#i wanted to edit the middle bit where i was bitching about the dynamic in my own fic

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

*Cackling* Now rank your ot3's!

*long sigh*

SECTION 1:

Yes, there are sections, this is a list of 20 things. I like to be organized. These ones I seek out. I like them. I actively enjoy them on purpose.

1. Roloceit: My BOYS. Are these my 3 favorites? perhaps. You can't prove anything (you sure can, just look at my goddamn Ao3). Something about the dynamics here is just...so good for me? The combination of fluff/angst/multi-talented braincells is wonderful. I need these three to watch a documentary and tear it to absolute pieces. Also they would be so good at...actually having methods of supporting each other??? I love them.

2. Analogince: in the same vein, the SNARK. THE SASS. THE GROUPCHAT THAT WE ALL KNOW EXISTS THAT IS SOO OVERLOADED WITH SALT THAT IT'S A DEHYDRATION RISK. Also healthy communication??? supportive signifs??? good shit

3. Anxcietmus: The Dark Sides™. Again, I think these three just get each other. That means great fluff and great angst possibilities ABOUND and especially when it comes to being a menace in the rest of the mindscape. Yes. Good. Have fun.

4. Intruloceit: Someone please make this nerd take a fucking break for once. The chaos of leading what you THINK is a stuck-up buttoned-up nerd only to feel such an odd mixture of pride and mortal terror at discovering a TRUE mad scientist. Yes. Logan deserves to go ape-shit. Let him.

5. Analoceit: Did someone ask for some amused gay judgement? You got the whole scale here, Distinguished, Functional, and Disaster. They don't need the group chat because they can do it with just a look. Perfect. Wonderful.

6. Intruloxiety: slightly less snark, which is why it's ranked lower, but I don't think it would be any less supportive. Between the three of them I think they'd have a conversation about boundaries right up front and constantly be checking in with each other. Which is good!! Please do this!!

7. Loroyality (am i making up some of these names as I go? yes): The Light Sides™! The reason this is ranked lower is because I think they've got some in-canon struggles that would take some time and effort (from errybody) to sort out before I would consider this relationship healthy, but after that? Forget it. We vomiting sushine and rainbows and our teeth hurt from how sweet they are. I have faith in them.

8. Royaliceit: *sniff sniff* did someone say ANGST??? This is the only one I put up here that I mainly look for to get angst because BOY HOWDY. Especially post-POF? Roman you poor thing why do I project so strongly onto you, my god. This is a MESS and they need to do WORK to FIX IT but it's all about the misunderstanding and the healing and oh my god please someone tell Roman his worth is not based on how well his work is received please. Also if you're like me and you subscribe to the headcanon that the last time Patton and Janus agreed on something it was to stay in the closet as long as possible...*choo choo bitches angst town here we come*

SECTION 2:

These ones I don't actively seek out but you know?? For a headcanon post? They seem pretty chill. Haven't devoted a lot of brainpower to 'em, just think they're neat.

9. Moloceit (my keyboard is so confused you guys): Now THIS. THIS is the obnoxious trio of philosophy majors that ALWAYS hog the good library table. Someone will say ONE GODDAMN thing and they'll be talking about ontology and subjectivity for hours. It's impossible to tell whether or not they're being serious when they do it. As a most-definitely-not-a-philosophy-student, no. I mean, yes but no.

10. Anaroceit: you know those fucking divas that strut into the mall like they own the goddamn place? These bastards. They are the Heathers (except actually decent people) and you will not get between them and their purchases. If you come after one of them the other will overprotective the fuck out of them and rip you to shreds. You might be worried sometimes that they're hurting each other but they do actually talk about their boundaries. solid 7/10.

11. Analogicality: (whoa, we're halfway there...): These three just seem like they'd be super domestic. Not that it wouldn't also be adorable, but just kinda...routine? Virgil doesn't like new shit, Logan likes a schedule, and Patton enjoys doing things together in 'traditions.' Some spice but they're all fairly level-headed so...the most they get is screaming out songs with the windows down (WHOA LIVIN' ON A PRAYER)

12: Intrulogicality: You know those scenarios where you got Person A who runs headlong into crazy bullshit, Person B who likes to pretend they're not as into the crazy bullshit as Person A but is, and Person C who gets dragged into shit? There you go.

13: Anxmoceit: I think once they all sat down and had a conversation they might actually be decent??? But I can't stop seeing Patton and Janus coparenting Virgil so it stays platonic in my head. (listen i don't kinkshame but i am aroace, that does limit me a bit when it comes to this bag of nonsense)

14. Intrumoceit: Again, LONG conversation, but it's better to have one crazy dumbass whom you both love but please stop giving up heart attacks every two seconds bb we can't deal with these palpitations. I think this would require SO much work on Patton's end to make this healthy that I can't see it very clearly.

15. Intrumoxiety: This one I put down here because while Janus isn't the best at being straightforward (or straight) he DOES understand himself enough to actually have a productive conversation when he has to. I think Virgil would be too caught up between the dynamic of Patton and Remus for it to be healthy for him, especially at the beginning. It would end up dumping too much of the conflict resolution into his court and uh...no. No thanks. Do I think they COULD make it work? Yes, of course, but I wouldn't seek it out.

16. Anaroyality: Uhhh yeah they exist. Y'all gotta do some work to establish good boundaries but yeah, I think you could do it. Have a makeup day where everybody just fucks shit UP at a Sephora or an Ulta and try crazy looks on each other. You could do it. I believe in you.

SECTION 3:

These are the ones I will actively avoid, more often than not. If they're not handled carefully--which is not the responsibility of other creators, I take full blame, this is just how I personally interpret them--they can squick me out. The ones with Roman and Remus are down here, and as a disclaimer, this isn't because I view poly relationships where not all parties are dating each other as inherently inferior, not at all. I just think that within a relationship where both Roman and Remus are dating the same person, that has the potential to go REAL bad REAL quick.

17. Intrulogince: Do I want to see Roman and Remus playfully competing to win the favor of our favorite nerd? yes. Do I think it would end up aggravating the rivalry they already had to really bad places? Also yes. Either with Roman backing off and internalizing the idea that he's not good enough or by exploding on both of them. It's a bad time. No. That being said, I have seen things where Logan is just spoiled by incredible things made in the Imagination and those are very sweet. a good time.

18. Intruprinxiety (that looks so weird when it's spelled out, oh my god it sounded so much better in my head): Again, exacerbating a pre-existing rivalry, oh dear me, and this time poor Virgil's caught in the middle? a mess. There is also the potential for them to be childhood friends to lovers which would be very sweet but the overlap with all of their combined histories are...a lot of baggage. Like so much.

19. Intruroceit: The only way I can see this happening is Roman's inadequacy issues and abandonment issues going THROUGH THE FUCKING ROOF and it would force Remus into being a pseudo-therapist for them and Janus your habit of messing with Roman needs to gtfo right the fuck now.

20. Intruroyality: is anyone surprised that this one is my least favorite? Between the squicks I get from Patton as a character, the relationship between Patton and both of the twins in canon, and how much baggage Roman and Remus have...no. Absolutely not. I have horrible memories of some very toxic relationships that I can absolutely see here and no.

*phew* that was a long one. you're welcome.

EDIT: thank you @shinekittenace for names seriously this post is a mess

[mickstart]

what do you think are some iconic/memorable schumi moments? i just got into f1 and would like to know more about him bc somehow i can’t really find anything like that about him.... just stats which are incredibly impressive but i can’t find anything about how he behaved or just anything about his personality..... thanks <3

:) Hi anon, thank you for unleashing the beast.

Ok I love you for asking me this thank you SO MUCH. Welcome to the circus I’m glad you’re here! Also yeah, Schumi is often talked about in terms of statistics and not as a human, Which is a shame bc like! Schumi is fascinating and the dynamics on the grid in late 90s F1 is so much fun! Also, this is mainly going to be late 90s -> early 2010s stuff bc I was born in 98 so uhhh I didn’t properly witness ANY 90s stuff and had to learn about it.

OK so I got super carried away but I’ve divided this into 3 sections: Drives/races that I think showcase some of his talents, human moments we need to talk about more, and Chaotic Little Bitch moments. The key thing to remember w/ Schumi is that he personally tends to be nice but as soon as you put him in a competition, Bastard Mode activates like a cat’s pupils going wide.

I am so sorry for the following short essay. Also some crashes are briefly mentioned but only ones with absolutely no injuries and there’s no details.

Chaotic Little Bitch Moments

Schumi debuted as a SUBSTITUTE driver for Jordan when one of their drivers was in police custody (yes. really.) The highest a Jordan had qualified all year was 10th and in his DEBUT at SPA, one of the toughest tracks, in the middle of the season, Schumi qualified that Jordan 7th! THEN his clutch failed before the first lap was even complete, but Benetton and Jordan WENT TO COURT to fight each other to sign him for their team before the next race in Monza. He couldn’t debut normally he HAD to cause a scene and set the tone.

The Red Strings of Fate: He qualified 7th, his iconic 7 starred helmet, his first victory next year was ALSO at Spa - his first complete race would be at Monza, Ferrari Holy Ground, and he finished 5th which 👀 1) he was immediately racing with The Greats. 2) Mr 5 Championships With Ferrari.

Winning a race by taking a stop and go penalty on the last lap, crossing the finish line in the pits, and making such a complicated argument about said penalty that in a hearing that was SUPPOSED to be Mclaren protesting the race result the stewards scrapped the entire penalty and the 3 who awarded it handed in their licenses??? Iconic.

Austria 2002 where Rubens was ordered to give the win to Michael. And then Michael fucking made him stand on the top step on the podium like “oh no no no RUBENS deserves this” and made a big SHOW out of it and its like “Michael stop you’re not making it heartwarming you’re making it WORSE Michael STOP” The Tension of germany 2010 podium VS the theatricality of THIS podium.

Team orders were banned because of this which also makes this indirectly responsible for Fernando Is Faster Than You having to be a coded message. You can’t escape him,

Blocking Alonso in Monaco qualifying and then, years later in 2010, overtaking Alonso technically illegally at Monaco (the race was ending under safety car, but the safety car doesn’t lead them over the line it pits and they’d crossed the safety car line and the regulations were NOT specific about the rules) and getting a 20 second penalty bc Damon Hill was a steward. Haunting FERNANDO specifically at Monaco like the ghost of christmas past? Getting a harsh penalty because ANOTHER driver he’d fucked over was a steward? Forcing the FIA to rewrite the rulebook to account for his nonsense when he was in his FOURTIES? I don’t know another chaos king.

Winning the 1995 championship by crashing into Damon Hill, getting AWAY with it for some reason, and then trying to do the same thing in 1997 to Villeneuve, failing to do so and simply rebounding off of him harmlessly, almost COMICALLY, and beaching his own car in a gravel trap at which point the FIA said “I have had ENOUGH of you Wacky Races Man!” and disqualified him from the entire championship

Forcing Mika off the track so bad at Spa 2000 that Mika realized the only way he was gonna be able to get past him was to re-invent the overtake and go for it whilst they were passing a backmarker. (The overtake itself is at 2:05 in the video but the build up to it is Important bc the key part it’s not just badass, it only happened bc Mika knew who he was dealing with.)

Spa 1998 was a Ridiculously Chaotic race it truly was the Mugello 2020 of its year, and after a crash at the start that took out almost the entire grid Schumi accidentally collided with Coulthard later in the race. (The teams used to have a spare car at every race then, so the race was able to continue after a restart.) This wasn’t a racing thing, Coulthard was getting lapped. So something in Schumi SNAPS, and he storms down the pitlane and tries to fight Coulthard while the mclaren and ferrari mechanics both hold him back and finally drag him away. He projected into the future, saw Coulthard was gonna talk non-stop shit about Seb, and acted accordingly.

Monaco 2012 Pole don’t talk to me about this I still can’t believe the audacity of this man to get the only pole of his comeback, at MONACO, at the ONE RACE where he had a 5 place grid penalty to take!!

In general, I know Cheating Bad but. I HAVE to admire the brainpower it must take to have the rulebook so memorized that whilst driving an F1 car Schumi could spot a loophole the size of the eye of a needle and then dance through it, forcing the FIA to add ANOTHER page to the rule book specially for him bc nobody else even REALISED that loophole existed.

Human Moments

A quick rant about Mika and Schumi’s entire friendship. After Spa 2000 Mika goes up to Michael, says something like “Don’t ever do that again” then they’re friends again. They had this mutual understanding that Racing was not Reality. This goes all the way back to their F3 days they were rivals AND friends for their entire career. They truly were the Sewis of the era if Sebastian was like 50% more evil. Their entire dynamic is “You’re the only motherfucker in this pit lane who can handle me”. Schumi would do some bullshit and every other driver would throw up their hands in frustration and Mika would just go “Okay” and drive better to put him in his place bc he was the only one who could keep up, and Schumi very visibly LOVED that he’s grinning after Mika owns his entire ass with that overtake at Spa. They were unstoppable force meets immovable object and I’m so sad their rivalry isn’t more talked about bc the way Mika is the only driver who can get him to behave like a normal human being is SO entertaining.

This is a sad one so I won’t link it but he started crying in the 2000 Monza press-conference with his brother and Mika when he equaled one of Senna’s records. The press kept trying to ask questions about it and Mika just has this death grip on his shoulder and tries to get them to stop or let them take a break and it’s so sad but also important to know about.

Once said he didn’t want Mick to race in F1 bc the pressure of his name would put Mick under so much stress and he wanted his son to be happy. (He fully supported Mick in his endeavors! But only after making absolutely sure it was what Mick wanted, and making sure he knew he could just race for fun if he wanted and it didn’t have to be F1)

This whole interview just after Mick was born with the Schumacher family. Special shout out to Gina on his head the entire video and also Corinna talking to the press while Michael is captivated by Mick. Me too Michael.

Once allegedly pleaded to take a stray kitten home from the track?

I reblogged this yesterday but. Sticking like glue to Sebastian at an F1 test and immediately being like “This is my new son he’s gonna go far”. There’s a lot of pictures out there also of Michael being a guest at the karting races Seb went to as a kid and baby Seb visibly losing his fucking mind at being given a trophy by his idol. Every day of my life I think about him trying to ruffle Seb’s hair through his helmet at Brazil 2012

WInning the championship in 2000. Him thanking the entire team individually and pausing mid-celebration to kiss his wife Corinna so tenderly it’s in the F1 opening. Also, the way it literally cuts from the rest of McLaren looking like they’re attending a funeral to Mika grinning at him and hugging him fucking SENDSSSSS me.

Schumi was a little shit in all the 2010-12 press conferences like, lowering Lewis’ chair, playing with a microphone wire, but ESPECIALLY corrupting baby Seb and getting him to mess with Nico Rosberg.

He’s just GOOFY! Like I refuse to let him be remembered as a terrifying force of nature he was so goofy kind of similarly to Seb. PLEASE watch this incredibly awkward interview he did with Coulthard on a golf buggy where they both had to pretend they hadn’t thought about murdering each other at least once. I think Sky F1 should force Brocedes to do this when covid’s over. “Do you mind if I drive?” “Yes.”

EDIT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I forgot the 1999 Canada press conference where Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen get into a water fight and Schumi immediately grabs a towel and hides behind it and is like “I had NOTHING to do with it” 🥺 adorable, actually

A lot of people at Ferrari, including Rob Smedley (who was on the other side of the garage with Felipe Massa so not in his inner circle) have said that a lot of the success of the team came from Schumi’s LEADERSHIP more than anything, that he’d make the team get together to bond all the time. When Schumi moved to Ferrari in 1996 they were NOT dominant. He did the same thing Lewis did - went to a team that everybody said would be a huge mistake and helped build them up behind the scenes.

THIS bit of the Canada 2011 Rewind where his engineer gives him the strategy and he’s like “... OkaAaAaAay?” and then when it turns out to be the wrong strategy he cheerfully tells them it’s too late. Little shit.

Speaking of Mercedes I also wanna say that like. They were a MESS in 2012 and his car DNF’d because of a failing on their part MULTIPLE times. (In Canada qualifying his DRS was stuck open and they couldn’t close it.) He did not say a single bad word about them EVER even though the press used this to attack him non-stop as washed-up and bad without Ferrari to cheat for him. At Ferrari he was the exact same with the team, any bastard antics Schumi had for his rivals did not extend to the engineers and crew.

OK this one is soured bc Top Gear is trash BUT if you were like, a kid in England who followed motorsports? Schumi’s fake reveal as The Stig on Top Gear was like the coolest, sickest thing,

Please view this image of Schumi and Mika when they were young and stupid

Iconic Races

ok so I have limited myself to a few races that show off some of his key strengths!

Hungary 1998 / France 2004 - STRATEGY/SPEED - Schumi switched to a 3 stop strategy in 98 and a FOUR STOP strategy in 04 and won both races. In order for the strategy call to work he’d have to basically make every single lap a qualifying style ‘flying lap’ and you best fucking believe he DID THAT. God I fucking miss when Ferrari was the king of strategy.

Argentina 1998 -  has it all. Talent, battling Mika, pit lane mind games with mclaren, and bullying coulthard xxx

Spain 1996 / a majority of the wet races - RAIN - One of Schumi’s nicknames was Rain Master bc he was so fucking good in the wet. If it started raining and you were a Schumi stan you were cackling evilly before the red lights even went out. I single out 1996 bc it was his first win for Ferrari and it was unexpected but in most wet races, even Canada 2011 post comeback, you can see Schumi thriving.

Malaysia 1999 - Schumi missed pretty much the entire second half of the season with a broken leg, came back for the last 2 races with everybody murmuring about whether he would struggle, and immediately put the Ferrari on pole. Also worth noting is that he was the number 2 driver for these 2 races bc his teammate Irvine was fighting Mika for the championship and he went along with that without complaint, allowing Ferrari to win the constructor’s championship if not the driver’s.

Monza 2002, 03, 04, or 06 just because it has the energy of the tifosi kneeling at the feet of an idol to their red god.

Brazil 2006 - Fuck All Y’all - Schumi’s last race for Ferrari. He got a puncture and ended up almost lapped, and then drove his way back from that to 4th bc he couldn’t go out without reminding us he’s a bad bitch.

Monza 2012 - Defending - Don’t tell F1 Twitter that there’s actual footage of Lewis and Michael having a genuine lengthy battle on track but DO watch Michael defending like a motherfucker and Lewis breathing down his neck for half the race we need to talk about this more.

Valencia 2012 - This isn’t necessarily anything special but I cried in my living room over the only podium of his comeback so it goes on here. It doesn’t have the same impact if you haven’t been watching him struggle with the car for years, DNF-ing from car failure most of 2012, and having BBC F1 telling you he’s washed up every single weekend, but you can just enjoy one of the best drives of FERNANDO’S entire career as he DRAGS that Ferrari by its hair to a home grand prix win and then watch the crowds embrace him like jesus and also Schumi being happy on the podium. Also, the very start of this clip from the press conference: him forgetting what language he’s supposed to be speaking 

Basically, Schumi was a hyper-competitive ambitious bitch who turned into a goofball as soon as he switched the engine off. This is by NO MEANS everything if I was making an exhaustive best races guide I’d do more research and another post but I hope this is what you were looking for?? THANK YOU SO MUCH for letting me go MAXIMUM SPECIAL INTEREST and I apologize.

[the-cryptographer]

Here, I'll help get your ideas going about the rest of Lottery Ticket. Pick the most helpful? 001 for Polar OR Violet OR Ettushipping OR even Arrogantshipping, OR 002 for Mai OR Joey OR Seto??? (also I can't decide either lol)

Thank you for the ask  :D

Lotto Ticket’s pretty much planned out. I just need to stop making things difficult and write more, but-

mmm, I already answered 002 for Mai, and I talked a little teeny bit there about how I see her and Seto’s being bros. So… I answered 001 for JouKai and Polar. Under the cut because whining about Jou and Kaiba gets long in particular x_x

JouKai

when I started shipping it if I did:

Somewhere in the nebulous time between watching the show as akid and when I started first reading fanfic for this show, my subconsciousdecided this was the combination of characters to slot into ffnet’s searchengine.

my thoughts:

F- F- F- F- FOILS! It’s a ship of conflicting circumstanceand ideology. It’s super fun to watch them butt heads at every turn, until somethingmanages to break through.

I think- In the series itself, Jounouchi and Kaiba both, ina sense, have their worlds and eyes opened by Yuugi and Atem respectively.Yuugi opens Jou up to opportunity – the possibility that there are ways he cansucceed without having to be a bully and a thug, and that it’s okay for him tonurture the more kind and loving aspects of himself. Atem opens Kaiba up to theidea that there can be trust and opportunity and connection with other people,that there is a way that cooperation and friendship (and maybe even miracles)can happen. I guess I think Jounouchi and Kaiba’s relationship is a kind ofnext step? Jounouchi & Kaiba are far more dissimilar than Yuugi &Jounouchi and Kaiba & Atem – so the process of reconciling their worldviewsin a way that is made to accommodate one another, while allowing them to retaintheir differences, is one that is able to open their eyes further to grandbreadth of the world and its possibilities – that there are many ways to liveand to be and they only need choose what works for them.

Also they both really deeply understand what it is to be desperate. I don’t really think they’dbe able to empathise much with the particular circumstances of such desperation,but I think they could really begin to understand on a deep level that alldesperation looks the same and it’s ugly and brings out the worst in people. If they could come to have sympathy for each other and themselves it would be nice.

Also I’m addicted to the class background spin *gnashesteeth* Jou’s more prototypically lower class than Kaiba’s prototypically upperclass in a cultural sense, but it’s still fun as heck~

What makes me happy about them:

The process of them coming to respect one another. Theprocess of them learning not to hurt each other. The process of them learningto cut themselves a break and deciding that there’s no reason they shouldn’t eachbe allowed their own happiness and fulfilment.

What makes me sad about them:

They already have an established relationship based on beingreally cruel to each other, and it’s really hard to alter patterns of behaviourthat have already been established. I can easily see them making efforts torepair how they interact with one another, and then, in some moment whenthey’re both angry and under pressure, losing the traction they’d built up tothat point – slipping into old patterns of being really nasty and cruel, exceptworse because they would be armed with an amount of intimacy that meant theywould really /know/ how to make the other one hurt. I wouldn’t want them tostay together if they crossed that kind of line, but it makes me sad how easilyI think they could cross that line, especially within the span of the firstcouple of years they’re together. It makes me extra sad how easily I think they mightbe inclined to /purposefully/ cross those lines as a means of sabotaging a lovethey feel they don’t deserve.

Also, something that doesn’t make me sad so much as frustrates me in my attempts to write them: In the pre-DSoD world, or given a post-DSoD world where Atemisn’t able to be Seto’s continued outlet for duelling/interpersonal connection,it’s very, very easy for me toimagine Seto isolating himself to the point of potential fatality. Seto… couldbe very rigid about this… and I find Jounouchi uniquely capable of addressingthis problem. Given that Jounouchi has some pretense or motivation for hasslingSeto, I think Jounouchi would – and that becomes self-perpetuating as Jounouchiis met with resistance. The more barriers Seto puts up, the more Jounouchi seesthis as a challenge, and the more he takes a sadistic glee in tearing thosebarriers down. In some ways, I think you need somebody with Jounouchi’s levelof reckless, self-destructive persistence to break through to Seto. But, at the same time,Jounouchi’s not being nice when he does this. He’s being forceful. He’s beingdisrespectful of other people’s boundaries. He’s not doing it out of concernfor Seto (at least not at first). He just enjoys forcing Seto into situationswhere Seto is off-balance, so he can feel steady in comparison. He’s being a bully. So I’m kind of torn betweenwanting to say, ‘jfc, Jou, STOP!’, and ‘jfc, Jou, KEEP FUCKING GOING! You willrestrain Seto and physically drag him out of his comfort zone if you have to,bc Seto’s comfort zone is such a small stretch of barren land – it’s only amatter of time before he dies of starvation!’ Ugh, and as Jou does this, he’salso being met with Seto giving off terrible mixed signals and periodically beingreally, really terrible in an attempt to get Jou to buzz the fuck off, but it doesn’t work because Jou is a neglectbaby who doesn’t care if people hurt him so long as they’re paying attention tohim. And then Seto gets to be all relieved when Jou hasn’t given up on him evenafter he’s gone and stabbed Jou with a pen.So all around it feels like I’mrewarding them for behaving really, really terribly. But it feels so organic to me the way it’s happening - let me stew in thistrash a little bit longer, okay?

things done in fanfic that annoy me:

Everything.

Offthe top of my head – the narrative pushing the idea that either Jou or Kaiba isthe better person, or the idea that their power struggle can be resolved in theprocess of finding the winner, instead of abandoning the fight. Seme/uketropes. I think everyone at this point has acknowledged Seto calls Jou doggythings is an attempt to dehumanise him, so Seto using such terminology as a petname is really fucking gross.

things I look for in fanfic:

Sometimes I’m just in the mood to read something fluffy, butmost of the time I’m looking for fic that acknowledges that they are bothreally cruel to one another, and that that cruelty isn’t superficial. That theyare both angry and maladjusted as fuck, and they have very, very valid reasons to have beef with oneanother and, without reaching and reassessing the deep insecurities and beliefsthat cause that anger, any attempts they make to play nice and be kind aresuperficial af and unlikely to last.

(I mean… I think there’s value to thembeing able to indulge in a little kindness even superficially – certainly theycan’t spend the whole long, gruelling process of self-change being at eachother’s throats, it would be too exhausting. So I don’t mind reading about thembeing superficially kind, but it can’t be sold to me as being somehow deeperthan it is, you feel?)

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

As much as I’m SUPER invested in Kaiba and Jou having someset of postcanon foibles that allow them to better understand one another andgrow as individuals - yeah I’m okay with them ultimately ending up with other people.

For Jou – Mai. For Kaiba – either Isis or Atem. I likerivalshipping too, but jumping from Jou to Yuugi would definitely be the causeof upsetting dramas.

My happily ever after for them:

Theylearn to fucking chill a little

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

Once more – “Jou doesn’t so much spoon people as he wraps hislegs around their chest and awkwardly strangle-hugs their face like it’s astrange laying-down-on-your-side sleepy piggyback ride.”

It’s things like this that, at first, make Seto wonder whyhe puts up with Jou. But, as time goes on, he gives up on wondering because he’snever going to find the answer. (Or, rather, admit the answer to himself.)

…At least one of the answers is that Jou likes running hishands softly through Kaiba’s hair and soothing him to sleep by massaging hisforehead, and it’s very comforting.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

They both enjoy duelling to a certain extent, but I thinkKaiba finds duelling Jou much less fun and challenging than the other wayaround, so that mismatch probably discourages it from being their true go-toactivity. But Yuugi invites them over for game nights periodically, and it’sbecomes a kind of fun thing for both of them to do.

They kind of have different interests, so I imagine they’rethe kind of couple that does their own things and then reconvenes to sharestories or otherwise silently enjoy each other’s presence. Kaiba’s aworkaholic, so a lot of times he’s on his laptop in the evenings, while Jousits next to him reading manga, or watching TV shows with headphones in. Kaiba oftenstays at the office late too, and Jou will come over just to be a reassuringpresence. He brings a sleeping bag and something to do and camps out on thedivan. Jou has learned not to bother Kaiba, and Kaiba’s learned not to bebothered in a complementary fashion.

For a very long time, Seto proves to be kind of difficult todrag out for dates and the like with any regularity. But, as Seto ages andstarts trusting Mokuba with more Kaiba Corp responsibilities, he’ll have morefree time. Jou starts taking him out for walks – sometimes to really date-ishplaces like theme parks or the promenade or the aquarium, but a lot of timesthey just go to the park or on nature-lite hikes. Jou’s extremely chatty onthese walks and runs ahead to look at this or that and points things out toSeto. Jou kind of gets worked up because Kaiba’s really quiet and mostly justnods and doesn’t say much, and then Jou becomes worried he’s annoying Kaiba,and then he gets annoyed that he’s worried and resolves to be extra loud andannoying. Really though Kaiba’s not annoyed at all – he enjoys listening to Joutalk and enjoys watching Jou get really cheerful and excited about these walks– Kaiba’s just quiet. By this point they won’t be so incapable of propercommunication though so, within the span of a walk or two, either Seto willnotice Jou’s being angry about talking and pointing things out instead ofproperly cheerful and ask him why, or Jou will break and ask Seto if he’sannoyed and that’s why isn’t he talking, and then they’ll clear up theirmisunderstanding. Jou will feel kind of silly for worrying afterwards~

==

JouMai

when I started shipping it if I did:

I was shipping this in 2001, when I didn’t know whatshipping was. I don’t remember what about Duellist Kingdom convinced me… Butsomething in Duellist Kingdom convinced me!!!

my thoughts:

Oh, geez, I mean- They’re just so lovely!!! I think theirDuellist Kingdom repertoire convinces me more than their Battle City one does.The way Jounouchi convinced Mai to take the star chips from Yuugi and kind ofconvinces her they’re friends, and then the way Mai returns the favour when shegives Jou the entry card. I feel like it was a really strong base of give andtake that wasn’t borne out of some kind of attempt to return favours upon eachother, but to genuinely help one another. It’s just so sweet.

And I feel like they buzz at similar levels. They’re bothkind of high energy and outgoing. And they’re both kind of immature, but inways that can both cause conflict and complement each other.

Also, it is kind of important to me that, in canon, theyseem to react to each other in the realm of being attracted to one another.Something about how it’s presented in the series, with Jou immediately going ‘wow,’and Mai being both dismissive and smitten seems really honest to me.

What makes me happy about them:

When they can be honest with each other and really bask inhow much they are cherished.

What makes me sad about them:

I think they don’t have a very good grasp on when theteasing things they do and say become genuinely hurtful to other.

I think theymight never meet each other at the right time to make their romance work.

And, also, I think Mai’s highkey convinced there’s somethingwrong with her for being attracted to Jou, given he’s eight years younger andalso washed-out thug with no prospects. Which… I won’t say her tastes aren’tinteresting, or that she shouldn’t absolutely keep in mind that he’s still aminor during the series, but I think it’s just one of many data points that Maicherry picks to use as part of her thesis on why she is fundamentally flawedand unloveable, which is kind of – fuckingstop it, Mai.

things done in fanfic that annoy me:

Excepting a couple of key stories, a lot of JouMai fic seemsto blend together in my mind in one really indistinct blob. I’m not sure there’sanything that outright annoys me so much as a lot of things that haven’tinspired me. I’m sorry, I still haven’t read yours yet miranova~

things I look for in fanfic:

I’mnot really sure what to say except, ‘something unique’ or ‘something thoughtprovoking

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Vivian for Mai. And pretty much anyone for Jou, but Yuugi andYuugi&Kaiba both come to mind. I’ll confess I flat out don’t want to readabout Jounouchi and Mai breaking up though. Even in passing, like, a throwawayline about how they dated once and it didn’t work out. In all the fics I’veread, I can only think of two that did this that I didn’t x-out of andneither one was JouKai

My happily ever after for them:

Maigets to have her career and make lots of moolah and live her life, and thenthey get together when they’re both older (Mai might even be pushing 40 at thatpoint, lol) and have lots of new exciting adventures together :)I think they’d want a kid or two but, even after the kids, Mai probably won’t be convinced on marriagefor another ten or twenty years, lol

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

Mai gets fed up with Jounouchi’s strangehold piggyback ride versionof spooning and takes over big spoon responsibilities… at least part of thetime. I think Mai likes feeling warm and surrounded, so she might curl upfacing him and he kind of curls in around her.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

Duelling and talking duel monsters, tbh. But I also thinkthey’re a very date-y couple. They’re always going places, whether it’s to themall or the movies or biking out to scenic kinds of places. Mai would like totake Jou on vacation abroad too~

I’ve talked about Jou and Mai going to the spa together too, but that might be overly indulgent of me~

[fluffywolverine]

Ok so THINGS I LOVE ABOUT LUCIFER SEASON 5 which I also like to call THE BEST SEASON EVER (major spoilers approaching!):

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- DECKERSTAR. It is just so pure in this season. Firstly, I'm so relieved that they finally ended this 'will they won't they' dynamics and can move on to building and keeping their relationship healthy. I'm very stressed about it tho, I just hope they don't screw it up, but I'm also so excited to see how it develops!

- TOM ELLIS. He's such a great actor and you can clearly see it here! I love his changes when he played Michael and I love all of them - his posture, walking, accent, way of speaking and that look in his eyes, very similiar to the one in Lucifer's, yet different. I knew he would handle it perfectly and he did not disappoint me

- Ella! I feel that she was left out, but just a little bit. I wanted to see more of her doubts about fait and etc and I was surprised when we found out she likes bad boys a bit too much. That was a cool addition to this character and I adored that they decided to make her say many more Spanish words here and there. The devil's in the details :D

- #michaelisadick I really liked him in the first two episodes but started to hate him after his talk with Lucifer. He is so well written! I love how manipulative he is, how well he knows how to break someone and where to hit to hurt one the most. It's so clear that he is very dangerous and the way Lucifer slowly realising it was perfect

- I admire how well they showed how manipulation works and how dangerous it may be. Bravo

- they also showed really well how fear works and how it can paralyse even angels

- the fights in this season were SO GOOD. The one between the twins was just so fabulous, it was brutal, it was very "brotherish", but I also loved the final fight. And apart from the choreography (which was stunning), I must say that camera work and editing was marvelous. It felt very real, just like I was in the middle of the action and it was just delicious

- The Noir Episode - simply perfection. I loved every bit of it. TRICIA HELFER OH MY GOD, the vibe, the music, the suspense and how old it felt. They really did a great job with that one

- I generally liked the editing, sound and music (they had Depeche Mode! Was waiting for this to happen!)

- Linda's backstory is interesting, I want to hear more. Oh and I love that despite being such a good therapist she still struggled with her demons from her past

- speaking of demons - Maze. So she wasn't as irritating as she used to be, I actually started to understand her. I also liked the idea how her relation with Lucifer represents our own demons - if you neglect them and don't solve your problems, they will literally threaten your life

- every single episode was better than the previous one, the fourth was a perfection, fifth kept that level, SIXTH WAS EVEN MORE PERFECT, then seventh was like fifth AND THEN EIGHT ENDED IT ALL WONDERFULLY

- I stan Amenadiel-comforting-everybody-else-being-clever-and-just-being-nice-to-everybody-and-trying-his-best-to-raise-his-son-as-well-as-possible

- And I enjoyed this thread with nuns and how they saw God's love in him

- KEVIN ALEJANDRO DIRECTED THE LAST EPISODE AND HE DID SUCH GREAT JOB I'M SO PROUD OF HIM

- Speaking of Kevin, Dan's story was really cool here - how he tried to sort out his life after losing Charlotte, how he bonded with Lucifer (that bracelet ❤) and then was so confused but saw and understood his relationship with Chloe

- Pete was very typical at the beginning, but I was really happy for Ella that she finally found someone good but... not really. I absolutely loved that they didn't romanticise it, that they didn't do "yeah, I killed those women, but I love you, you're different". No, boom, he tried, but realised he's not able to be attracted to her. He's a psychopath and was portrayed as one. Very, very good. We don't need more toxic relationships goals

- Mr Said Out Bitch ❤ I adore how they dig out characters that appeared previously and use them again

- I also paid attention to this whole thing with reflections and how it recurs through the entire season. Michael is Lucifer's reflection, they both reflect one's desires or fears and Chloe decides to reflect Lucifer's vulnerability. There's much more than that and catching these little details was a lot of fun!

- Actually the entire season was filled with these small things and it was so cool to find them

- DAD. As a Christian it was quite a big deal for me, finally seeing Him :D

- The part where Lucifer and Michael try to convince Amenadiel about Charlie was AMAZING. Michael being "the devil" and Lucifer "the angel" - AWESOME

- Diablo ahahahahah. The way they played with this whole "making a series about crime solving devil" was so pure

- I didn't really realise how much I missed the show and characters. It felt so good to be back ❤

I didn't like s4 that much, so I was really afraid that I won't like s5 too. It was unnecessary! That was great!

It gave me so many thoughts about myself, my life, my fears, my relationships and SO. MANY. FEELS.

I'm so happy to be a part of this fandom and can't wait for the rest!

[derpcakes]

So we watched (nay, Experienced) the BBC/Netflix Dracula series

Brought to us by everyone’s favourite team, Steve Moff and Mark Gatiss, promising to be an innovative and exciting new vision of the classic novel

Boy it was definitely something!!!

First I will say: obviously Moff is not my favourite TV writer and my fam and I did go into this with a bias. I’m happy to report, though, that it’s going to be one of these shows that haunts me forever, because if it had just been bad I could have said “bleh” and deleted it from my brain. But because parts of this were genuinely cool, interesting, and fun, and parts of it genuinely had potential, all the bits that were bad stand out as so much worse and the whole thing feels as cursed as a 500 year old undead count. 

Things that were enjoyable and well put-together:

Van Helsing has been gender-swapped into a vampire-hunting nun and her cat-and-mouse game with Dracula is rife with belligerent sexual tension. I was ready to hate this, and ready for like, Sherlock and Irene Adler 2.0, but their dynamic was actually pretty fun to watch! Their power balance is kept even throughout most of the show, and Helsing is never struck down because of ~womanly failings~ or infantilised. She’s consistently really clever and, even if there are some cringey one-liners, I found her and Draccy’s playful quest to murder each other one of the most fun parts of the show. It could’ve been better, but it was enjoyable! (I also like how Helsing isn’t Young and Hot, but is a capable older lady, and her actor and Draccy’s even seem about the same age. Amazing)

The second episode is a spooky murder mystery/horror mini-movie on a ship, with a cast full of interesting characters who all had different things going on and different relationship dynamics that were compelling to watch. There’s even an interracial gay couple! And they’re like, written pretty sympathetically and to be layered and flawed in ways that didn’t feel too stereotypical! And they don’t die first!! Wack! I understand the bar is on the ground, but it’s still worth a mention

Some fun with vampire lore: Draccy absorbs knowledge and traits from people he drinks blood from (which is how he learns languages. Get Duolingo, dude, stop eating people), leading to the intriguing suggestion that myths like “vampires will die in sunlight” and “vampires are afraid of holy symbols” have kinda become real to him even if they don’t literally work, because he’s swallowed so many people to whom these superstitions and beliefs were law. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been done, but groundbreaking or no it was kinda neat

Things that were not enjoyable and well put-together:

EVERYTHING ELSE

Episode 1: a weird speedrun of most of the original novel, feat. weaponised nuns and a weird fixation on whether or not Jonathan Harker and Draccy boned. They did not. Dracula pops out of the body of a wolf and he’s Whole Ass Naked. Him and Van Helsing have a power play where she stands just on the threshold of a convent and calls him a little bitch, knowing he can’t come and get her. A knife is licked. 

Episode 2: aforementioned cool ship horror story. Definitely the best ep. It really makes me think about hbomb’s critique that Moff is pretty good at doing standalone stories (and pilots), but when things are tied into a bigger narrative things get zonkers. 

Episode 3: Things Get Zonkers!!

Let me just. Okay. I have the most to say about this one because this is where things really got batshit. And yet, also really boring? How does that figure? Anyway:

Dracula emerges from under the sea and finds that 123 years have passed and he’s now the star of a Modern AU. Upon setting foot on British sand he is immediately accosted by what appears to be an anti-vampire task force. There’s a helicopter. It is later explained how they knew to pounce on him at this exact moment, but holy god it was wild to watch the entire British Secret Service descend on this one wet bastard in a suit

The editing shifts aggressively in the direction of Sherlock. Mark Gattis is there playing an amazingly annoying character. There’s a fuckign.... Underground Secret Society devoted to studying vampires and they put Drac in a Designated Glass Prison for Smug Geniuses (also as seen in Sherlock). Van Helsing is dead but her great-great-grand-niece is played by the same actress and. Okay. Van Helsing, vampire hunting nun, possesses her descendent and rises through the ether to roast Drac one last time, and he’s DELIGHTED TO SEE HER AGAIN. 

And she has cancer, right, so her blood is poisonous when Draccy tries to bite her, but in the end, right, the end of the episode, right, the final shots of the show, he comes to a place where he’s willing to die, and she’s already dying, and so he drinks her blood and they die together on a table while cinematic metaphor vision shows them having sex in the middle of the sun

There was a badly CGI-ed vampire baby. Jonathan Harker falls from a tower and a scene later they flash back to this event by reversing the footage of him falling down, meaning we just see him go VWOOP up through the air, bouncing off the wall on the way. Van Helsing says the words “come boy, suckle” when she’s goading Drac into drinking her blood. The show sits in a weird middle ground where the characters talk about sex a lot (”dID yOu HaVe sExUaL iNterCOURSE with COUNT DRACULA?”) and Drac is clearly meant to be super magnetic and sexy but the characterisation and cinematography is not horny at all. People have these sexy-type dreams of their lover of choice when Drac is drinking their blood but even those are very boring and weirdly chaste, except of course for the final one where, if I  can take the chance to remind you, Van Helsing and Dracula have symbolic Mind Palace sex inside the centre of the solar system

I can’t speak too much on its quality as an adaptation since I actually haven’t read the book, but splitting the story so that some characters (the Harkers, Van Helsing) existed in the time the story is set, and some (Lucy, Dr Seward) exist in The Modern AU felt very strange. Was there any reason to set the third episode in modern times, apart from the fact that I guess they wanted to do their Sherlock thing again? Or, perhaps, because they wanted to do their Jekyll thing again?? Oh my god, that’s what the editing reminds me of - the small clips of Jekyll I’ve seen. The zooming. The slow-mo. The emphasis on The Monster Man’s weird goddamn teeth

(Also, I don’t really feel qualified to dig too deep into it, but I will say there felt something a bit uncomfortable about Lucy being black in this version, while also being written to be very promiscuous and vain. idk. Also, since it happened in an ep of Sherlock as well, “weedy white Nice Boy rescues the Very Cool woman of colour he has a tragically unrequited crush on” is now an official Moffattis trope)

Count Moffatula is an experience. Its pacing is buck wild. The speeding through the original plot and the mish-mashing of elements in the Modern AU section feels like another expression of contempt for the source material on Moff’s part. Someone says “reality is overrated” in a show set in the 1890s. Draccy quotes a Beatles song. He also makes quippy allusions to having eaten various famous figures and basically winks at the camera every time. Granted, this wasn’t as obnoxious as I was maybe expecting, but there are still too many lines of dialogue where you think “oh, the writers high-fived each other after they wrote that one, huh”. The fact that Moff has such vitriol against fan fic writers is more and more grating every day because this is so, so clearly a zany-ass fanfic that he happens to be getting paid for. The costumes are nowhere near as nice as they could have been, and Dracula’s cape looks like his mum made it for him for the school play in which he is playing Dracula. 

This show is So Much. Watch it to share in this fever dream. Or don’t, and save approximately 5 hours of your life. God. 5 hours. Who was I before Count Maffatula. Who am I now. Why was his cape so bloody ugly. Why did they bone in the centre of the sun

[mego42]

Make Yourselves Forget That The Plague Is A Bitch: Book Edition

Tagged by: @foxmagpie and @jazillia007 💖

What’s the most recent book that you’ve read and absolutely fell in love with?

the starless sea by erin morgenstern. erin morgenstern is hands down one of the most incredible authors i’ve ever read. her writing is literal magic, she transports you to these lush, rich, fantastical places that you want to live inside of and never come out. the starless sea is also a story about the nature of stories so it’s got this brain puzzling meta element to it that gives me such a raging brain and craftsmanship boner i have to go sit in the corner and face the wall until i calm down.

Do you keep track of how many books you’re reading every month?

lmao no. i used to have a goodreads that i would sporadically update with varying degrees of accuracy but i locked myself out of it last year and found out the email it was attached to no longer exists so i can’t get back in.

What’s your stance on the debate as to whether or not we should dissociate the artist from their art (artist = writer in this case)?

I’m pretty unilaterally camp to each their own. everyone has their own lines in the sand and it’s not anyone else’s call where those lines fall. I will say, though, generally when people are terrible, their terribleness is reflected in their work to some degree so that’s often where i turn off. but at the same time, sometimes you fall in love with someone’s work at a stage in your life where you don’t notice/have issues with it (for me, joss whedon and jk rowling immediately jump to mind) and it’s not like that love just like, turns off like a faucet when you stop liking the artist so much, you know? buffy’s my forever girl and always will be. Idk, it’s complicated.

What do you do when you can’t focus on a book?

usually put it down and do something else, half the books on my shelves have book marks tucked away somewhere from when i started and then decided i wasn’t in the mood

Paperback or hardcover?

EBOOK BITCHES!!!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA listen i love being able to read anywhere and i can read ebooks on my phone. that said, i prefer hardcovers for the aesthetic but paperbacks for the cost/weight. i’m p unfussy tbh, i just like books.

Which language would you like to learn just to be able to read its untranslated literature?

literally any of them, i’m hopelessly bad at languages, it’s a disgrace.

Pick up the book that is closest to you. convince me to read it in less than 10 sentences.

it is super handy that i pulled out one of my all time fav books the other day to look up a quote so i can actually say the book closest to me is froi of the exiles by melina marchetta.

melina marchetta is an australian author who writes hands down the most engrossing, beautiful, real family dynamics that will haunt me until my dying day. she’s also very much about home, community, and culture, both the ones we come from and the ones we build, and the indelible mark they leave on ourselves and our worlds. not only that but she writes literally the most poignant, evocative romances i’ve ever read. froi of the exiles is the middle book in her epic fantasy trilogy the lumatere chronicles and while it is technically fantasy, it’s incredibly grounded in real world themes (iirc she said somewhere it was originally supposed to be a refugee story set in the real world but she ultimately swerved to fantasy so people wouldn’t get hung up on real world baggage). literally every character is a fully realized person and i would die for approx 87% of them.

honestly i don’t really know how to sell this trilogy, it turns me into a drooling idiot every time i read it bc it’s so good it melts my brain. i absolutely 100% seriously weep for the entire second half of the third book, even though i’ve already read it at least 7 times, it makes me feel that much that strongly and it never wears off. if i could read nothing else until the day i die it would be this trilogy and that’s not even a little bit hyperbolic.

i have no idea how long this has been going around or who has been tagged so consider yourself tagged if you want to play!

[meibemeibelline]

part 3 (FINAL) of highlights from that 32k word doc i wrote when i marathoned gazette songs (2012-2018)

PART 1 | PART 2

once again:

This is a combo of thoughts on music, lyrics and other random things I wrote while listening. Not every song will be featured, sorry.

I sometimes directly quote translations and when I do, I’ll specify whose it was. Here are the masterposts of lyrics by Heresiarchy , Defective Tragedy and Trauma Radio

I will write song titles for which there are warnings in bold and all caps

So this part will be a bit different because mental health and The Band became really prominent themes in their music in a way it wasn’t really before, so rather than simply writing about songs as they come, I do (attempt to) connect some dots between songs and albums

Also this is REALLY LONG (~5k words)

If you read any of these posts, thank you <3

CONTENT WARNINGS: murder (In Blossom), reference to abuse (In Blossom), suicide/suicidal thoughts (Kagefumi, Deux/Blemish), reference to PTSD (Incubus). Overall LOTS of discussions about mental health.

buckle up folks it’s gonna be a long one

So I listened to Division according to the limited edition version where the songs got split into the ‘story-like songs’ and the ‘hype songs’. Just while we’re on that, I like to think that Vein is the story part because these songs (the blood) are meant to go TO our hearts, while Artery, which is the ‘raw emotion’, is the heart doing the talking and supplying the oxygen that will do its thing. LIKE HEADBANGING.

“Ibitsu is not the first song they’ve written about changes in the music industry, but it’s quite different from others like 13Stairs[-]1 and Dim Scene. They were quite angry about the state of things, lamenting it. But here, Ruki is writing his and the band’s place in all of that. It’s like in the other two songs he’s like, “wow look at all this rubble. This sucks.” But in Ibitsu he’s writing about how he’s also in that rubble and thinks about what HE feels about it in relation to himself and the GazettE. And I find that quite interesting. Also hell YES imagery – skies as ideals, the world around them collapsing into ruin, the band as a flower amidst the rubble that can’t reach the sky. It sounds like he’s trying to navigate how he’s supposed to move forward when his ideals and what’s happening in the industry oppose each other quite a lot. He doesn’t reach an answer in this song and ends by asking whether it is actually in ruins or whether he’s just afraid of change, I think.” - interestingly, he uses this same imagery in Kuroku Sunda Sora to Zangai to Katahane to write about anxiety and not feeling good enough.

Quick disclaimer on KAGEFUMI: I do want to say first that I’m talking about this purely as a piece of art. Not as in, like, “this is peak romance”, but just as an artwork I can have Opinions™ about, even if they’re possibly in disagreement with that of the creator. “The shadow tag metaphor for a couple committing double suicide meaning that they’re ‘becoming one’ and being together in death is A Lot. There’s an incredibly strong belief in an afterlife where they can be together makes (what Ruki describes) this stronger bond between them that literally lasts or even transcends the boundaries between life and death, rather than a tragic end (unlike Tokyo Shinjuu). Musically, I love this song and think it’s gorgeous, the way it’s sad yet hopeful. We over here with that bittersweet stuff again but lyrically it’s a WILDLY different route than others before it.”

“Yoin is such a heavy end to disc 1. The ending lines, “The sea of loss / Understanding of helplessness / That day we grieved” about the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami and the nuclear disaster is just so ……. And not only that, but how even though people still struggle to survive, people are moving on like it’s a thing of the past. It’s SO heavy.” (Cr: Defective Tragedy)

“I think [Derangement] is about a massive internal struggle between wanting longing for the past, knowing it won’t come back, but also wanting to destroy the past out of self-hatred. There are aspects of the past, perhaps ambition and drive for example, that are good, but other parts that are not. It’s almost like a continuation of Remember the Urge but like…angrier and with more hatred towards his own past rather than only the longing of it. Which is also really interesting.” – this is definitely one of the themes that comes up A LOT from now, ESPECIALLY in Ninth. We’ll get to that.

“IS KAI GOOD??? That man is NOT human. I swear to god his drums in Required Malfunction are INSANE. ANYWAY, this song is about how people cannot be perfect and we all have flaws, especially in the context of relationships. I like that even though people argue and butt heads sometimes, there’s that Japanese verse where he sings “Let’s send a song without stains / to that innocence without lies / so you can swallow those wounds” and the last lines “Because you are always here, I can advance” to mean like…them being together can ultimately make them better and it can be a good relationship (if they work on it, imo). Also, I love the language he uses here – viruses and malfunctions and inputs – a very non-human way to write about human relationships.” (Cr: Trauma Radio)

(Dripping Insanity) “Solitude drenched in red laughs / in the insanity dripping in silence” is SUCH a good line yes hello I appreciate this. (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“EYYY HAVEN’T HEARD FORBIDDEN BEAVER IN FOREVER. At first I was wondering if this might be judgmental but honestly? I think this is satirical, especially from the line “May the truth you spew on taboos going frantically around / Shred the rhythm of high society”. Like the fact they’re gossiping about a famous woman who has a lot of sex and just TARNISHING her name bc of it, to Ruki, is a load of bullshit. Also, some of the lyrics in the chorus are funny coming from Ruki – “She has a sex addiction / Bang! Bang! / Cute luv machine” – like he does NOT ever write like this and this song is just a huge satirical joke I’m YELLING.” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“The transition from Malformed Box to Inside Beast >>>>”

“[Inside Beast] is definitely about having a ‘beast’ inside you that’s like all your demons and ugly feelings and to let them all out. He wrote about demons in Derangement, but the way he writes about acceptance is like…empowering and freeing. Not necessarily through words but through the music and just how hard this song slaps.”

“I really love the lyrics of [Until it Burns Out] and its whole thing about valuing the time they have as a band and to be together making music precisely because it’s going to end someday, and it’s going to be their last shot at living their dreams, which is to make music and perform TOGETHER as the GazettE. Like that’s so meaningful, and powerful in the way they just…grab it by the fucking throat. Breaking down the walls that hold them back, TOGETHER, towards the future in which they see their dreams. Like they’re not letting this be the end. They won’t allow it. UGH. UGHHH. The middle eight is so beautiful and I love the lines “The light that colours this irreplaceable scenery / burns the significance of standing here into me / Until the last” like they just love performing SO MUCH UGGGHHH FEELINGS”. (Cr: Trauma Radio)

“[REDO] IS SO GODDAMN SENTIMENTAL I’M IN MY FEELINGSSSSS. Kai being the composer, I can’t help but feel this is him paying homage to jazz, which is the music his mother plays and he loves her so so much. I’m probably reaching but THAT’S JUST HOW I FEEL.”

“EVERBODY SHUT UPPPP IT’S LAST HEAVEN TIMEEEE. It’s so gd gorgeous and sweet. I��M GETTING REALLY EMO WHAT THE FUCKKKK. BRUH. BRUUUUHHH. THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL //THROWS. SHUT UPPPP. TOO MANY SKY, STAR AND FOREVER REFERENCES FOR THIS TO BE OKAY BITCH. This is Ruki’s love song to the cosmos, wishing to be eternal like the stars but acknowledging that all he can do is chase it knowing his life will end, BUT THAT THEY DON’T HAVE TO GRIEVE BECAUSE THEY WILL MEET AGAIN IN THE AFTERLIFE BECAUSE IN SOME WAY WE /ARE/ ETERNAL. IT’S LOVING AND INNOCENT AND WISTFUL. This song is the goddess to all the GazettE love songs. THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK. “The distant sky, this infinite moment / I now wish from the visible stars / in this youthful merry-go-round / that continues to turn endlessly / I want to be eternal like you” – is just…such a beautiful image. “Let’s stay like this, having dreams we cannot reach / Long road which leads to the calm hill / I go, leaving my sadness behind / Good night…my beloved / Last heaven of mine” – it’s yearning but it’s the yearning for LIFE. And to leave behind sadness…Ruki very rarely writes about pain like this. And to call the ‘beloved’ his last heaven, the last thing in his life that’s just THE BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO HIM AND THE THING HE WANTS TO BE ETERNAL WITH goodbye………GOODBYE. “Love without shape changing day by day / Close together / we become / one shooting star” – AAAHHH AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH. Also, for him to say ‘memento mori’ which means “Remember, you must die” in the middle eight of a song about wanting to be eternal just gives the entire sentiment a new meaning ;-;” (Cr: Trauma Radio)

“There’s a particular sound to Division and Beautiful Deformity (but more in BD). It sounds like rushing water. Loss in particular sounds like this. Like, the sound isn’t just ‘dark’ and ‘heavy’, it moves A LOT and there is sooo much emotionality in the songs on this album. It’s really dynamic.”

“The Stupid Tiny Insect revisits the theme of inner demons. Specifically, in this song it sounds like negative internal self-talk. It’s interesting though, the way that Ruki writes it as an entirely separate being to how he writes inner demons and whatnot in other songs, where it’s either another entity within a person that is part of them OR just…themselves. Here, they are VERY separate, and that probably allows him to feel and express rage instead of helplessness or confusion. I also love the reference to pretending to be okay – “I get high on delusion / And act as if I made them die out / ‘Just like a summer moth to a flame”.” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“IN BLOSSOM is pretty fucking brilliant lyrically imo. It reminds me a lot of 32 Koukei no Pistol in that a protagonist who was abused/neglected by the parents kills them, and in the latter’s case only, also themselves. Some other differences: In Blossom is WAY angrier (and a lot more loaded) and the protagonist is trying to ‘make their own life’ (even if the way they choose to do that DOESN’T WORK), whereas the narrator in 32 Calibre Pistol was mostly lamenting that they’ve ‘lost their way’ and deep-down were wishing for their family to be happy together. I can’t say WHY that is. But it’s interesting that in In Blossom, the abuse just…DESTROYED their concept of family that they used to believe in entirely, and the fact they cannot separate themselves from their abusers neither by dying nor killing them is A Lot. So, they try to free themselves and ‘get hope’ by killing their abusers as revenge (“Die away, along with these wounds I’d counted”), but it doesn’t bring them happiness or heal them (“Even if I slash so much it’s unparalleled by the wounds I’d counted, it still starts to ache / It doesn’t even fight off the decay, much less heal me”). It’s very much saying that despite pain, revenge is not the answer. I also love the line “They adorn vividly – have blossomed beautifully / The sun that has started to set makes sure of it” to describe the wounds as the narrator kills their abusers and their loss of sanity as they do so.” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“To Dazzling Darkness is about that moment when a concert is over and the lights start to come on. It’s so gorgeous. This is sort of like, the other side of Until it Burns Out. If UIBO is about the band then TDD is about the fans, and the band’s place in the world. I love the imagery in the first verse – darkness is usually associated with bad things, but here darkness is peace, escapism and unity that are part of the happiness of a concert, while the light symbolises the continuation of life. The scenery here is the same scenery in UIBO, which is the scenery of a concert that this band cherishes. There’s also the acknowledgement that time is fleeting and nothing is forever. Like, this is really the other side of the coin and I love it.”

“Dogma defines their new (2015) sound so well, which is HEAVY AND DIRTY AS FUCK. Like, it is SO conceptual and experimental and the painting is just GORGEOUS. I love the harpsichord in this song – as the predecessor of the piano, it was used in a lot of churches and religious music in the Baroque period (1600-1750ish), so using it here in a song where the band is likened to idols (the religious type) is super cool. And to combine it with these really low and heavy guitars just gives the DARKEST image.

And there’s so much going on in the lyrics – MANY MOTIFS, MANY MEANINGS. They bring back the concept of darkness as a symbol for escape from harsh life and of unity during concerts. As for death, Reita has an iconic quote where he said something along the lines of: “we often say in lives ‘to die’, but what we actually mean is to live. Live and be free”. I see death for GazettE as a kind of transformation – and end, yet also a beginning to become something or someone new.

Ruki hasn’t really mentioned god since Ogre in Dim, in which he basically wrote “idk if God exists but I don’t really care – all I need is me”. But here he likens the band to an idol of worship. We as the fans worship the GazettE, and they are also gods to us, their followers, in the sense that they provide us with life and unity (referred to here as death and darkness, respectively). The GazettE as a band brings darkness and death to the world (with their own meanings, of course).

This is also a song about the band breaking away from current gods and dogmas of the music industry, and from its greed. I also love the line, “The rite I must face is cloaked in darkness and isolation” – this process of their journey to finding their truth is lonely, and no one but them can do it for themselves. To do so also isolates them from everything they once knew. It’s them navigating what is expected of them by the masses and those they work with vs doing what they want without getting shunned for it.” (Cr: Defective Tragedy)

 “DAWN IS ABOUT REDISCOVERING THEMSELVES. I love the number of metaphors he brings back in this song – 13 stairs, death, merry-go-rounds and again dogma. Death here is about the transformation of them as a band, which occurs at the top of the 13 stairs to the gallows. And I find that so interesting because he uses the image of gallows (eg: 13 Stairs[-]1 and Forbidden Beaver) as like…an actual Death that means the end of a genre or a person’s reputation, but here it’s a place of transformation. In Last Heaven, the merry-go-round is a symbol of life – it comes back here but this time it’s red instead of blue (youthful) and is paired with the image of a mad banquet with emotions running wild (ie concerts). Basically, this is about the band’s life and, like, their life being about concerts. My favourite part is “Overcoming a period of confusion, I took those stirring emotions / And hung them up high on the 13 stairs” because there’s also the line “I’ve already had a lethal dose of misfortune / The ruined gallows towers above me” -> WE WENT THROUGH SOME SHIT BUT WE FOUND OURSELVES AND SURPRISE BITCH, BET YOU THOUGHT YOU’D SEEN THE LAST OF ME.” (Cr1: Heresiarchy, Cr2: Defective Tragedy)

Not from my notes directly but I feel like the difference between Bizarre to Juuyonsai no Knife (ie the only two songs about Real juvenile criminals) is a REALLY good representation of how Ruki’s lyrics have changed over the years. He went from taking perspectives of people who perpetrators of violence (to write horror stories, imo, but also to generally Explore their minds through art) to making comments about society and how systems affect people in real life. Not to say he doesn’t write about killers anymore or that social commentary is NEW for him, but just…a big change in what’s PROMINENT.

“Interesting that Wasteland is next, which is about Justice on the Internet. I know Ruki has always been really critical of the internet and the kind of social processes that occur online (see: Nakigahara) and here it’s about morality and justice, but more importantly the way it’s about crowd mindsets and CONTROL. And he just summarises it SO WELL in the first verse: “The thousand eyes that can kill even God / Transform into rebels that lust for control / If the time comes when right and wrong disappear / It will all end with a blood-red moon”. There’s also the line “Innocence gives way to sinful judgment” ie the innocent go along with their ways or it’s the innocent (the weak, as he says later) that are scrutinised. And I think about this a lot considering…some other fandoms I’m in >.>” (Cr: Defective Tragedy)

(INCUBUS) “The song is a lot of wondering what they did to deserve their trauma and how they want the dreams/nightmares to go away. I do like that at the end of the song they come to the conclusion that they cannot change what happened and decide “fuck the why”, accepting they didn’t deserve it. Even though the narrator is still stuck in the maze (of trauma), the letting go of asking why it happened is like, a really important step in healing. Because it’s the end of self-blame. So, I hope narrator can heal :( “

(DEUX) “My dumbass never realised this but the music of Deux itself has DUALITY. Metal with solo piano. IT REALLY TOOK ME FIVE YEARS TO REALISE THAT HUH. It’s about two conflicting selves (which to me sound more like intrusive thoughts, considering Blemish’s VERY LOUD “These days I’m better dead”) and the effect that has on like, your emotionality and how it leads to loneliness. His use of nightmares in this song is fascinating – the Japanese word he uses (sakayume) is like…a reverse dream, like if a child has a nightmare you tell them it’s a sakayume so it means what happened in their dream definitely won’t happen AND something good will happen instead. And this is something Ruki prays for.”

(Ominous) “The imagery is really dark in this – “A prayer crushed under wreckage / Reflects in your eyes as you start to fly / I see you in the sky thick with shadows / Spinning around with nightmares” – there’s a desperate attempt to fly and get better and do Well but still they’re surrounded by darkness and nightmares, unable to escape. “Don’t forget that a heart cannot die / Don’t forget that dreams aren’t predictions of the future” –There’s hopefulness in a heart not dying yet a very strong despair when he says dreams don’t predict the future, not even reverse dreams. “It steals away my still-unformed future, and whenever I step forth / I can’t see a thing in that shadowed sky / My screaming can’t save anything / when I’m killing myself with sadness” – oh that hurts, that hurts A LOT. He wants to fly but he can’t. This is just SO MUCH. And they didn’t even have an instrumental outro, IT JUST ENDS WITH ACCEPTANCE OF HOPELESSNESS AND DEPRESSION.” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“The drums in Goddess uggghhh UGGGHHH. AND THE GUITAR TOOOOOO. Lyrically, this is really a mid-point between depression and healing. It’s A Lot. He writes about his suffering, wanting to make something of his mistakes and his sins and actually WANTING TO LIVE. But it’s so sad that in the end he still feels really helpless – the subtle changes between “I want to become the stars that fill the silence” vs “I can’t become the stars that fill the silence”. But I think that on some level he knows what the next step is. He wishes in the last two lines, “If only I could share my grief that can’t be put to words / If only I could face reality and live accepting my crippling despair”. THAT’S THE FIRST STEP!!!! THAT’S A STEP!!!! TO HEALING!!!! “These bleak thoughts are my sacrifice that will one day begin to thaw into a selfless, smiling heart” – this line is fucking LOADED. Like, he sacrifices his bleak thoughts by expressing them and by making art out of his pain in hopes that he will be able to acknowledge and accept his suffering and his pain as a means to heal, as a way of allowing him to have a selfless and smiling heart. Like, this is SO much of what his art is about and what it has been for SUCH a long time it makes me so emotional that this is what he’s saying about his own lyrics.” I realise too that the goddess is likely the same goddess from Blemish. I’m still unsure what to make of it because Blemish ends in Ruki writing he doesn’t wants to be reborn, and not abandoned. But here he ends with wanting to heal. Wanting to move on and live.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO UNDYING.

“WHEN HE BROUGHT BACK “SLEEP, COUNT ME DOWN AGAIN” >>> God, this song is so powerful. THERE ARE SO MANY CALL-BACKS TO DOGMA. I SHOULD’VE KNOWN THIS BUT STILL. BITCH WHAT THE FUCK. It’s a direct continuation of Ominous (“I won’t arise from this”). I think in this song he’s becoming that figure that is flying in Ominous, and the one that is surrounded by nightmares and shadows – the first verses are about how the future is drenched in misfortune yet we must continue to live (and suffer, but WE CAN AT LEAST BE A BIT HOPEFUL). Ruki says this YET HE IS STILL DREAMING, EVEN AS THE END COMES (“My heart starts to disappear along with the spirit of my words / And though it knew the end was near / It dreamt of things it shouldn’t want / And even now I am still—“). There’s also his mentions of sins again that he continues to drown in :( But overall, this song is really about living despite all the pain, which is really meaningful after Dogma ended on such a note of hopelessness. There’s so much power in this song.” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

“Vacant doesn’t necessarily sound like a romantic relationship breaking down as much as it is about making a mistake and being unable to fix it between you and someone else (or other people), even if Ruki said he wrote it with a band’s image in mind. But the gist is is that there is yet again a struggle within the self (“Self-condemnation distorts the answer / And I lose sight of what I should be / Because of those unconscious actions / I can’t even dream”). The line “In the pain of not being able to tie back the undone thread / The traces left by stopping time keep piling up” really got to me – being stuck in time and constantly wishing for something that was and being hurt by the fact it’s gone is something I personally relate to. But even as the narrator is stuck in time, their grip on the past is loosening – they are forgetting, memories fade, and they lose their strength (“Vacant, you are withering”).” (Cr: Heresiarchy)

(Faling) ““Together, embracing the same pain: it’s only temporary / Don’t forget that this is not the end / So come on, let’s open our eyes and fall / We just believe in ourselves to die / Sometimes it’s okay to be broken” THIS MEANS SO FUCKING MUCH AFTER THE AMOUNT OF TIMES RUKI ENDED DOGMA SONGS WITH HOPELESSNESS AND AT BEST “WE HAVE TO KEEP LIVING AND SUFFERING AND BEING IN PAIN” BUT IN FALLING, PAIN IS TEMPORARY. PAIN IS TEMPORARY. WE WILL HEAL, BITCH. WE WILL GET BETTER, BITCH.” (Cr: Defective Tragedy)

Can’t find my notes bc it’s somewhere else in my Tumblr drafts but basically: I consider Mortal, Utsusemi and Sono Kore wa Moroku like a Depression Trilogy™ in Ninth. Mortal is about depression, loneliness and loss but like, tying it to a singular person or event in which the narrator felt grief. Utsusemi is about loneliness and depression as well, AND RUKI USES THE CICADA SHELL METAPHOR, WHICH IS THE SAME AS CRUCIFY SORROW (ALSO ABOUT DEPRESSION, BUT SOMEONE ELSE’S). But then, Sono Koe wa Moroku is THE turning point and where he first mentions (in this album) and actual DESIRE to heal and like, ON HIS OWN. IT’S ABOUT BEING STRONG FOR HIMSELF AND THAT MAKES ME SO EMOTIONAL. And as I mentioned before, Falling also ends on a hopeful note about sadness not lasting forever – it’s like he’s prefacing the album with the fact sadness IS temporary and that there IS a turning point.

“Babylon’s Taboo is interesting…so apparently Babylon is a figure of western imperialism and capitalism in the Rastafari movement (an afro-centric anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement from Jamaica). The narrator is COMPLETELY aware of the oppression and injustice that goes on around him but confesses to doing nothing. I interpreted this as complacency to violence, which Ruki has written about before. Also, he describes a starry sky (which I presume represents wealth and happiness) as a lie, and that they are actually black eyes that watch and look down upon you. In the context of anti-capitalism, my interpretation is that the ‘guaranteed fate’ he writes about is the life-long struggle to attain wealth and happiness – we are doomed to dedicate our lives to this, futilely, to no end. and there’s nothing we can do about it. Another line that stood out to me most is “all I need is sanity but uncertainty will do”. this, along with the rest of the song, implies that the narrator is PRETTY DAMN SURE that we’re all fucked so like....HAHA COOL.” (Cr: Defective Tragedy)

(Two of a Kind) Okay so…another motif I noticed in this album is an I and a You. And I know this sounds weird considering almost EVERY SINGLE GAZETTE SONG uses first and second pronouns, but mental health is SUCH a prominent, overarching theme in a way no album concept has been before, hence why I’m saying this. Two of a Kind is really solidifying this for me, but they appear in almost every song (but the You is known as ‘she’ in The Mortal). This pair are connected in an extremely emotionally intimate way. For one, they share pain and understand each other’s pain. Secondly, the narrator falls into depression after they’re gone. A part of me thinks it could be a past self and a current self, considering Ruki’s said this album involved the Most introspection from him and Falling writes about sins and past mistakes again. So, it could be a way of separating a past and current self – a past self that was perhaps lost, and made mistakes, but ultimately creates his current self.

But it could also be another person, as this You figure is also a source of light – someone Ruki shares his wounds with, in Two of a Kind. If it’s another person, it may also make sense that the depression and loneliness written about in The Mortal and Utsusemi is triggered by someone extremely close leaving him. Either way, it is this understanding and connection between the I and the You that also bring hope for the future and I REALLY love the way that hope is conveyed in the chorus of Two of a Kind. There’s so much light in it compared to the parts of the song where ruki calls himself filthy and ugly, and when he writes about negative feelings that never go away and bleed into this other person. but i think this other person understands it, and that’s why he can move on.

“Abhor God is a REALLY dark and heavy take on MOVING FORWARD. Like there’s so much rage in the way he writes about killing his lust, pride and anxiety and stringing up his nightmares in a noose, yet so much power in how he moves forward and sings victory with his music and his art. This is likely connected to Ninth Odd Smell and Uragiru Bero - where he writes about the band’s history and his imposter syndrome as an artist despite the band never going to die just because of that. He contrasts ‘too fast to live’ and ‘too young to die’ like, he’s really in a sort of purgatory where he’s constantly making too many mistakes to be happy but has too much to do for him to give up. So it’s here that he chooses to keep going no matter how weak the beat is. Imagery-wise this feels like.....continuing to live not because you have happiness to look forward to but just out of sheer willpower. Like it’s just so angry. Angry at the world, at yourself, but carrying that anger to try to be better and move forward.”

“And Unfinished is about the fans being his reasons to live and IT MAKES ME VERY EMOTIONAL THAT THIS IS HOW THE ALBUM ENDS!!!!!!! WITH HOPE!!!!! AND MOVING FORWARD!!!!! THEY LITERALLY ENDED THEIR ALBUM THAT’S ABOUT THEM ‘MAKING THEIR MARK ON THEIR WORLD’ WITH LIGHT AND HOPE AFTER LIKE TWO STRAIGHT ALBUMS OF /DEPRESSION/. EVERYBODY GO HOME WE LOVE HEALING IN THIS HOUSE.”

AND THAT’S THE END FOLKS!!!! if you made it here thank you so much for reading my ramblings and i appreciate u so so much <3 i hope you learned something new about the gazette’s music (i sure did - it’s why i went on this marathon in the first place!!) and again i have a list of posts i might write (which will definitely be shorter than these) so! yeah! anyway!! it’s past 11pm and i have no more brain cells. thanks again love ya have a good day/night <3 <3

[saladejin]

Writing Tag Game ❤

 Thanks dippie (@bangtanloverboys​) for the tag 🥺 

I might put a read more since my answers were a little on the lengthy side, but I love and appreciate everyone who follows me and thought you guys might want to know a little more about me, so here u go 

^-^    

What is your ideal setting for focusing on your writing?  - When I actually do write (oops), it tends to be in my bedroom. Somewhere comfy and quiet where there are not many opportunities for people to interrupt. I also pretty much always write at ungodly hours too ... something about being a night owl and finding solace in the peace of nighttime I guess? My brain juices A C T I V A T E.    

What is your favourite genre to write?   - Whew, well I guess I love writing fluffy romance scenarios (you see a lot of canon-compliant stuff in my masterlist), or domestic fluff with some angst and sometimes smut sprinkled in there. Lately though, I’ve been mad interested in fantasy/supernatural/adventure tropes, they seem so fun to play around with. (also idk if slow-burn is a genre but I CAN’T HELP IT WHEN IT COMES TO SERIES).     

Do you prefer to write on paper or digitally? -Oh digital for sure. I need to be able to edit and fix mistakes from the get-go otherwise I’d be wayyyy too frustrated. I use pretty notebooks for ideas and brainstorming though 🥰    

It’s the middle of the night and you suddenly wake up with an idea. What do you do? - You bet that bitch is getting written right then and there ... if I can, at least. This kind of thing doesn’t strike me too often, so that’s why I’m not dishing out fics like it’s some kind of buffet, but the inspiration 9 times out of 10 hits me when I’m travelling - from overseas holidays to a simple road trip. If i can’t write it in that moment, I’ll make an elaborate plan in my notes app or write it in my physical planning notebook.  (P.S -  Most likely I’ll be trying to sleep at night and keep coming up with ideas for the same fic. lol, when you trade sleep for writing bullet points in your phone a hundred times a night u go a little crazy 🤪) 

Who is your favourite person to write about? - Well I really do enjoy writing about OT7, but it does take a lot of time and management to get perfect in one fic, so I’m not really sure if I can say it’s my favourite, even if I do love it to bits. I think my answer to this could be Seokjin, because I love coming up with witty crackhead-ish dialogue (and we all know how he can be a muse in that aspect).  Other than that, maybe Jimin because his soft, affectionate and playful personality just gets to me. I love writing it so much 😭 (Yoongi is a close second).    

Do you like making your own characters, or do you usually write about real people?  -When it comes to OC’s, I tend to only implement them if they move the plot forward or provide some kind of benefit/dilemma to the overall story and characters. I’m not one to really enjoy manifesting a bunch of characters on my own, because my brain would never be able to keep track of everything (without extensive planning that I just don’t have the energy for lmao). That’s why I turn to fanfiction 😄 Using real people allows for more creative freedom regarding other aspects of writing, such as plot and world building, character dynamics, even genres. If you have a grasp on a personality of someone real out there, it can become easy to make characters (that u base off that person) seem more dimensional and human. And that opens many doors with putting those personas into various situations. Writers can practise consistency and development, until one day they feel confident enough to branch out and write their own characters into a completely new story. BUT THAT’S NOT SPEAKING FOR EVERYONE! Fanfiction is purely whatever you want it to be for you haha. A lot is just self-indulgent because we love the people we write about. I get it, and I’m very much the same lol (damn who said people couldn’t ramble in tag games? because I sure as hell just did oopsies).    

Have you ever written a book/story with more than 15 chapters (100K words)? -Haven’t reached that word count quite yet, but CAU is in the 90k range and there are 20+ chapters ... so not far off 😗    

How often do you get ideas? -Hmm well I’ll admit it doesn’t happen often on my own. The ideas I have that materialise out of nowhere ALWAYS want to be some kind of long series, because I can’t help myself (and that’s why I hold off on posting wips). But occasionally a one-shot/short chaptered fic idea might strike me. Oftentimes when I ask for requests I get motivated to really brainstorm and plan something, but I think that’s just because there’s some kind of set goal at play. Someone requests ‘fluffy honeymoon seokjin with some smut’ and I instantly try to plan for what I can do with that specific idea, if that makes sense.  I do requests here, but keep in mind I’m not the fastest writer!    

Do you ever get an idea that you really like, but just can’t seem to finish?  - Please sjsjsjjshdkjsh, I think many of my mutuals on here can vouch for the way I scream and fuel on people’s ideas, but struggle with writing or finishing anything of my own. I go through literal writing bursts, and that means I can generally get down as many as 5-10k words in one sitting, but then also have long breaks in between. IF ONLY MY IDEAS WEREN’T SO SLOW-BURNING 😩    

What is your least favourite plot? - There’s not much I don’t enjoy if it’s written well tbh (except yandere maybe). But the clichéd plots that revolve around many high school AU’s usually annoy me to no end (tedious jealousy and stereotypes etc.). I also detest when the main conflict of a plot is centred around a massive unnecessary misunderstanding, and there’s all this pain for no reason. I have to prepare for angsty plots anyway because I don’t want my heart hurting in general, but those get me MAD. 

[trashangel-dee]

A post-mfhp Mac & Dee friendship fic

I started this back in November, but finally got the inspiration to finish it today. Before watching the episode, I caught a bit of a spoiler that said something like “after Luther rejects him, when Mac was laying with his head in her lap”  I thought op was talking about Dee or Mrs. Mac and it was such an intriguing and weird concept to me, that I felt the need to write it.

tw for a suicide attempt scene. Nothing really graphic, but it’s definitely an important part of this. It’s in italics, if you want to skip it. It’s based off Mac’s line about Dee in Chardee Macdennis.

lmk if you see anything else that needs to be tagged.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dee snaps when she enters her apartment.  

Mac is lying on her couch. He barely looks at her, “I forgot Frank isn’t living here anymore.”

“No, goddammit, he’s not. And neither are you.” Finally, finally, after 4 years she had her apartment to herself again. Things went south between Charlie and the Waitress and Frank immediately moved back into that filthy studio.

He doesn’t fight back or insult her and Dee feels an unwanted spike of worry for the man. She walks over to the couch, staring down at him, hands on hips, “Where were you today? You were supposed to be on our float. We had to use Cricket.”

“I was busy. Okay, Dee?” He sits up to glare at her.

Dee sits in the open space, staking out her territory before another of those assholes could take over her apartment again. Mac looks too defeated to argue. She groans, already hating herself for what she’s about to say. “C’mere,” she says patting her lap. He looks suspicious and mildly repulsed. “Clearly you’re depressed and shit, and I don’t want a gay man’s death on my hands if you off yourself.”  

It only takes a moment to remember all those years ago when the situations were reversed. After a game of Chardee MacDennis they had all separated. As the victor that day, Dennis had used his power to send Mac over to Dee’s to get her VCR for movie night. Plans were changed, though, when he burst through the door. He stopped mid-sentence upon finding Dee stretched across her couch, beer in hand.  

----

“What’s going on here?” Mac asks with an odd mix of curiosity and concern.

“What d’you think?” she asks. “I’m an ugly bird who’s failed at life. It’d be better if I was dead, right? But I can’t even do that right.”  

He approaches her for a closer inspection, some sort of insult poised on his tongue, when his foot sends an empty pill bottle across the floor. He doesn’t bother to look at it to know it’s not her name that’s on the label.

Panic mode sets in, and his controlling side takes over. He grips her wrists, pulling her to a sitting position. “You gotta get that out of you,” he instructs. When she doesn’t make an attempt to move, he gives her another tug. “C’mon, you stubborn bitch,” Mac mutters, “Don’t make me drag you in there.” A thought occurs to him, and he adds, “Because then I-,” he gags lightly, trying to push the thought out of his mind. He looks her in the eyes, hoping to convey as much authority and clarity as possible, “I’m trying to help you.”

Looking tired, and paler than usual, she cooperates, disappearing into the bathroom with a click of the door.

A short time later, Dee emerges from the bathroom, expecting the apartment to be empty. Instead, she finds Mac sitting on her couch, watching a muted television.  

“Water,” she explains when he looks up.  

“Sit,” he commands, then jumps up, “I got it.” It looks like she could fall over at any second, and it’s a long way to the floor for someone that lanky.

Too tired to argue, Dee follows his instructions. He returns from the kitchen and passes her a glass. She expects him to leave, but instead, he sits, too. She takes a small sip.  

“Were you listening to me?” she asks, embarrassed and disgusted.  

“I wasn’t listening,” he clarifies, heavy on the last word. “I had to be sure you were doing it, and not trying something else stupid.”

“Why do you care?” Dee asks.  

“Suicide is a sin,” he states, simply.  

Dee shrugs, “We’re all going to hell anyway.”  

“You don’t know that,” Mac responds, almost defensively. “The Lord is forgiving. You just have to love Him.”

“I feel like shit,” Dee sighs, instead of arguing.

He puts his ugly boots on the coffee table, clearly planning on staying.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” she asks, hoping to sound inconvenienced.

“Nah,” he says, settling in. The VCR was his whole reason for coming over, and that’s right here. Bonus if saving Dee from trying anything again gave him some major points with The Big Man.  

They didn’t talk about it the next day. It was so long ago that his memory is a little fuzzy, but Mac is pretty sure they didn’t talk at all. Everything went on as normal, but instead of joining in when Dennis called her a dumb bird, he laughed once, to save face, then turned the attention to his latest security plan to make Paddy’s safer.  

----

He lays back down, head in her lap. He really doesn’t have the energy to trek over to another apartment.

Her fingers softly find their way through his hair. The touch too soothing and the moment too nice and fragile to insult her giant hands. Still, the situation isn’t as strange as it should be. With the change in the gang’s dynamics over the past year, they’ve become almost-real friends.

“Y’know, Dennis and I- me? I?- we did this as kids sometimes,” she begins softly. “When he would have some kind of breakdown over something stupid. Like the buzzer when we were on that game show. Or when Maureen dumped him for the millionth time that week. He’d always come into my room crying and yelling and I had to deal with that.” She’s not sure why she’s sharing this information, but it feels right.  

“This isn’t my job as a woman. To comfort men,” she says. “So whatever stupid sexist-”

“I came out to my dad today,” he interrupts.

“Oh,” she says, surprised. “Shit. How’d that go?”

“I don’t know. Not good, I think. He just walked out in the middle of it.”

"When you were telling him? What a dick move,” Dee muses.

“No,” Mac corrects. “I danced.” Before Dee has the chance to laugh at the idea of Mac on stage, jabbing his elbows all over and making an ass of himself, he continues speaking in a much softer tone. “I worked really hard on this dance. Every day for months. With this woman. It was kind of beautiful.”

“That’s-,” Dee begins, at a loss for words.  

“Frank was there. He looked proud,” Mac says and it sounds kind of distant.  

Dee feels a quick spike of jealousy. He never seemed proud of anything she’s done, unless it was for a scheme. And he’s certainly never been in the audience, supporting her during pageants or plays. She chooses to move past it.

“If you’re gonna be a pussy about it and keep drooling on my legs, then pass me the remote,” Dee says, but there’s no real cruelty to her tone.  

He leans forward slightly, reaching onto the coffee table and following her request. “Put something good on.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Thanks for reading. I hope it wasn’t awful. :) I’ll probably give it a day or so and do any editing I think of, and post to ao3

[echodrops]

Opinions on the new VLD S5 trailer??

This is probably not what you meant but

0:05 - I really feel like putting  Matt and Nyma in the same scene is an ill-thought out plan, like they just met each other and they probably already have a secret handshake, five in-jokes, and a plan to take over the universe.

0:09 - Where’s Shiro this time?

0:12 - Did Keith keep that crappy little Galra fighter? Like, they couldn’t at least upgrade him to a real Galra ship after taking 1/3 of the Galra Empire?

0:14 - Look at all the cannon fodder… As much as I appreciate the cryptid hunters of this fandom, I’m still not 100% sold on that being Sendak in the back. Willing to buy Sendak from Dreamworks just to put him back in myself tho, just sayin’.

0:30 - When will Shiro’s real haircut come back from the war?

0:31 - Why is Lotor so extra? Why he spinning? That twirl was entirely 110% unnecessary. Theory confirmed: Skirt is there just to look cool while he pirouettes across the battlefield.

0:36 - Lance said “devil.” I can’t believe he’s finally expanded his curse word vocabulary past “cheese” and “crow.” EDIT BECAUSE IT JUST OCCURED TO ME: I bet the trailer is pulling a fast one on us and Lance’s line about “deal with the devil” isn’t to Lotor at all–it’s about Zarkon and whatever deal they’re trying to make with him!

0:37 - Who touched my son. Who made his single bang into plural bangs. I WON’T HESITATE BITCH.

0:39 - Wow Coran, who would have guessed.

0:42 - I’ve listened to this three times now and I’m pretty sure Zarkon is saying “They’re making a one-time offer,” not “I’m/We’re making a one-time offer”? So someone is offering something to Zarkon, not the other way around? Hmmmmm…

0:44 - I feel like being stuffed in a cyropod is not what Lotor had in mind when he decided to crash on Voltron’s couch. Also, I’m not one of the people who believes Lotor is going to come out of this completely on the good guys side, but I still suspect we’re going to see a plotline in which Team Voltron’s lack of trust in Lotor is what fucks them over royally. 

0:45 - Matt Fucking Holt is literally the poster child for “be careful who you call ugly in middle school.” The hero we both need and deserve. Also it looks like he, Shiro, and Pidge may be in a showdown (or a “trade off”?) with Zarkon + Lotor’s generals? If this is the precursor for that long ago Matt, Shiro, Pidge fight scene leak in which Ezor is also present, we know that things are of course going to go south…

0:51 - Can I just talk about how much I hate the lion swap plotline? I hate it so much I can actually taste the salt in my mouth when I even so much as think about it. As a way of expanding on the characters’ capabilities and shaking up their dynamics, it would have been a great short subplot, maybe a few episodes worth of mixed up colors. But allowing that mix up to drag on over an entire other season and then leaving it that way for months as we waited for the fifth season has left fans entirely adrift: do we accept the swapped lions as permanent because they’ve let them sit that way for so long in our minds? Or do we not consider them permanent, because none of the characters have bothered to swap their armor to match which is probably a deliberate visual warning to viewers not to get comfortable with the swapped colors? Are we supposed to be happy for Allura getting a lion, or sad for Lance becoming a second-rate replacement for Keith again? It’s just been poorly managed all the way around.

And as much as I wanted to think an active sixth lion is completely unnecessary and would be a pretty wide divergence from the original series, at this point, adding a “White Lion” is honestly the only thing that could possibly fix the six paladins/five lions problem the series has created, because they left Allura as a paladin too long to force her out of that role now. If Allura takes on the role of flying a different lion, Lance can take back Blue, and Keith will have room to return to Red without displacing Shiro, who has become too well-loved to really remove from the team. And that just leaves Lotor (who will obviously complete Sincline at some point, but… Eh, if the plot isn’t going to cast him aside after one or two more seasons, the writers might as well slap sacred Altean powers on him and let him be the wormhole opener in Allura’s place…)

All that said, I honestly don’t have enough faith in Voltron’s writers to believe that they will tidily resolve the mess they created with the lion swap, and so I suspect this lion in the trailer will either be Allura unlocking a new power in Blue, a hallucinated White Lion ala the original series, some form of vision or flashback, or some other less hype-worthy thing than we fans actually want it to be. PROVE ME WRONG DREAMWORKS, PLEASE.

0:54 - They suddenly remembered that Keith can use the awoken form of his blade instead of just the dagger form. Good job, animation team, just seven episodes late.

1:03 - I don’t know why people are so obsessed with the idea of Black Paladin!Lance or that excited about Lance getting a “leadership arc” in the first place. It’s almost like people’s interest in and ability to empathize with this character hinges on their perception of him as a blank slate on which to project all their own personal heroic and romantic fantasies–uhhh I mean, whoooo!! >___> Leadership Lance! You get ‘em tiger!! Even though there’s a 99% chance that all these moments are coming from the same episode, in which a Robeast is also present, so it’s highly likely that the long-desired “leadership arc” is going to amount to one episode of leadership to defeat a pointless monster of the day before the writers forget Lance is a main character again. (Sorry, I’m just a bit salty, especially on Shiro’s behalf, and also exhausted of Lance being the fandom’s vehicle for self-insertion.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Trailers lie, meng. I’m keeping my expectations low.

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

to all the boys i’ve loved before: the good, the bad & the ugly

THE GOOD

I live my life with the belief, not in any religion, but in several other truths: pineapple topping on pizza is a crime against humanity. FOUR is the superior One Direction album. The book will always be superior to the movie based off of it.

Actually, maybe we have to reconsider that last one.

I first watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before expecting a slightly polished version of a Disney channel original. I was- to my surprise, and delight- proven wrong. Sure, the premise is a bit flimsy (why, in god’s name, would Lara Jean put her letters in envelopes and address them if she had no intention of mailing them?); there’s a multitude of cliché YA tropes (naïve, introverted MC meets floppy-haired white boy ft. some reincarnation of Regina George who happens to be his ex with a vendetta against the poor, innocent MC; the GBF); I’ve got several concerns about the casting (the Covey girls are supposed to half-Korean. The actors playing them don’t even have the same ethnicity? Nor do they look like they could pass for siblings?); and the soundtrack is- well. They could’ve done better.

BUT. And that’s a big ‘but’, which is why it’s in all caps. There were so many things I loved about the movie, so much more than the ones that bothered me. My little Asian heart always bursts in joy whenever I see a positive representation of someone like me in media- I don’t care if they’re South Asian or East Asian or SEA or Middle Eastern or anywhere else from the Asian continent. For so long, the only representation in Western media- if any; having Asian characters is a rarity- were perpetuating stereotypes; Lara Jean and her sisters are such a breath of fresh air. Noah Centineo’s… well, a lot of people find him cute, and he’s got a charming smile. Kitty is my spirit animal. And the aesthetics are so cute- Lara Jean’s wardrobe is a dream, and her room even more so. I loved the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before movie, and I will go to my grave defending it.

Since I loved the movie so much, surely, the book would be better! Right?

… Sigh.

THE BAD

The cover’s very cute, I’ll give it that. Arty font, reminiscent of something you’d find in a love letter, good call. The color scheme’s adorable. The girl on the cover is very pretty. And, um… that’s about it.

Right off the bat, Lara Jean’s monologue made me go, oh. It’s that kind of protagonist. The one who spends way too much time telling and not enough showing (blame all the writing advice videos I watched on YouTube. It never used to bother me before, but it’s all I can see now).

(Also, “After I write my letter, I’m no longer consumed by my all-consuming love.” You’re proud of that, aren’t you, Miss Jenny Han?)

And, see, I wouldn’t mind (I probably would) if Lara Jean’s thoughts were particularly riveting. Mildly entertaining, at the very least- that’s all I’m asking for.

Lara Jean is uninteresting; almost painfully so. Film-LJ’s quirkiness barely translates to the pages. Sure, Lara Jean likes romance… and baking… and antiques… and writing letters to boys who are supposedly out of her league and who could never fall for little old her. And she’s a bad driver. She idolizes her older sister. Decent character traits for a YA protagonist. And, as far as I recall, no internalized misogyny that comes in the form of slut-shaming, which is a rarity for the genre of YA. Great.

And yet there’s something about book-LJ that feels so… contrived. A little Mary Sue-ish, if you will. Papery.

Which can be said about almost every other character (except Chris and Kitty. Margot, to an extent, but I don’t like her).

There are loads of useless info-dumps strewn throughout the story, which makes me wonder if it wasn’t edited. The writing’s just… bad. It’s more like a Wattpad story (when did ‘Wattpad story’ become the paragon of bad YA? Honestly speaking, though, all the popular Wattpad books give the website a bad name. There are some incredibly well-written works on it- yes, even Harry Styles fanfiction. Not every Wattpad story is going to be *bleh* After or The Kissing Booth. But I digress). Lara Jean goes into too much detail about her outfits and the trivial details of… everything, really. And, well, no one gives a fuck.

Which brings me to: the love triangle. Beloved of all YA clichés, pretty much a staple in the genre at this point. Always with the female main character choosing between two men, both conventionally attractive in a very Eurocentric way. Usually, it’s painfully obvious who gets the girl; “Emma Notlikeothergirls has to choose between the handsome, confident, gorgeous, athletic, strapping Ashton Dreamboat and that rando who lives next door, Billy Whatsisname. Whoever will she choose?”

I’ll give credit where credit is due. The book makes both Peter and Josh (unrelated, but why are the boys’ names so standard Hoosier boy-ish? You’ve got girls named Genevieve and Margot, and the boys are pretty much the twelve apostles) pretty evenly matched. Josh has the whole boy-next-door, childhood friends, I-have-always-loved-you cliché going for him, while Peter’s the popular boy, the jock, the guy every girl wants to be with and every guy wants to be.

And yet they’re both complete dicks.

I’m supposed to be rooting for one of them. Team Peter or Team Josh; either Peter-Jane or Lara-Josh. Either the guy who’s got nothing but his looks going for him, or the guy who slept with her sister and kissed her without her consent. hOwEvEr WiLL sHe ChOOsE???

And I was never really convinced that Peter actually developed feelings for Lara Jean, ever. Maybe I’m just oblivious, but they seemed more like friends instead of lovers. I was lowkey shipping Lara Jean x Chris, even though I knew that was plain wishful thinking; I already got my Asian MC, this won’t be getting too diverse.

Other clichés I’m tired of seeing but were unfortunately present: Lucas, the token Gay Best Friend (I was annoyed with the movie for making him the Rafiki to Lara Jean’s Simba and nothing else, but rereading the book made me realize that they didn’t have much to work with in the first place); Margot, the Bitchy Sister (I never forgave her for lying to their dad about Lara Jean having sex. Seriously, how low can you get? JOSH kissed LARA JEAN, not the other way around! Margot’s supposed to be the same age I am, I think, so I believe I have the ability to call her out on her bullshit); Genevieve, the Bitch Queen Extraordinaire; Kitty, the Annoying Younger Sibling (but I love and cherish her so I don’t mind it).

“The sibling dynamic was surprisingly better written than a solid 75% of the book,” says me, an only child.

Also, a final complaint: is having sex that big of a deal? I get Lara Jean being (rightfully) horrified at the accusations, and Peter Kavinskydick deserves a decent roundhouse kick (the movie did a better job of making Peter’s actions forgivable), but why does everyone else care? Seriously, do you have that little fodder for gossip?

THE UGLY

Am I going to complain about the sequel to the movie based off of the sequel to the book that I can’t remember anything of besides the fact that John Ambrose was ten times the man Peter Kavinsky was? You bet I am.

In all honesty, I can’t remember much of the book version of P.S. I Still Love You. Rest assured that I was Team John Ambrose all the way, both while reading the book and watching the movie. I don’t want to make myself suffer through the book again, so I’ll resort to bashing the movie sequel.

This movie sucked balls. Not on the level of Sierra Burgess is a Loser or Swiped or The Kissing Booth or- yikes- The Kissing Booth 2, but it was still pretty bad. It’s pretty obvious that the two movies weren’t directed by the same person. For all its plot-related shortcomings, the first film was charming and pretty widely well-received. The second film takes all that charm and cuteness and fluff and flushes it down the toilet, along with the tiniest bit of affection I had for the character of Peter Kavinsky. Lara Jean, too, to an extent.

At least Peter and Josh were evenly matched. John Ambrose is lightyears ahead of Peter. And yet Lara Jean chooses Peter because… the first dick is the best dick? Make it make sense!

She’s leading John Ambrose on during the entire film, and I normally hate using that term because it’s such an incel way of putting things. But she doesn’t tell John Ambrose about Peter and her dating, even though she’s had the opportunity to do so countless times. She gets mad at Peter for being close to Genevieve, and yet? Hypocrite much? Not to mention she kisses John Ambrose, right before she’s like, “whoops haha guess I don’t like you that much after all :/ lol my bad”.

John Ambrose deserved better, and that is the hill I will die on.

[survivesalem]

Episode 3 - “This music video is kinda hot to be quite honest.” - Raffy

I think this may be the end of me. The worst possible thing has happened. We are tribe swapping....I'm the only member of my tribe over here.....its a 5-1-1......oof Can I get an F in chat? Here's to good luck and hope that there is fracture within the 5.

I am kind of glad to be swapped because it means that I am no longer stuck with a losing tribe. But, it seems no one knows how to edit which just sucks because that will surely mean we will lose the challenge. On the plus side, I have Mac and Jay with me. Our alliance will be stronger than ever! However, Mac let slip earlier that he knows a lot more people than he lets on which means I will allow him to choose the target if we go to tribal council as I don't need to accidentally target someone he's friends with. I feel that I can make stronger connections on my current tribe way more easily than with my old tribe.

Ben and Evelyn went. Inacts. Bye. Now it’s swap. I’m down the street when I see the “Announcement” pop up and I’m like AHH SHIT. I look at the tribes.....I wouldn’t say I’m in danger but the division is literally 3-3-1. Jessie as the swing vote. I need to work my ass off or flip to get myself safe. Oof I’m worried. Butttttt MUSIC VIDEO CHALLENGE TIMEEEEE. I was away when people discussed the songs, and it’s literally some random song I’ve never heard of. I’d love to bitch and complain but also not, so I’ll just sell this fucking performance xoxo

So we get tribe swapped and I’m the only og tituba still on the tribe . Gonna list my thoughts on my new tribe members Raft - seems okay we played a game in the past we’re he got out early . Picked the music video song seems to be a take charge personality . Jay : haven’t spoken much don’t vibe yet . Seems very silent Jessie: wow Jessie, it’s finally your challenge please snap or you’ll probably be yeeted off the tribe Lukas: haven’t spoken . Don’t think he’s gonna reach out first so it’s gonna have to be me . Keegan/Harley: played atomic didn’t work together we said we are gonna work together this time so hopefully it happens Mac/ Oak tree man: THIS IS THE MAN I SENT PICTURES OF TREES TO IN ATOMIC. He passes my vibe check . Brien: I’ve actually met him and he seems genuinely hyped that we get to play together . Don’t think he’s voting me off soon Rn my biggest concerns on the tribe are Jay and Lukas due to lack of communication. I’m sure they already have connections most people tend to . Anyways yeah I’m just hoping we win this music video challenge because honestly I love our tribes ideas. Spooky spooky witchy witchy

Despite being hesitant about editing, I think I am actually doing a pretty good job at this! This is probably going to be the best music video I've ever put together. Brien was talking to me earlier about how he thinks this tribe isn't going to be based on tribal lines. That the game would be more dynamic if we play without it. But, here's the thing, I don't believe that. I think we need to get rid of an original Good member since one of those people will come back if we go to tribal. Plus he wanted to get info out of me already on my old tribe like.... we're not that close bro. At least not yet.

My dumbass not submitting any confessionals before episode 3. Gotta love that INV1 rating! So, lots has happened. Gizmo and Cameron are sneaky sneaks who have been playing all sides and just being chaotic little shits. Our tribe had multiple alliances by like day 2, even before the first challenge results. Slow down there! We ended up coming in second in a challenge but since 2/3 tribes we’re going To tribal we still had to go. Eve was voted out 4-1-1 against Cameron and ME! How dare they?? I think it was Eve who voted me but whatever. And then we swapped into two tribes! And this is basically Nova Scotia 2.0. We’ve got me and Mac and Jessie! We’ll see if that goes anywhere if we lose a challenge. (This rounds is music videos 🤮) So anyways Brien, Lukas and I are sticking together for a bit based on OG tribes, and I’ll see if I can’t get Jessie or Jay (who I just voted out of Atomic oop) to work with us. But that leaves Mac and Raffy in the outs? Who I both enjoy a lot. So, we’ll see what happens. I don’t see myself being a target right away but you never know.

Well, I did not like this challenge at all. I'm a pretty shy person so this was really out of my comfort zone. Unfortunately I wasn't able to film a whole lot due to having to travel this weekend, but! I still at least got something in to show I tried. I may have figured a way to get myself into majority which I really need. I just hope we can get it all sorted out today.

This music video is kinda hot to be quite honest. I think we're going to win, unless they have some editing god on the other side. I would be so disappointed in myself if we lost cause I'm just an amateur. However, I believe that people have appreciated my efforts as editor, so I will most likely survive this round. I just need to protect Jay and Mac. I hope they have started being social with everyone. On this tribe, I want to work with Jessie because she's in the middle of the tribe line split. I have not told Jay or Mac this because I want to keep my cards as close to my chest as possible in the pre-merge. I do not even know if I even want to work with anyone in the long term. In any case, I am hoping to target either Lukas or Brien. I have talked to Lukas the least which is problematic, and Brien is always on game mode seemingly. He's been talking strategy despite not even going to tribal. That's a potential threat. However, I am going to let other people take the lead for this vote. I just want to focus on socially and strategically positioning myself with people that like me.

so uhhh....we’re doing my least favorite challenge. Music videos are the bane of my existence. I always end up editing and I refuse to do it now. Paolo is supposed to be our editor, but he has gone AWOL. I mean...I could offer to edit, but like.....why not let Paolo lose the challenge for us and then vote him out? Seems like an easy option to me. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The swap Tituba tribe are safe. HOT. Now. I’m super happy since this is the first time this season I’m immune. I can’t talk game with Liam and I hate this. But omg I need Alex safe. I also need Liam safe. Hopefully someone flops and they can leave. If my tribe lost, I’m pretty sure I would’ve had the numbers to send Keegan home. I make Brien seem like he’s in control of the vote while working with Jay and Raffy for a 4-3 vote or a 5-2 vote. That difference would be if Jessie was on my side or not.

we lost. i’m excited to start the game and go to tribal. idk what i plan to do yet, but I have ideas about who I want to work with.

Sad days. It's my first tribal of the season in the post tribe swap, and I'm not really sure where I've ended up on the tribe. I haven't spoken a word to Alex, and I voted Zach out in a prior game, so I don't know if he'll hold that against me. I like Austin, Gizmo, and Dylan, but we've never had a chance to talk game or work together yet. I'm also nervous that people will target me since I did such a bad job at editing compared to the other team, but who knows. It's gonna be a free for all on my end.

The other tribe, Osbourne, is going to tribal. In our tribe, it’s a 3-3-1 split. On the other tribe, it’s a 5-1-1 split. The 1 person also has the 5 from the other tribe, making all six. That’s worrying. If one of those 5 don’t go home then we may have to throw a challenge or two and make sure the 1 leaves. The only issue, that 1 is Jessie, and I really like them as a person. My new tribe has 3 OG Good; Keegan, Lukas, Brien, as well as 3 Osbourne; myself, Jay and Raffy. Brien is the outlier with Lukas and Keegan being close. Brien fed me useful info of Gizmo being new and close to Lukas and Keegan. On my personal hitlist; is Lukas, Keegan and Austin. I don’t trust those 3 out of the people left in the cast, even despite me and Austin never interacting yet. Austin is sweet but their style gameplay is a lil cutthroat. Pretty much what I’m saying is whoever goes from the opposing tribe is who I target in this tribe when we go to tribal. Either Jessie, or the Keegan/Lukas duo. Anyways, stream Sour Candy by Lady Gaga ft BLACKPINK.

Keegan definitely voted for Cameron bc he was scared of an idol I’m fairly certain of it but I understand why he did so I’m not mad at him and I think I trust him on this new tribe more then Lukas. But I fear they are a duo and I wanna talk to Jessie and tell her my fears so she knows she can trust me and maybe me her and Keegan can be a group. I wanna work with Jessie bc I know her pregame and met her irl but the only problem is her original tribe has not lost a member and if we don’t vote her out here then the other tribe might stick together and get Alex and Gizmo out before turning on eachother then we could have all of them at a merge which would not be ideal. So I gotta weigh if keeping Jessie as an ally is worth that happening. I had a good convo with Mac Idk where will stand on this new tribe but I wanna work with him bc I think he will always be perceived as more threatening then me. He even bought up the idea of a tengagers alliance with everyone in the game that has a tengaged which is me him Liam Alex and Cameron we will see if all of us are still around come merge time but I’m excited to maybe make that reality once we merge. We both kinda agreed Austin is shady. Keegan Mac and Jessie all just played atomic together which worries me that they will want to stick together on this tribe but I definitely want to work with Mac and I need to make sure he knows it. Atm the person I’m least closest to on my tribe is Jay so if we lose I’d want to try to make a move on him possibly. I wanna work with raffy but he sketches me out in our pms and isn’t willing to give me any info. I fear Keegan and Lukas are too close and I’m a 3rd wheel for them I wanna see if I can enlist macs help to take one of them out maybe Lukas because he talks to me less then Keegan does

I can't believe that I won a music video challenge with my editing skills. I am so proud of that video! I am going to take the time that we are immune to bond more with my tribe. I think I have gotten the best vibes from Keegan and Jessie. Brien is middling. Lukas and I don't really connect that well. I think I am still good with Jay and Mac, so there's no worry on that front. Now that I edited my tribe to victory, they will all probably like me and want to work with me a lot more. There's the benefit of volunteering as editor hehe.

So right now I would definitely consider Mac my number one ally and I wanna keep that lowkey so no one sees us as a duo he suggested throwing the next 2 challenges to get a mix of Jessie, Keegan and Lukas out which is interesting and throwing challenges rarely works but I love going to tribal so Im not gonna say no to it. Plus if it helps gizmo stay in the game on the other tribe longer that’s good. I really like him and want to see him make the merge and then maybe we can work together at the merge Mac really seems to think merge will be at 12 and I’m not too sold on that we could have a swap or not merge at 12 So the way this tribe is it’s me and mad together and he is playing Raffy and jay and I’m playing Lukas and Keegan and idk where Jessie figures into all this but I feel bad that she may have to go simply for numbers sake if one of her original tribe doesn’t go at this tribal. I’m trying my best to be social with everyone and I think I’m a good spot to not go if we go to 2 or even 3 tribals in this tribe that’s another reason I’m not opposed to throwing the challenges. I don’t see a reason jay would trust Keegan after he voted him out in atomic so we may be able to get a 5 person majority against Keegan and Lukas who I made sure Mac knew they were right. Or if we have to we can maybe get a unanimous vote against Jessie. Mac and I made all these grand plans to make the end game and have specific numbers come merge but things never work out the way you plan them so I need to have a plans b through z at the ready and I don’t wanna put all my eggs in the Mac train atm even though I think I convinced him to trust me and he can until I feel I can’t beat him or he is more loyal to someone else *cough cough* Liam they are both hosts together on tengaged I played their game so they are close but mac is certainly trying to downplay it I need Keegan and Lukas to trust me until it’s too late for them. Will I have some remorse going for my original tribe ehh not really in games if I see I better route or a better opportunity I’m gonna take it. I think I’m the real swing vote when we have to go to tribal especially if Keegan really thinks he can get Jessie on our side. So that puts me in an interesting spot a spot where I could be loyal to my OG tribe or I could make a move a change the direction of my game for the better. It’s weird bc I’ll have enemies after I make my choice but I need to make sure the allies I make won’t turn on me after I side with them. Idk the choice I’m gonna make yet I need to weigh out the pros and cons and decide accordingly but one thing is for sure I’ll be in charge at the next vote

Well, we lost the music video challenge. Can't say I'm surprised, we took forever to get it together. There isn't as much activity on this tribe as far as I can see at least. I really want to survive this tribal. I think I've gotten myself into a good position. I'm in a 4 person alliance which is majority, but who knows if they're being honest. I'm currently trying to get in with the three other tribe members. If i can position myself as the swing vote I think that would be good for me at least for this vote.

Flirting with Brien is fun. Maybe that'll bring us closer and he'll be my goat hehe. But who can never be sure

Jay brought up in the alliance chat what we are going to do if we have to go to tribal in the future. He's just trying to get out there who would be receptive of working with us (me, Mac, and him). Jay says that he's talked the most with Brien and Lukas. That is strange because I barely talk to Lukas. I probably should get on that. I said I talked the most with Brien and Jessie. I really want to sell them on Jessie so that we can make her work with us which will help us gain a majority on this tribe without stepping on tribal lines. Mac has yet to wake up, so I'm waiting to see what he thinks. It sounds like our alliance might want to work with Brien eventually, but we shall see. I am very hesitant to even mention working with anyone because I do not want to step on toes so early on. Maybe I should try to keep my mouth shut on game talk and work on being social for the time being.

Mac is spilling the hot tea today. He wants to throw the next immunity challenge to take out either Keegan or Lukas. I am in love with this idea as it puts the target on Mac instead of myself since he was the one who said it. I will just let people fight my battles for me until merge to avoid the big target. Apparently, Keegan is a past winner and Lukas is popular in the community. So, if we take them out now, then we can set ourselves up in a power position late down the line. I can see why Mac made POTS. He is definitely a strategic threat and has a very analytical mind. When I backstab him, I need to do it swiftly and effectively. I hoping that Jay follows through with the plan. I believe that we will target Keegan as he has not been the most active in the chats at all. This could make him the easy vote out. I want to include Jessie in on the plan in order to establish a strong connection with her. This is so when we do merge that she won't fall back to her old tribe and will fall back to us.

So uh........,,.,,.,.,..,shit hit the fan. Apparently Austin is targeting Dylan and I do yeehaw. I think Dylan and I are going to try and pull votes for austin.

When that chat was created between Alex, Austin, Gizmo & Myself I knew I had to expose it! AND THAT'S WHAT YA BOI DID! Austin is a rat and I've had shady vibes from him since the beginning and this just confirmed it. I told Dylan, Paolo & Zach what Austin said and some certain people were not that happy. I think it's either Austin or Paolo going but I'm still not 100% but if I managed to get numbers for Austin I'm so SHOOK

[nxctcaelum]

It Takes Practice

    See below: a completely self indulgent fluff fic based off of this AU**. @rubatosiis for reasons

i.

    It had felt like a dream, when they'd actually met at last. Twelve years of nothing but unbelievable interaction- he'd been told for years that he was insane, there was no Prompto; Prompto was just a figment of his imagination, his method of coping from the accident as a child. Prompto was a voice, a hallucination, and he needed to let him go. No prince would be able to properly serve his kingdom by giving credence to a voice in his head, be it comforting or not.

    But college arrived and with it, so did the proof- a laugh from across the field, the abrupt realization that he'd been heard by that person. And tearing through the courtyard, he'd seen: he was there. He was real. They could finally spend time together, not just pouring over the same book, not just looking at the same sky, not just commiserating about assignments and the unfairness of their teenage years together. There was proximity; there was an intimacy to it. And it made all of his uncertainty, everything he'd been feeling, but unable to reason or articulate for so long.... so real as well. 

    Frankly, that scared Noctis more than he was willing to admit.

        "I love you."

    Lucky that he was deaf. Prompto continued his work, leaned with his hand in his surprisingly mussed hair and glaring at the laptop screen as if it had wronged him. He was editing... something. If he asked Noctis, that sure did look like any other tree that he could have chosen from the courtyard, but apparently it was a piece. He was kind of grateful Prompto didn't ask him to weigh in on this sort of thing. Instead, he just watched Prompto grumble and mutter incoherently. Noctis flipped his pen in his hand, all thought of matrices and getting his homework done before the midnight deadline forgotten.

        "I love you."

    It wasn't said with real vigor, no major inflection in his tone. It was just stated like a fact, like a line delivered by a teenager attempting to navigate Hamlet for the first time. Uncertain, unsteady, experimental, the words rolled off his tongue with a look of scrutiny, as if he were weighing them on his tongue. He'd said these same words to so many others. Ignis, one of his greatest friends, albeit his adviser, had heard him say it ( ruefully, sometimes with a lilt of sarcasm, but sincere no less ). Gladio, who was totally not his bodyguard ( but would be some day ).... okay no, he'd never said it to Gladio. That just wasn't their dynamic. But it was understood- as much as Gladio would sacrifice for him, Noctis would do the same, even if they sometimes got along as well as bricks and dynamite. 

        "I love you."

    His father had heard him say it probably upwards of a million times, if he had to take a guess. Every time he hung up the phone, his father would say it, to which he would respond in kind. It was a habit, a ritual, a morbidly unspoken assurance that if something should happen to one of them, that would be their parting words. Such was the way for a Crown family, but also for a family that had experienced such tragedy in the previous years. 

    And yet for all of the times he had said it... why did it feel weird to say it to Prompto? Why did it feel like his mouth turned to cotton, like his words were not his own? Platonic 'I love you's should roll off the tongue, be as flippant as the weather. He'd seen people, even guys, do it. True, it was usually punctuated with a jab and a laugh, but it happened no less. So then...

         "I love you."

    ... are you sayin' something, Noct?

    Noctis froze, noticing for the first time that Prompto had looked up, quirked a brow. Had he noticed? Had he seen-- crap he could read lips sometimes, had he-- panic, panic, panic!- Noctis said a little too loud, "I uh-- I need to vacuum. Do you mind?"

    A moment of pause. .... Now? Prompto just shrugged, gave a tired smile. Won't bother me. He tapped his head with his finger. A little focused. Just lemme know if you need something.

    Y-yeah.

    As Prompto turned away, he exhaled, practically wilting into the chair. That was way too close. But why did it matter? Why did his heart leap into his throat at the prospect of Prompto seeing? It was true- he loved him. He... he loved...

    He needed to find the vacuum...

ii.

    He'd started viewing it as practice, after a time. Trying to slip it casually into dialogue that he knew Prompto wouldn't see, or saying it as he left a room- out loud, so that it would escape his notice. A few weeks, now, he'd been doing this, and yet it still didn't sit right. Why... For someone he'd known for so long, someone who knew him so well and gave him no allowances for his station, telling him how important he was to him should have been easy.

    "I love you." he announced as Prompto strolled by, whistling again of all things.

    You know the fact that you can still flawlessly whistle the Chocobo song despite not hearing it is kind of baffling.

    Prompto gave a small, chirping laugh, and Noctis's heart turned over in his chest. Yeah well, it was my favorite as a kid. Probably drove Mom nuts with it. Guess it's muscle memory?

You're doing it to spite me.

What you don't like chocobos?

    The look of horror outweighed the gravity of the situation, and Noctis rolled his eyes. No, you dork. He peeked down at his book. He was on the w's... He held his thumb to his lips, putting up his first and pinky finger and feigning to blow into them. Whistling.

    He saw that, Prompto- the little twinkle he got in his eyes when he signs something correctly, the way that his lips quirk, but just on the right side of his face as if he's trying not to be too excited by it. And Noctis couldn't help but return it despite his mild irritation. He never could figure out how to whistle. 

    Another laugh, and Prompto turned away again. I could teach you.

    Take the chance-- "I love you." Nope, still not right...

    The blond turned around. What's not right?

    Shit- Noctis looked back down to the book and reclined in such a way that he hid his eyes. Th-that you can whistle and not me. C'mon, where's that get fair?

    And now Prompto was the one for eye rolling. He strode over, laptop under his arm as he flopped down beside him. He leaned his back against Noctis's shoulder, flipping it open. In what world is it fair that you have an Audi at nineteen?

    This one.

    Then give me whistling.

    ... touché , bitch.

    Prompto laughed again, lightly elbowing him. You've got a foul mouth.

    Coming from you?

    .... touché , jerk.

    "I love you."

    ...... he'd just have to keep practicing.

iii.

    He supposed he hadn't meant it as a joke that first day, that Prompto could stay in his apartment. His reasoning was that, as the Farmer Scholar, he'd gotten his own room. That didn't change that the room was made for two people- a suite with a kitchen, and far too much room for him. And well... Noctis had never much cared for being alone anyway. But he'd also let it be known that there were two beds. So how did they always end up like this?

    The movie wasn't even good. Noctis fortunately always had on subtitles anyway, and Prompto was absolutely rapt in the going's on. It was... some kind of vampire drama. He'd never really been into that sort of occult thing, but at least the blond seemed interested. Noctis peered over. 

    "I love you...?"

    Still sounded off. It'd been a couple of months, and he still.. couldn't get it... Frankly it was starting to frustrate him. How long did he have to rehearse...? 

    Something up?

    .... and he'd been glaring at Prompto. Noctis blinked, a bit embarrassed, then looked back at the screen. Your movie sucks.

Prompto puffed his cheeks, and Noctis couldn't help the smirk. Hey, it's a classic!

    A classic what, flop?

    No!

    Then how is it a classic. It looks recent.

    Jeez, didn't you pick up a book before? Carmilla an older vampire tale than even Dracula.

    And you know that. Color me impressed.

    Color you rude.

    Ouch. My pride.

    Agreed to disagree, then, and Prompto crossed his arms over his chest. He turned his eyes back to the screen. With a chuckle, Noctis slid an arm over his shoulder and tugged him closer. Hey, no pouting.

    Did Prompto get warmer? His shoulders seemed tense, but Noctis wasn't going to look. Maybe his room was just warm. Noctis kept his eyes on the screen. 

    ... h-... hey, Noct?

    Hmm?

    He looked over. Prompto still wasn't looking at him. Cocking a brow, he asked, What is it?

    ... N... Nevermind. I'll tell you later.

    Aww, c'mon, don't do that. He actually kind of hated when people did that stutter-start thing with conversations, but... he hunkered down beside Prompto, squeezing his shoulder a little. Fine, just don't forget.

    Don't worry. I could never.

    Noctis smiled and muttered, "I love you." Prompto laid his head on his shoulder.

    He'd just have to keep practicing.

iv.

    I wanna teach you something.

    It was freezing, Noctis was cramming for finals, and Prompto, who was in none of his classes, wanted to teach him something. Noctis looked up from his book, a look of befuddled disbelief on his face. 

    ... now?! 

    That was some very emphatic nodding going on, Prompto. It was almost worrying- would he get whiplash, nodding like that? He supposed it was possible. Noctis leaned up, gesturing for Prompto to sit across from him. The photographer, instead, slid into the chair beside him, pulling up to sit in front of Noctis with a determined expression. Noctis, in turn, retreated with a small scream of chair legs on linoleum. What had gotten in to him...?

    Prompto reached over, taking a deep breath as he took Noctis's hand. It's a sign. he advised. Here, this one. It's important, don't forget it. Delicately, almost with trepidation, Prompto bent in Noctis's ring and middle finger, pushing the others to extend. He held up the sign himself. Like this!

    Noctis lifted his hand, looking at the sign. This one he kinda recognized, but... What is it? And why was it so important that he had to learn it this second?

    ... and why was Prompto absolutely scarlet? It only showed worse against the light, heather gray of his sweater, his freckles all but vanishing in the flush. He opened his mouth, and Noctis quirked a brow. "I-.." And his eyes widened. Was Prompto trying to talk? 

    He dropped the sign, waving his hands. You don't have to say it, dude-

Yes I do!

    Prompto's eyes squeezed shut, and Noctis swore he could see the start of frustrated tears. His heart sank. What was this? He reached out, placing a hand on Prompto's shoulder. Hey, it's--

        "I- I love you--"

    Noctis froze. The words were halting, almost stumbled over- it was how Prompto spoke, and one of the reasons he tended not to. He hadn't been able to hear since he was six; it'd be hard to replicate sounds from that long ago. And yet... had he just....

    Prompto wasn't looking at him. ... that's... what it means... I...

    ... you son of a bitch.

    Prompto's eyes snapped open, horror rinsing over him as if someone had turned the shower to arctic on him. Noctis, however, was smirking with a wolfish confidence. Well, this wasn't so difficult now-

    He reached over, wrapping a hand carefully around Prompto's neck as he pulled him in. Prompto probably looked as alarmed as ever, and Noctis's heart swelled and hammered between the anxiousness and excitement of the moment. But he didn't pull away- that was what was important as Noctis pressed his lips to Prompto's. He didn't pull away.

    When they did part, Noctis let out a small laugh. He pressed his forehead to Prompto's. ... do you have any idea how long I've been working on that?

    And now he'd been beaten. Practice, it seemed, didn't always make perfect.

    ** As children, both Noctis and Prompto were left comatose, Noctis from a major car accident, Prompto from illness. The illness left Prompto deaf, while Noctis went through major therapy to regain his ability to walk. Through this time, he and Prompto, who had met through this coma, bonded, spoke mentally to one another. Both vehemently defended that the other was real, but had doubts. It wasn’t until the two actually met in college that their doubts were abated and their true relationship could bloom.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

‘Atomic Blonde,’ ‘Detroit’ and ‘Endless Poetry’

  It’s a typical week at the cinema with half a dozen films opening, and that’s not counting special events like QFest or the Sidewalk Cinema, a video installation at the corner of Main Street and Dallas funded by the Houston Downtown Management District and Aurora Picture Show.

This week some noted directors are getting their just desserts, including vets like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kathryn Bigelow as well as relative newcomer David Leitch.

Jodorowsky remains one of the supreme surrealists working in film, however, his latest film, Endless Poetry, is easily his most accessible to mainstream audiences. While there are surreal moments in the film, there’s nothing like the imagery we’ve come to expect from the director of such films as El Topo or Santa Sangre.

Specifically, just like in his previous autobiographical film The Dance of Reality (2013), Jodorowsky mines his youth for story elements. When his mother talks, the words come out like a diva singing opera phrases. In the film, Jodorowsky uses his sons to play his father and himself as a young man. It’s brilliant, really, when you think about how many films you see where the parents and progeny are played by movie stars who look totally unrelated by blood.

In one of Endless Poetry’s few fourth-wall breaking moments, Alejandro himself shows up behind the actor playing his son (Adan Jodorowsky) as if to conjure up the metaphor of a person looking back at his own life. Another son of Alejandro, Brontis Jodorowsky, plays his father, Jamie, not just a stern paterfamilias but rather a bit of a fascist.

Young Alejandro distances himself from his family, who are aghast that he wants to be a poet. Eventually finding a like-minded group of outcasts, Alejandro develops what is to become his singular style of story telling. Other young characters portrayed in Endless Poetry, like Enrique Lihn, Stella Diaz Varín and Nicanor Parra, went on to be renowned artists in their own right.

As in his other films, Jodorowsky never capitulates to normalcy, especially in the father/son dynamics. Young Alejandro’s romance with Stella ends on a sad note. Yet Endless Poetry follows through with its narrative in such a linear manner that it sits among the best family dramas ever made. The cinematographer of the film is Christopher Doyle.

  Endless Poetry unwinds exclusively at the Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park starting today.

    David Leitch may not be a household name, but you’ve seen films he’s worked on mainly as a stunt choreographer or stunt double (for instance, Brad Pitt in Fight Club). Leitch was the uncredited director for John Wick (think Ron Howard on the Han Solo film). His upcoming 2018 film is the sequel Deadpool 2, but his current film is what people will be talking about.

Atomic Blonde operates on so many levels you may be challenged as whether to describe it as a hard boiled spy film, a nostalgic trip through 1980 new wave music cues, or the latest film to celebrate female empowerment.

Charlize Theron (no stranger to bad ass distaff roles) plays secret agent Lorraine Broghton, a no-nonsense MI6 operative who’s about to tear up Berlin on the eve of the collapse of the Wall. James McAvoy, John Goodman, Til Schweiger and Sofia Boutella co-star.

Leitch lays down a soundtrack of that could be the definitive mix tape of late-80s progressive songs: “99 Luftballons,” “I Ran,” “London Calling,” “Der Kommissar,” “Major Tom” and “Blue Monday.” That’s leaving out several titles.

To accompany the music, Leitch escalates the violence of rapid-cut Bourne films to stage massive fight sequences that last for minutes, seemingly without cuts. Whether Leitch uses invisible digital editing doesn’t matter, the action flows, regardless of the technique, like a continuous means to an end.

For the film, Theron trained so hard she cracked her teeth, requiring dental surgery before principal photography. And when it comes time for her world-weary agent of change to find romance, it’s in the arms of another femme. Which is just as well, as the other available guys are probably double agents anyway.

  Atomic Blond opens wide today at area theaters.

    Kathryn Bigelow, first woman to win an Academy Award as Best Director (for The Hurt Locker), places her latest film during the Detroit race riots of 1967. Detroit is really about the Algiers Motel altercation, ann incident that saw police kill three black men while also beating seven other men and two white women during an impromptu interrogation that occupies much of the film’s running time.

Detroit is anything but black and white. Some of the police are shown having an upstanding moral conscience, while others use their badge to literally get away with murder. Likewise, the victims display flaws that make them less than perfect, although certainly not deserving of the abuse thrown their way.

Bigelow starts out the film with a series of art panels by Jacob Lawrence depicting African-American migration in the United States that play over the opening credits. The origins of the riots started with the police busting an illegal after-hours club in the middle of the night. Events snowball from there when martial law is declared and the city has regions cordoned off by the National Guard, the State Patrol, and local Detroit Police.

Remember in The Deer Hunter (1978) when the wedding sequence at the end of the second act seemed to go on forever? There’s a similar scene in Detroit that could be its own movie.

On July 25, 1967 the Algiers Motel came under scrutiny when shots were fired from a window towards a National Guard unit across the street. The gun was actually a starter pistol shooting blanks. Eventually, some bad cops take over the situation and line up a dozen or so suspects in a dank hallway and Detroit becomes a film within a film.

Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd gives Detroit a grainy period look. Considering how much time the characters are being photographed against dark wood hues, the film still retains a sense of the character’s fear, despite the close quarters.

The aftermath comes together quickly. The officers on trial are found not guilty and the world keeps spinning, although the axis has been changed. Detroit may be hard for some audiences to sit through because the truth can really be a bitch.

  Detroit opens exclusively at the Edwards Grand Palace today, opening wide on Aug. 4.

‘Atomic Blonde,’ ‘Detroit’ and ‘Endless Poetry’ this is a repost