ?”

“If you let me get into those worn-out cargo pants of yours,” He snickered.

“You want my pants? I’m not sure they’d fit your legs.”

Matsukawa burst out laughing, holding his stomach as the cheerful sound echoed throughout the space. Daichi felt his anger spike, especially since he didn’t know what was so funny. There was a small piece of him, however, that relaxed at hearing Matsukawa laugh so heartily.

“I didn’t mean I wanted your pants, I meant I want us to fuck.”

Daichi said as he felt his entire face erupt in heat. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been eyeing Matsukawa’s lean body hidden beneath his clothes. It only took a quick glance to see he wasn’t just slender; there were firm muscles rippling underneath that Daichi was itching to get his fingers on.

“You know I’m not really the kind of guy to exchange sex for goods,” He said finally, and the grin on Matsukawa’s face slipped away as his shoulders slumped in disappointment. “However, I’m not opposed to having sex for fun,” Daichi added hastily, rubbing the back of his burning neck.

“Oh, thank God,” Matsukawa said as he lifted himself off the cabinet and grasped Daichi’s hand as he led him toward one of the cubicle spaces. “I thought my only sexual experiences were going to be solo acts or with my friends, ugh.”

Daichi was overwhelmed at how quickly Matsukawa was acting, but he also knew they only had so much time before the storm ended and his friends came back from their scouting. His heart was pounding as Matsukawa guided him in his makeshift bedroom and immediately peeled off his own shirt. Daichi had guessed correctly Matsukawa’s body was built with lean muscle, decorated with random scars long since healed. Daichi’s hands were sweaty when Matsukawa grasped them and pulled his gloves off.

“Did you want me to peel off your layers slowly? Or did you want me to tear them off?” Matsukawa asked, his voice low and rumbling while his eyes burned with heat.

“Quick, before I lose my nerve.”

Matsukawa seemed happy to oblige and immediately yanked Daichi’s ratty shirt over his head. As soon as his hands were free, Daichi reached for Matsukawa’s pants and hastily worked on undoing them. Outside the wind was howling and beating against the building, but inside all that could be heard was the hum of the generator and their quickening breaths as they removed each other’s clothes in a hurry.

Daichi gulped as Matsukawa eased him onto the floor on a heap of blankets he used for a bed. He expected the other man to rush right into it, but instead, he hovered over Daichi and cupped his face in his hands.

“Are you really nervous?”

“A little. My last time was a little rough. Not mean or nonconsensual! It was more… dry?”

Understanding flickered across Matsukawa’s face, and he gave Daichi a warm smile before leaning down and kissing him gently.

“Don’t worry,” Matsukawa whispered against his lips, “I’ll make sure you enjoy every bit of this.”

Daichi smiled into the next kiss, and for the first time since they’d met, he trusted Matsukawa completely.

Please visit on AO3 to leave a kudos and comment, I’d love to hear what you all think :) Thank you @thatishogwash for sending this in, and the challenge is still open for anyone else who wants to send one in!

#ask challenge #post apocalyptic #Matsudai #matsukawa issei #sawamura daichi #haikyuu rare pairs #This was so much fun to write it's insane

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miki-agrawal · 3 years

Text

From Carole Baskin to Leslie Jordan, the Unlikely Stars of the Quarantine

A look at the people and products who captured our imaginations (and, in some cases, our hearts) during a strange moment in history

Originally Posted On lamag.com By Paul Schrodt On May 17, 2020

It’s hard to think of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact as anything other than a series of downturns: in global health, the economy, our cultural lifeblood, and moods. But as in any crisis, there are positives deserving praise. Dr. Anthony Fauci, unknown to many of us months ago, now has his own bobblehead—and deservedly so. But other experts and personalities—some with direct ties to the novel coronavirus, others who are delightful distractions—have captured our collective imagination. Here are 20.

Carole Baskin

Netflix’s zeitgeist-defining docuseries Tiger King is teeming with wilder-than-the-last characters, but one rises above the rest. Baskin—the 58-year-old former big-cat breeder turned conservationist and archrival/attempted murder victim of central subject Joe Exotic—sports an enviable feline-inspired wardrobe; coos her memed-around-the-world tagline, “Hey all you cool cats and kittens”; and prefers not to answer questions about her mysteriously missing ex-husband. A morally ambiguous figure for our uncertain times, she’s also sure to be one of Halloween’s most popular costumes—so stock up now on the fiercest tiger prints you can find.

Dua Lipa

The British singer, 24, didn’t want to release her second album, Future Nostalgia, into a pandemic—she announced its arrival with tears on social media. But its neo-disco bangers are exactly what a lockdown dance party demands, and the release is her first Top 10 LP in the U.S. She’s liberated the masses to move while (fabulously) self-quarantining with her model-celebrity-spawn boyfriend Anwar Hadid. But how hard is that?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAayNagnmHF/

Ryan Heffington

Heffington, 46, had already been motivating Angelenos to hone their hip shaking  at his Silver Lake dance studio, the Sweat Spot, but the Grammy-nominated choreographer has turned his Joshua Tree house into a makeshift gym space. For his five-day-a-week Sweatfest cardio class on Instagram Live, he coaches around 8,000 viewers at a time through unique moves. Fans are known to end sessions with a cathartic cry.

D-Nice

Born Derrick Jones,  D-Nice had a moment as a hip-hop  artist in the ’90s that  quickly faded. But  the 49-year-old DJ  reached newfound fame streaming his live Club Quarantine sets from his downtown L.A. apartment, drawing hundreds of thousands of stay-at-home revelers, including Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Michelle Obama. The funk-and-soul-heavy playlists are more than a sonic escape—they’re an act of communal transcendence against all odds.

Zack Fox

A previously undersung L.A. comedian and internet provocateur, Fox, 29, racked up more than 300,000 views with a stone-faced parody—which made perfect use of Three 6 Mafia’s “Slob on My Knob”—of Gal Gadot’s viral-for-all-the-wrong-reasons “Imagine” sing-along.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B98XjQ7AK9X/

Juan Delcan and  Valentina Izaguirre 

The local artist couple, based in View Park-Windsor Hills, illuminated the power of social distancing with their “Safety Match” viral video, in which animated matches light up in a row until one of them steps out of the way. Viewed roughly a million times, the contemporary art piece achieved what no government PSA could.

Alison Roman

The New York Times cooking writer (and native Angeleno), 34, had already achieved food-world stardom with two best-selling books before lockdown. Under quarantine, Roman’s simple yet flavor-packed recipes for dishes like caramelized shallot pasta—and her unfussy-but-particular Brooklyn boho banter—have become required reading and eating. Roman went from darling to pariah in May when controversial comments she made about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo went viral. If only shallots made you immune to Twitter backlash.

Ina Garten

More than 3 million people on Instagram watched the tranquil Barefoot Contessa, 72, demonstrate how she keeps her “favorite tradition,” the cocktail hour, alive under desperate conditions. The Food Network star has been a rightfully beloved figure for nearly two decades, but her mixing a gigantic cosmo was a hilariously refreshing reminder of what a true treasure she is.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-cJUwUpxbM/

L.A. tap water

You’re not good, we never loved you, and yet without gallons of overpriced filtered alkaline H2O, we’re suddenly overjoyed to guzzle you.

Bidet attachments

After hoarders cleared out the toilet paper aisles, the makers of bidet products began cleaning up with their water-jet-shooting self-cleaning devices. The brand Brondell saw a 300 percent spike in sales, while the cleverly marketed Tushy sold out entirely. The future may be wipe free.

Zoom

The video-conferencing platform—which has raised security concerns and provides the same service as FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and Facebook Messenger—has become a key part of life under quarantine. Zoom stock has jumped more than 100 percent since January.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAAihoslm_O/

The brothers Cuomo

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, 62, has been lionized for leading his state through the darkness. But his cute younger brother, 49-year-old CNN anchor Chris, stole plenty of shine when he  tested positive for  COVID-19 and  without missing a  beat continued hosting  his show in self-isolation from his basement. Despite regular potshots from  right-wing critics, the younger Cuomo managed to come off  as more sincere and urgent than ever. One NYC matchmaker says the duo are topping her “most wanted” list, beating out even the Jonas brothers.

Reply All’s “The Case of the Missing Hit” 

Podcast Reply All delivered a blockbuster with a mind-bending search for a song—which might not exist—that a man says got stuck in his head in the ’90s. A reflection of the unanswered questions inundating our lives, except with far lower stakes, the March episode has sparked a 35 percent increase in the show’s listenership.

Trolls World Tour

Universal’s Trolls sequel, with a bizarre rock-versus-pop premise and a message about cultural appropriation that will likely go over the heads of its intended audience (and perhaps that of star Justin Timberlake), set a record for the biggest debut for a digital release, topping every relevant platform during its opening weekend in April. The $20 two-day rental price seemed steep to some, but to parents with stir-crazy kids it was a bargain.

The Womanizer vibrator

With Tinder hookups on hold, we’re turning inward—and reaching for sex toys. This cheekily marketed device has seen  a 152 percent year-over-year rise in U.S. sales thanks to quarantine orders. Its resonant new slogan for those hungry for pleasure: Stay home.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAp1cWNpQz6/

Sourdough bread 

It’s a cliche at  this point, but  making it ourselves is truly com forting, if not always Tartine level. No wonder more than 100,000 posts have been tagged with #crumbshot on Instagram.

The new class of badass reporters

Journalism is never more important than during a national emergency or the mass dissemination of misinformation. We happen to be living through both. A young crop of reporters in the White House briefing room—including Weijia Jiang of CBS, Kaitlan Collins and Jeremy Diamond of CNN, Yamiche Alcindor of PBS, and Kristin Fisher of Fox News—has resisted President Trump’s theatrical boasting and mugging, pressing for straightforward information and fact-checking on the spot.

Leslie Jordan

The 64-year-old veteran actor from Will  & Grace and American Horror Story has amassed more than 3 million Instagram followers since March as a result of absurdist check-in videos in which he appears to be either very bored or very stoned. Pointing to his DIY painted toenails, he shares: “I messed this one up.” Relatable.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAtA9Nfhat7/

My Year of Rest  and Relaxation 

Ottessa Moshfegh’s  2018 best-selling novel, about a beautiful, lazy, pill-popping  young woman who attempts a yearlong  hibernation in a Manhattan apartment, had  been celebrated at the time of its publication for its dark humor. Now its wit is hailed as beautifully horrific, as evidenced by the literary critics who are circling back to it. Vice declared of the book in one recent headline: “Blacking Out in a Juicy Couture Tracksuit Is a Lockdown Mood.”

The smart bike

Already a cult obsession, Peloton’s $2,245 souped-up stationary bike has never been more covetable as gyms lie dormant. The company’s stock bounced 50 percent in March, leaving an offensive Christmas-ad debacle in the dust. Cheaper competitors are also racing ahead. Echelon, whose bikes start at $839, reported a tenfold increase in sales the same month.

Tushy is a bidet startup which aims to replace toilet paper, Tushy was founded by Miki Agrawal.

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sapphicalexaandra · 6 years

Note

jalec as ten and rose = journey's end

(confirmed that you meant doomsday)

Happy birthday, dear! I still don’t know whether to hate you or love you for this prompt, because tenrose and jalec??? my otps, a perfect match!

But the feels, man…

Basically, you know who to blame for this angst fest ;) (and i might’ve expanded it a bit, i hope you don’t mind!)

This Is The Story of How I Died

The breach wasfinally open, and Dalek after Cyberman after Dalek were being sucked right intoit.

Alec, foras long as he had been the Doctor, had known that celebrating victory before duetime could only end up in crushing disappointment…and yet, this time he trulyfelt that they had done it.

As him andJace held on for dear life onto their magnetic clamps, everything was about tobe over so very soon. And they couldgo back to their adventures in all of space and time.

The Doctorand Jace Herondale, together, in the Tardis. As it should be.

…Of course,of course, fate had other plans forthem.

One of thelevers that kept the breach open had shifted from its place; the portal wouldclose before they had gotten rid of all their enemies!

Jace, ohJace, brave, brilliant Jace, he leapt from the safety of his hold, managing tograb the lever and struggling to put it back in place at the same time that theforce of the pull from the breach was so strong.Alec could only watch him with widened eyes, his two hearts pumping with astaccato beat that had nothing graceful about it, as he hoped, prayed to ahigher being that he knew didn’t exist, for his companion to succeed. For thingsto work in his favor, for once!

Jace did it, the lever was back in its place,the breach would remain until it had enclosed every last…

Alec’s armstwitched around his hold, as his eyes almost popped out of his head, becauseJace’s fingers were slipping.

“JACE! HOLDON!!” he shouted, desperately, over the noise of the magnetic force.

Had he everbeen more desperate in his life? He must’ve been, right, but…

Sounds of strainand fatigue were coming out of Jace as he fought against the pull drawing himtowards certain death.

“HOLD ON!”Alec could only repeat.

His andJace’s eyes met amidst the madness, and time seemed to slow down. Jace – thefirst face this face saw, his companion, his lover, his everything…

A shout hadbuilt deep in him even before Alec saw Jace lose his hold, but when it came out, it was like never before, histhroat burning around it, as Jace’s own scream mirrored his own…

“NOOOOO!”

It wasover, he had killed another one, Jace was going to be stuck in the Void forever,and Alec was never going to see him again!

A darkfigure appeared. Stephen Herondale, as alive as he was in the parallel universethey had visited, was right in front of the breach, and he grabbed Jace a splitsecond before he teleported them both away. As soon as they had vanished, Alec’sscream finished its course just as the last Dalek was pulled in, and the breachclosed after it. Forever.

Jace wasalive. He’d live a full life, with a bit of luck.

Alec shouldfeel at least partially happy, as heslumped down on the ground, completely spent. But he felt only…empty.

Entirely,utterly void.

Alec gotup, his movements slow, as if he had no energy to do more, and he approachedthe white wall. It was just a simplewhite wall…but it hid behind it everything that he had lost. Alec pressed ahand, then his face against it, listening in to nothing that he could everhear.

The Doctorand Jace Herondale, together, in the Tardis, was no more.

“TAKE MEBACK! TAKE ME BACK! TAKE ME BACK!”

Jace wasreduced to those three words, as he pounded against a plain white wall and screamedhis lungs out. Tears were running down his face, but he was past the point ofcaring…about anything.

“It’sstopped working. He did it. He closed the breach,” Jace heard his father saybehind him, and that only twisted the knife in his gut.

“No!” hesobbed, leaning his forehead against the wall, as his entire body shook andcrumbled in of itself.

The lastyear had been the best of his life. He had seen wanders, he had done wanders, he had met the most wonderfullycrazy man in the whole universe, who had opened Jace’s eyes to a whole newworld of possibilities!

It couldnot be over…it could not…

Jace couldn’tbreathe, as he pressed his hands against the wall, and then his head. Listeningintently, as if he could actually hearthe other world that was behind it.

But therewas nothing. Nothing at all.

It wasn’tover, though…not yet.

Jace.

He dreamed of a voice, night after night, callinghis name. His father, mother, and Clary couldn’t help but listen to him, becausethey had met the Doctor. They all knew it meantsomething, so they listened to the dream, and followed the voice.

They droveand drove, until they crossed water, then they kept driving, hundreds andhundreds of miles.

Because he was calling.

Here I am, at last, Jace thought.

And therehe was. Alec. His Doctor. Standing in the middle of a beach in Norway.

“Where areyou?” Jace asked him, the sound of his own voice surprising him.

“Inside theTardis.” But it was nothing like hisvoice, as Jace finally heard it again. Because it reached not Jace’s ears, butsomething far deeper than that. “There’s one tiny little gap in the universeleft, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection- I’m in orbit around a supernova. I’m burning up a sun, just to say goodbye.” Therewas an unmistakable catch behind Alec’s attempt at levity.

And thatwas, strangely, the most romantic thing Jace had ever heard, or seen done for him. Still, he couldn’thelp his own neediness. “You look like a ghost.”

He couldn’t look one last time at him like that.

“Hold on.”

Alecpointed his sonic screwdriver forward, at the Tardis’s console for sure, andsuddenly he looked solid.

Jacestretched a hand forward before he could stop himself, his fingers twitching painfully.“Can I…t-”

“I’m stilljust an image. No touch,” Alec said back, as reluctant to spell it out as Jacewas to hear it.

At least,Alec was staring at him fixedly, with his big, deep, sad eyes drinking him in,just as Jace was doing to him.

“Can’t youcome through properly?” Jace begged.

“The wholething would fracture. Two universes would collapse.”

“So?” Jace brokeout into a laugh between the tears that, cursedly, were already pooling in hiseyes, and Alec did that, too.

But Jaceknew that they were both serious. What were two universes collapsing…to this? To them?

Alecshrugged himself off; Jace knew that he was forcing himself to act casual, tochange the subject. They, after all, had never done this. They had never laid out in the open what they were to each other, and what each of them thought theother to be, or felt for him.

“Where arewe? Where did the gap come out?” Alec asked.

“We’re inNorway,” Jace responded, almost toneless.

“Norway!Right.” Alec’s chirpiness was almost successful. Almost.

“About 50miles out of Bergen,” Jace went on, never taking his eyes off Alec. “It’scalled Darlig Ulv Stranden.”

“Dalek?”Alec shot back, confused.

“Darlig,”Jace clarified. “It’s Norwegian for bad.” A new shaken kind of laugh came outof Jace. “This translates as Bad Wolf Bay.”

Alec’s eyeswidened, before his surprise turned into another laugh, too. And Jace knew thatthe true irony wasn’t lost on eitherof them; this had always been their destiny. Everything had led them to end up on two different sides of theuniverse.

Jace feltthe first tears slide down his cheeks. “How long have we got?” he croaked out.

Alec’s neckbobbed up and down as he swallowed. “About two minutes.”

They keptstaring, just staring, as the clock ticked, and their time together slippedfrom their fingers. Jace brought a hand to rub at his eyes.

“I can’tthink of…what to say,” Jace admitted brokenly.

Alec smiledhis kind smile, and Jace could swear his lower lip was wobbling. He averted hiseyes, though, and looked behind Jace, at the people waiting for him there. “You’vestill got Miss Clary, then.”

Jace noddedlightly. “There’s five of us now - Mum, Dad, Clary…and the baby.”

Jace knewthat that was petty of him, but he still couldn’t help but want to see what Alec’s reaction would be.

It didn’tdisappoint. Alec paused for a long moment, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline,clearly taken aback. “Is Clary…?”

Jacesnorted, satisfied by the clear jealousy he could hear in Alec’s tone. He justwanted…to be remembered, to be held dear for a while longer after everythingwas said and done, was that too much to ask? “No. It’s Mum. She’s three months gone. More Herondales on the way.”

Alec’s shouldersvisibly sagged in relief, and Jace’s heart rose even more.

“And whatabout you, what are you…?” Alec was still deflecting, and Jace chose to indulgehim a little more.

“Yeah, I’mback working in the shop.”

“Oh, goodfor you,” Alec said.

Jace rolledhis eyes. “Shut up! Nah, I’m not. The Torchwood on this planet’s still open forbusiness. I think I know a thing or two about aliens.”

He smirked,and was pleased to see the same expression mirrored on Alec’s face.

“JaceHerondale. Defender of the Earth,” Alec stated, the pride he could hear in hisvoice warming something inside of Jace…only for one moment, until the nextwords, “You’re dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day, andyou’ve gone missing. You’re on a list of the dead.”

Jacenodded, lowering his eyes to the ground.

“Yet hereyou are.” Jace’s bleary eyes shot back up, and Alec’s face was nothing short ofa shiny vision. How could…how wouldhe let go? “Living a life, day after day. The one adventure I can never have.”

“Am I evergoing to see you again?” Jace finally blurted out, giving up on any pretense ashis chest was now fully shaken with sobs that he couldn’t keep in.

Alec’ssmile was fond, but so deeply sad. “You can’t.”

“What areyou going to do?”

“I’ve gotthe Tardis. Same old life. Last of the Time Lords.”

Thatthought alone was enough to dig a giant whole in Jace’s chest. He thought hecould see the same happening in Alec. “On your own?”

Alec noddedmutely.

That wasit. Their last moments. Fading away one after the other. It was now, or never.

“I-” Jace’svoice didn’t know how to come out of him anymore, and he had to force it. Notbecause he didn’t want to say it…but because he doubted any other words hadever been more important. “I love you.”

And therethey were. Out in the open. Jace kept trying to swallow down his tears, aseverything crumbled down all around him. Alec was the only real thing he would ever feel, and Jace loved him. There wasno other truth.

Jacethought he could almost see tears in Alec’s eyes, too, as his mouth opened upin one last smile.

“Quiteright, too,” Alec said, his voice low and hoarse.

Jace’sheart was thumping wildly in his chest.

“And Isuppose…” Alec continued.

Jace didn’tthink he was breathing.

“If it’s my last chance to say it…”

Jace knew italready, yes, but he didn’t think that he could ever live another day havingnever heard those words coming from that mouth, in that voice that had become as familiar as his own, and directed at him and only him. He needed that confirmation of everythingthat he – they – had been feeling forso long.

“JaceHerondale, -”

Alecvanished.

One blinkof an eye, and he wasn’t there anymore.

Jace staredat empty space.

send me prompts

#shadowhunters #jalec #jalec fic #my fic #my writing #this is the story of how i died #tenrose au #darebearrph

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daymusik · 4 years

Photo

Okay. I am going to try and keep this SHORT but this is an issue that has been bugging me for literal years! If you remember, back in the day, the days of the Nintendo DSi and the wonderful world of Flipnotes, you may recall there was a platform with which to share your flipnotes and find countless others as well. That place was called "Flipnote Hatena." Again, trying to keep this short, but it's kinda hard because what you see here is a character; her name is Rhapsody the Bat. At least, what you see is the culmination of years of obsessing over her after originally finding this character on Flipnote Hatena drawn by an artist named "Darkbunny" at the time but I believe shortly before Hatena ended, she changed her name and made it actually impossible to find her only knowing this and maybe her real name was Samantha or just Sam and the main reason why I have been trying to find her-...*sighs* This character, drawn and animated to a nightcore version of this song (which I believe was a popular animation meme at the time), was among my first ever furry crushes, forming in me feelings I had no clue what to do with at the time but definitely helped lead me in the direction of finding out who I really am. She is definitely to thank for me being a furry, and her artwork has inspired me to draw; I mean, just look at this! She did not look like this on the DSi, I can assure you of that! She was a chibi-style character with much less detail and, even, my first attempt at "drawing" her was me actually putting paper against my DSi screen and tracing her because I wanted to keep her in mind, and from those tracings, I drew her and a couple of other characters (named Rye the Albino Fox, Devion the demon fox, and Angeon, whom I don't think I drew but was among her lore) until eventually improving my skill enough to make this! I have search for many years to see what became of her after Hatena closed and I have found other Hatena artists, ShinyEevee (now named Pupom), Yuna1997 (I believe was the number), Pocho, I've found other Flipnote artists whom I used to watch on Flipnote Hatena, but this mysterious Darkbunny character still alludes me and it has been the most frustrating, actually physically depressing feeling I have ever held with me, and I know -- if for some reason you, or anyone!, is still reading this -- this probably all seems weird or like some weird obsession -- it is! It's an obsession for this Rhapsody character whom I actually fell in love with at the age of 13 or 14 and shaped me into who I am now and the desire to find and thank the original artist involved. God! You guys didn't see the original animation where she came from and this particular still image, this one nor the other one of her and Devion set to a different equally haunting song when paired with the image that just provoked some odd feelings I was far too young to understand but GOD did it resonate with me TO THIS DAY that I might actually start crying if I keep typing! Please, Darkbunny from Flipnote Hatena one the DSi, circa 2009-2012, if by some miracle this gets around to you, I just want to say, truly and deeply from the bottom of my heart: Thank you. Your amazing artwork, your incredible character design, and your awe-inspiring animations really left a long lasting impression on me. As I kid, I could have never known what it would have done to me and my developing mind, but as I mind has now developed, I can only look back and see that I have you to thank. You've inspired me; you've helped shape my life into what it is today; you and your characters, among such others as Ember from Spyro: A Hero's Tail and Amy Rose from the Sonic series, left an impression on me that I carried throughout my entire adolescense and teenage years and should I not have proceeded the way I did, well, I couldn't even imagine how my life would be at this moment. I can assure you, I would either still be "in the closet" or at most have come out much later than I did. So, once again, sincerely, Thank You.

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#bat #darkness #female #claws #wings #fangs #zatox

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cryptoriawebb · 7 years

Text

My Little Pony: the Movie (review)

I really wanted to love this movie. I really really did.

I’ve been following along this series almost from the beginning; when I heard a proper animated film was in the works I was very excited. I had no idea what lay in store, of course, but it seemed like such a milestone, and rightly deserved. I can’t believe this series has come as far as it has, and still going after all these years. Not only that, but the characters have continued to grow organically, one-off characters return and develop as well, and story arcs went from episodic to partially serialized. It’s really inspiring for someone like me, to see a little show about colorful ponies evolve into quite frankly, a phenomenon I’ve never before seen. Nor have I seen a company/studio respond the way Hasbro did: they’ve really seemed to embrace their fanbase and both broadened and improved their merchandise along with it. I’ve said it before but I really hope one day I’m able to create something with half as much meaning and inspiration as I’ve seen My Little Pony give so many others, myself included.

So to walk away from their film with a mediocre “meh” hurts me to admit. It really does. I wanted something new, fresh and impressionable from this movie. Both the plot and characters felt standard, expected and honestly, tired because of that. The Storm King felt essentially like a rehashed Tirek, without half the same terror. While I maintain season four of MLP was essentially Dragonball’s Goku vs Freeza, it was still one heck of a finale. Tirek stands as my favorite villain in the series: he was threatening, powerful and quite honestly, terrifying in his own right. He straight up ate magic. Changed physically because of it. Came very very close to destroying Equestria and my gosh I wanted to feel that same sense of dread in the movie. I didn’t. Instead, I saw a wannabe and less-impressive Tirek conquer Equestria in a less-impressive way. He also received no backstory whatsoever. I suppose that’s the case with most MLP villains, I suppose I just hoped for something different in the first feature for this incarnation.

Likewise, I also hoped for a far more interesting backstory for Tempest. She had such a presence on-screen, and I’ve never seen the concept of a broken horn explored before. Her song, too, was by far the most powerful in the film…which is why I was so disappointed to learn she became the way she was through an Ursa Major attack. Ursa Majors are huge and intimidating, I get that, it just seemed a bit weak for such a powerful villain against friendship…and reminded me strongly of Starlight Glimmer’s origin. A pony turned against others due to feeling abandoned. Just like Tirek, Starlight’s conclusions and subsequent revenge against the mane six made for a much greater impact. I’m also not at all surprised she turned around when the Storm King (surprise surprise, I say sarcastically) betrayed her but Twilight saved her. How often has this happened in the series? I know friendship is Twilight’s title, and the focus of the series, but I wanted something stronger, something—as I said—unique to this movie.

Honestly, Tempest embodies a lot of what I love about Zira from Simba’s Pride (the Lion King sequel, because there are some people who don’t know that.) The way she carries herself, speaks and sings…just with a lot less maniacal bloodlust. The murderous mania I can do without, I just wish Tempest felt more like a villain, a proper villain. The Storm King, too. They were caricatures, and I don’t think caricatures don’t always work well in a feature.

Villains aside, I also had a lot of problems with the behavior of the mane six. From what I’ve read, production for this movie began in 2014, which would explain why they act so different from the ponies we see in season 7, now. I don’t believe the Twilight of 2017 would angrily state it might’ve been better if she hadn’t been friends with Pinkie and the others. I also do not believe she would have tried to steal a magic pearl. Ever. Even in season one. That is not a Twilight thing to do, no matter the stakes. Of course, compared to the others she was the only one taking this entire threat seriously. I’d witness fear and dread in her friends but then they’d carelessly make a scene and draw attention to themselves, something that, again, did not work for a feature like this. I know this movie is primarily for children, but the balance between humor and darkness didn’t flow as well as it does in the series itself. With more time to carry out a story, it should have. (Also, didn’t Spike get over his Rarity-crush?) Most of the characters behaved like they might have in seasons three or four, not seven. It felt really out of place and at times took me out of the urgency.

On a more positive note, I adored the seapony sequence. Everything about it: the backstory, the design and visuals, and the characters! I will say I figured out pretty quick they held some kind of relation to the hippogriffs, but it was cool nonetheless! The princess’ introduction felt very “Little Mermaid.” Kind of a fun nod, although I’m not entirely sure if it was intentional. Definitely the best part of the movie. A friend of mine pointed out—and I agree, actually—a movie set almost entirely underwater would’ve been a lot more fun than what we got. It was so colorful, and the origin blurb has a lot of potential for deeper development. Pinkie Pie was by far my favorite of the mer-designs!

I’ll go back to visuals in a second: I want to talk about characters for a minute. I don’t for a second think there needed to be as many new characters as there were. Was it cool to see pirate-bird-creatures-seriously-what-were-they and an anthromorphic cat? Yes, yes it was. Did we need them? No. No we didn’t. Too many characters, not enough time to develop them beyond tropes seen time and again. I would’ve preferred the creative team use this opportunity to bring more minor characters to the forefront: a “Slice of life” combined with the mane cast for an epic adventure or something. Actually—and I was talking to the same friend about this—if this movie had been written even a year later, it might’ve been a great opportunity to throw Starlight at the forefront of the other mane ponies to rescue/stop a corrupted Twilight Sparkle. I know that’s not something done so easily in a kid’s movie: they want to root for their favorite princess to save the day. However…Midnight Sparkle made such a great impact, at least I think so, in Equestria Girls, and the older Tempest might very well have succeeded in corralling a disheartened Twilight to her side, even if she were reluctant. Maybe Twilight’s magic gained an explosive side when reacting to negative emotion: similar to Tempest and even Starlight. Or maybe she really felt like there was no other way out or that she hurt her friends beyond recovery or something… just something. Something better. I’m not sure how I felt about the series kind of making fun of itself, either. I liked that they were out of their element, that their streak of making friends and solving problems so easily wasn’t working and yet essentially did by the end. However, they’ve traveled to other kingdoms before, and made friends, solved problems in these kingdoms, despite not always seeing eye to eye with the locals. It seemed a little weird they’d grow frustrated with themselves over leaving equestrian and expecting the same results: they have left Equestria and gotten the same results. Makes enough sense to me they’d grow used to expectation.

Now to the visuals.

WOW. W-O-W. Absolutely stunning in every, and I do mean every, possible way. Fluid, colorful, sparkly, the very definition of eye candy. I can’t get over it. The added shadows and movement in their hair, eyelashes, everything…I wish the show were animated like that all the time. It was a tiny bit jarring, trying to adjust to so much more on a big screen but I’m not complaining. There were definitely a few shots in there I’m sure the studio put in to show off their animation but again, not complaining. They worked hard on this movie and deserve to show off.

It was also really wonderful to see an animated film reminisce the hand-drawn cel-animated look of old. I know that computer-generated look is cheaper and the next “big” step in animation, but I’m a little old school at heart. Disney, Don Bluth, Dreamworks, you name it: they created such wonderful, fluid work back in the day…I miss it. Some highlights that stood out to me: THE EYES. They were so big and sparkly. So expressive. My gosh. The hair/mane, especially on Celestia and Luna. Such volume! Really mystical. The sonic rainboom, however foolish of Rainbow Dash, might’ve been the most visually appealing moment in the film. So vibrant and rich. Wow. As I said, the seapony sequence. Although Tempest’s magic gets special mention because I definitely felt her rage and dazzling power whenever it went off.

I can’t think of anything else to add…I think this about sums up my thoughts. If there’s anything else, it’s the jokes/references to Hungry Hungry Hippos and the Wizard of Oz. Not necessary, exactly, but done, at least I thought, with more taste than Moana’s attempt at pop culture. As much as I loved that movie. Setting them in the background, or split apart amongst a group made you do a doubletake: a ‘listen-close-or-you-might-miss-it’ sort of thing. I liked that.

So to sum up: Average movie, not good or bad, although disappointed with the storytelling. I’ve seen this team do so much more, pull off concepts that would otherwise come across dull and cliché. What happened?

#my little pony #my little pony friendship is magic #my little pony the movie #mlp fim #twilight sparkle #tempest shadow #the storm king #seaponies #apple jack #rarity #fluttershy #rainbow dash #pinkie pie #movie reviews #returnedtothecrypt

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whitecatgeek · 7 years

Text

Remember that time I started a Game Grumps/egobangiplier fanfiction and never got further than three and a half pages?

yeahmeneither

‘I’m Sonic the Motherfucking Hedgehog, or more like, the fuckin’, fuckin’, what even is a hedgehog do we even get those in America what the fuck why isn’t it like Sonic the Armadillo those shitheads can roll into a ball and probably move really fast maybe I mean I don’t even know.’

Those were the thoughts casually flowing through the brain of one Arin Hanson as he sat in class, the monotone of algebra a mere background noise as the lead of his pencil scratched furiously against squared paper. What should have been numbers was multiple, somewhat crude doodles and drawings of video game characters. A particularly sad and bewildered Tails ‘Miles’ Prower stood, arms a bit too long for his body, looking lost as Sonic flipped him the bird, and a sense of angry pride swelled in Arin’s head.

“Hahahaa!” His thoughts were broken by a pleasant, but to him incredibly disruptive, laugh coming from the back of the class.

“What the ffffFFFUCK.” He spat out involuntarily and entirely without thinking, the tip of his pencil breaking as though to echo his rage. Of course, that exclamation was supposed to be in his head, not bellowed out for his entire class to hear. Although actually quite shy, Arin was not known for his self control.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hanson?” Dread practically dripped down his neck as he heard those words from the authoritative figure that was his Maths tutor, hairs prickling up on his arms as he realised what he had just done. “Is something wrong?”

“I-... Uhhh.” He muttered, cheeks burning with embarrassment, yet still he could not stop himself from glancing around to the source of the laugh that caused his outburst. Why was he being punished when someone else was fooling around in class?

The merriment came from the lanky, long-legged boy who always sat out of reach and out of consequence, his chair tilted back as he looked at Arin, his gaze not seeming to actually reach the shorter, grumpy boy but instead always looking past him, as though something else ultimately took his interest.

Daniel Avidan, or Danny to his friends, was not your typical troublemaker. He never paid attention, never handed in homework, never really seemed to do... Anything. This infuriated Arin to no end, because despite his preference for other creative hobbies he always did his best to scrape by. Yet this other boy, this tall, big-haired, droopy-eyed, painfully charming student never seemed to have a care in the world.

“How about you think about it outside the class and let the rest of us get back to learning, Mr. Hanson?” Arin’s eyes quickly snapped back to his teacher at hearing those words, and he resisted his natural instinct to swear under his breath, or question if that was a request or a demand when he knew full well what it was.

He clumsily snatched up all of his belongings, jabbing pencils and notebooks into his backpack as he tried not to let the amused stares of his peer’s burn into the back of his head for too long, chin length strands of slightly greasy mahogany hair falling over his eyes and allowing him to hide his shame.

Just as he was about to reach the freedom of the corridor, he heard that laugh again. Girls liked that laugh; they thought it was “cute”. It made Arin freeze on the spot and his hands clenched into fists. In that moment he hated that laugh and everything that it stood for. To be fair, Arin was known for his melodramatic attitude.

He burst out of the classroom and closed the door behind him, swinging his backpack onto the floor and pressing his forehead against the wall of the hallway. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.’ His brain repeatedly battered away at him, being this close to escaping the prison that was high school and going to college meant that he didn’t have room to make mistakes like this.

Whilst he considered himself to be a loner, Arin was actually in a very happy place. All of the awkwardness of being bullied for being “nerdy” had settled as fellow students focused on their studies and the paths that would inevitably lead to college or other roads in life, and he had amassed a small but very loyal group of friends.

He groaned quietly, smooshing his face into the wall as he imagined what said friends would say when they found out that he managed to get kicked out of his class this late into the game. In fact he didn’t really need to imagine it because he knew exactly how they would react, one young man in particular whose maniacal, “HAH HAH HAAAH!” would no doubt soon be echoing throughout the corridors.

“Uh, hey man, are you... Alright?” He was pulled out of his thoughts by the sudden question and Arin flew backwards, almost bumping into the student who approached him out of the blue. He furiously brushed and swept at his hair with his hands before actually laying eyes on the kind stranger. “You looked pretty intimate with that wall there.”

“Oh, hey, dude! I’m fine! I’m great!” Arin bellowed in response before giving a clumsy, fairly pointless thumbs up.

Before him stood someone that he did not recognise, though he appeared to be of a similar age. He was just a tad shorter than Arin though with a broader build, with jet black hair draped across his forehead. His face was handsome but understated, and he appeared to be at least part East Asian in ethnicity.

“Uhhh, do I know you?” Arin continued, staring dumbly at the shorter boy.

“Oh, uh, no, I don’t think so! I’m Mark!” Mark Fischbach, as it turned out, quickly introduced himself whilst glancing around, an obvious sense of nervousness about him that wasn’t hidden by his surprisingly low voice that had an almost radio DJ quality to it. “Hey I don’t mean to bother you, but I am totally lost here, it’s my first day and I literally have no idea where I’m going.”

“Oh, bro! Yeah sure, I mean, I can probably help.” Arin involuntarily puffed his chest out, his natural desire to go into ‘show off’ mode kicking in. “Where do you need to get to? I know this whole place super well, almost like someone who comes here every day.”

“Oh, well, I’m trying to find Room 237; it’s for Chemistry with Ms Dubois..?” He sheepishly responded, searching Arin’s face for a response.

“Noooo problem!” The young man beamed, easily distracted from his previous woes. “I’ll show you how to get there, consider me your personal guide.” With that he snatched up his backpack, the dark colour of the fabric carrier decorated with little bursts of colour in the form of hand-made badges and key rings of his own artwork, along with bright candy packets littered in Japanese font sitting in the small netted pocket at the front.

He set off with long, proud strides and the meeker boy followed behind him, making sure to keep up with the slightly erratic youth that he had encountered. As they travelled across the school building, its halls ghostly quiet due to classes being in session, they made small talk.

As it turned out, Mark had just moved into the neighbourhood and was trying his best to catch up, but Arin got the impression that the other teenager was very bright and even more modest. Mark found Arin’s quirky, eager to please attitude strangely charming and enjoyed the boy’s constant outbursts of facts about the school, though sometimes he found it a little difficult to get any words of his own into the conversation.

“So, uh, like. Are you-... You know.” Arin suddenly stopped and stared at Mark, then at the floor, then back at Mark, and then pretty much everywhere he could possibly lay his eyes in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. “Nihonjin.”

“Ni-... Home gym..? Wha’?” Mark blinked, absolutely lost.

“You know, nihonjin, nippon, nihongo?” Arin muttered through his teeth, moving closer to the shorter student and now staring at him intensely with an expectant look.

“Is... Is this hazing?”

“WHAT. No. Man, you know! Japanese? Are you Japanese!?”

“Oh! .... Huh?”

“Oh my God, Arin, not every Asian person is Japanese.” The awkwardness was abruptly broken by two students appearing behind them having just walked around the corner, the taller of the two placing a hand upon Arin’s shoulder. “Are you harassing people again?”

“Barry!” Arin exclaimed and jumped back away from Mark, “I was just... No!” His bottom lip jutted out in a dramatic pout whilst his follower continued to look utterly confused. “...Wait, what are you doing out of class?”

“I had to walk this guy to the nurse’s office.” Barry responded, waving his thumb over at the grinning youth next to him.

“I got bitten by a crocodile!” Said youth exclaimed, strands of pale brown hair cascading over his eyebrows, beneath them his blue eyes were wide and bright despite the fact that one of his hands was wrapped around his knee whilst and he hopped awkwardly upon his other leg, obviously injured.

“No, you did not. Someone decided that it would be a good idea to try and play cricket whilst everyone else was running track, and the baseball he used bounced back and hit him.” Barry sighed, putting a palm upon his forehead in exasperation.

“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault that we don’t get to play real sports... Wait, why are YOU out of class?” The hobbling boy asked, his words all lifted by hints of an Australian accent.

“Oh, uhm...” Arin sighed before explaining the situation, and then it happened as expected.

“HAH HAH HAAAH!”

“Shut up Ross! It wasn’t my fault! It was that guy, that... DAN. He thinks he’s so cool just because everyone likes him and he’s so handsome and like, ‘Oh look at me, I’m Dan, I’m so cool and everyone likes me and I’m so handsome!’ Yeah well you’re a loser and you suck.”

“Oh come on, he’s not that bad.” Barry interrupted, leaning against a pillar structure in the wall of the corridor. “So what’s your story?” He nodded over at Mark who was listening patiently to the three.

“Oh, uhm, hi! I’m Mark!” He plucked up and introduced himself, and with that they all started to head towards the new student’s classroom. “So who is this.. Dan?”

“Oh he’s just a guy that Arin is obsessed with.”

#polygrumps #game grumps fanfiction #polygrumps fanfiction #egobang #egobangiplier

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tordism · 7 years

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Mob vs The Nasties

Well, the fic was locked by AO3 because the pedos thought it was harassment, so I’m posting the fic here!

Do me a favor and spread this! It’s pissing off the pedos!

Ritsu woke up and got out of bed and clipped through the floor at 3 am in the morning. He heard the bad news. That someone out there was writing nasty shit about his brother. He was going to have none of it.

So he built up enough speed to go completely through the wall and into his brother’s room. “Shige.” He said and poked his brother’s forehead.

Mob opened his eyes super wide and screeched. It was ear shattering. The windows exploded. Ritsu’s ears started to bleed. So Ritsu put a hand over Mob’s mouth and shushed him.

“Brother. The nasties are back. We gotta move.” He said, and Mob completely understood. He got out of bed and together, the two jumped out the broken window.

They ran at high speeds. They didn’t even use their powers they were just naturally super fucking fast. Like Sonic but faster.

Teru spotted them from his spot in the sewers and just had to join them. He understood the situation perfectly. The nasties were back. It was time for destruction. Teru began to Naruto run after them. “Hey guys!” He cried. They ignored him.

Then they arrived at their destination. They broke down the door to Reigen’s apartment and Ritsu dropped a brick on Reigen’s stomach. “Wake up asshole.” Ritsu said. Reigen just opened one eye and stared at him.

“What?” He asked and yawned. Reigen was really tired.

“The nasties are back.” Mob said and whipped out his phone, showing Reigen the nasty shit in the AO3 tag.

Reigen sat up, an angry look on his face. “Ugh! They’re back at it again!” He grumbled and ate the phone. Fuck those guys. “Writing porn of those type of ships is straight up illegal!” Reigen declared then stared directly at the camera.

Ritsu looked in the direction Reigen was staring in, then shrugged. “Anyways, we need to stop the nasties before they get too powerful. We have to combine our psychic powers to do it. Except for you, Reigen, you fake ass hoe.”

Reigen cried. Then Shou appeared from underneath Reigen’s bed. He’s been under there, stealing food scraps to survive. “Hey dorks.” He said and posed. Teru was offended because that was his thing. Shou ignored him because he didn’t care about Teru. “I heard that the nasties were back. I’ll help you fight them with my psychic powers!”

The three kids shrugged. “Sure. We can use all the help we can get.” They said in unison. Then the four kids grabbed Reigen and they ran off into the night.

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They found a big field somewhere far away and all stopped there. Serizawa was waiting for them, lying on the floor and thinking about his existence. Shou dropped in and landed on his stomach, but Serizawa was too strong and it caused Shou to glitch and shoot up into the sky. They had to wait an hour for him to come back down.

“Okay guys, you know what we have to do. Psychic powers, let’s do this.” Mob said and they all nodded. Dimple showed up right on time and gave them all a thumbs up.

Mob, Ritsu, Teru, Shou and Serizawa all formed a circle and began using their epic psychic powers. They began chanting this phrase over and over again.

“Writing child porn is disgusting and illegal. Writing child porn is disgusting and illegal.”

Then suddenly, the nasties showed up! They surrounded them all and were moving in fast. The espers were on their guard, and Reigen was lucky he brought his lucky plunger. You know, just in case there was a fight.

One of the nasties, most likely the temporary leader of the group (The leader changes often), stepped forward and pointed at the group. “My name is CheerfulLamb and you don’t understand my kinks! I’ve been writing child porn for years!”

Mob frowned and pointed back at them. “You’re all disgusting and we’re going to defeat you, no matter what!” He said and immediately was tackled by a nasty!

“You fuckers!” Ritsu shouted and kicked the nasty off of his brother. He used his psychic powers to blow the nasty back further, but he wasn’t strong enough to completely destroy them. Ritsu cursed himself under his breath. He wasn’t fully prepared for this.

Then, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Shou! Shou grinned and nodded at him. “I got ya, bro.” He cackled, then fused together with Ritsu. Their fusion looked like a shorter Ritsu with red hair, and their fusion name was “Depressed Jams”.

Depressed Jams began to glow, their aura was beautiful. Their aura was like how a scene kid would draw their aura. Edgy but colorful at the same time. Mob and Teru were absolutely amazed. Serizawa cried with joy and Reigen almost exploded by the sheer amount of awesome coming from them.

“Get fucked nasties.” They said and unleashed a flurry of spoons that were really hot. Like you heated them over a fire and they got all red. Several nasties fell at the hands of the spoons. Depressed Jams laughed and cried at the same time. By the way, Depressed Jams sounds just like Justin Timberlake.

Teru decided to get to work and pulled a skateboard out of his pocket. “Surfs up, punks.” He said, throwing on a pair of sunglasses. He began to skate around, using his psychic powers to blow up the nasties left and right.

Serizawa was helping too, making sure Reigen didn’t get his ass killed by the nasties. He threw one nasty into another, then crumbled them up like paper.

Reigen was swinging the plunger around like a fucking madman. He was screaming the entire time and heavy metal was playing softly in the background. The nasties went flying all around him and they disintegrated into piles of salt. “Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.” Reigen said, attempting to be badass like the others.

Now it was just Mob versus the leader. CheerfulLamb laughed evilly, and it made Mob very upset. “You think you can defeat me? CheerfulLamb? I’m the biggest baddie of them all! You’ll never win, Shigeo Kageyama! I’ll keep writing porn of you even if it kills me!”

Mob’s hand clenched into a fist. “You can go to jail for that, nasty!” He said before CheerfulLamb rushed forward, hitting Mob as hard as they could.

Mob threw up his barrier just in time and deflected the blow.

67%

“You don’t understand! This stuff is bad! Call us antis all you want, you’re still disgusting! You can go to jail for that kind of content!” Mob shouted, thanking his barrier for keeping him safe from MerryLamb’s punches.

CheerfulLamb screeched. “No you don’t understand! It’s just fiction! Stop being a whiny baby or I’ll write more!”

78%

“Even if it’s fiction it’s still bad! It gives pedophiles an okay! You’re encouraging the actions of real life pedophiles!” Mob shouted, but Lamby didn’t listen.

88%

99%

100% DETERMINATION.

Mob was determined to defeat the nasties! He let out an incredible burst of energy, sending Lamb backwards. He flew forward, punching Lamb right in the gut. They felt their ribs break as they were pushed into the ground.

Depressed Jams cheered them on as they defended the others from nasties crawling out of the ground. “Go Mob! You can do it! Win this fight!” They shouted.

Teru did a sick ollie over Depressed Jams, smacking into a nasty that almost caught them off guard.

CheerfulLamb screeched loudly and attempted to attack Mob again, but it didn’t work. Their nastiness couldn’t beat Shigeo Kageyama. Mob was going super saiyan and Lamb began to disappear in a flash. They were melting.

“I’ll be back!” They shouted as they were melting. “I’ll bring even more nasty stuff when I return!”

Mob pointed at them. “And we’ll be waiting. We’ll fight you with everything we have.” He said and there was a badass explosion behind him. Then as they finished melting, CheerfulGoat disappeared.

The other nasties exploded one by one as the sun began to rise. They have been defeated for now. Depressed Jams unfused, and the two kids gave each other a high five. Teru absorbed his skateboard and cried tears of joy. Reigen clapped and Serizawa screamed. Dimple did nothing the entire time.

Mob was back at 0%. He turned around and smiled at the others. “The evil is defeated. For now. Let’s go home everyone!” He said and walked back to them.

Everyone gathered around him, and with the power of friendship they rose into the sky.

The end.

#mob psycho 100 #mp100 #reimob #n0r5k1.txt #My Writing

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theeverlastingshade · 5 years

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Merriweather Post Pavilion- Animal Collective: 10th Anniversary

While it may have seemed evident for the first time in their career up to that point where Animal Collective would go on their next LP given the sounds of their brilliant, and game changing previous record, Strawberry Jam, and Panda Bear’s landmark third LP, Person Pitch, Merriweather Post Pavilion presented another remarkable departure for the band, bringing them as close to cultural ubiquity as they would ever get. In continuing within the progression from SJ that found them ditching their guitars for samplers, alongside Panda Bear’s newfound adherence to crafting loop-based jams over working within traditional song structure parameters on PP, MPP was unlike anything in their discography. It was by far their most approachable album, but thankfully despite the heightened emphasis on melody and danceable rhythms they don’t compromise an ounce of their singularity, ability to distill a myriad of disparate influences seamlessly, or otherworldly strangeness. Even at their most inclusive Animal Collective sound like no one but themselves entirely. Ten years later MPP still stands as a towering piece of work that sounds like one of the most compelling albums to legitimately, inadvertently bridge the gap between the underground and mainstream this century.

Throughout their career Animal Collective toured their new material, work shopping the songs in real time in front of audiences, before they were properly released, and the material on MPP was no exception. After the release of SJ Deakin left the band due to a combination of touring fatigue and undisclosed personal reasons, and so Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist set out to record their following LP without him throughout the following winter. The demos for MPP began circulating in an email chain between band members throughout 2007, and while songs for the record would seep into their live sets that year they didn’t formally reconvene for recording until February 2008. Without Deakin in the mix it was a given that guitar would play a markedly diminished role in the recordings, and working with Ben H. Allen as a producer helped further heighten the populist sensibilities that had always existed within their music, albeit usually buried under heaps of noise. As a result, MPP is noticeably cleaner sounding, and far more bass heavy than any other their records, but thankfully just as dense and mesmerizing. The previously unprecedented emphasis on a thick low-end, coupled with cleaner production, and brighter, richer harmonies than they had ever attempted resulted in a bewildering level of immediacy that wouldn’t have been fathomable five years prior.

Everything about Animal Collective’s work following their remarkable 2005 LP Feels has been informed to some degree by PP. It’s importance on their subsequent work simply cannot be overstated. Their music has always been defined by hyper-saturated textures and sonic exploration, but from Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished through Feels they were still working within the parameters of rock instrumentation, despite the arrangements being so bathed in effects that they at times hardly seemed to suggest their origin. On MPP, instead of recording themselves playing these arrangements on traditional instruments they repeatedly sampled themselves, and then spliced up the various samples, looping them together in a dizzying array of colorful sound. The songs born from these samples are more meticulously assembled than anything that they had attempted prior, and like a few of the songs on PP, they seem like they could go on forever with samples occasionally shifting shape while the overall composition continues to ride on the maximalist repetition. Despite the complexity of their construction, the songs on MPP shine with an impeccable melodicism that had been unprecedented to that degree within their canon.

Though not overtly presenting as one, Animal Collective have been a pop band at heart since STGSTV, and here they unabashedly embrace that impulse while continuing to evolve and challenge themselves. Much in the way that SJ was Avey Tare’s record, as it marked a shift away from the sun-streaked, blissful psychedelia of Feels to something more visceral and manic, MPP is a return to the band’s tamer side, and is undeniably Panda Bear’s record. A few of the songs existed in demo form while Panda Bear was touring PP, and even after having been fleshed out into proper songs by the rest of the band, they still retain his vibrant melodic touch. Despite Geologist’s stunning sample work that consistently envelopes these songs with plenty of indiscernible sound to latch onto, the band’s tunefulness reaches its peak here. Both Avey and Panda’s voices are relegated to a much higher place in the mix than than usual, which further heightens the distinctiveness of each while amplifying their anthemic qualities. While their voices had never rung clearer, they’re also both consistently lathered in a thick coating of reverb which ensured that it wouldn’t be quite as obvious which one of them was singing when presented in tandem with one another, despite their singular inflections. While it’s easy to lament the sharp contrast, particularly in regards to the absence of Tare’s feral shrieks, the seamless interplay between their vocals is an absolute marvel throughout, and it’s never sounded as tight, before or after.

It seems only fitting that the album of theirs up to this point that contained the most otherworldly, synthetic sounding compositions was equally defined by their most endearing, human lyrics to date. Avey Tare and Panda Bear had both gotten married a few years beforehand, Panda Bear had just become a father, and Geologist was in a relationship that would lead to marriage by late 2009, so the lyrics throughout touch on themes of family, responsibility, sense of self, discovery, and healing. “My Girls” finds Panda Bear singing about his desire to simply provide for his family “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things/Like a social status/I just want four walls and adobe slabs, for my girls”, deeming anything in addition to sustainability an afterthought. “Guys Eyes” details Panda’s longing for intimacy while on tour “I really need to show to my girl that I need her”, while “Daily Routine” unpacks the minutiae of the newfound habitual schedule that emerged since Panda Bear became a father “Make sure my kid’s got a jacket/And keys and coat and shoes and hat”. “Bluish” explores a moment of pure bliss that Avey experienced with a lover “I’m getting lost in your curls/I’m drawing pictures on your skin”, while “Taste” explores issues of identity and how we manage to define ourselves “Don't let your temper rise, don't get a bitter face/Don’t judge me on my kind of taste”. While the music splits the difference between dense complexity and all-encompassing immediacy, the writing succeeds in achieving a delicate balance between sincere simplicity and universal human experience.

While the production throughout MPP provides the songs with a level of approachability that previously eluded the band, there are still a few songs here that rank among the best that they ever wrote. “Taste” stirs to life with ambient samples that seem to approximate the buzz of insects before a massive kick drum, delicate synths, and the gorgeous back and forth vocals of Panda Bear and Avey Tare slide into the mix. It’s one of the finest displays of their vocal interplay to date, and despite just how dense the mix is, it doesn’t detract from what’s handedly one of their strongest melodies to date. “Daily Routine” begins at a crawl with brief organ stabs before Panda Bear’s voice descends upon the mix alongside the now iconic organ riff. Shortly before the halfway point the riff is perpetually looped, and alongside breezy guitar strums and droning new age synths that creep along the periphery of the mix Panda Bear’s voice soars above it all as he provides the grandest delivery in their discography “Just one sec more in my bed”, the mix practically trembling with catharsis. Even as the record veers toward unrelenting maximalism, “Bluish” comes in to provide sensory relief in the form of a tranquil comedown. Though still steeped in a hypnotic array of texture, the tempo, vocals, and instrumentation are as subdued as the band have allowed since Feels, and their restraint pays off immensely as Avey delivers one of his most tender vocal performances to date.

As accomplished as these songs are, the crown jewel of MPP is the final song, “Brother Sport”. Equally uplifting and heartbreaking, “Brother Sport” was written by Panda Bear as a balm for his brother Matt to help him cope with their father’s death “I know it sucks that daddy’s done/But try to think of what you want/You’ve got to open up your/Open up your/Open up your throat”. It’s the song that most resembles something that could have wound up on PP, and the ingenious pacing of the samples allow the song to end in a much different place than where it began with the transitions sounding as effortless and natural as breathing. “Brother Sport” begins as an afro-electronic rave that continues building steam before transitioning into an explosive, full-blown psychedelic freak-out that’s bursting at the seams with Panda Bear’s jubilant vocals, frantic tribal drums, blaring synths, and a bounty of hazy texture.

While “Brother Sport” was the furthest that they’ve strayed from their psych-folk roots up to that point, and the closest that they’d come to reaching a full-on embrace of club culture, it’s still far from a shameless cash-grab. “Brother Sport” comes off like the peak of a summit that they’d been climbing since STGSTV. It’s the natural culmination of their progression up to this point and it incorporates much of what they’ve made their calling cards through their career (angelic harmonies, unrelenting noise, tasteful use of space and repetition, infectious, complex polyrhythms, and heaping doses of unorthodox texture) while looking decidedly toward the future of where they could take their idiosyncratic sound. It’s a perfect conclusion to the record, and while sonically and thematically cohesive with respect to everything that precedes it, it’s more impressive than everything else here.

While not necessarily their best album, MPP is nonetheless the record of theirs that’s all but guaranteed to stand the test of time longer than anything else that they’ve done for everyone outside of the hardcore faithful. It addition to capping off a decade of brilliance with a career arc that was more consistently compelling and unpredictable than that of any other band this century, and changing form on an album to album basis from the lo-fi psych-folk of STGSTV up to the maximalist electronic art-pop of MPP, they rewrote the rules for how musicians would most commonly operate throughout this decade. Although the shift was truly kicked into gear initially by Panda Bear on PP, MPP without question cemented the “ditch the guitars for samplers” approach that became so commonplace for the the acts that were lumped into the chillwave scene, as well as the hypnagogic pop acts, and the bands that drew from psychedelia that all emerged this decade.

So much underground pop music today seems unfathomable in a context that wasn’t preceded by MPP, and yet it still sounds like the work of no one else. Even with the existence of their disappointing subsequent LP, Painting With, MPP still sounds like an utter anomaly within their canon. Later in 2009 Animal Collective would release the stellar Fall Be Kind companion EP, which marked the last time that they were nearly unanimously regarded as a critical favorite in addition to their brief brush with the mainstream. The following albums of theirs never reached the highs of their work throughout the last decade, with their solo work (deservedly) largely eclipsing their proper albums. While I’d love to believe that Animal Collective have at least one more great album left in them, they’ve already given us far more than we deserve. Regardless of the future quality of their music, MPP will continue to exist as a triumph of the human spirit; a beacon of perseverance, warmth, and the miraculous achievements that are possible when you dismiss your inhibitions and the expectations of others in favor of keeping your head in the clouds.

Essentials: “Brother Sport”, “Daily Routine”, “Taste”

#Animal Collective #merriweather post pavilion #domino records

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